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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Complete Works of Whittier, by
+John Greenleaf Whittier
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Complete Works of Whittier
+ The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index
+
+Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
+
+Release Date: January 2006 [EBook #9600]
+Posting Date: July 10, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WHITTIER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE COMPLETE WORKS OF JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
+
+
+By John Greenleaf Whittier
+
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME I. NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT
+
+The Standard Library Edition of Mr. Whittier's writings comprises his
+poetical and prose works as re-arranged and thoroughly revised by
+himself or with his cooperation. Mr. Whittier has supplied such
+additional information regarding the subject and occasion of certain
+poems as may be stated in brief head-notes, and this edition has been
+much enriched by the poet's personal comment. So far as practicable the
+dates of publication of the various articles have been given, and since
+these were originally published soon after composition, the dates of
+their first appearance have been taken as determining the time at which
+they were written. At the request of the Publishers, Mr. Whittier has
+allowed his early poems, discarded from previous collections, to be
+placed, in the general order of their appearance, in an appendix to the
+final volume of poems. By this means the present edition is made so
+complete and retrospective that students of the poet's career will
+always find the most abundant material for their purpose. The Publishers
+congratulate themselves and the public that the careful attention which
+Mr. Whittier has been able to give to this revision of his works has
+resulted in so comprehensive and well-adjusted a collection.
+
+The portraits prefixed to the several volumes have been chosen with a
+view to illustrating successive periods in the poet's life. The
+original sources and dates are indicated in each case.
+
+
+ CONTENTS:
+
+ THE VAUDOIS TEACHER
+ THE FEMALE MARTYR
+ EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND"
+ THE DEMON OF THE STUDY
+ THE FOUNTAIN
+ PENTUCKET
+ THE NORSEMEN
+ FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS
+ ST JOHN
+ THE CYPRESS-TREE OF CEYLON
+ THE EXILES
+ THE KNIGHT OF ST JOHN
+ CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK
+ THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD
+
+ THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK
+ I. THE MERRIMAC
+ II. THE BASHABA
+ III. THE DAUGHTER
+ IV. THE WEDDING
+ V. THE NEW HOME
+ VI. AT PENNACOOK
+ VII. THE DEPARTURE
+ VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN
+
+ BARCLAY OF URY
+ THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA
+ THE LEGEND OF ST MARK
+ KATHLEEN
+ THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE
+ THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS
+ TAULER
+ THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID
+ THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN
+ THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS
+ SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE
+ THE SYCAMORES
+ THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW
+ TELLING THE BEES
+ THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY
+ THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY
+
+ MABEL MARTIN: A HARVEST IDYL
+ PROEM
+ I. THE RIVER VALLEY
+ II. THE HUSKING
+ III. THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER
+ IV. THE CHAMPION
+ V. IN THE SHADOW
+ VI. THE BETROTHAL
+
+ THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL
+ THE RED RIVER VOYAGEUR
+ THE PREACHER
+ THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA
+ MY PLAYMATE
+ COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION
+ AMY WENTWORTH
+ THE COUNTESS
+
+ AMONG THE HILLS
+ PRELUDE
+ AMONG THE HILLS
+
+ THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL
+ THE TWO RABBINS
+ NOREMBEGA
+ MIRIAM
+ MAUD MULLER
+ MARY GARVIN
+ THE RANGER
+ NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON
+ THE SISTERS
+ MARGUERITE
+ THE ROBIN
+
+ THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM
+ INTRODUCTORY NOTE
+ PRELUDE
+ THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM
+
+ KING VOLMER AND ELSIE
+ THE THREE BELLS
+ JOHN UNDERHILL
+ CONDUCTOR BRADLEY
+ THE WITCH OF WENHAM
+ KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS
+ IN THE "OLD SOUTH"
+ THE HENCHMAN
+ THE DEAD FEAST OF THE KOL-FOLK
+ THE KHAN'S DEVIL
+ THE KING'S MISSIVE
+ VALUATION
+ RABBI ISHMAEL
+ THE ROCK-TOMB OF BRADORE
+
+ THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS
+ To H P S
+ THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS
+
+ THE WISHING BRIDGE
+ HOW THE WOMEN WENT FROM DOVER
+ ST GREGORY'S GUEST
+ CONTENTS
+ BIRCHBROOK MILL
+ THE TWO ELIZABETHS
+ REQUITAL
+ THE HOMESTEAD
+ HOW THE ROBIN CAME
+ BANISHED FROM MASSACHUSETTS
+ THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN
+
+
+NOTE.--The portrait prefixed to this volume was etched by
+S. A. Schoff, in 1888, after a painting by Bass Otis, a pupil of
+Gilbert Stuart, made in the winter of 1836-1837.
+
+
+
+
+PROEM
+
+ I LOVE the old melodious lays
+ Which softly melt the ages through,
+ The songs of Spenser's golden days,
+ Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase,
+ Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew.
+
+ Yet, vainly in my quiet hours
+ To breathe their marvellous notes I try;
+ I feel them, as the leaves and flowers
+ In silence feel the dewy showers,
+ And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky.
+
+ The rigor of a frozen clime,
+ The harshness of an untaught ear,
+ The jarring words of one whose rhyme
+ Beat often Labor's hurried time,
+ Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here.
+
+ Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace,
+ No rounded art the lack supplies;
+ Unskilled the subtle lines to trace,
+ Or softer shades of Nature's face,
+ I view her common forms with unanointed eyes.
+
+ Nor mine the seer-like power to show
+ The secrets of the heart and mind;
+ To drop the plummet-line below
+ Our common world of joy and woe,
+ A more intense despair or brighter hope to find.
+
+ Yet here at least an earnest sense
+ Of human right and weal is shown;
+ A hate of tyranny intense,
+ And hearty in its vehemence,
+ As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own.
+
+ O Freedom! if to me belong
+ Nor mighty Milton's gift divine,
+ Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song,
+ Still with a love as deep and strong
+ As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine.
+
+ AMESBURY, 11th mo., 1847.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+The edition of my poems published in 1857 contained the following note
+by way of preface:--
+
+"In these volumes, for the first time, a complete collection of my
+poetical writings has been made. While it is satisfactory to know that
+these scattered children of my brain have found a home, I cannot but
+regret that I have been unable, by reason of illness, to give that
+attention to their revision and arrangement, which respect for the
+opinions of others and my own afterthought and experience demand.
+
+"That there are pieces in this collection which I would 'willingly let
+die,' I am free to confess. But it is now too late to disown them, and I
+must submit to the inevitable penalty of poetical as well as other sins.
+There are others, intimately connected with the author's life and times,
+which owe their tenacity of vitality to the circumstances under which
+they were written, and the events by which they were suggested.
+
+"The long poem of Mogg Megone was in a great measure composed in early
+life; and it is scarcely necessary to say that its subject is not such
+as the writer would have chosen at any subsequent period."
+
+After a lapse of thirty years since the above was written, I have been
+requested by my publishers to make some preparation for a new and
+revised edition of my poems. I cannot flatter myself that I have added
+much to the interest of the work beyond the correction of my own errors
+and those of the press, with the addition of a few heretofore
+unpublished pieces, and occasional notes of explanation which seemed
+necessary. I have made an attempt to classify the poems under a few
+general heads, and have transferred the long poem of Mogg Megone to the
+Appendix, with other specimens of my earlier writings. I have endeavored
+to affix the dates of composition or publication as far as possible.
+
+In looking over these poems I have not been unmindful of occasional
+prosaic lines and verbal infelicities, but at this late day I have
+neither strength nor patience to undertake their correction.
+
+Perhaps a word of explanation may be needed in regard to a class of
+poems written between the years 1832 and 1865. Of their defects from an
+artistic point of view it is not necessary to speak. They were the
+earnest and often vehement expression of the writer's thought and
+feeling at critical periods in the great conflict between Freedom and
+Slavery. They were written with no expectation that they would survive
+the occasions which called them forth: they were protests, alarm
+signals, trumpet-calls to action, words wrung from the writer's heart,
+forged at white heat, and of course lacking the finish and careful
+word-selection which reflection and patient brooding over them might
+have given. Such as they are, they belong to the history of the
+Anti-Slavery movement, and may serve as way-marks of its progress. If
+their language at times seems severe and harsh, the monstrous wrong of
+Slavery which provoked it must be its excuse, if any is needed. In
+attacking it, we did not measure our words. "It is," said Garrison,
+"a waste of politeness to be courteous to the devil." But in truth the
+contest was, in a great measure, an impersonal one,--hatred of slavery
+and not of slave-masters.
+
+ "No common wrong provoked our zeal,
+ The silken gauntlet which is thrown
+ In such a quarrel rings like steel."
+
+Even Thomas Jefferson, in his terrible denunciation of Slavery in the
+Notes on Virginia, says "It is impossible to be temperate and pursue the
+subject of Slavery." After the great contest was over, no class of the
+American people were more ready, with kind words and deprecation of
+harsh retaliation, to welcome back the revolted States than the
+Abolitionists; and none have since more heartily rejoiced at the fast
+increasing prosperity of the South.
+
+Grateful for the measure of favor which has been accorded to my
+writings, I leave this edition with the public. It contains all that I
+care to re-publish, and some things which, had the matter of choice been
+left solely to myself, I should have omitted.
+ J. G. W.
+
+
+
+
+
+NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS
+
+
+
+
+THE VAUDOIS TEACHER.
+
+This poem was suggested by the account given of the manner which the
+Waldenses disseminated their principles among the Catholic gentry. They
+gained access to the house through their occupation as peddlers of
+silks, jewels, and trinkets. "Having disposed of some of their goods,"
+it is said by a writer who quotes the inquisitor Rainerus Sacco, "they
+cautiously intimated that they had commodities far more valuable than
+these, inestimable jewels, which they would show if they could be
+protected from the clergy. They would then give their purchasers a Bible
+or Testament; and thereby many were deluded into heresy." The poem,
+under the title Le Colporteur Vaudois, was translated into French by
+Professor G. de Felice, of Montauban, and further naturalized by
+Professor Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet, who quoted it in his lectures on
+French literature, afterwards published. It became familiar in this form
+to the Waldenses, who adopted it as a household poem. An American
+clergyman, J. C. Fletcher, frequently heard it when he was a student,
+about the year 1850, in the theological seminary at Geneva, Switzerland,
+but the authorship of the poem was unknown to those who used it.
+Twenty-five years later, Mr. Fletcher, learning the name of the author,
+wrote to the moderator of the Waldensian synod at La Tour, giving the
+information. At the banquet which closed the meeting of the synod, the
+moderator announced the fact, and was instructed in the name of the
+Waldensian church to write to me a letter of thanks. My letter, written
+in reply, was translated into Italian and printed throughout Italy.
+
+ "O LADY fair, these silks of mine
+ are beautiful and rare,--
+ The richest web of the Indian loom, which beauty's
+ queen might wear;
+ And my pearls are pure as thy own fair neck, with whose
+ radiant light they vie;
+ I have brought them with me a weary way,--will my
+ gentle lady buy?"
+
+ The lady smiled on the worn old man through the
+ dark and clustering curls
+ Which veiled her brow, as she bent to view his
+ silks and glittering pearls;
+ And she placed their price in the old man's hand
+ and lightly turned away,
+ But she paused at the wanderer's earnest call,--
+ "My gentle lady, stay!
+
+ "O lady fair, I have yet a gem which a purer
+ lustre flings,
+ Than the diamond flash of the jewelled crown on
+ the lofty brow of kings;
+ A wonderful pearl of exceeding price, whose virtue
+ shall not decay,
+ Whose light shall be as a spell to thee and a
+ blessing on thy way!"
+
+ The lady glanced at the mirroring steel where her
+ form of grace was seen,
+ Where her eye shone clear, and her dark locks
+ waved their clasping pearls between;
+ "Bring forth thy pearl of exceeding worth, thou
+ traveller gray and old,
+ And name the price of thy precious gem, and my
+ page shall count thy gold."
+
+ The cloud went off from the pilgrim's brow, as a
+ small and meagre book,
+ Unchased with gold or gem of cost, from his
+ folding robe he took!
+ "Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price, may it prove
+ as such to thee
+ Nay, keep thy gold--I ask it not, for the word of
+ God is free!"
+
+ The hoary traveller went his way, but the gift he
+ left behind
+ Hath had its pure and perfect work on that high-
+ born maiden's mind,
+ And she hath turned from the pride of sin to the
+ lowliness of truth,
+ And given her human heart to God in its beautiful
+ hour of youth
+
+ And she hath left the gray old halls, where an evil
+ faith had power,
+ The courtly knights of her father's train, and the
+ maidens of her bower;
+ And she hath gone to the Vaudois vales by lordly
+ feet untrod,
+ Where the poor and needy of earth are rich in the
+ perfect love of God!
+ 1830.
+
+
+
+
+THE FEMALE MARTYR.
+
+Mary G-----, aged eighteen, a "Sister of Charity," died in one of our
+Atlantic cities, during the prevalence of the Indian cholera, while
+in voluntary attendance upon the sick.
+
+
+ "BRING out your dead!" The midnight street
+ Heard and gave back the hoarse, low call;
+ Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet,
+ Glanced through the dark the coarse white sheet,
+ Her coffin and her pall.
+ "What--only one!" the brutal hack-man said,
+ As, with an oath, he spurned away the dead.
+
+ How sunk the inmost hearts of all,
+ As rolled that dead-cart slowly by,
+ With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-fall!
+ The dying turned him to the wall,
+ To hear it and to die!
+ Onward it rolled; while oft its driver stayed,
+ And hoarsely clamored, "Ho! bring out your dead."
+
+ It paused beside the burial-place;
+ "Toss in your load!" and it was done.
+ With quick hand and averted face,
+ Hastily to the grave's embrace
+ They cast them, one by one,
+ Stranger and friend, the evil and the just,
+ Together trodden in the churchyard dust.
+
+ And thou, young martyr! thou wast there;
+ No white-robed sisters round thee trod,
+ Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer
+ Rose through the damp and noisome air,
+ Giving thee to thy God;
+ Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper gave
+ Grace to the dead, and beauty to the grave!
+
+ Yet, gentle sufferer! there shall be,
+ In every heart of kindly feeling,
+ A rite as holy paid to thee
+ As if beneath the convent-tree
+ Thy sisterhood were kneeling,
+ At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, keeping
+ Their tearful watch around thy place of sleeping.
+
+ For thou wast one in whom the light
+ Of Heaven's own love was kindled well;
+ Enduring with a martyr's might,
+ Through weary day and wakeful night,
+ Far more than words may tell
+ Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and unknown,
+ Thy mercies measured by thy God alone!
+
+ Where manly hearts were failing, where
+ The throngful street grew foul with death,
+ O high-souled martyr! thou wast there,
+ Inhaling, from the loathsome air,
+ Poison with every breath.
+ Yet shrinking not from offices of dread
+ For the wrung dying, and the unconscious dead.
+
+ And, where the sickly taper shed
+ Its light through vapors, damp, confined,
+ Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread,
+ A new Electra by the bed
+ Of suffering human-kind!
+ Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay,
+ To that pure hope which fadeth not away.
+
+ Innocent teacher of the high
+ And holy mysteries of Heaven!
+ How turned to thee each glazing eye,
+ In mute and awful sympathy,
+ As thy low prayers were given;
+ And the o'er-hovering Spoiler wore, the while,
+ An angel's features, a deliverer's smile!
+
+ A blessed task! and worthy one
+ Who, turning from the world, as thou,
+ Before life's pathway had begun
+ To leave its spring-time flower and sun,
+ Had sealed her early vow;
+ Giving to God her beauty and her youth,
+ Her pure affections and her guileless truth.
+
+ Earth may not claim thee. Nothing here
+ Could be for thee a meet reward;
+ Thine is a treasure far more dear
+ Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear
+ Of living mortal heard
+ The joys prepared, the promised bliss above,
+ The holy presence of Eternal Love!
+
+ Sleep on in peace. The earth has not
+ A nobler name than thine shall be.
+ The deeds by martial manhood wrought,
+ The lofty energies of thought,
+ The fire of poesy,
+ These have but frail and fading honors; thine
+ Shall Time unto Eternity consign.
+
+ Yea, and when thrones shall crumble down,
+ And human pride and grandeur fall,
+ The herald's line of long renown,
+ The mitre and the kingly crown,--
+ Perishing glories all!
+ The pure devotion of thy generous heart
+ Shall live in Heaven, of which it was a part.
+ 1833.
+
+
+
+
+EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND."
+
+(Originally a part of the author's Moll Pitcher.)
+
+
+ How has New England's romance fled,
+ Even as a vision of the morning!
+ Its rites foredone, its guardians dead,
+ Its priestesses, bereft of dread,
+ Waking the veriest urchin's scorning!
+ Gone like the Indian wizard's yell
+ And fire-dance round the magic rock,
+ Forgotten like the Druid's spell
+ At moonrise by his holy oak!
+ No more along the shadowy glen
+ Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men;
+ No more the unquiet churchyard dead
+ Glimpse upward from their turfy bed,
+ Startling the traveller, late and lone;
+ As, on some night of starless weather,
+ They silently commune together,
+ Each sitting on his own head-stone
+ The roofless house, decayed, deserted,
+ Its living tenants all departed,
+ No longer rings with midnight revel
+ Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil;
+ No pale blue flame sends out its flashes
+ Through creviced roof and shattered sashes!
+ The witch-grass round the hazel spring
+ May sharply to the night-air sing,
+ But there no more shall withered hags
+ Refresh at ease their broomstick nags,
+ Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters
+ As beverage meet for Satan's daughters;
+ No more their mimic tones be heard,
+ The mew of cat, the chirp of bird,
+ Shrill blending with the hoarser laughter
+ Of the fell demon following after!
+ The cautious goodman nails no more
+ A horseshoe on his outer door,
+ Lest some unseemly hag should fit
+ To his own mouth her bridle-bit;
+ The goodwife's churn no more refuses
+ Its wonted culinary uses
+ Until, with heated needle burned,
+ The witch has to her place returned!
+ Our witches are no longer old
+ And wrinkled beldames, Satan-sold,
+ But young and gay and laughing creatures,
+ With the heart's sunshine on their features;
+ Their sorcery--the light which dances
+ Where the raised lid unveils its glances;
+ Or that low-breathed and gentle tone,
+ The music of Love's twilight hours,
+ Soft, dream-like, as a fairy's moan
+ Above her nightly closing flowers,
+ Sweeter than that which sighed of yore
+ Along the charmed Ausonian shore!
+ Even she, our own weird heroine,
+ Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn,'
+ Sleeps calmly where the living laid her;
+ And the wide realm of sorcery,
+ Left by its latest mistress free,
+ Hath found no gray and skilled invader.
+ So--perished Albion's "glammarye,"
+ With him in Melrose Abbey sleeping,
+ His charmed torch beside his knee,
+ That even the dead himself might see
+ The magic scroll within his keeping.
+ And now our modern Yankee sees
+ Nor omens, spells, nor mysteries;
+ And naught above, below, around,
+ Of life or death, of sight or sound,
+ Whate'er its nature, form, or look,
+ Excites his terror or surprise,
+ All seeming to his knowing eyes
+ Familiar as his "catechise,"
+ Or "Webster's Spelling-Book."
+
+ 1833.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEMON OF THE STUDY.
+
+ THE Brownie sits in the Scotchman's room,
+ And eats his meat and drinks his ale,
+ And beats the maid with her unused broom,
+ And the lazy lout with his idle flail;
+ But he sweeps the floor and threshes the corn,
+ And hies him away ere the break of dawn.
+
+ The shade of Denmark fled from the sun,
+ And the Cocklane ghost from the barn-loft cheer,
+ The fiend of Faust was a faithful one,
+ Agrippa's demon wrought in fear,
+ And the devil of Martin Luther sat
+ By the stout monk's side in social chat.
+
+ The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of him
+ Who seven times crossed the deep,
+ Twined closely each lean and withered limb,
+ Like the nightmare in one's sleep.
+ But he drank of the wine, and Sindbad cast
+ The evil weight from his back at last.
+
+ But the demon that cometh day by day
+ To my quiet room and fireside nook,
+ Where the casement light falls dim and gray
+ On faded painting and ancient book,
+ Is a sorrier one than any whose names
+ Are chronicled well by good King James.
+
+ No bearer of burdens like Caliban,
+ No runner of errands like Ariel,
+ He comes in the shape of a fat old man,
+ Without rap of knuckle or pull of bell;
+ And whence he comes, or whither he goes,
+ I know as I do of the wind which blows.
+
+ A stout old man with a greasy hat
+ Slouched heavily down to his dark, red nose,
+ And two gray eyes enveloped in fat,
+ Looking through glasses with iron bows.
+ Read ye, and heed ye, and ye who can,
+ Guard well your doors from that old man!
+
+ He comes with a careless "How d' ye do?"
+ And seats himself in my elbow-chair;
+ And my morning paper and pamphlet new
+ Fall forthwith under his special care,
+ And he wipes his glasses and clears his throat,
+ And, button by button, unfolds his coat.
+
+ And then he reads from paper and book,
+ In a low and husky asthmatic tone,
+ With the stolid sameness of posture and look
+ Of one who reads to himself alone;
+ And hour after hour on my senses come
+ That husky wheeze and that dolorous hum.
+
+ The price of stocks, the auction sales,
+ The poet's song and the lover's glee,
+ The horrible murders, the seaboard gales,
+ The marriage list, and the jeu d'esprit,
+ All reach my ear in the self-same tone,--
+ I shudder at each, but the fiend reads on!
+
+ Oh, sweet as the lapse of water at noon
+ O'er the mossy roots of some forest tree,
+ The sigh of the wind in the woods of June,
+ Or sound of flutes o'er a moonlight sea,
+ Or the low soft music, perchance, which seems
+ To float through the slumbering singer's dreams,
+
+ So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone,
+ Of her in whose features I sometimes look,
+ As I sit at eve by her side alone,
+ And we read by turns, from the self-same book,
+ Some tale perhaps of the olden time,
+ Some lover's romance or quaint old rhyme.
+
+ Then when the story is one of woe,--
+ Some prisoner's plaint through his dungeon-bar,
+ Her blue eye glistens with tears, and low
+ Her voice sinks down like a moan afar;
+ And I seem to hear that prisoner's wail,
+ And his face looks on me worn and pale.
+
+ And when she reads some merrier song,
+ Her voice is glad as an April bird's,
+ And when the tale is of war and wrong,
+ A trumpet's summons is in her words,
+ And the rush of the hosts I seem to hear,
+ And see the tossing of plume and spear!
+
+ Oh, pity me then, when, day by day,
+ The stout fiend darkens my parlor door;
+ And reads me perchance the self-same lay
+ Which melted in music, the night before,
+ From lips as the lips of Hylas sweet,
+ And moved like twin roses which zephyrs meet!
+
+ I cross my floor with a nervous tread,
+ I whistle and laugh and sing and shout,
+ I flourish my cane above his head,
+ And stir up the fire to roast him out;
+ I topple the chairs, and drum on the pane,
+ And press my hands on my ears, in vain!
+
+ I've studied Glanville and James the wise,
+ And wizard black-letter tomes which treat
+ Of demons of every name and size
+ Which a Christian man is presumed to meet,
+ But never a hint and never a line
+ Can I find of a reading fiend like mine.
+
+ I've crossed the Psalter with Brady and Tate,
+ And laid the Primer above them all,
+ I've nailed a horseshoe over the grate,
+ And hung a wig to my parlor wall
+ Once worn by a learned Judge, they say,
+ At Salem court in the witchcraft day!
+
+ "Conjuro te, sceleratissime,
+ Abire ad tuum locum!"--still
+ Like a visible nightmare he sits by me,--
+ The exorcism has lost its skill;
+ And I hear again in my haunted room
+ The husky wheeze and the dolorous hum!
+
+ Ah! commend me to Mary Magdalen
+ With her sevenfold plagues, to the wandering Jew,
+ To the terrors which haunted Orestes when
+ The furies his midnight curtains drew,
+ But charm him off, ye who charm him can,
+ That reading demon, that fat old man!
+
+ 1835.
+
+
+
+
+THE FOUNTAIN.
+
+On the declivity of a hill in Salisbury, Essex County, is a fountain of
+clear water, gushing from the very roots of a venerable oak. It is about
+two miles from the junction of the Powow River with the Merrimac.
+
+ TRAVELLER! on thy journey toiling
+ By the swift Powow,
+ With the summer sunshine falling
+ On thy heated brow,
+ Listen, while all else is still,
+ To the brooklet from the hill.
+
+ Wild and sweet the flowers are blowing
+ By that streamlet's side,
+ And a greener verdure showing
+ Where its waters glide,
+ Down the hill-slope murmuring on,
+ Over root and mossy stone.
+
+ Where yon oak his broad arms flingeth
+ O'er the sloping hill,
+ Beautiful and freshly springeth
+ That soft-flowing rill,
+ Through its dark roots wreathed and bare,
+ Gushing up to sun and air.
+
+ Brighter waters sparkled never
+ In that magic well,
+ Of whose gift of life forever
+ Ancient legends tell,
+ In the lonely desert wasted,
+ And by mortal lip untasted.
+
+ Waters which the proud Castilian
+ Sought with longing eyes,
+ Underneath the bright pavilion
+ Of the Indian skies,
+ Where his forest pathway lay
+ Through the blooms of Florida.
+
+ Years ago a lonely stranger,
+ With the dusky brow
+ Of the outcast forest-ranger,
+ Crossed the swift Powow,
+ And betook him to the rill
+ And the oak upon the hill.
+
+ O'er his face of moody sadness
+ For an instant shone
+ Something like a gleam of gladness,
+ As he stooped him down
+ To the fountain's grassy side,
+ And his eager thirst supplied.
+
+ With the oak its shadow throwing
+ O'er his mossy seat,
+ And the cool, sweet waters flowing
+ Softly at his feet,
+ Closely by the fountain's rim
+ That lone Indian seated him.
+
+ Autumn's earliest frost had given
+ To the woods below
+ Hues of beauty, such as heaven
+ Lendeth to its bow;
+ And the soft breeze from the west
+ Scarcely broke their dreamy rest.
+
+ Far behind was Ocean striving
+ With his chains of sand;
+ Southward, sunny glimpses giving,
+ 'Twixt the swells of land,
+ Of its calm and silvery track,
+ Rolled the tranquil Merrimac.
+
+ Over village, wood, and meadow
+ Gazed that stranger man,
+ Sadly, till the twilight shadow
+ Over all things ran,
+ Save where spire and westward pane
+ Flashed the sunset back again.
+
+ Gazing thus upon the dwelling
+ Of his warrior sires,
+ Where no lingering trace was telling
+ Of their wigwam fires,
+ Who the gloomy thoughts might know
+ Of that wandering child of woe?
+
+ Naked lay, in sunshine glowing,
+ Hills that once had stood
+ Down their sides the shadows throwing
+ Of a mighty wood,
+ Where the deer his covert kept,
+ And the eagle's pinion swept!
+
+ Where the birch canoe had glided
+ Down the swift Powow,
+ Dark and gloomy bridges strided
+ Those clear waters now;
+ And where once the beaver swam,
+ Jarred the wheel and frowned the dam.
+
+ For the wood-bird's merry singing,
+ And the hunter's cheer,
+ Iron clang and hammer's ringing
+ Smote upon his ear;
+ And the thick and sullen smoke
+ From the blackened forges broke.
+
+ Could it be his fathers ever
+ Loved to linger here?
+ These bare hills, this conquered river,--
+ Could they hold them dear,
+ With their native loveliness
+ Tamed and tortured into this?
+
+ Sadly, as the shades of even
+ Gathered o'er the hill,
+ While the western half of heaven
+ Blushed with sunset still,
+ From the fountain's mossy seat
+ Turned the Indian's weary feet.
+
+ Year on year hath flown forever,
+ But he came no more
+ To the hillside on the river
+ Where he came before.
+ But the villager can tell
+ Of that strange man's visit well.
+
+ And the merry children, laden
+ With their fruits or flowers,
+ Roving boy and laughing maiden,
+ In their school-day hours,
+ Love the simple tale to tell
+ Of the Indian and his well.
+
+ 1837
+
+
+
+
+PENTUCKET.
+
+The village of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, called by the Indians
+Pentucket, was for nearly seventeen years a frontier town, and during
+thirty years endured all the horrors of savage warfare. In the year
+1708, a combined body of French and Indians, under the command of De
+Chaillons, and Hertel de Rouville, the famous and bloody sacker of
+Deerfield, made an attack upon the village, which at that time contained
+only thirty houses. Sixteen of the villagers were massacred, and a still
+larger number made prisoners. About thirty of the enemy also fell, among
+them Hertel de Rouville. The minister of the place, Benjamin Rolfe, was
+killed by a shot through his own door. In a paper entitled The Border
+War of 1708, published in my collection of Recreations and Miscellanies,
+I have given a prose narrative of the surprise of Haverhill.
+
+
+ How sweetly on the wood-girt town
+ The mellow light of sunset shone!
+ Each small, bright lake, whose waters still
+ Mirror the forest and the hill,
+ Reflected from its waveless breast
+ The beauty of a cloudless west,
+ Glorious as if a glimpse were given
+ Within the western gates of heaven,
+ Left, by the spirit of the star
+ Of sunset's holy hour, ajar!
+
+ Beside the river's tranquil flood
+ The dark and low-walled dwellings stood,
+ Where many a rood of open land
+ Stretched up and down on either hand,
+ With corn-leaves waving freshly green
+ The thick and blackened stumps between.
+ Behind, unbroken, deep and dread,
+ The wild, untravelled forest spread,
+ Back to those mountains, white and cold,
+ Of which the Indian trapper told,
+ Upon whose summits never yet
+ Was mortal foot in safety set.
+
+ Quiet and calm without a fear,
+ Of danger darkly lurking near,
+ The weary laborer left his plough,
+ The milkmaid carolled by her cow;
+ From cottage door and household hearth
+ Rose songs of praise, or tones of mirth.
+
+ At length the murmur died away,
+ And silence on that village lay.
+ --So slept Pompeii, tower and hall,
+ Ere the quick earthquake swallowed all,
+ Undreaming of the fiery fate
+ Which made its dwellings desolate.
+
+ Hours passed away. By moonlight sped
+ The Merrimac along his bed.
+ Bathed in the pallid lustre, stood
+ Dark cottage-wall and rock and wood,
+ Silent, beneath that tranquil beam,
+ As the hushed grouping of a dream.
+ Yet on the still air crept a sound,
+ No bark of fox, nor rabbit's bound,
+ Nor stir of wings, nor waters flowing,
+ Nor leaves in midnight breezes blowing.
+
+ Was that the tread of many feet,
+ Which downward from the hillside beat?
+ What forms were those which darkly stood
+ Just on the margin of the wood?--
+ Charred tree-stumps in the moonlight dim,
+ Or paling rude, or leafless limb?
+ No,--through the trees fierce eyeballs glowed,
+ Dark human forms in moonshine showed,
+ Wild from their native wilderness,
+ With painted limbs and battle-dress.
+
+ A yell the dead might wake to hear
+ Swelled on the night air, far and clear;
+ Then smote the Indian tomahawk
+ On crashing door and shattering lock;
+
+ Then rang the rifle-shot, and then
+ The shrill death-scream of stricken men,--
+ Sank the red axe in woman's brain,
+ And childhood's cry arose in vain.
+ Bursting through roof and window came,
+ Red, fast, and fierce, the kindled flame,
+ And blended fire and moonlight glared
+ On still dead men and scalp-knives bared.
+
+ The morning sun looked brightly through
+ The river willows, wet with dew.
+ No sound of combat filled the air,
+ No shout was heard, nor gunshot there;
+ Yet still the thick and sullen smoke
+ From smouldering ruins slowly broke;
+ And on the greensward many a stain,
+ And, here and there, the mangled slain,
+ Told how that midnight bolt had sped
+ Pentucket, on thy fated head.
+
+ Even now the villager can tell
+ Where Rolfe beside his hearthstone fell,
+ Still show the door of wasting oak,
+ Through which the fatal death-shot broke,
+ And point the curious stranger where
+ De Rouville's corse lay grim and bare;
+ Whose hideous head, in death still feared,
+ Bore not a trace of hair or beard;
+ And still, within the churchyard ground,
+ Heaves darkly up the ancient mound,
+ Whose grass-grown surface overlies
+ The victims of that sacrifice.
+ 1838.
+
+
+
+
+THE NORSEMEN.
+
+In the early part of the present century, a fragment of a statue, rudely
+chiselled from dark gray stone, was found in the town of Bradford, on
+the Merrimac. Its origin must be left entirely to conjecture. The fact
+that the ancient Northmen visited the north-east coast of North America
+and probably New England, some centuries before the discovery of the
+western world by Columbus, is very generally admitted.
+
+ GIFT from the cold and silent Past!
+ A relic to the present cast,
+ Left on the ever-changing strand
+ Of shifting and unstable sand,
+ Which wastes beneath the steady chime
+ And beating of the waves of Time!
+ Who from its bed of primal rock
+ First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block?
+ Whose hand, of curious skill untaught,
+ Thy rude and savage outline wrought?
+
+ The waters of my native stream
+ Are glancing in the sun's warm beam;
+ From sail-urged keel and flashing oar
+ The circles widen to its shore;
+ And cultured field and peopled town
+ Slope to its willowed margin down.
+ Yet, while this morning breeze is bringing
+ The home-life sound of school-bells ringing,
+ And rolling wheel, and rapid jar
+ Of the fire-winged and steedless car,
+ And voices from the wayside near
+ Come quick and blended on my ear,--
+ A spell is in this old gray stone,
+ My thoughts are with the Past alone!
+
+ A change!--The steepled town no more
+ Stretches along the sail-thronged shore;
+ Like palace-domes in sunset's cloud,
+ Fade sun-gilt spire and mansion proud
+ Spectrally rising where they stood,
+ I see the old, primeval wood;
+ Dark, shadow-like, on either hand
+ I see its solemn waste expand;
+ It climbs the green and cultured hill,
+ It arches o'er the valley's rill,
+ And leans from cliff and crag to throw
+ Its wild arms o'er the stream below.
+ Unchanged, alone, the same bright river
+ Flows on, as it will flow forever
+ I listen, and I hear the low
+ Soft ripple where its waters go;
+ I hear behind the panther's cry,
+ The wild-bird's scream goes thrilling by,
+ And shyly on the river's brink
+ The deer is stooping down to drink.
+
+ But hark!--from wood and rock flung back,
+ What sound comes up the Merrimac?
+ What sea-worn barks are those which throw
+ The light spray from each rushing prow?
+ Have they not in the North Sea's blast
+ Bowed to the waves the straining mast?
+ Their frozen sails the low, pale sun
+ Of Thule's night has shone upon;
+ Flapped by the sea-wind's gusty sweep
+ Round icy drift, and headland steep.
+ Wild Jutland's wives and Lochlin's daughters
+ Have watched them fading o'er the waters,
+ Lessening through driving mist and spray,
+ Like white-winged sea-birds on their way!
+
+ Onward they glide,--and now I view
+ Their iron-armed and stalwart crew;
+ Joy glistens in each wild blue eye,
+ Turned to green earth and summer sky.
+ Each broad, seamed breast has cast aside
+ Its cumbering vest of shaggy hide;
+ Bared to the sun and soft warm air,
+ Streams back the Norsemen's yellow hair.
+ I see the gleam of axe and spear,
+ The sound of smitten shields I hear,
+ Keeping a harsh and fitting time
+ To Saga's chant, and Runic rhyme;
+ Such lays as Zetland's Scald has sung,
+ His gray and naked isles among;
+ Or muttered low at midnight hour
+ Round Odin's mossy stone of power.
+ The wolf beneath the Arctic moon
+ Has answered to that startling rune;
+ The Gael has heard its stormy swell,
+ The light Frank knows its summons well;
+ Iona's sable-stoled Culdee
+ Has heard it sounding o'er the sea,
+ And swept, with hoary beard and hair,
+ His altar's foot in trembling prayer.
+
+ 'T is past,--the 'wildering vision dies
+ In darkness on my dreaming eyes
+ The forest vanishes in air,
+ Hill-slope and vale lie starkly bare;
+ I hear the common tread of men,
+ And hum of work-day life again;
+
+ The mystic relic seems alone
+ A broken mass of common stone;
+ And if it be the chiselled limb
+ Of Berserker or idol grim,
+ A fragment of Valhalla's Thor,
+ The stormy Viking's god of War,
+ Or Praga of the Runic lay,
+ Or love-awakening Siona,
+ I know not,--for no graven line,
+ Nor Druid mark, nor Runic sign,
+ Is left me here, by which to trace
+ Its name, or origin, or place.
+ Yet, for this vision of the Past,
+ This glance upon its darkness cast,
+ My spirit bows in gratitude
+ Before the Giver of all good,
+ Who fashioned so the human mind,
+ That, from the waste of Time behind,
+ A simple stone, or mound of earth,
+ Can summon the departed forth;
+ Quicken the Past to life again,
+ The Present lose in what hath been,
+ And in their primal freshness show
+ The buried forms of long ago.
+ As if a portion of that Thought
+ By which the Eternal will is wrought,
+ Whose impulse fills anew with breath
+ The frozen solitude of Death,
+ To mortal mind were sometimes lent,
+ To mortal musings sometimes sent,
+ To whisper-even when it seems
+ But Memory's fantasy of dreams--
+ Through the mind's waste of woe and sin,
+ Of an immortal origin!
+
+ 1841.
+
+
+
+
+FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS.
+
+Polan, chief of the Sokokis Indians of the country between Agamenticus
+and Casco Bay, was killed at Windham on Sebago Lake in the spring of
+1756. After the whites had retired, the surviving Indians "swayed" or
+bent down a young tree until its roots were upturned, placed the body of
+their chief beneath it, then released the tree, which, in springing back
+to its old position, covered the grave. The Sokokis were early converts
+to the Catholic faith. Most of them, prior to the year 1756, had removed
+to the French settlements on the St. Francois.
+
+ AROUND Sebago's lonely lake
+ There lingers not a breeze to break
+ The mirror which its waters make.
+
+ The solemn pines along its shore,
+ The firs which hang its gray rocks o'er,
+ Are painted on its glassy floor.
+
+ The sun looks o'er, with hazy eye,
+ The snowy mountain-tops which lie
+ Piled coldly up against the sky.
+
+ Dazzling and white! save where the bleak,
+ Wild winds have bared some splintering peak,
+ Or snow-slide left its dusky streak.
+
+ Yet green are Saco's banks below,
+ And belts of spruce and cedar show,
+ Dark fringing round those cones of snow.
+
+ The earth hath felt the breath of spring,
+ Though yet on her deliverer's wing
+ The lingering frosts of winter cling.
+
+ Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks,
+ And mildly from its sunny nooks
+ The blue eye of the violet looks.
+
+ And odors from the springing grass,
+ The sweet birch and the sassafras,
+ Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass.
+
+ Her tokens of renewing care
+ Hath Nature scattered everywhere,
+ In bud and flower, and warmer air.
+
+ But in their hour of bitterness,
+ What reek the broken Sokokis,
+ Beside their slaughtered chief, of this?
+
+ The turf's red stain is yet undried,
+ Scarce have the death-shot echoes died
+ Along Sebago's wooded side;
+
+ And silent now the hunters stand,
+ Grouped darkly, where a swell of land
+ Slopes upward from the lake's white sand.
+
+ Fire and the axe have swept it bare,
+ Save one lone beech, unclosing there
+ Its light leaves in the vernal air.
+
+ With grave, cold looks, all sternly mute,
+ They break the damp turf at its foot,
+ And bare its coiled and twisted root.
+
+ They heave the stubborn trunk aside,
+ The firm roots from the earth divide,--
+ The rent beneath yawns dark and wide.
+
+ And there the fallen chief is laid,
+ In tasselled garb of skins arrayed,
+ And girded with his wampum-braid.
+
+ The silver cross he loved is pressed
+ Beneath the heavy arms, which rest
+ Upon his scarred and naked breast.
+
+ 'T is done: the roots are backward sent,
+ The beechen-tree stands up unbent,
+ The Indian's fitting monument!
+
+ When of that sleeper's broken race
+ Their green and pleasant dwelling-place,
+ Which knew them once, retains no trace;
+
+ Oh, long may sunset's light be shed
+ As now upon that beech's head,
+ A green memorial of the dead!
+
+ There shall his fitting requiem be,
+ In northern winds, that, cold and free,
+ Howl nightly in that funeral tree.
+
+ To their wild wail the waves which break
+ Forever round that lonely lake
+ A solemn undertone shall make!
+
+ And who shall deem the spot unblest,
+ Where Nature's younger children rest,
+ Lulled on their sorrowing mother's breast?
+
+ Deem ye that mother loveth less
+ These bronzed forms of the wilderness
+ She foldeth in her long caress?
+
+ As sweet o'er them her wild-flowers blow,
+ As if with fairer hair and brow
+ The blue-eyed Saxon slept below.
+
+ What though the places of their rest
+ No priestly knee hath ever pressed,--
+ No funeral rite nor prayer hath blessed?
+
+ What though the bigot's ban be there,
+ And thoughts of wailing and despair,
+ And cursing in the place of prayer.
+
+ Yet Heaven hath angels watching round
+ The Indian's lowliest forest-mound,--
+ And they have made it holy ground.
+
+ There ceases man's frail judgment; all
+ His powerless bolts of cursing fall
+ Unheeded on that grassy pall.
+
+ O peeled and hunted and reviled,
+ Sleep on, dark tenant of the wild!
+ Great Nature owns her simple child!
+
+ And Nature's God, to whom alone
+ The secret of the heart is known,--
+ The hidden language traced thereon;
+
+ Who from its many cumberings
+ Of form and creed, and outward things,
+ To light the naked spirit brings;
+
+ Not with our partial eye shall scan,
+ Not with our pride and scorn shall ban,
+ The spirit of our brother man!
+ 1841.
+
+
+
+
+ST. JOHN.
+
+The fierce rivalry between Charles de La Tour, a Protestant, and
+D'Aulnay Charnasy, a Catholic, for the possession of Acadia, forms one
+of the most romantic passages in the history of the New World. La Tour
+received aid in several instances from the Puritan colony of
+Massachusetts. During one of his voyages for the purpose of obtaining
+arms and provisions for his establishment at St. John, his castle was
+attacked by D'Aulnay, and successfully defended by its high-spirited
+mistress. A second attack however followed in the fourth month, 1647,
+when D'Aulnay was successful, and the garrison was put to the sword.
+Lady La Tour languished a few days in the hands of her enemy, and then
+died of grief.
+
+ "To the winds give our banner!
+ Bear homeward again!"
+ Cried the Lord of Acadia,
+ Cried Charles of Estienne;
+ From the prow of his shallop
+ He gazed, as the sun,
+ From its bed in the ocean,
+ Streamed up the St. John.
+
+ O'er the blue western waters
+ That shallop had passed,
+ Where the mists of Penobscot
+ Clung damp on her mast.
+ St. Saviour had looked
+ On the heretic sail,
+ As the songs of the Huguenot
+ Rose on the gale.
+
+ The pale, ghostly fathers
+ Remembered her well,
+ And had cursed her while passing,
+ With taper and bell;
+ But the men of Monhegan,
+ Of Papists abhorred,
+ Had welcomed and feasted
+ The heretic Lord.
+
+ They had loaded his shallop
+ With dun-fish and ball,
+ With stores for his larder,
+ And steel for his wall.
+ Pemaquid, from her bastions
+ And turrets of stone,
+ Had welcomed his coming
+ With banner and gun.
+
+ And the prayers of the elders
+ Had followed his way,
+ As homeward he glided,
+ Down Pentecost Bay.
+ Oh, well sped La Tour
+ For, in peril and pain,
+ His lady kept watch,
+ For his coming again.
+
+ O'er the Isle of the Pheasant
+ The morning sun shone,
+ On the plane-trees which shaded
+ The shores of St. John.
+ "Now, why from yon battlements
+ Speaks not my love!
+ Why waves there no banner
+ My fortress above?"
+
+ Dark and wild, from his deck
+ St. Estienne gazed about,
+ On fire-wasted dwellings,
+ And silent redoubt;
+ From the low, shattered walls
+ Which the flame had o'errun,
+ There floated no banner,
+ There thundered no gun!
+
+ But beneath the low arch
+ Of its doorway there stood
+ A pale priest of Rome,
+ In his cloak and his hood.
+ With the bound of a lion,
+ La Tour sprang to land,
+ On the throat of the Papist
+ He fastened his hand.
+
+ "Speak, son of the Woman
+ Of scarlet and sin!
+ What wolf has been prowling
+ My castle within?"
+ From the grasp of the soldier
+ The Jesuit broke,
+ Half in scorn, half in sorrow,
+ He smiled as he spoke:
+
+ "No wolf, Lord of Estienne,
+ Has ravaged thy hall,
+ But thy red-handed rival,
+ With fire, steel, and ball!
+ On an errand of mercy
+ I hitherward came,
+ While the walls of thy castle
+ Yet spouted with flame.
+
+ "Pentagoet's dark vessels
+ Were moored in the bay,
+ Grim sea-lions, roaring
+ Aloud for their prey."
+ "But what of my lady?"
+ Cried Charles of Estienne.
+ "On the shot-crumbled turret
+ Thy lady was seen:
+
+ "Half-veiled in the smoke-cloud,
+ Her hand grasped thy pennon,
+ While her dark tresses swayed
+ In the hot breath of cannon!
+ But woe to the heretic,
+ Evermore woe!
+ When the son of the church
+ And the cross is his foe!
+
+ "In the track of the shell,
+ In the path of the ball,
+ Pentagoet swept over
+ The breach of the wall!
+ Steel to steel, gun to gun,
+ One moment,--and then
+ Alone stood the victor,
+ Alone with his men!
+
+ "Of its sturdy defenders,
+ Thy lady alone
+ Saw the cross-blazoned banner
+ Float over St. John."
+ "Let the dastard look to it!"
+ Cried fiery Estienne,
+ "Were D'Aulnay King Louis,
+ I'd free her again!"
+
+ "Alas for thy lady!
+ No service from thee
+ Is needed by her
+ Whom the Lord hath set free;
+ Nine days, in stern silence,
+ Her thraldom she bore,
+ But the tenth morning came,
+ And Death opened her door!"
+
+ As if suddenly smitten
+ La Tour staggered back;
+ His hand grasped his sword-hilt,
+ His forehead grew black.
+ He sprang on the deck
+ Of his shallop again.
+ "We cruise now for vengeance!
+ Give way!" cried Estienne.
+
+ "Massachusetts shall hear
+ Of the Huguenot's wrong,
+ And from island and creekside
+ Her fishers shall throng!
+ Pentagoet shall rue
+ What his Papists have done,
+ When his palisades echo
+ The Puritan's gun!"
+
+ Oh, the loveliest of heavens
+ Hung tenderly o'er him,
+ There were waves in the sunshine,
+ And green isles before him:
+ But a pale hand was beckoning
+ The Huguenot on;
+ And in blackness and ashes
+ Behind was St. John!
+
+ 1841
+
+
+
+
+THE CYPRESS-TREE OF CEYLON.
+
+Ibn Batuta, the celebrated Mussulman traveller of the fourteenth
+century, speaks of a cypress-tree in Ceylon, universally held sacred by
+the natives, the leaves of which were said to fall only at certain
+intervals, and he who had the happiness to find and eat one of them was
+restored, at once, to youth and vigor. The traveller saw several
+venerable Jogees, or saints, sitting silent and motionless under the
+tree, patiently awaiting the falling of a leaf.
+
+ THEY sat in silent watchfulness
+ The sacred cypress-tree about,
+ And, from beneath old wrinkled brows,
+ Their failing eyes looked out.
+
+ Gray Age and Sickness waiting there
+ Through weary night and lingering day,--
+ Grim as the idols at their side,
+ And motionless as they.
+
+ Unheeded in the boughs above
+ The song of Ceylon's birds was sweet;
+ Unseen of them the island flowers
+ Bloomed brightly at their feet.
+
+ O'er them the tropic night-storm swept,
+ The thunder crashed on rock and hill;
+ The cloud-fire on their eyeballs blazed,
+ Yet there they waited still!
+
+ What was the world without to them?
+ The Moslem's sunset-call, the dance
+ Of Ceylon's maids, the passing gleam
+ Of battle-flag and lance?
+
+ They waited for that falling leaf
+ Of which the wandering Jogees sing:
+ Which lends once more to wintry age
+ The greenness of its spring.
+
+ Oh, if these poor and blinded ones
+ In trustful patience wait to feel
+ O'er torpid pulse and failing limb
+ A youthful freshness steal;
+
+ Shall we, who sit beneath that Tree
+ Whose healing leaves of life are shed,
+ In answer to the breath of prayer,
+ Upon the waiting head;
+
+ Not to restore our failing forms,
+ And build the spirit's broken shrine,
+ But on the fainting soul to shed
+ A light and life divine--
+
+ Shall we grow weary in our watch,
+ And murmur at the long delay?
+ Impatient of our Father's time
+ And His appointed way?
+
+ Or shall the stir of outward things
+ Allure and claim the Christian's eye,
+ When on the heathen watcher's ear
+ Their powerless murmurs die?
+
+ Alas! a deeper test of faith
+ Than prison cell or martyr's stake,
+ The self-abasing watchfulness
+ Of silent prayer may make.
+
+ We gird us bravely to rebuke
+ Our erring brother in the wrong,--
+ And in the ear of Pride and Power
+ Our warning voice is strong.
+
+ Easier to smite with Peter's sword
+ Than "watch one hour" in humbling prayer.
+ Life's "great things," like the Syrian lord,
+ Our hearts can do and dare.
+
+ But oh! we shrink from Jordan's side,
+ From waters which alone can save;
+
+ And murmur for Abana's banks
+ And Pharpar's brighter wave.
+
+ O Thou, who in the garden's shade
+ Didst wake Thy weary ones again,
+ Who slumbered at that fearful hour
+ Forgetful of Thy pain;
+
+ Bend o'er us now, as over them,
+ And set our sleep-bound spirits free,
+ Nor leave us slumbering in the watch
+ Our souls should keep with Thee!
+
+ 1841
+
+
+
+
+THE EXILES.
+
+The incidents upon which the following ballad has its foundation
+about the year 1660. Thomas Macy was one of the first, if not the first
+white settler of Nantucket. The career of Macy is briefly but carefully
+outlined in James S. Pike's The New Puritan.
+
+ THE goodman sat beside his door
+ One sultry afternoon,
+ With his young wife singing at his side
+ An old and goodly tune.
+
+ A glimmer of heat was in the air,--
+ The dark green woods were still;
+ And the skirts of a heavy thunder-cloud
+ Hung over the western hill.
+
+ Black, thick, and vast arose that cloud
+ Above the wilderness,
+
+ As some dark world from upper air
+ Were stooping over this.
+
+ At times the solemn thunder pealed,
+ And all was still again,
+ Save a low murmur in the air
+ Of coming wind and rain.
+
+ Just as the first big rain-drop fell,
+ A weary stranger came,
+ And stood before the farmer's door,
+ With travel soiled and lame.
+
+ Sad seemed he, yet sustaining hope
+ Was in his quiet glance,
+ And peace, like autumn's moonlight, clothed
+ His tranquil countenance,--
+
+ A look, like that his Master wore
+ In Pilate's council-hall:
+ It told of wrongs, but of a love
+ Meekly forgiving all.
+
+ "Friend! wilt thou give me shelter here?"
+ The stranger meekly said;
+ And, leaning on his oaken staff,
+ The goodman's features read.
+
+ "My life is hunted,--evil men
+ Are following in my track;
+ The traces of the torturer's whip
+ Are on my aged back;
+
+ "And much, I fear, 't will peril thee
+ Within thy doors to take
+ A hunted seeker of the Truth,
+ Oppressed for conscience' sake."
+
+ Oh, kindly spoke the goodman's wife,
+ "Come in, old man!" quoth she,
+ "We will not leave thee to the storm,
+ Whoever thou mayst be."
+
+ Then came the aged wanderer in,
+ And silent sat him down;
+ While all within grew dark as night
+ Beneath the storm-cloud's frown.
+
+ But while the sudden lightning's blaze
+ Filled every cottage nook,
+ And with the jarring thunder-roll
+ The loosened casements shook,
+
+ A heavy tramp of horses' feet
+ Came sounding up the lane,
+ And half a score of horse, or more,
+ Came plunging through the rain.
+
+ "Now, Goodman Macy, ope thy door,--
+ We would not be house-breakers;
+ A rueful deed thou'st done this day,
+ In harboring banished Quakers."
+
+ Out looked the cautious goodman then,
+ With much of fear and awe,
+ For there, with broad wig drenched with rain
+ The parish priest he saw.
+
+ Open thy door, thou wicked man,
+ And let thy pastor in,
+ And give God thanks, if forty stripes
+ Repay thy deadly sin."
+
+ "What seek ye?" quoth the goodman;
+ "The stranger is my guest;
+ He is worn with toil and grievous wrong,--
+ Pray let the old man rest."
+
+ "Now, out upon thee, canting knave!"
+ And strong hands shook the door.
+ "Believe me, Macy," quoth the priest,
+ "Thou 'lt rue thy conduct sore."
+
+ Then kindled Macy's eye of fire
+ "No priest who walks the earth,
+ Shall pluck away the stranger-guest
+ Made welcome to my hearth."
+
+ Down from his cottage wall he caught
+ The matchlock, hotly tried
+ At Preston-pans and Marston-moor,
+ By fiery Ireton's side;
+
+ Where Puritan, and Cavalier,
+ With shout and psalm contended;
+ And Rupert's oath, and Cromwell's prayer,
+ With battle-thunder blended.
+
+ Up rose the ancient stranger then
+ "My spirit is not free
+ To bring the wrath and violence
+ Of evil men on thee;
+
+ "And for thyself, I pray forbear,
+ Bethink thee of thy Lord,
+ Who healed again the smitten ear,
+ And sheathed His follower's sword.
+
+ "I go, as to the slaughter led.
+ Friends of the poor, farewell!"
+ Beneath his hand the oaken door
+ Back on its hinges fell.
+
+ "Come forth, old graybeard, yea and nay,"
+ The reckless scoffers cried,
+ As to a horseman's saddle-bow
+ The old man's arms were tied.
+
+ And of his bondage hard and long
+ In Boston's crowded jail,
+ Where suffering woman's prayer was heard,
+ With sickening childhood's wail,
+
+ It suits not with our tale to tell;
+ Those scenes have passed away;
+ Let the dim shadows of the past
+ Brood o'er that evil day.
+
+ "Ho, sheriff!" quoth the ardent priest,
+ "Take Goodman Macy too;
+ The sin of this day's heresy
+ His back or purse shall rue."
+
+ "Now, goodwife, haste thee!" Macy cried.
+ She caught his manly arm;
+ Behind, the parson urged pursuit,
+ With outcry and alarm.
+
+ Ho! speed the Macys, neck or naught,--
+ The river-course was near;
+ The plashing on its pebbled shore
+ Was music to their ear.
+
+ A gray rock, tasselled o'er with birch,
+ Above the waters hung,
+ And at its base, with every wave,
+ A small light wherry swung.
+
+ A leap--they gain the boat--and there
+ The goodman wields his oar;
+ "Ill luck betide them all," he cried,
+ "The laggards on the shore."
+
+ Down through the crashing underwood,
+ The burly sheriff came:--
+ "Stand, Goodman Macy, yield thyself;
+ Yield in the King's own name."
+
+ "Now out upon thy hangman's face!"
+ Bold Macy answered then,--
+ "Whip women, on the village green,
+ But meddle not with men."
+
+ The priest came panting to the shore,
+ His grave cocked hat was gone;
+ Behind him, like some owl's nest, hung
+ His wig upon a thorn.
+
+ "Come back,--come back!" the parson cried,
+ "The church's curse beware."
+ "Curse, an' thou wilt," said Macy, "but
+ Thy blessing prithee spare."
+
+ "Vile scoffer!" cried the baffled priest,
+ "Thou 'lt yet the gallows see."
+ "Who's born to be hanged will not be drowned,"
+ Quoth Macy, merrily;
+
+ "And so, sir sheriff and priest, good-by!"
+ He bent him to his oar,
+ And the small boat glided quietly
+ From the twain upon the shore.
+
+ Now in the west, the heavy clouds
+ Scattered and fell asunder,
+ While feebler came the rush of rain,
+ And fainter growled the thunder.
+
+ And through the broken clouds, the sun
+ Looked out serene and warm,
+ Painting its holy symbol-light
+ Upon the passing storm.
+
+ Oh, beautiful! that rainbow span,
+ O'er dim Crane-neck was bended;
+ One bright foot touched the eastern hills,
+ And one with ocean blended.
+
+ By green Pentucket's southern'slope
+ The small boat glided fast;
+ The watchers of the Block-house saw
+ The strangers as they passed.
+
+ That night a stalwart garrison
+ Sat shaking in their shoes,
+ To hear the dip of Indian oars,
+ The glide of birch canoes.
+
+ The fisher-wives of Salisbury--
+ The men were all away--
+ Looked out to see the stranger oar
+ Upon their waters play.
+
+ Deer-Island's rocks and fir-trees threw
+ Their sunset-shadows o'er them,
+ And Newbury's spire and weathercock
+ Peered o'er the pines before them.
+
+ Around the Black Rocks, on their left,
+ The marsh lay broad and green;
+ And on their right, with dwarf shrubs crowned,
+ Plum Island's hills were seen.
+
+ With skilful hand and wary eye
+ The harbor-bar was crossed;
+ A plaything of the restless wave,
+ The boat on ocean tossed.
+
+ The glory of the sunset heaven
+ On land and water lay;
+ On the steep hills of Agawam,
+ On cape, and bluff, and bay.
+
+ They passed the gray rocks of Cape Ann,
+ And Gloucester's harbor-bar;
+ The watch-fire of the garrison
+ Shone like a setting star.
+
+ How brightly broke the morning
+ On Massachusetts Bay!
+ Blue wave, and bright green island,
+ Rejoicing in the day.
+
+ On passed the bark in safety
+ Round isle and headland steep;
+ No tempest broke above them,
+ No fog-cloud veiled the deep.
+
+ Far round the bleak and stormy Cape
+ The venturous Macy passed,
+ And on Nantucket's naked isle
+ Drew up his boat at last.
+
+ And how, in log-built cabin,
+ They braved the rough sea-weather;
+ And there, in peace and quietness,
+ Went down life's vale together;
+
+ How others drew around them,
+ And how their fishing sped,
+ Until to every wind of heaven
+ Nantucket's sails were spread;
+
+ How pale Want alternated
+ With Plenty's golden smile;
+ Behold, is it not written
+ In the annals of the isle?
+
+ And yet that isle remaineth
+ A refuge of the free,
+ As when true-hearted Macy
+ Beheld it from the sea.
+
+ Free as the winds that winnow
+ Her shrubless hills of sand,
+ Free as the waves that batter
+ Along her yielding land.
+
+ Than hers, at duty's summons,
+ No loftier spirit stirs,
+ Nor falls o'er human suffering
+ A readier tear then hers.
+
+ God bless the sea-beat island!
+ And grant forevermore,
+ That charity and freedom dwell
+ As now upon her shore!
+
+ 1841.
+
+
+
+
+THE KNIGHT OF ST. JOHN.
+
+ ERE down yon blue Carpathian hills
+ The sun shall sink again,
+ Farewell to life and all its ills,
+ Farewell to cell and chain!
+
+ These prison shades are dark and cold,
+ But, darker far than they,
+ The shadow of a sorrow old
+ Is on my heart alway.
+
+ For since the day when Warkworth wood
+ Closed o'er my steed, and I,
+ An alien from my name and blood,
+ A weed cast out to die,--
+
+ When, looking back in sunset light,
+ I saw her turret gleam,
+ And from its casement, far and white,
+ Her sign of farewell stream,
+
+ Like one who, from some desert shore,
+ Doth home's green isles descry,
+ And, vainly longing, gazes o'er
+ The waste of wave and sky;
+
+ So from the desert of my fate
+ I gaze across the past;
+ Forever on life's dial-plate
+ The shade is backward cast!
+
+ I've wandered wide from shore to shore,
+ I've knelt at many a shrine;
+ And bowed me to the rocky floor
+ Where Bethlehem's tapers shine;
+
+ And by the Holy Sepulchre
+ I've pledged my knightly sword
+ To Christ, His blessed Church, and her,
+ The Mother of our Lord.
+
+ Oh, vain the vow, and vain the strife!
+ How vain do all things seem!
+ My soul is in the past, and life
+ To-day is but a dream.
+
+ In vain the penance strange and long,
+ And hard for flesh to bear;
+ The prayer, the fasting, and the thong,
+ And sackcloth shirt of hair.
+
+ The eyes of memory will not sleep,
+ Its ears are open still;
+ And vigils with the past they keep
+ Against my feeble will.
+
+ And still the loves and joys of old
+ Do evermore uprise;
+ I see the flow of locks of gold,
+ The shine of loving eyes!
+
+ Ah me! upon another's breast
+ Those golden locks recline;
+ I see upon another rest
+ The glance that once was mine.
+
+ "O faithless priest! O perjured knight!"
+ I hear the Master cry;
+ "Shut out the vision from thy sight,
+ Let Earth and Nature die.
+
+ "The Church of God is now thy spouse,
+ And thou the bridegroom art;
+ Then let the burden of thy vows
+ Crush down thy human heart!"
+
+ In vain! This heart its grief must know,
+ Till life itself hath ceased,
+ And falls beneath the self-same blow
+ The lover and the priest!
+
+ O pitying Mother! souls of light,
+ And saints and martyrs old!
+ Pray for a weak and sinful knight,
+ A suffering man uphold.
+
+ Then let the Paynim work his will,
+ And death unbind my chain,
+ Ere down yon blue Carpathian hill
+ The sun shall fall again.
+
+ 1843
+
+
+
+
+CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK.
+
+In 1658 two young persons, son and daughter of Lawrence Smithwick of
+Salem, who had himself been imprisoned and deprived of nearly all his
+property for having entertained Quakers at his house, were fined for
+non-attendance at church. They being unable to pay the fine, the General
+Court issued an order empowering "the Treasurer of the County to sell
+the said persons to any of the English nation of Virginia or Barbadoes,
+to answer said fines." An attempt was made to carry this order into
+execution, but no shipmaster was found willing to convey them to the
+West Indies.
+
+ To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing rise
+ to-day,
+ From the scoffer and the cruel He hath plucked
+ the spoil away;
+ Yea, He who cooled the furnace around the faithful
+ three,
+ And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set His hand-
+ maid free!
+ Last night I saw the sunset melt through my prison
+ bars,
+ Last night across my damp earth-floor fell the pale
+ gleam of stars;
+ In the coldness and the darkness all through the
+ long night-time,
+ My grated casement whitened with autumn's early
+ rime.
+ Alone, in that dark sorrow, hour after hour crept
+ by;
+ Star after star looked palely in and sank adown
+ the sky;
+ No sound amid night's stillness, save that which
+ seemed to be
+ The dull and heavy beating of the pulses of the sea;
+
+ All night I sat unsleeping, for I knew that on the
+ morrow
+ The ruler and the cruel priest would mock me in
+ my sorrow,
+ Dragged to their place of market, and bargained
+ for and sold,
+ Like a lamb before the shambles, like a heifer
+ from the fold!
+
+ Oh, the weakness of the flesh was there, the
+ shrinking and the shame;
+ And the low voice of the Tempter like whispers to
+ me came:
+ "Why sit'st thou thus forlornly," the wicked
+ murmur said,
+ "Damp walls thy bower of beauty, cold earth thy
+ maiden bed?
+
+ "Where be the smiling faces, and voices soft and
+ sweet,
+ Seen in thy father's dwelling, heard in the pleasant
+ street?
+ Where be the youths whose glances, the summer
+ Sabbath through,
+ Turned tenderly and timidly unto thy father's pew?
+
+
+ "Why sit'st thou here, Cassandra?-Bethink
+ thee with what mirth
+ Thy happy schoolmates gather around the warm
+ bright hearth;
+ How the crimson shadows tremble on foreheads
+ white and fair,
+ On eyes of merry girlhood, half hid in golden hair.
+
+ "Not for thee the hearth-fire brightens, not for
+ thee kind words are spoken,
+ Not for thee the nuts of Wenham woods by laughing
+ boys are broken;
+ No first-fruits of the orchard within thy lap are
+ laid,
+ For thee no flowers of autumn the youthful hunters
+ braid.
+
+ "O weak, deluded maiden!--by crazy fancies
+ led,
+ With wild and raving railers an evil path to tread;
+ To leave a wholesome worship, and teaching pure
+ and sound,
+ And mate with maniac women, loose-haired and
+ sackcloth bound,--
+
+ "Mad scoffers of the priesthood; who mock at
+ things divine,
+ Who rail against the pulpit, and holy bread and
+ wine;
+ Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and from the
+ pillory lame,
+ Rejoicing in their wretchedness, and glorying in
+ their shame.
+
+ "And what a fate awaits thee!--a sadly toiling
+ slave,
+ Dragging the slowly lengthening chain of bondage
+ to the grave!
+ Think of thy woman's nature, subdued in hopeless
+ thrall,
+ The easy prey of any, the scoff and scorn of all!"
+
+ Oh, ever as the Tempter spoke, and feeble Nature's
+ fears
+ Wrung drop by drop the scalding flow of unavailing
+ tears,
+ I wrestled down the evil thoughts, and strove in
+ silent prayer,
+ To feel, O Helper of the weak! that Thou indeed
+ wert there!
+
+ I thought of Paul and Silas, within Philippi's cell,
+ And how from Peter's sleeping limbs the prison
+ shackles fell,
+ Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an angel's
+ robe of white,
+ And to feel a blessed presence invisible to sight.
+
+ Bless the Lord for all his mercies!--for the peace
+ and love I felt,
+ Like dew of Hermon's holy hill, upon my spirit
+ melt;
+ When "Get behind me, Satan!" was the language
+ of my heart,
+ And I felt the Evil Tempter with all his doubts
+ depart.
+
+ Slow broke the gray cold morning; again the sunshine
+ fell,
+ Flecked with the shade of bar and grate within
+ my lonely cell;
+ The hoar-frost melted on the wall, and upward
+ from the street
+ Came careless laugh and idle word, and tread of
+ passing feet.
+
+ At length the heavy bolts fell back, my door was
+ open cast,
+ And slowly at the sheriff's side, up the long street
+ I passed;
+ I heard the murmur round me, and felt, but dared
+ not see,
+ How, from every door and window, the people
+ gazed on me.
+
+ And doubt and fear fell on me, shame burned upon
+ my cheek,
+ Swam earth and sky around me, my trembling
+ limbs grew weak:
+ "O Lord! support thy handmaid; and from her
+ soul cast out
+ The fear of man, which brings a snare, the weakness
+ and the doubt."
+
+ Then the dreary shadows scattered, like a cloud in
+ morning's breeze,
+ And a low deep voice within me seemed whispering
+ words like these:
+ "Though thy earth be as the iron, and thy heaven
+ a brazen wall,
+ Trust still His loving-kindness whose power is over
+ all."
+
+ We paused at length, where at my feet the sunlit
+ waters broke
+ On glaring reach of shining beach, and shingly
+ wall of rock;
+ The merchant-ships lay idly there, in hard clear
+ lines on high,
+ Tracing with rope and slender spar their network
+ on the sky.
+
+ And there were ancient citizens, cloak-wrapped
+ and grave and cold,
+ And grim and stout sea-captains with faces bronzed
+ and old,
+ And on his horse, with Rawson, his cruel clerk at
+ hand,
+ Sat dark and haughty Endicott, the ruler of the
+ land.
+
+ And poisoning with his evil words the ruler's ready
+ ear,
+ The priest leaned o'er his saddle, with laugh and
+ scoff and jeer;
+ It stirred my soul, and from my lips the seal of
+ silence broke,
+ As if through woman's weakness a warning spirit
+ spoke.
+
+ I cried, "The Lord rebuke thee, thou smiter of the
+ meek,
+ Thou robber of the righteous, thou trampler of
+ the weak!
+ Go light the dark, cold hearth-stones,--go turn
+ the prison lock
+ Of the poor hearts thou hast hunted, thou wolf
+ amid the flock!"
+
+ Dark lowered the brows of Endicott, and with a
+ deeper red
+ O'er Rawson's wine-empurpled cheek the flush of
+ anger spread;
+ "Good people," quoth the white-lipped priest,
+ "heed not her words so wild,
+ Her Master speaks within her,--the Devil owns
+ his child!"
+
+ But gray heads shook, and young brows knit, the
+ while the sheriff read
+ That law the wicked rulers against the poor have
+ made,
+ Who to their house of Rimmon and idol priesthood
+ bring
+ No bended knee of worship, nor gainful offering.
+
+ Then to the stout sea-captains the sheriff, turning,
+ said,--
+ "Which of ye, worthy seamen, will take this
+ Quaker maid?
+ In the Isle of fair Barbadoes, or on Virginia's
+ shore,
+ You may hold her at a higher price than Indian
+ girl or Moor."
+
+ Grim and silent stood the captains; and when
+ again he cried,
+ "Speak out, my worthy seamen!"--no voice, no
+ sign replied;
+ But I felt a hard hand press my own, and kind
+ words met my ear,--
+ "God bless thee, and preserve thee, my gentle girl
+ and dear!"
+
+ A weight seemed lifted from my heart, a pitying
+ friend was nigh,--
+ I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw it in his
+ eye;
+ And when again the sheriff spoke, that voice, so
+ kind to me,
+ Growled back its stormy answer like the roaring
+ of the sea,--
+
+ "Pile my ship with bars of silver, pack with coins
+ of Spanish gold,
+ From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the roomage of
+ her hold,
+ By the living God who made me!--I would sooner
+ in your bay
+ Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear this child
+ away!"
+
+ "Well answered, worthy captain, shame on their
+ cruel laws!"
+ Ran through the crowd in murmurs loud the people's
+ just applause.
+ "Like the herdsman of Tekoa, in Israel of old,
+ Shall we see the poor and righteous again for
+ silver sold?"
+
+ I looked on haughty Endicott; with weapon half-
+ way drawn,
+ Swept round the throng his lion glare of bitter hate
+ and scorn;
+ Fiercely he drew his bridle-rein, and turned in
+ silence back,
+ And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode
+ murmuring in his track.
+
+ Hard after them the sheriff looked, in bitterness of
+ soul;
+ Thrice smote his staff upon the ground, and
+ crushed his parchment roll.
+ "Good friends," he said, "since both have fled,
+ the ruler and the priest,
+ Judge ye, if from their further work I be not well
+ released."
+
+ Loud was the cheer which, full and clear, swept
+ round the silent bay,
+ As, with kind words and kinder looks, he bade me
+ go my way;
+ For He who turns the courses of the streamlet of
+ the glen,
+ And the river of great waters, had turned the
+ hearts of men.
+
+ Oh, at that hour the very earth seemed changed
+ beneath my eye,
+ A holier wonder round me rose the blue walls of
+ the sky,
+ A lovelier light on rock and hill and stream and
+ woodland lay,
+ And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the waters of
+ the bay.
+
+ Thanksgiving to the Lord of life! to Him all
+ praises be,
+ Who from the hands of evil men hath set his hand-
+ maid free;
+ All praise to Him before whose power the mighty
+ are afraid,
+ Who takes the crafty in the snare which for the
+ poor is laid!
+
+ Sing, O my soul, rejoicingly, on evening's twilight
+ calm
+ Uplift the loud thanksgiving, pour forth the grateful
+ psalm;
+ Let all dear hearts with me rejoice, as did the
+ saints of old,
+ When of the Lord's good angel the rescued Peter
+ told.
+
+ And weep and howl, ye evil priests and mighty
+ men of wrong,
+ The Lord shall smite the proud, and lay His hand
+ upon the strong.
+ Woe to the wicked rulers in His avenging hour!
+ Woe to the wolves who seek the flocks to raven
+ and devour!
+
+ But let the humble ones arise, the poor in heart
+ be glad,
+ And let the mourning ones again with robes of
+ praise be clad.
+ For He who cooled the furnace, and smoothed the
+ stormy wave,
+ And tamed the Chaldean lions, is mighty still to
+ save!
+
+ 1843.
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD.
+
+The following ballad is founded upon one of the marvellous legends
+connected with the famous General ----, of Hampton, New Hampshire,
+who was regarded by his neighbors as a Yankee Faust, in league with
+the adversary. I give the story, as I heard it when a child, from a
+venerable family visitant.
+
+
+ DARK the halls, and cold the feast,
+ Gone the bridemaids, gone the priest.
+ All is over, all is done,
+ Twain of yesterday are one!
+ Blooming girl and manhood gray,
+ Autumn in the arms of May!
+
+ Hushed within and hushed without,
+ Dancing feet and wrestlers' shout;
+ Dies the bonfire on the hill;
+ All is dark and all is still,
+ Save the starlight, save the breeze
+ Moaning through the graveyard trees,
+ And the great sea-waves below,
+ Pulse of the midnight beating slow.
+
+ From the brief dream of a bride
+ She hath wakened, at his side.
+ With half-uttered shriek and start,--
+ Feels she not his beating heart?
+ And the pressure of his arm,
+ And his breathing near and warm?
+
+ Lightly from the bridal bed
+ Springs that fair dishevelled head,
+ And a feeling, new, intense,
+ Half of shame, half innocence,
+ Maiden fear and wonder speaks
+ Through her lips and changing cheeks.
+
+ From the oaken mantel glowing,
+ Faintest light the lamp is throwing
+ On the mirror's antique mould,
+ High-backed chair, and wainscot old,
+ And, through faded curtains stealing,
+ His dark sleeping face revealing.
+
+ Listless lies the strong man there,
+ Silver-streaked his careless hair;
+ Lips of love have left no trace
+ On that hard and haughty face;
+ And that forehead's knitted thought
+ Love's soft hand hath not unwrought.
+
+ "Yet," she sighs, "he loves me well,
+ More than these calm lips will tell.
+ Stooping to my lowly state,
+ He hath made me rich and great,
+ And I bless him, though he be
+ Hard and stern to all save me!"
+
+ While she speaketh, falls the light
+ O'er her fingers small and white;
+ Gold and gem, and costly ring
+ Back the timid lustre fling,--
+ Love's selectest gifts, and rare,
+ His proud hand had fastened there.
+
+ Gratefully she marks the glow
+ From those tapering lines of snow;
+ Fondly o'er the sleeper bending
+ His black hair with golden blending,
+ In her soft and light caress,
+ Cheek and lip together press.
+
+ Ha!--that start of horror! why
+ That wild stare and wilder cry,
+ Full of terror, full of pain?
+ Is there madness in her brain?
+ Hark! that gasping, hoarse and low,
+ "Spare me,--spare me,--let me go!"
+
+ God have mercy!--icy cold
+ Spectral hands her own enfold,
+ Drawing silently from them
+ Love's fair gifts of gold and gem.
+ "Waken! save me!" still as death
+ At her side he slumbereth.
+
+ Ring and bracelet all are gone,
+ And that ice-cold hand withdrawn;
+ But she hears a murmur low,
+ Full of sweetness, full of woe,
+ Half a sigh and half a moan
+ "Fear not! give the dead her own!"
+
+ Ah!--the dead wife's voice she knows!
+ That cold hand whose pressure froze,
+ Once in warmest life had borne
+ Gem and band her own hath worn.
+ "Wake thee! wake thee!" Lo, his eyes
+ Open with a dull surprise.
+
+ In his arms the strong man folds her,
+ Closer to his breast he holds her;
+ Trembling limbs his own are meeting,
+ And he feels her heart's quick beating
+ "Nay, my dearest, why this fear?"
+ "Hush!" she saith, "the dead is here!"
+
+ "Nay, a dream,--an idle dream."
+ But before the lamp's pale gleam
+ Tremblingly her hand she raises.
+ There no more the diamond blazes,
+ Clasp of pearl, or ring of gold,--
+ "Ah!" she sighs, "her hand was cold!"
+
+ Broken words of cheer he saith,
+ But his dark lip quivereth,
+ And as o'er the past he thinketh,
+ From his young wife's arms he shrinketh;
+ Can those soft arms round him lie,
+ Underneath his dead wife's eye?
+
+ She her fair young head can rest
+ Soothed and childlike on his breast,
+ And in trustful innocence
+ Draw new strength and courage thence;
+ He, the proud man, feels within
+ But the cowardice of sin!
+
+ She can murmur in her thought
+ Simple prayers her mother taught,
+ And His blessed angels call,
+ Whose great love is over all;
+ He, alone, in prayerless pride,
+ Meets the dark Past at her side!
+
+ One, who living shrank with dread
+ From his look, or word, or tread,
+ Unto whom her early grave
+ Was as freedom to the slave,
+ Moves him at this midnight hour,
+ With the dead's unconscious power!
+
+ Ah, the dead, the unforgot!
+ From their solemn homes of thought,
+ Where the cypress shadows blend
+ Darkly over foe and friend,
+ Or in love or sad rebuke,
+ Back upon the living look.
+
+ And the tenderest ones and weakest,
+ Who their wrongs have borne the meekest,
+ Lifting from those dark, still places,
+ Sweet and sad-remembered faces,
+ O'er the guilty hearts behind
+ An unwitting triumph find.
+
+ 1843
+
+
+
+
+THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.
+
+Winnepurkit, otherwise called George, Sachem of Saugus, married a
+daughter of Passaconaway, the great Pennacook chieftain, in 1662. The
+wedding took place at Pennacook (now Concord, N. H.), and the ceremonies
+closed with a great feast. According to the usages of the chiefs,
+Passaconaway ordered a select number of his men to accompany the
+newly-married couple to the dwelling of the husband, where in turn there
+was another great feast. Some time after, the wife of Winnepurkit
+expressing a desire to visit her father's house was permitted to go,
+accompanied by a brave escort of her husband's chief men. But when she
+wished to return, her father sent a messenger to Saugus, informing her
+husband, and asking him to come and take her away. He returned for
+answer that he had escorted his wife to her father's house in a style
+that became a chief, and that now if she wished to return, her father
+must send her back, in the same way. This Passaconaway refused to do,
+and it is said that here terminated the connection of his daughter with
+the Saugus chief.--Vide MORTON'S New Canaan.
+
+
+ WE had been wandering for many days
+ Through the rough northern country. We had seen
+ The sunset, with its bars of purple cloud,
+ Like a new heaven, shine upward from the lake
+ Of Winnepiseogee; and had felt
+ The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy isles
+ Which stoop their summer beauty to the lips
+ Of the bright waters. We had checked our steeds,
+ Silent with wonder, where the mountain wall
+ Is piled to heaven; and, through the narrow rift
+ Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet
+ Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar,
+ Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind
+ Comes burdened with the everlasting moan
+ Of forests and of far-off waterfalls,
+ We had looked upward where the summer sky,
+ Tasselled with clouds light-woven by the sun,
+ Sprung its blue arch above the abutting crags
+ O'er-roofing the vast portal of the land
+ Beyond the wall of mountains. We had passed
+ The high source of the Saco; and bewildered
+ In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills,
+ Had heard above us, like a voice in the cloud,
+ The horn of Fabyan sounding; and atop
+ Of old Agioochook had seen the mountains'
+ Piled to the northward, shagged with wood, and thick
+ As meadow mole-hills,--the far sea of Casco,
+ A white gleam on the horizon of the east;
+ Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods and hills;
+ Moosehillock's mountain range, and Kearsarge
+ Lifting his granite forehead to the sun!
+
+ And we had rested underneath the oaks
+ Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires are shaken
+ By the perpetual beating of the falls
+ Of the wild Ammonoosuc. We had tracked
+ The winding Pemigewasset, overhung
+ By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks,
+ Or lazily gliding through its intervals,
+ From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam
+ Of sunlit waters. We had seen the moon
+ Rising behind Umbagog's eastern pines,
+ Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its beams
+ At midnight spanning with a bridge of silver
+ The Merrimac by Uncanoonuc's falls.
+
+ There were five souls of us whom travel's chance
+ Had thrown together in these wild north hills
+ A city lawyer, for a month escaping
+ From his dull office, where the weary eye
+ Saw only hot brick walls and close thronged streets;
+ Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see
+ Life's sunniest side, and with a heart to take
+ Its chances all as godsends; and his brother,
+ Pale from long pulpit studies, yet retaining
+ The warmth and freshness of a genial heart,
+ Whose mirror of the beautiful and true,
+ In Man and Nature, was as yet undimmed
+ By dust of theologic strife, or breath
+ Of sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore;
+ Like a clear crystal calm of water, taking
+ The hue and image of o'erleaning flowers,
+ Sweet human faces, white clouds of the noon,
+ Slant starlight glimpses through the dewy leaves,
+ And tenderest moonrise. 'T was, in truth, a study,
+ To mark his spirit, alternating between
+ A decent and professional gravity
+ And an irreverent mirthfulness, which often
+ Laughed in the face of his divinity,
+ Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined
+ The oracle, and for the pattern priest
+ Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant,
+ To whom the soiled sheet found in Crawford's inn,
+ Giving the latest news of city stocks
+ And sales of cotton, had a deeper meaning
+ Than the great presence of the awful mountains
+ Glorified by the sunset; and his daughter,
+ A delicate flower on whom had blown too long
+ Those evil winds, which, sweeping from the ice
+ And winnowing the fogs of Labrador,
+ Shed their cold blight round Massachusetts Bay,
+ With the same breath which stirs Spring's opening leaves
+ And lifts her half-formed flower-bell on its stem,
+ Poisoning our seaside atmosphere.
+
+ It chanced that as we turned upon our homeward way,
+ A drear northeastern storm came howling up
+ The valley of the Saco; and that girl
+ Who had stood with us upon Mount Washington,
+ Her brown locks ruffled by the wind which whirled
+ In gusts around its sharp, cold pinnacle,
+ Who had joined our gay trout-fishing in the streams
+ Which lave that giant's feet; whose laugh was heard
+ Like a bird's carol on the sunrise breeze
+ Which swelled our sail amidst the lake's green islands,
+ Shrank from its harsh, chill breath, and visibly drooped
+ Like a flower in the frost. So, in that quiet inn
+ Which looks from Conway on the mountains piled
+ Heavily against the horizon of the north,
+ Like summer thunder-clouds, we made our home
+ And while the mist hung over dripping hills,
+ And the cold wind-driven rain-drops all day long
+ Beat their sad music upon roof and pane,
+ We strove to cheer our gentle invalid.
+
+ The lawyer in the pauses of the storm
+ Went angling down the Saco, and, returning,
+ Recounted his adventures and mishaps;
+ Gave us the history of his scaly clients,
+ Mingling with ludicrous yet apt citations
+ Of barbarous law Latin, passages
+ From Izaak Walton's Angler, sweet and fresh
+ As the flower-skirted streams of Staffordshire,
+ Where, under aged trees, the southwest wind
+ Of soft June mornings fanned the thin, white hair
+ Of the sage fisher. And, if truth be told,
+ Our youthful candidate forsook his sermons,
+ His commentaries, articles and creeds,
+ For the fair page of human loveliness,
+ The missal of young hearts, whose sacred text
+ Is music, its illumining, sweet smiles.
+ He sang the songs she loved; and in his low,
+ Deep, earnest voice, recited many a page
+ Of poetry, the holiest, tenderest lines
+ Of the sad bard of Olney, the sweet songs,
+ Simple and beautiful as Truth and Nature,
+ Of him whose whitened locks on Rydal Mount
+ Are lifted yet by morning breezes blowing
+ From the green hills, immortal in his lays.
+ And for myself, obedient to her wish,
+ I searched our landlord's proffered library,--
+ A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice wood pictures
+ Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike them;
+ Watts' unmelodious psalms; Astrology's
+ Last home, a musty pile of almanacs,
+ And an old chronicle of border wars
+ And Indian history. And, as I read
+ A story of the marriage of the Chief
+ Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo,
+ Daughter of Passaconaway, who dwelt
+ In the old time upon the Merrimac,
+ Our fair one, in the playful exercise
+ Of her prerogative,--the right divine
+ Of youth and beauty,--bade us versify
+ The legend, and with ready pencil sketched
+ Its plan and outlines, laughingly assigning
+ To each his part, and barring our excuses
+ With absolute will. So, like the cavaliers
+ Whose voices still are heard in the Romance
+ Of silver-tongued Boccaccio, on the banks
+ Of Arno, with soft tales of love beguiling
+ The ear of languid beauty, plague-exiled
+ From stately Florence, we rehearsed our rhymes
+ To their fair auditor, and shared by turns
+ Her kind approval and her playful censure.
+
+ It may be that these fragments owe alone
+ To the fair setting of their circumstances,--
+ The associations of time, scene, and audience,--
+ Their place amid the pictures which fill up
+ The chambers of my memory. Yet I trust
+ That some, who sigh, while wandering in thought,
+ Pilgrims of Romance o'er the olden world,
+ That our broad land,--our sea-like lakes and mountains
+ Piled to the clouds, our rivers overhung
+ By forests which have known no other change
+ For ages than the budding and the fall
+ Of leaves, our valleys lovelier than those
+ Which the old poets sang of,--should but figure
+ On the apocryphal chart of speculation
+ As pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with the privileges,
+ Rights, and appurtenances, which make up
+ A Yankee Paradise, unsung, unknown,
+ To beautiful tradition; even their names,
+ Whose melody yet lingers like the last
+ Vibration of the red man's requiem,
+ Exchanged for syllables significant,
+ Of cotton-mill and rail-car, will look kindly
+ Upon this effort to call up the ghost
+ Of our dim Past, and listen with pleased ear
+ To the responses of the questioned Shade.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE MERRIMAC.
+
+ O child of that white-crested mountain whose
+ springs
+ Gush forth in the shade of the cliff-eagle's
+ wings,
+ Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy wild waters
+ shine,
+ Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing through the
+ dwarf pine;
+ From that cloud-curtained cradle so cold and so
+ lone,
+ From the arms of that wintry-locked mother of
+ stone,
+ By hills hung with forests, through vales wide and
+ free,
+ Thy mountain-born brightness glanced down to the
+ sea.
+
+ No bridge arched thy waters save that where the
+ trees
+ Stretched their long arms above thee and kissed in
+ the breeze:
+ No sound save the lapse of the waves on thy
+ shores,
+ The plunging of otters, the light dip of oars.
+
+ Green-tufted, oak-shaded, by Amoskeag's fall
+ Thy twin Uncanoonucs rose stately and tall,
+ Thy Nashua meadows lay green and unshorn,
+ And the hills of Pentucket were tasselled with
+ corn.
+ But thy Pennacook valley was fairer than these,
+ And greener its grasses and taller its trees,
+ Ere the sound of an axe in the forest had rung,
+ Or the mower his scythe in the meadows had
+ swung.
+
+ In their sheltered repose looking out from the
+ wood
+ The bark-builded wigwams of Pennacook stood;
+ There glided the corn-dance, the council-fire shone,
+ And against the red war-post the hatchet was
+ thrown.
+
+ There the old smoked in silence their pipes, and
+ the young
+ To the pike and the white-perch their baited lines
+ flung;
+ There the boy shaped his arrows, and there the
+ shy maid
+ Wove her many-hued baskets and bright wampum
+ braid.
+
+ O Stream of the Mountains! if answer of thine
+ Could rise from thy waters to question of mine,
+ Methinks through the din of thy thronged banks
+ a moan
+ Of sorrow would swell for the days which have
+ gone.
+
+ Not for thee the dull jar of the loom and the wheel,
+ The gliding of shuttles, the ringing of steel;
+ But that old voice of waters, of bird and of breeze,
+ The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling of trees.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE BASHABA.
+
+ Lift we the twilight curtains of the Past,
+ And, turning from familiar sight and sound,
+ Sadly and full of reverence let us cast
+ A glance upon Tradition's shadowy ground,
+ Led by the few pale lights which, glimmering round
+ That dim, strange land of Eld, seem dying fast;
+ And that which history gives not to the eye,
+ The faded coloring of Time's tapestry,
+ Let Fancy, with her dream-dipped brush, supply.
+
+ Roof of bark and walls of pine,
+ Through whose chinks the sunbeams shine,
+ Tracing many a golden line
+ On the ample floor within;
+ Where, upon that earth-floor stark,
+ Lay the gaudy mats of bark,
+ With the bear's hide, rough and dark,
+ And the red-deer's skin.
+
+ Window-tracery, small and slight,
+ Woven of the willow white,
+ Lent a dimly checkered light;
+ And the night-stars glimmered down,
+ Where the lodge-fire's heavy smoke,
+ Slowly through an opening broke,
+ In the low roof, ribbed with oak,
+ Sheathed with hemlock brown.
+
+ Gloomed behind the changeless shade
+ By the solemn pine-wood made;
+ Through the rugged palisade,
+ In the open foreground planted,
+ Glimpses came of rowers rowing,
+ Stir of leaves and wild-flowers blowing,
+ Steel-like gleams of water flowing,
+ In the sunlight slanted.
+
+ Here the mighty Bashaba
+ Held his long-unquestioned sway,
+ From the White Hills, far away,
+ To the great sea's sounding shore;
+ Chief of chiefs, his regal word
+ All the river Sachems heard,
+ At his call the war-dance stirred,
+ Or was still once more.
+
+ There his spoils of chase and war,
+ Jaw of wolf and black bear's paw,
+ Panther's skin and eagle's claw,
+ Lay beside his axe and bow;
+ And, adown the roof-pole hung,
+ Loosely on a snake-skin strung,
+ In the smoke his scalp-locks swung
+ Grimly to and fro.
+
+ Nightly down the river going,
+ Swifter was the hunter's rowing,
+ When he saw that lodge-fire, glowing
+ O'er the waters still and red;
+ And the squaw's dark eye burned brighter,
+ And she drew her blanket tighter,
+ As, with quicker step and lighter,
+ From that door she fled.
+
+ For that chief had magic skill,
+ And a Panisee's dark will,
+ Over powers of good and ill,
+ Powers which bless and powers which ban;
+ Wizard lord of Pennacook,
+ Chiefs upon their war-path shook,
+ When they met the steady look
+ Of that wise dark man.
+
+ Tales of him the gray squaw told,
+ When the winter night-wind cold
+ Pierced her blanket's thickest fold,
+ And her fire burned low and small,
+ Till the very child abed,
+ Drew its bear-skin over bead,
+ Shrinking from the pale lights shed
+ On the trembling wall.
+
+ All the subtle spirits hiding
+ Under earth or wave, abiding
+ In the caverned rock, or riding
+ Misty clouds or morning breeze;
+ Every dark intelligence,
+ Secret soul, and influence
+ Of all things which outward sense
+ Feels, or bears, or sees,--
+
+ These the wizard's skill confessed,
+ At his bidding banned or blessed,
+ Stormful woke or lulled to rest
+ Wind and cloud, and fire and flood;
+ Burned for him the drifted snow,
+ Bade through ice fresh lilies blow,
+ And the leaves of summer grow
+ Over winter's wood!
+
+ Not untrue that tale of old!
+ Now, as then, the wise and bold
+ All the powers of Nature hold
+ Subject to their kingly will;
+ From the wondering crowds ashore,
+ Treading life's wild waters o'er,
+ As upon a marble floor,
+ Moves the strong man still.
+
+ Still, to such, life's elements
+ With their sterner laws dispense,
+ And the chain of consequence
+ Broken in their pathway lies;
+ Time and change their vassals making,
+ Flowers from icy pillows waking,
+ Tresses of the sunrise shaking
+ Over midnight skies.
+ Still, to th' earnest soul, the sun
+ Rests on towered Gibeon,
+ And the moon of Ajalon
+ Lights the battle-grounds of life;
+ To his aid the strong reverses
+ Hidden powers and giant forces,
+ And the high stars, in their courses,
+ Mingle in his strife!
+
+
+
+
+III. THE DAUGHTER.
+
+ The soot-black brows of men, the yell
+ Of women thronging round the bed,
+ The tinkling charm of ring and shell,
+ The Powah whispering o'er the dead!
+
+ All these the Sachem's home had known,
+ When, on her journey long and wild
+ To the dim World of Souls, alone,
+ In her young beauty passed the mother of his child.
+
+ Three bow-shots from the Sachem's dwelling
+ They laid her in the walnut shade,
+ Where a green hillock gently swelling
+ Her fitting mound of burial made.
+ There trailed the vine in summer hours,
+ The tree-perched squirrel dropped his shell,--
+ On velvet moss and pale-hued flowers,
+ Woven with leaf and spray, the softened sunshine fell!
+
+ The Indian's heart is hard and cold,
+ It closes darkly o'er its care,
+ And formed in Nature's sternest mould,
+ Is slow to feel, and strong to bear.
+ The war-paint on the Sachem's face,
+ Unwet with tears, shone fierce and red,
+ And still, in battle or in chase,
+ Dry leaf and snow-rime crisped beneath his
+ foremost tread.
+
+ Yet when her name was heard no more,
+ And when the robe her mother gave,
+ And small, light moccasin she wore,
+ Had slowly wasted on her grave,
+ Unmarked of him the dark maids sped
+ Their sunset dance and moonlit play;
+ No other shared his lonely bed,
+ No other fair young head upon his bosom lay.
+
+ A lone, stern man. Yet, as sometimes
+ The tempest-smitten tree receives
+ From one small root the sap which climbs
+ Its topmost spray and crowning leaves,
+ So from his child the Sachem drew
+ A life of Love and Hope, and felt
+ His cold and rugged nature through
+ The softness and the warmth of her young
+ being melt.
+
+ A laugh which in the woodland rang
+ Bemocking April's gladdest bird,--
+ A light and graceful form which sprang
+ To meet him when his step was heard,--
+ Eyes by his lodge-fire flashing dark,
+ Small fingers stringing bead and shell
+ Or weaving mats of bright-hued bark,--
+ With these the household-god (3) had graced
+ his wigwam well.
+
+ Child of the forest! strong and free,
+ Slight-robed, with loosely flowing hair,
+ She swam the lake or climbed the tree,
+ Or struck the flying bird in air.
+ O'er the heaped drifts of winter's moon
+ Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter's way;
+ And dazzling in the summer noon
+ The blade of her light oar threw off its shower
+ of spray!
+
+ Unknown to her the rigid rule,
+ The dull restraint, the chiding frown,
+ The weary torture of the school,
+ The taming of wild nature down.
+ Her only lore, the legends told
+ Around the hunter's fire at night;
+ Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled,
+ Flowers bloomed and snow-flakes fell, unquestioned
+ in her sight.
+
+ Unknown to her the subtle skill
+ With which the artist-eye can trace
+ In rock and tree and lake and hill
+ The outlines of divinest grace;
+ Unknown the fine soul's keen unrest,
+ Which sees, admires, yet yearns alway;
+ Too closely on her mother's breast
+ To note her smiles of love the child of Nature lay!
+
+ It is enough for such to be
+ Of common, natural things a part,
+ To feel, with bird and stream and tree,
+ The pulses of the same great heart;
+ But we, from Nature long exiled,
+ In our cold homes of Art and Thought
+ Grieve like the stranger-tended child,
+ Which seeks its mother's arms, and sees but feels
+ them not.
+
+ The garden rose may richly bloom
+ In cultured soil and genial air,
+ To cloud the light of Fashion's room
+ Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair;
+ In lonelier grace, to sun and dew
+ The sweetbrier on the hillside shows
+ Its single leaf and fainter hue,
+ Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose!
+
+ Thus o'er the heart of Weetamoo
+ Their mingling shades of joy and ill
+ The instincts of her nature threw;
+ The savage was a woman still.
+ Midst outlines dim of maiden schemes,
+ Heart-colored prophecies of life,
+ Rose on the ground of her young dreams
+ The light of a new home, the lover and the wife.
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE WEDDING.
+
+ Cool and dark fell the autumn night,
+ But the Bashaba's wigwam glowed with light,
+ For down from its roof, by green withes hung,
+ Flaring and smoking the pine-knots swung.
+
+ And along the river great wood-fires
+ Shot into the night their long, red spires,
+ Showing behind the tall, dark wood,
+ Flashing before on the sweeping flood.
+
+ In the changeful wind, with shimmer and shade,
+ Now high, now low, that firelight played,
+ On tree-leaves wet with evening dews,
+ On gliding water and still canoes.
+
+ The trapper that night on Turee's brook,
+ And the weary fisher on Contoocook,
+ Saw over the marshes, and through the pine,
+ And down on the river, the dance-lights shine.
+ For the Saugus Sachem had come to woo
+ The Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo,
+ And laid at her father's feet that night
+ His softest furs and wampum white.
+
+ From the Crystal Hills to the far southeast
+ The river Sagamores came to the feast;
+ And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds shook
+ Sat down on the mats of Pennacook.
+
+ They came from Sunapee's shore of rock,
+ From the snowy sources of Snooganock,
+ And from rough Coos whose thick woods shake
+ Their pine-cones in Umbagog Lake.
+
+ From Ammonoosuc's mountain pass,
+ Wild as his home, came Chepewass;
+ And the Keenomps of the bills which throw
+ Their shade on the Smile of Manito.
+
+ With pipes of peace and bows unstrung,
+ Glowing with paint came old and young,
+ In wampum and furs and feathers arrayed,
+ To the dance and feast the Bashaba made.
+
+ Bird of the air and beast of the field,
+ All which the woods and the waters yield,
+ On dishes of birch and hemlock piled,
+ Garnished and graced that banquet wild.
+
+ Steaks of the brown bear fat and large
+ From the rocky slopes of the Kearsarge;
+ Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook,
+ And salmon speared in the Contoocook;
+
+ Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick
+ in the gravelly bed of the Otternic;
+ And small wild-hens in reed-snares caught
+ from the banks of Sondagardee brought;
+
+ Pike and perch from the Suncook taken,
+ Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken,
+ Cranberries picked in the Squamscot bog,
+ And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog:
+
+ And, drawn from that great stone vase which stands
+ In the river scooped by a spirit's hands,(4)
+ Garnished with spoons of shell and horn,
+ Stood the birchen dishes of smoking corn.
+
+ Thus bird of the air and beast of the field,
+ All which the woods and the waters yield,
+ Furnished in that olden day
+ The bridal feast of the Bashaba.
+
+ And merrily when that feast was done
+ On the fire-lit green the dance begun,
+ With squaws' shrill stave, and deeper hum
+ Of old men beating the Indian drum.
+
+ Painted and plumed, with scalp-locks flowing,
+ And red arms tossing and black eyes glowing,
+ Now in the light and now in the shade
+ Around the fires the dancers played.
+
+ The step was quicker, the song more shrill,
+ And the beat of the small drums louder still
+ Whenever within the circle drew
+ The Saugus Sachem and Weetamoo.
+
+ The moons of forty winters had shed
+ Their snow upon that chieftain's head,
+ And toil and care and battle's chance
+ Had seamed his hard, dark countenance.
+
+ A fawn beside the bison grim,--
+ Why turns the bride's fond eye on him,
+ In whose cold look is naught beside
+ The triumph of a sullen pride?
+
+ Ask why the graceful grape entwines
+ The rough oak with her arm of vines;
+ And why the gray rock's rugged cheek
+ The soft lips of the mosses seek.
+
+ Why, with wise instinct, Nature seems
+ To harmonize her wide extremes,
+ Linking the stronger with the weak,
+ The haughty with the soft and meek!
+
+
+
+
+V. THE NEW HOME.
+
+ A wild and broken landscape, spiked with firs,
+ Roughening the bleak horizon's northern edge;
+ Steep, cavernous hillsides, where black hemlock
+ spurs
+ And sharp, gray splinters of the wind-swept
+ ledge
+ Pierced the thin-glazed ice, or bristling rose,
+ Where the cold rim of the sky sunk down upon
+ the snows.
+
+ And eastward cold, wide marshes stretched away,
+ Dull, dreary flats without a bush or tree,
+ O'er-crossed by icy creeks, where twice a day
+ Gurgled the waters of the moon-struck sea;
+ And faint with distance came the stifled roar,
+ The melancholy lapse of waves on that low shore.
+
+ No cheerful village with its mingling smokes,
+ No laugh of children wrestling in the snow,
+ No camp-fire blazing through the hillside oaks,
+ No fishers kneeling on the ice below;
+ Yet midst all desolate things of sound and view,
+ Through the long winter moons smiled dark-eyed
+ Weetamoo.
+
+ Her heart had found a home; and freshly all
+ Its beautiful affections overgrew
+ Their rugged prop. As o'er some granite wall
+ Soft vine-leaves open to the moistening dew
+ And warm bright sun, the love of that young wife
+ Found on a hard cold breast the dew and warmth
+ of life.
+
+ The steep, bleak hills, the melancholy shore,
+ The long, dead level of the marsh between,
+ A coloring of unreal beauty wore
+ Through the soft golden mist of young love seen.
+ For o'er those hills and from that dreary plain,
+ Nightly she welcomed home her hunter chief again.
+
+ No warmth of heart, no passionate burst of feeling,
+ Repaid her welcoming smile and parting kiss,
+ No fond and playful dalliance half concealing,
+ Under the guise of mirth, its tenderness;
+
+ But, in their stead, the warrior's settled pride,
+ And vanity's pleased smile with homage satisfied.
+
+ Enough for Weetamoo, that she alone
+ Sat on his mat and slumbered at his side;
+ That he whose fame to her young ear had flown
+ Now looked upon her proudly as his bride;
+ That he whose name the Mohawk trembling heard
+ Vouchsafed to her at times a kindly look or word.
+
+ For she had learned the maxims of her race,
+ Which teach the woman to become a slave,
+ And feel herself the pardonless disgrace
+ Of love's fond weakness in the wise and brave,--
+ The scandal and the shame which they incur,
+ Who give to woman all which man requires of her.
+
+ So passed the winter moons. The sun at last
+ Broke link by link the frost chain of the rills,
+ And the warm breathings of the southwest passed
+ Over the hoar rime of the Saugus hills;
+ The gray and desolate marsh grew green once more,
+ And the birch-tree's tremulous shade fell round the
+ Sachem's door.
+
+ Then from far Pennacook swift runners came,
+ With gift and greeting for the Saugus chief;
+ Beseeching him in the great Sachem's name,
+ That, with the coming of the flower and leaf,
+ The song of birds, the warm breeze and the rain,
+ Young Weetamoo might greet her lonely sire again.
+
+ And Winnepurkit called his chiefs together,
+ And a grave council in his wigwam met,
+ Solemn and brief in words, considering whether
+ The rigid rules of forest etiquette
+ Permitted Weetamoo once more to look
+ Upon her father's face and green-banked
+ Pennacook.
+
+ With interludes of pipe-smoke and strong water,
+ The forest sages pondered, and at length,
+ Concluded in a body to escort her
+ Up to her father's home of pride and strength,
+ Impressing thus on Pennacook a sense
+ Of Winnepurkit's power and regal consequence.
+
+ So through old woods which Aukeetamit's(5) hand,
+ A soft and many-shaded greenness lent,
+ Over high breezy hills, and meadow land
+ Yellow with flowers, the wild procession went,
+ Till, rolling down its wooded banks between,
+ A broad, clear, mountain stream, the Merrimac
+ was seen.
+
+ The hunter leaning on his bow undrawn,
+ The fisher lounging on the pebbled shores,
+ Squaws in the clearing dropping the seed-corn,
+ Young children peering through the wigwam doors,
+ Saw with delight, surrounded by her train
+ Of painted Saugus braves, their Weetamoo again.
+
+
+
+
+VI. AT PENNACOOK.
+
+ The hills are dearest which our childish feet
+ Have climbed the earliest; and the streams most sweet
+ Are ever those at which our young lips drank,
+ Stooped to their waters o'er the grassy bank.
+
+ Midst the cold dreary sea-watch, Home's hearth-light
+ Shines round the helmsman plunging through the night;
+ And still, with inward eye, the traveller sees
+ In close, dark, stranger streets his native trees.
+
+ The home-sick dreamer's brow is nightly fanned
+ By breezes whispering of his native land,
+ And on the stranger's dim and dying eye
+ The soft, sweet pictures of his childhood lie.
+
+ Joy then for Weetamoo, to sit once more
+ A child upon her father's wigwam floor!
+ Once more with her old fondness to beguile
+ From his cold eye the strange light of a smile.
+
+ The long, bright days of summer swiftly passed,
+ The dry leaves whirled in autumn's rising blast,
+ And evening cloud and whitening sunrise rime
+ Told of the coming of the winter-time.
+
+ But vainly looked, the while, young Weetamoo,
+ Down the dark river for her chief's canoe;
+ No dusky messenger from Saugus brought
+ The grateful tidings which the young wife sought.
+
+ At length a runner from her father sent,
+ To Winnepurkit's sea-cooled wigwam went
+ "Eagle of Saugus,--in the woods the dove
+ Mourns for the shelter of thy wings of love."
+
+ But the dark chief of Saugus turned aside
+ In the grim anger of hard-hearted pride;
+ "I bore her as became a chieftain's daughter,
+ Up to her home beside the gliding water.
+
+ If now no more a mat for her is found
+ Of all which line her father's wigwam round,
+ Let Pennacook call out his warrior train,
+ And send her back with wampum gifts again."
+
+ The baffled runner turned upon his track,
+ Bearing the words of Winnepurkit back.
+ "Dog of the Marsh," cried Pennacook, "no more
+ Shall child of mine sit on his wigwam floor.
+
+ "Go, let him seek some meaner squaw to spread
+ The stolen bear-skin of his beggar's bed;
+ Son of a fish-hawk! let him dig his clams
+ For some vile daughter of the Agawams,
+
+ "Or coward Nipmucks! may his scalp dry black
+ In Mohawk smoke, before I send her back."
+ He shook his clenched hand towards the ocean wave,
+ While hoarse assent his listening council gave.
+
+ Alas poor bride! can thy grim sire impart
+ His iron hardness to thy woman's heart?
+ Or cold self-torturing pride like his atone
+ For love denied and life's warm beauty flown?
+
+ On Autumn's gray and mournful grave the snow
+ Hung its white wreaths; with stifled voice and low
+ The river crept, by one vast bridge o'er-crossed,
+ Built by the boar-locked artisan of Frost.
+
+ And many a moon in beauty newly born
+ Pierced the red sunset with her silver horn,
+ Or, from the east, across her azure field
+ Rolled the wide brightness of her full-orbed shield.
+
+ Yet Winnepurkit came not,--on the mat
+ Of the scorned wife her dusky rival sat;
+ And he, the while, in Western woods afar,
+ Urged the long chase, or trod the path of war.
+
+ Dry up thy tears, young daughter of a chief!
+ Waste not on him the sacredness of grief;
+ Be the fierce spirit of thy sire thine own,
+ His lips of scorning, and his heart of stone.
+
+ What heeds the warrior of a hundred fights,
+ The storm-worn watcher through long hunting nights,
+ Cold, crafty, proud of woman's weak distress,
+ Her home-bound grief and pining loneliness?
+
+
+
+
+VII. THE DEPARTURE.
+
+ The wild March rains had fallen fast and long
+ The snowy mountains of the North among,
+ Making each vale a watercourse, each hill
+ Bright with the cascade of some new-made rill.
+
+ Gnawed by the sunbeams, softened by the rain,
+ Heaved underneath by the swollen current's strain,
+ The ice-bridge yielded, and the Merrimac
+ Bore the huge ruin crashing down its track.
+
+ On that strong turbid water, a small boat
+ Guided by one weak hand was seen to float;
+ Evil the fate which loosed it from the shore,
+ Too early voyager with too frail an oar!
+
+ Down the vexed centre of that rushing tide,
+ The thick huge ice-blocks threatening either side,
+ The foam-white rocks of Amoskeag in view,
+ With arrowy swiftness sped that light canoe.
+
+ The trapper, moistening his moose's meat
+ On the wet bank by Uncanoonuc's feet,
+ Saw the swift boat flash down the troubled stream;
+ Slept he, or waked he? was it truth or dream?
+
+ The straining eye bent fearfully before,
+ The small hand clenching on the useless oar,
+ The bead-wrought blanket trailing o'er the water--
+ He knew them all--woe for the Sachem's daughter!
+
+ Sick and aweary of her lonely life,
+ Heedless of peril, the still faithful wife
+ Had left her mother's grave, her father's door,
+ To seek the wigwam of her chief once more.
+
+ Down the white rapids like a sear leaf whirled,
+ On the sharp rocks and piled-up ices hurled,
+ Empty and broken, circled the canoe
+ In the vexed pool below--but where was Weetamoo.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN.
+
+ The Dark eye has left us,
+ The Spring-bird has flown;
+ On the pathway of spirits
+ She wanders alone.
+ The song of the wood-dove has died on our shore
+ Mat wonck kunna-monee!(6) We hear it no more!
+
+ O dark water Spirit
+ We cast on thy wave
+ These furs which may never
+ Hang over her grave;
+ Bear down to the lost one the robes that she wore
+ Mat wonck kunna-monee! We see her no more!
+
+ Of the strange land she walks in
+ No Powah has told:
+ It may burn with the sunshine,
+ Or freeze with the cold.
+ Let us give to our lost one the robes that she wore:
+ Mat wonck kunna-monee! We see her no more!
+
+ The path she is treading
+ Shall soon be our own;
+ Each gliding in shadow
+ Unseen and alone!
+ In vain shall we call on the souls gone before:
+ Mat wonck kunna-monee! They hear us no more!
+
+ O mighty Sowanna!(7)
+ Thy gateways unfold,
+ From thy wigwam of sunset
+ Lift curtains of gold!
+
+ Take home the poor Spirit whose journey is o'er
+ Mat wonck kunna-monee! We see her no more!
+
+ So sang the Children of the Leaves beside
+ The broad, dark river's coldly flowing tide;
+ Now low, now harsh, with sob-like pause and swell,
+ On the high wind their voices rose and fell.
+ Nature's wild music,--sounds of wind-swept trees,
+ The scream of birds, the wailing of the breeze,
+ The roar of waters, steady, deep, and strong,--
+ Mingled and murmured in that farewell song.
+
+ 1844.
+
+
+
+
+BARCLAY OF URY.
+
+Among the earliest converts to the doctrines of Friends in Scotland was
+Barclay of Ury, an old and distinguished soldier, who had fought under
+Gustavus Adolphus, in Germany. As a Quaker, he became the object of
+persecution and abuse at the hands of the magistrates and the populace.
+None bore the indignities of the mob with greater patience and nobleness
+of soul than this once proud gentleman and soldier. One of his friends,
+on an occasion of uncommon rudeness, lamented that he should be treated
+so harshly in his old age who had been so honored before. "I find more
+satisfaction," said Barclay, "as well as honor, in being thus insulted
+for my religious principles, than when, a few years ago, it was usual
+for the magistrates, as I passed the city of Aberdeen, to meet me on the
+road and conduct me to public entertainment in their hall, and then
+escort me out again, to gain my favor."
+
+ Up the streets of Aberdeen,
+ By the kirk and college green,
+ Rode the Laird of Ury;
+ Close behind him, close beside,
+ Foul of mouth and evil-eyed,
+ Pressed the mob in fury.
+
+ Flouted him the drunken churl,
+ Jeered at him the serving-girl,
+ Prompt to please her master;
+ And the begging carlin, late
+ Fed and clothed at Ury's gate,
+ Cursed him as he passed her.
+
+ Yet, with calm and stately mien,
+ Up the streets of Aberdeen
+ Came he slowly riding;
+ And, to all he saw and heard,
+ Answering not with bitter word,
+ Turning not for chiding.
+
+ Came a troop with broadswords swinging,
+ Bits and bridles sharply ringing,
+ Loose and free and froward;
+ Quoth the foremost, "Ride him down!
+ Push him! prick him! through the town
+ Drive the Quaker coward!"
+
+ But from out the thickening crowd
+ Cried a sudden voice and loud
+ "Barclay! Ho! a Barclay!"
+ And the old man at his side
+ Saw a comrade, battle tried,
+ Scarred and sunburned darkly;
+
+ Who with ready weapon bare,
+ Fronting to the troopers there,
+ Cried aloud: "God save us,
+ Call ye coward him who stood
+ Ankle deep in Lutzen's blood,
+ With the brave Gustavus?"
+
+ "Nay, I do not need thy sword,
+ Comrade mine," said Ury's lord;
+ "Put it up, I pray thee
+ Passive to His holy will,
+ Trust I in my Master still,
+ Even though He slay me.
+
+ "Pledges of thy love and faith,
+ Proved on many a field of death,
+ Not by me are needed."
+ Marvelled much that henchman bold,
+ That his laird, so stout of old,
+ Now so meekly pleaded.
+
+ "Woe's the day!" he sadly said,
+ With a slowly shaking head,
+ And a look of pity;
+ "Ury's honest lord reviled,
+ Mock of knave and sport of child,
+ In his own good city.
+
+ "Speak the word, and, master mine,
+ As we charged on Tilly's(8) line,
+ And his Walloon lancers,
+ Smiting through their midst we'll teach
+ Civil look and decent speech
+ To these boyish prancers!"
+
+ "Marvel not, mine ancient friend,
+ Like beginning, like the end:"
+ Quoth the Laird of Ury;
+ "Is the sinful servant more
+ Than his gracious Lord who bore
+ Bonds and stripes in Jewry?
+
+ "Give me joy that in His name
+ I can bear, with patient frame,
+ All these vain ones offer;
+ While for them He suffereth long,
+ Shall I answer wrong with wrong,
+ Scoffing with the scoffer?
+
+ "Happier I, with loss of all,
+ Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall,
+ With few friends to greet me,
+ Than when reeve and squire were seen,
+ Riding out from Aberdeen,
+ With bared heads to meet me.
+
+ "When each goodwife, o'er and o'er,
+ Blessed me as I passed her door;
+ And the snooded daughter,
+ Through her casement glancing down,
+ Smiled on him who bore renown
+ From red fields of slaughter.
+
+ "Hard to feel the stranger's scoff,
+ Hard the old friend's falling off,
+ Hard to learn forgiving;
+ But the Lord His own rewards,
+ And His love with theirs accords,
+ Warm and fresh and living.
+
+ "Through this dark and stormy night
+ Faith beholds a feeble light
+ Up the blackness streaking;
+ Knowing God's own time is best,
+ In a patient hope I rest
+ For the full day-breaking!"
+
+ So the Laird of Ury said,
+ Turning slow his horse's head
+ Towards the Tolbooth prison,
+ Where, through iron gates, he heard
+ Poor disciples of the Word
+ Preach of Christ arisen!
+
+ Not in vain, Confessor old,
+ Unto us the tale is told
+ Of thy day of trial;
+ Every age on him who strays
+ From its broad and beaten ways
+ Pours its seven-fold vial.
+
+ Happy he whose inward ear
+ Angel comfortings can hear,
+ O'er the rabble's laughter;
+ And while Hatred's fagots burn,
+ Glimpses through the smoke discern
+ Of the good hereafter.
+
+ Knowing this, that never yet
+ Share of Truth was vainly set
+ In the world's wide fallow;
+ After hands shall sow the seed,
+ After hands from hill and mead
+ Reap the harvests yellow.
+
+ Thus, with somewhat of the Seer,
+ Must the moral pioneer
+ From the Future borrow;
+ Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,
+ And, on midnight's sky of rain,
+ Paint the golden morrow!
+
+
+
+
+THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA.
+
+A letter-writer from Mexico during the Mexican war, when detailing some
+of the incidents at the terrible fight of Buena Vista, mentioned that
+Mexican women were seen hovering near the field of death, for the
+purpose of giving aid and succor to the wounded. One poor woman was
+found surrounded by the maimed and suffering of both armies, ministering
+to the wants of Americans as well as Mexicans, with impartial
+tenderness.
+
+ SPEAK and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward
+ far away,
+ O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mexican
+ array,
+ Who is losing? who is winning? are they far or
+ come they near?
+ Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither rolls the
+ storm we hear.
+ Down the hills of Angostura still the storm of
+ battle rolls;
+ Blood is flowing, men are dying; God have mercy
+ on their souls!
+ "Who is losing? who is winning?" Over hill
+ and over plain,
+ I see but smoke of cannon clouding through the
+ mountain rain.
+
+ Holy Mother! keep our brothers! Look, Ximena,
+ look once more.
+ "Still I see the fearful whirlwind rolling darkly
+ as before,
+ Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend and foeman,
+ foot and horse,
+ Like some wild and troubled torrent sweeping
+ down its mountain course."
+
+ Look forth once more, Ximena! "Ah! the smoke
+ has rolled away;
+ And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the
+ ranks of gray.
+ Hark! that sudden blast of bugles! there the troop
+ of Minon wheels;
+ There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon
+ at their heels.
+
+ "Jesu, pity I how it thickens I now retreat and
+ now advance!
+ Bight against the blazing cannon shivers Puebla's
+ charging lance!
+ Down they go, the brave young riders; horse and
+ foot together fall;
+ Like a ploughshare in the fallow, through them
+ ploughs the Northern ball."
+
+ Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling fast and
+ frightful on!
+ Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who has lost,
+ and who has won?
+ Alas! alas! I know not; friend and foe together
+ fall,
+ O'er the dying rush the living: pray, my sisters,
+ for them all!
+
+ "Lo! the wind the smoke is lifting. Blessed
+ Mother, save my brain!
+ I can see the wounded crawling slowly out from
+ heaps of slain.
+ Now they stagger, blind and bleeding; now they
+ fall, and strive to rise;
+ Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest they die
+ before our eyes!
+
+ "O my hearts love! O my dear one! lay thy
+ poor head on my knee;
+ Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee? Canst
+ thou hear me? canst thou see?
+ O my husband, brave and gentle! O my Bernal,
+ look once more
+ On the blessed cross before thee! Mercy!
+ all is o'er!"
+
+ Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy dear one
+ down to rest;
+ Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the cross upon
+ his breast;
+ Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his funeral
+ masses said;
+ To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the living ask thy
+ aid.
+
+ Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young,
+ a soldier lay,
+ Torn with shot and pierced with lances, bleeding
+ slow his life away;
+ But, as tenderly before him the lorn Ximena knelt,
+ She saw the Northern eagle shining on his pistol-
+ belt.
+
+ With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned
+ away her head;
+ With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon
+ her dead;
+ But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his
+ struggling breath of pain,
+ And she raised the cooling water to his parching
+ lips again.
+
+ Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand
+ and faintly smiled;
+ Was that pitying face his mother's? did she watch
+ beside her child?
+ All his stranger words with meaning her woman's
+ heart supplied;
+ With her kiss upon his forehead, "Mother!"
+ murmured he, and died!
+
+ "A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee
+ forth,
+ From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping, lonely,
+ in the North!"
+ Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him
+ with her dead,
+ And turned to soothe the living, and bind the
+ wounds which bled.
+
+ "Look forth once more, Ximena!" Like a cloud
+ before the wind
+ Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood
+ and death behind;
+ Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the
+ wounded strive;
+ "Hide your faces, holy angels! O thou Christ of
+ God, forgive!"
+
+ Sink, O Night, among thy mountains! let the cool,
+ gray shadows fall;
+ Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain
+ over all!
+ Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart
+ the battle rolled,
+ In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's
+ lips grew cold.
+
+ But the noble Mexic women still their holy task
+ pursued,
+ Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and
+ faint and lacking food.
+ Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender
+ care they hung,
+ And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange
+ and Northern tongue.
+
+ Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of
+ ours;
+ Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh
+ the Eden flowers;
+ From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity
+ send their prayer,
+ And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in
+ our air!
+
+ 1847.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEGEND OF ST. MARK.
+
+"This legend (to which my attention was called by my friend Charles
+Sumner), is the subject of a celebrated picture by Tintoretto, of which
+Mr. Rogers possesses the original sketch. The slave lies on the ground,
+amid a crowd of spectators, who look on, animated by all the various
+emotions of sympathy, rage, terror; a woman, in front, with a child in
+her arms, has always been admired for the lifelike vivacity of her
+attitude and expression. The executioner holds up the broken implements;
+St. Mark, with a headlong movement, seems to rush down from heaven in
+haste to save his worshipper. The dramatic grouping in this picture is
+wonderful; the coloring, in its gorgeous depth and harmony, is, in Mr.
+Rogers's sketch, finer than in the picture."--MRS. JAMESON'S Sacred and
+Legendary Art, I. 154.
+
+ THE day is closing dark and cold,
+ With roaring blast and sleety showers;
+ And through the dusk the lilacs wear
+ The bloom of snow, instead of flowers.
+
+ I turn me from the gloom without,
+ To ponder o'er a tale of old;
+ A legend of the age of Faith,
+ By dreaming monk or abbess told.
+
+ On Tintoretto's canvas lives
+ That fancy of a loving heart,
+ In graceful lines and shapes of power,
+ And hues immortal as his art.
+
+ In Provence (so the story runs)
+ There lived a lord, to whom, as slave,
+ A peasant-boy of tender years
+ The chance of trade or conquest gave.
+
+ Forth-looking from the castle tower,
+ Beyond the hills with almonds dark,
+ The straining eye could scarce discern
+ The chapel of the good St. Mark.
+
+ And there, when bitter word or fare
+ The service of the youth repaid,
+ By stealth, before that holy shrine,
+ For grace to bear his wrong, he prayed.
+
+ The steed stamped at the castle gate,
+ The boar-hunt sounded on the hill;
+ Why stayed the Baron from the chase,
+ With looks so stern, and words so ill?
+
+ "Go, bind yon slave! and let him learn,
+ By scath of fire and strain of cord,
+ How ill they speed who give dead saints
+ The homage due their living lord!"
+
+ They bound him on the fearful rack,
+ When, through the dungeon's vaulted dark,
+ He saw the light of shining robes,
+ And knew the face of good St. Mark.
+
+ Then sank the iron rack apart,
+ The cords released their cruel clasp,
+ The pincers, with their teeth of fire,
+ Fell broken from the torturer's grasp.
+
+ And lo! before the Youth and Saint,
+ Barred door and wall of stone gave way;
+ And up from bondage and the night
+ They passed to freedom and the day!
+
+ O dreaming monk! thy tale is true;
+ O painter! true thy pencil's art;
+ in tones of hope and prophecy,
+ Ye whisper to my listening heart!
+
+ Unheard no burdened heart's appeal
+ Moans up to God's inclining ear;
+ Unheeded by his tender eye,
+ Falls to the earth no sufferer's tear.
+
+ For still the Lord alone is God
+ The pomp and power of tyrant man
+ Are scattered at his lightest breath,
+ Like chaff before the winnower's fan.
+
+ Not always shall the slave uplift
+ His heavy hands to Heaven in vain.
+ God's angel, like the good St. Mark,
+ Comes shining down to break his chain!
+
+ O weary ones! ye may not see
+ Your helpers in their downward flight;
+ Nor hear the sound of silver wings
+ Slow beating through the hush of night!
+
+ But not the less gray Dothan shone,
+ With sunbright watchers bending low,
+ That Fear's dim eye beheld alone
+ The spear-heads of the Syrian foe.
+
+ There are, who, like the Seer of old,
+ Can see the helpers God has sent,
+ And how life's rugged mountain-side
+ Is white with many an angel tent!
+
+ They hear the heralds whom our Lord
+ Sends down his pathway to prepare;
+ And light, from others hidden, shines
+ On their high place of faith and prayer.
+
+ Let such, for earth's despairing ones,
+ Hopeless, yet longing to be free,
+ Breathe once again the Prophet's prayer
+ "Lord, ope their eyes, that they may see!"
+
+ 1849.
+
+
+
+
+KATHLEEN.
+
+This ballad was originally published in my prose work, Leaves from
+Margaret Smith's Journal, as the song of a wandering Milesian
+schoolmaster. In the seventeenth century, slavery in the New World was
+by no means confined to the natives of Africa. Political offenders and
+criminals were transported by the British government to the plantations
+of Barbadoes and Virginia, where they were sold like cattle in the
+market. Kidnapping of free and innocent white persons was practised to a
+considerable extent in the seaports of the United Kingdom.
+
+ O NORAH, lay your basket down,
+ And rest your weary hand,
+ And come and hear me sing a song
+ Of our old Ireland.
+
+ There was a lord of Galaway,
+ A mighty lord was he;
+ And he did wed a second wife,
+ A maid of low degree.
+
+ But he was old, and she was young,
+ And so, in evil spite,
+ She baked the black bread for his kin,
+ And fed her own with white.
+
+ She whipped the maids and starved the kern,
+ And drove away the poor;
+ "Ah, woe is me!" the old lord said,
+ "I rue my bargain sore!"
+
+ This lord he had a daughter fair,
+ Beloved of old and young,
+ And nightly round the shealing-fires
+ Of her the gleeman sung.
+
+ "As sweet and good is young Kathleen
+ As Eve before her fall;"
+ So sang the harper at the fair,
+ So harped he in the hall.
+
+ "Oh, come to me, my daughter dear!
+ Come sit upon my knee,
+ For looking in your face, Kathleen,
+ Your mother's own I see!"
+
+ He smoothed and smoothed her hair away,
+ He kissed her forehead fair;
+ "It is my darling Mary's brow,
+ It is my darling's hair!"
+
+ Oh, then spake up the angry dame,
+ "Get up, get up," quoth she,
+ "I'll sell ye over Ireland,
+ I'll sell ye o'er the sea!"
+
+ She clipped her glossy hair away,
+ That none her rank might know;
+ She took away her gown of silk,
+ And gave her one of tow,
+
+ And sent her down to Limerick town
+ And to a seaman sold
+ This daughter of an Irish lord
+ For ten good pounds in gold.
+
+ The lord he smote upon his breast,
+ And tore his beard so gray;
+ But he was old, and she was young,
+ And so she had her way.
+
+ Sure that same night the Banshee howled
+ To fright the evil dame,
+ And fairy folks, who loved Kathleen,
+ With funeral torches came.
+
+ She watched them glancing through the trees,
+ And glimmering down the hill;
+ They crept before the dead-vault door,
+ And there they all stood still!
+
+ "Get up, old man! the wake-lights shine!"
+ "Ye murthering witch," quoth he,
+ "So I'm rid of your tongue, I little care
+ If they shine for you or me."
+
+ "Oh, whoso brings my daughter back,
+ My gold and land shall have!"
+ Oh, then spake up his handsome page,
+ "No gold nor land I crave!
+
+ "But give to me your daughter dear,
+ Give sweet Kathleen to me,
+ Be she on sea or be she on land,
+ I'll bring her back to thee."
+
+ "My daughter is a lady born,
+ And you of low degree,
+ But she shall be your bride the day
+ You bring her back to me."
+
+ He sailed east, he sailed west,
+ And far and long sailed he,
+ Until he came to Boston town,
+ Across the great salt sea.
+
+ "Oh, have ye seen the young Kathleen,
+ The flower of Ireland?
+ Ye'll know her by her eyes so blue,
+ And by her snow-white hand!"
+
+ Out spake an ancient man, "I know
+ The maiden whom ye mean;
+ I bought her of a Limerick man,
+ And she is called Kathleen.
+
+ "No skill hath she in household work,
+ Her hands are soft and white,
+ Yet well by loving looks and ways
+ She doth her cost requite."
+
+ So up they walked through Boston town,
+ And met a maiden fair,
+ A little basket on her arm
+ So snowy-white and bare.
+
+ "Come hither, child, and say hast thou
+ This young man ever seen?"
+ They wept within each other's arms,
+ The page and young Kathleen.
+
+ "Oh give to me this darling child,
+ And take my purse of gold."
+ "Nay, not by me," her master said,
+ "Shall sweet Kathleen be sold.
+
+ "We loved her in the place of one
+ The Lord hath early ta'en;
+ But, since her heart's in Ireland,
+ We give her back again!"
+
+ Oh, for that same the saints in heaven
+ For his poor soul shall pray,
+ And Mary Mother wash with tears
+ His heresies away.
+
+ Sure now they dwell in Ireland;
+ As you go up Claremore
+ Ye'll see their castle looking down
+ The pleasant Galway shore.
+
+ And the old lord's wife is dead and gone,
+ And a happy man is he,
+ For he sits beside his own Kathleen,
+ With her darling on his knee.
+
+ 1849.
+
+
+
+
+THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE
+
+Pennant, in his Voyage to the Hebrides, describes the holy well of Loch
+Maree, the waters of which were supposed to effect a miraculous cure of
+melancholy, trouble, and insanity.
+
+ CALM on the breast of Loch Maree
+ A little isle reposes;
+ A shadow woven of the oak
+ And willow o'er it closes.
+
+ Within, a Druid's mound is seen,
+ Set round with stony warders;
+ A fountain, gushing through the turf,
+ Flows o'er its grassy borders.
+
+ And whoso bathes therein his brow,
+ With care or madness burning,
+ Feels once again his healthful thought
+ And sense of peace returning.
+
+ O restless heart and fevered brain,
+ Unquiet and unstable,
+ That holy well of Loch Maree
+ Is more than idle fable!
+
+ Life's changes vex, its discords stun,
+ Its glaring sunshine blindeth,
+ And blest is he who on his way
+ That fount of healing findeth!
+
+ The shadows of a humbled will
+ And contrite heart are o'er it;
+ Go read its legend, "TRUST IN GOD,"
+ On Faith's white stones before it.
+
+ 1850.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS.
+
+The incident upon which this poem is based is related in a note to
+Bernardin Henri Saint Pierre's Etudes de la Nature. "We arrived at the
+habitation of the Hermits a little before they sat down to their table,
+and while they were still at church. J. J. Rousseau proposed to me to
+offer up our devotions. The hermits were reciting the Litanies of
+Providence, which are remarkably beautiful. After we had addressed our
+prayers to God, and the hermits were proceeding to the refectory,
+Rousseau said to me, with his heart overflowing, 'At this moment I
+experience what is said in the gospel: Where two or three are gathered
+together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. There is here a
+feeling of peace and happiness which penetrates the soul.' I said, 'If
+Finelon had lived, you would have been a Catholic.' He exclaimed, with
+tears in his eyes, 'Oh, if Finelon were alive, I would struggle to get
+into his service, even as a lackey!'" In my sketch of Saint Pierre, it
+will be seen that I have somewhat antedated the period of his old age.
+At that time he was not probably more than fifty. In describing him, I
+have by no means exaggerated his own history of his mental condition at
+the period of the story. In the fragmentary Sequel to his Studies of
+Nature, he thus speaks of himself: "The ingratitude of those of whom I
+had deserved kindness, unexpected family misfortunes, the total loss of
+my small patrimony through enterprises solely undertaken for the benefit
+of my country, the debts under which I lay oppressed, the blasting of
+all my hopes,--these combined calamities made dreadful inroads upon my
+health and reason. . . . I found it impossible to continue in a room
+where there was company, especially if the doors were shut. I could not
+even cross an alley in a public garden, if several persons had got
+together in it. When alone, my malady subsided. I felt myself likewise
+at ease in places where I saw children only. At the sight of any one
+walking up to the place where I was, I felt my whole frame agitated, and
+retired. I often said to myself, 'My sole study has been to merit well
+of mankind; why do I fear them?'"
+
+He attributes his improved health of mind and body to the counsels of
+his friend, J. J. Rousseau. "I renounced," says he, "my books. I threw
+my eyes upon the works of nature, which spake to all my senses a
+language which neither time nor nations have it in their power to alter.
+Thenceforth my histories and my journals were the herbage of the fields
+and meadows. My thoughts did not go forth painfully after them, as in
+the case of human systems; but their thoughts, under a thousand engaging
+forms, quietly sought me. In these I studied, without effort, the laws
+of that Universal Wisdom which had surrounded me from the cradle, but on
+which heretofore I had bestowed little attention."
+
+Speaking of Rousseau, he says: "I derived inexpressible satisfaction
+from his society. What I prized still more than his genius was his
+probity. He was one of the few literary characters, tried in the furnace
+of affliction, to whom you could, with perfect security, confide your
+most secret thoughts. . . . Even when he deviated, and became the victim
+of himself or of others, he could forget his own misery in devotion to
+the welfare of mankind. He was uniformly the advocate of the miserable.
+There might be inscribed on his tomb these affecting words from that
+Book of which he carried always about him some select passages, during
+the last years of his life: 'His sins, which are many, are forgiven, for
+he loved much.'"
+
+ "I DO believe, and yet, in grief,
+ I pray for help to unbelief;
+ For needful strength aside to lay
+ The daily cumberings of my way.
+
+ "I 'm sick at heart of craft and cant,
+ Sick of the crazed enthusiast's rant,
+ Profession's smooth hypocrisies,
+ And creeds of iron, and lives of ease.
+
+ "I ponder o'er the sacred word,
+ I read the record of our Lord;
+ And, weak and troubled, envy them
+ Who touched His seamless garment's hem;
+
+ "Who saw the tears of love He wept
+ Above the grave where Lazarus slept;
+ And heard, amidst the shadows dim
+ Of Olivet, His evening hymn.
+
+ "How blessed the swineherd's low estate,
+ The beggar crouching at the gate,
+ The leper loathly and abhorred,
+ Whose eyes of flesh beheld the Lord!
+
+ "O sacred soil His sandals pressed!
+ Sweet fountains of His noonday rest!
+ O light and air of Palestine,
+ Impregnate with His life divine!
+
+ "Oh, bear me thither! Let me look
+ On Siloa's pool, and Kedron's brook;
+ Kneel at Gethsemane, and by
+ Gennesaret walk, before I die!
+
+ "Methinks this cold and northern night
+ Would melt before that Orient light;
+ And, wet by Hermon's dew and rain,
+ My childhood's faith revive again!"
+
+ So spake my friend, one autumn day,
+ Where the still river slid away
+ Beneath us, and above the brown
+ Red curtains of the woods shut down.
+
+ Then said I,--for I could not brook
+ The mute appealing of his look,--
+ "I, too, am weak, and faith is small,
+ And blindness happeneth unto all.
+
+ "Yet, sometimes glimpses on my sight,
+ Through present wrong, the eternal right;
+ And, step by step, since time began,
+ I see the steady gain of man;
+
+ "That all of good the past hath had
+ Remains to make our own time glad,
+ Our common daily life divine,
+ And every land a Palestine.
+
+ "Thou weariest of thy present state;
+ What gain to thee time's holiest date?
+ The doubter now perchance had been
+ As High Priest or as Pilate then!
+
+ "What thought Chorazin's scribes? What faith
+ In Him had Nain and Nazareth?
+ Of the few followers whom He led
+ One sold Him,--all forsook and fled.
+
+ "O friend! we need nor rock nor sand,
+ Nor storied stream of Morning-Land;
+ The heavens are glassed in Merrimac,--
+ What more could Jordan render back?
+
+ "We lack but open eye and ear
+ To find the Orient's marvels here;
+ The still small voice in autumn's hush,
+ Yon maple wood the burning bush.
+
+ "For still the new transcends the old,
+ In signs and tokens manifold;
+ Slaves rise up men; the olive waves,
+ With roots deep set in battle graves!
+
+ "Through the harsh noises of our day
+ A low, sweet prelude finds its way;
+ Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear,
+ A light is breaking, calm and clear.
+
+ "That song of Love, now low and far,
+ Erelong shall swell from star to star!
+ That light, the breaking day, which tips
+ The golden-spired Apocalypse!"
+
+ Then, when my good friend shook his head,
+ And, sighing, sadly smiled, I said:
+ "Thou mind'st me of a story told
+ In rare Bernardin's leaves of gold."
+
+ And while the slanted sunbeams wove
+ The shadows of the frost-stained grove,
+ And, picturing all, the river ran
+ O'er cloud and wood, I thus began:--
+
+ . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+ In Mount Valerien's chestnut wood
+ The Chapel of the Hermits stood;
+ And thither, at the close of day,
+ Came two old pilgrims, worn and gray.
+
+ One, whose impetuous youth defied
+ The storms of Baikal's wintry side,
+ And mused and dreamed where tropic day
+ Flamed o'er his lost Virginia's bay.
+
+ His simple tale of love and woe
+ All hearts had melted, high or low;--
+ A blissful pain, a sweet distress,
+ Immortal in its tenderness.
+
+ Yet, while above his charmed page
+ Beat quick the young heart of his age,
+ He walked amidst the crowd unknown,
+ A sorrowing old man, strange and lone.
+
+ A homeless, troubled age,--the gray
+ Pale setting of a weary day;
+ Too dull his ear for voice of praise,
+ Too sadly worn his brow for bays.
+
+ Pride, lust of power and glory, slept;
+ Yet still his heart its young dream kept,
+ And, wandering like the deluge-dove,
+ Still sought the resting-place of love.
+
+ And, mateless, childless, envied more
+ The peasant's welcome from his door
+ By smiling eyes at eventide,
+ Than kingly gifts or lettered pride.
+
+ Until, in place of wife and child,
+ All-pitying Nature on him smiled,
+ And gave to him the golden keys
+ To all her inmost sanctities.
+
+ Mild Druid of her wood-paths dim!
+ She laid her great heart bare to him,
+ Its loves and sweet accords;--he saw
+ The beauty of her perfect law.
+
+ The language of her signs lie knew,
+ What notes her cloudy clarion blew;
+ The rhythm of autumn's forest dyes,
+ The hymn of sunset's painted skies.
+
+ And thus he seemed to hear the song
+ Which swept, of old, the stars along;
+ And to his eyes the earth once more
+ Its fresh and primal beauty wore.
+
+ Who sought with him, from summer air,
+ And field and wood, a balm for care;
+ And bathed in light of sunset skies
+ His tortured nerves and weary eyes?
+
+ His fame on all the winds had flown;
+ His words had shaken crypt and throne;
+ Like fire, on camp and court and cell
+ They dropped, and kindled as they fell.
+
+ Beneath the pomps of state, below
+ The mitred juggler's masque and show,
+ A prophecy, a vague hope, ran
+ His burning thought from man to man.
+
+ For peace or rest too well he saw
+ The fraud of priests, the wrong of law,
+ And felt how hard, between the two,
+ Their breath of pain the millions drew.
+
+ A prophet-utterance, strong and wild,
+ The weakness of an unweaned child,
+ A sun-bright hope for human-kind,
+ And self-despair, in him combined.
+
+ He loathed the false, yet lived not true
+ To half the glorious truths he knew;
+ The doubt, the discord, and the sin,
+ He mourned without, he felt within.
+
+ Untrod by him the path he showed,
+ Sweet pictures on his easel glowed
+ Of simple faith, and loves of home,
+ And virtue's golden days to come.
+
+ But weakness, shame, and folly made
+ The foil to all his pen portrayed;
+ Still, where his dreamy splendors shone,
+ The shadow of himself was thrown.
+
+ Lord, what is man, whose thought, at times,
+ Up to Thy sevenfold brightness climbs,
+ While still his grosser instinct clings
+ To earth, like other creeping things!
+
+ So rich in words, in acts so mean;
+ So high, so low; chance-swung between
+ The foulness of the penal pit
+ And Truth's clear sky, millennium-lit!
+
+ Vain, pride of star-lent genius!--vain,
+ Quick fancy and creative brain,
+ Unblest by prayerful sacrifice,
+ Absurdly great, or weakly wise!
+
+ Midst yearnings for a truer life,
+ Without were fears, within was strife;
+ And still his wayward act denied
+ The perfect good for which he sighed.
+
+ The love he sent forth void returned;
+ The fame that crowned him scorched and burned,
+ Burning, yet cold and drear and lone,--
+ A fire-mount in a frozen zone!
+
+ Like that the gray-haired sea-king passed,(9)
+ Seen southward from his sleety mast,
+ About whose brows of changeless frost
+ A wreath of flame the wild winds tossed.
+
+ Far round the mournful beauty played
+ Of lambent light and purple shade,
+ Lost on the fixed and dumb despair
+ Of frozen earth and sea and air!
+
+ A man apart, unknown, unloved
+ By those whose wrongs his soul had moved,
+ He bore the ban of Church and State,
+ The good man's fear, the bigot's hate!
+
+ Forth from the city's noise and throng,
+ Its pomp and shame, its sin and wrong,
+ The twain that summer day had strayed
+ To Mount Valerien's chestnut shade.
+
+ To them the green fields and the wood
+ Lent something of their quietude,
+ And golden-tinted sunset seemed
+ Prophetical of all they dreamed.
+
+ The hermits from their simple cares
+ The bell was calling home to prayers,
+ And, listening to its sound, the twain
+ Seemed lapped in childhood's trust again.
+
+ Wide open stood the chapel door;
+ A sweet old music, swelling o'er
+ Low prayerful murmurs, issued thence,--
+ The Litanies of Providence!
+
+ Then Rousseau spake: "Where two or three
+ In His name meet, He there will be!"
+ And then, in silence, on their knees
+ They sank beneath the chestnut-trees.
+
+ As to the blind returning light,
+ As daybreak to the Arctic night,
+ Old faith revived; the doubts of years
+ Dissolved in reverential tears.
+
+ That gush of feeling overpast,
+ "Ah me!" Bernardin sighed at last,
+ I would thy bitterest foes could see
+ Thy heart as it is seen of me!
+
+ "No church of God hast thou denied;
+ Thou hast but spurned in scorn aside
+ A bare and hollow counterfeit,
+ Profaning the pure name of it!
+
+ "With dry dead moss and marish weeds
+ His fire the western herdsman feeds,
+ And greener from the ashen plain
+ The sweet spring grasses rise again.
+
+ "Nor thunder-peal nor mighty wind
+ Disturb the solid sky behind;
+ And through the cloud the red bolt rends
+ The calm, still smile of Heaven descends.
+
+ "Thus through the world, like bolt and blast,
+ And scourging fire, thy words have passed.
+ Clouds break,--the steadfast heavens remain;
+ Weeds burn,--the ashes feed the grain!
+
+ "But whoso strives with wrong may find
+ Its touch pollute, its darkness blind;
+ And learn, as latent fraud is shown
+ In others' faith, to doubt his own.
+
+ "With dream and falsehood, simple trust
+ And pious hope we tread in dust;
+ Lost the calm faith in goodness,--lost
+ The baptism of the Pentecost!
+
+ "Alas!--the blows for error meant
+ Too oft on truth itself are spent,
+ As through the false and vile and base
+ Looks forth her sad, rebuking face.
+
+ "Not ours the Theban's charmed life;
+ We come not scathless from the strife!
+ The Python's coil about us clings,
+ The trampled Hydra bites and stings!
+
+ "Meanwhile, the sport of seeming chance,
+ The plastic shapes of circumstance,
+ What might have been we fondly guess,
+ If earlier born, or tempted less.
+
+ "And thou, in these wild, troubled days,
+ Misjudged alike in blame and praise,
+ Unsought and undeserved the same
+ The skeptic's praise, the bigot's blame;--
+
+ "I cannot doubt, if thou hadst been
+ Among the highly favored men
+ Who walked on earth with Fenelon,
+ He would have owned thee as his son;
+
+ "And, bright with wings of cherubim
+ Visibly waving over him,
+ Seen through his life, the Church had seemed
+ All that its old confessors dreamed."
+
+ "I would have been," Jean Jaques replied,
+ "The humblest servant at his side,
+ Obscure, unknown, content to see
+ How beautiful man's life may be!
+
+ "Oh, more than thrice-blest relic, more
+ Than solemn rite or sacred lore,
+ The holy life of one who trod
+ The foot-marks of the Christ of God!
+
+ "Amidst a blinded world he saw
+ The oneness of the Dual law;
+ That Heaven's sweet peace on Earth began,
+ And God was loved through love of man.
+
+ "He lived the Truth which reconciled
+ The strong man Reason, Faith the child;
+ In him belief and act were one,
+ The homilies of duty done!"
+
+ So speaking, through the twilight gray
+ The two old pilgrims went their way.
+ What seeds of life that day were sown,
+ The heavenly watchers knew alone.
+
+ Time passed, and Autumn came to fold
+ Green Summer in her brown and gold;
+ Time passed, and Winter's tears of snow
+ Dropped on the grave-mound of Rousseau.
+
+ "The tree remaineth where it fell,
+ The pained on earth is pained in hell!"
+ So priestcraft from its altars cursed
+ The mournful doubts its falsehood nursed.
+
+ Ah! well of old the Psalmist prayed,
+ "Thy hand, not man's, on me be laid!"
+ Earth frowns below, Heaven weeps above,
+ And man is hate, but God is love!
+
+ No Hermits now the wanderer sees,
+ Nor chapel with its chestnut-trees;
+ A morning dream, a tale that's told,
+ The wave of change o'er all has rolled.
+
+ Yet lives the lesson of that day;
+ And from its twilight cool and gray
+ Comes up a low, sad whisper, "Make
+ The truth thine own, for truth's own sake.
+
+ "Why wait to see in thy brief span
+ Its perfect flower and fruit in man?
+ No saintly touch can save; no balm
+ Of healing hath the martyr's palm.
+
+ "Midst soulless forms, and false pretence
+ Of spiritual pride and pampered sense,
+ A voice saith, 'What is that to thee?
+ Be true thyself, and follow Me!
+
+ "In days when throne and altar heard
+ The wanton's wish, the bigot's word,
+ And pomp of state and ritual show
+ Scarce hid the loathsome death below,--
+
+ "Midst fawning priests and courtiers foul,
+ The losel swarm of crown and cowl,
+ White-robed walked Francois Fenelon,
+ Stainless as Uriel in the sun!
+
+ "Yet in his time the stake blazed red,
+ The poor were eaten up like bread
+ Men knew him not; his garment's hem
+ No healing virtue had for them.
+
+ "Alas! no present saint we find;
+ The white cymar gleams far behind,
+ Revealed in outline vague, sublime,
+ Through telescopic mists of time!
+
+ "Trust not in man with passing breath,
+ But in the Lord, old Scripture saith;
+ The truth which saves thou mayst not blend
+ With false professor, faithless friend.
+
+ "Search thine own heart. What paineth thee
+ In others in thyself may be;
+ All dust is frail, all flesh is weak;
+ Be thou the true man thou dost seek!
+
+ "Where now with pain thou treadest, trod
+ The whitest of the saints of God!
+ To show thee where their feet were set,
+ the light which led them shineth yet.
+
+ "The footprints of the life divine,
+ Which marked their path, remain in thine;
+ And that great Life, transfused in theirs,
+ Awaits thy faith, thy love, thy prayers!"
+
+ A lesson which I well may heed,
+ A word of fitness to my need;
+ So from that twilight cool and gray
+ Still saith a voice, or seems to say.
+
+ We rose, and slowly homeward turned,
+ While down the west the sunset burned;
+ And, in its light, hill, wood, and tide,
+ And human forms seemed glorified.
+
+ The village homes transfigured stood,
+ And purple bluffs, whose belting wood
+ Across the waters leaned to hold
+ The yellow leaves like lamps of hold.
+
+ Then spake my friend: "Thy words are true;
+ Forever old, forever new,
+ These home-seen splendors are the same
+ Which over Eden's sunsets came.
+
+ "To these bowed heavens let wood and hill
+ Lift voiceless praise and anthem still;
+ Fall, warm with blessing, over them,
+ Light of the New Jerusalem!
+
+ "Flow on, sweet river, like the stream
+ Of John's Apocalyptic dream
+ This mapled ridge shall Horeb be,
+ Yon green-banked lake our Galilee!
+
+ "Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more
+ For olden time and holier shore;
+ God's love and blessing, then and there,
+ Are now and here and everywhere."
+
+ 1851.
+
+
+
+
+TAULER.
+
+ TAULER, the preacher, walked, one autumn day,
+ Without the walls of Strasburg, by the Rhine,
+ Pondering the solemn Miracle of Life;
+ As one who, wandering in a starless night,
+ Feels momently the jar of unseen waves,
+ And hears the thunder of an unknown sea,
+ Breaking along an unimagined shore.
+
+ And as he walked he prayed. Even the same
+ Old prayer with which, for half a score of years,
+ Morning, and noon, and evening, lip and heart
+ Had groaned: "Have pity upon me, Lord!
+ Thou seest, while teaching others, I am blind.
+ Send me a man who can direct my steps!"
+
+ Then, as he mused, he heard along his path
+ A sound as of an old man's staff among
+ The dry, dead linden-leaves; and, looking up,
+ He saw a stranger, weak, and poor, and old.
+
+ "Peace be unto thee, father!" Tauler said,
+ "God give thee a good day!" The old man raised
+ Slowly his calm blue eyes. "I thank thee, son;
+ But all my days are good, and none are ill."
+
+ Wondering thereat, the preacher spake again,
+ "God give thee happy life." The old man smiled,
+ "I never am unhappy."
+
+ Tauler laid
+ His hand upon the stranger's coarse gray sleeve
+ "Tell me, O father, what thy strange words mean.
+ Surely man's days are evil, and his life
+ Sad as the grave it leads to." "Nay, my son,
+ Our times are in God's hands, and all our days
+ Are as our needs; for shadow as for sun,
+ For cold as heat, for want as wealth, alike
+ Our thanks are due, since that is best which is;
+ And that which is not, sharing not His life,
+ Is evil only as devoid of good.
+ And for the happiness of which I spake,
+ I find it in submission to his will,
+ And calm trust in the holy Trinity
+ Of Knowledge, Goodness, and Almighty Power."
+
+ Silently wondering, for a little space,
+ Stood the great preacher; then he spake as one
+ Who, suddenly grappling with a haunting thought
+ Which long has followed, whispering through the dark
+ Strange terrors, drags it, shrieking, into light
+ "What if God's will consign thee hence to Hell?"
+
+ "Then," said the stranger, cheerily, "be it so.
+ What Hell may be I know not; this I know,--
+ I cannot lose the presence of the Lord.
+ One arm, Humility, takes hold upon
+ His dear Humanity; the other, Love,
+ Clasps his Divinity. So where I go
+ He goes; and better fire-walled Hell with Him
+ Than golden-gated Paradise without."
+
+ Tears sprang in Tauler's eyes. A sudden light,
+ Like the first ray which fell on chaos, clove
+ Apart the shadow wherein he had walked
+ Darkly at noon. And, as the strange old man
+ Went his slow way, until his silver hair
+ Set like the white moon where the hills of vine
+ Slope to the Rhine, he bowed his head and said
+ "My prayer is answered. God hath sent the man
+ Long sought, to teach me, by his simple trust,
+ Wisdom the weary schoolmen never knew."
+
+ So, entering with a changed and cheerful step
+ The city gates, he saw, far down the street,
+ A mighty shadow break the light of noon,
+ Which tracing backward till its airy lines
+ Hardened to stony plinths, he raised his eyes
+ O'er broad facade and lofty pediment,
+ O'er architrave and frieze and sainted niche,
+ Up the stone lace-work chiselled by the wise
+ Erwin of Steinbach, dizzily up to where
+ In the noon-brightness the great Minster's tower,
+ Jewelled with sunbeams on its mural crown,
+ Rose like a visible prayer. "Behold!" he said,
+ "The stranger's faith made plain before mine eyes.
+ As yonder tower outstretches to the earth
+ The dark triangle of its shade alone
+ When the clear day is shining on its top,
+ So, darkness in the pathway of Man's life
+ Is but the shadow of God's providence,
+ By the great Sun of Wisdom cast thereon;
+ And what is dark below is light in Heaven."
+
+ 1853.
+
+
+
+
+THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID.
+
+ O STRONG, upwelling prayers of faith,
+ From inmost founts of life ye start,--
+ The spirit's pulse, the vital breath
+ Of soul and heart!
+
+ From pastoral toil, from traffic's din,
+ Alone, in crowds, at home, abroad,
+ Unheard of man, ye enter in
+ The ear of God.
+
+ Ye brook no forced and measured tasks,
+ Nor weary rote, nor formal chains;
+ The simple heart, that freely asks
+ In love, obtains.
+
+ For man the living temple is
+ The mercy-seat and cherubim,
+ And all the holy mysteries,
+ He bears with him.
+
+ And most avails the prayer of love,
+ Which, wordless, shapes itself in needs,
+ And wearies Heaven for naught above
+ Our common needs.
+
+ Which brings to God's all-perfect will
+ That trust of His undoubting child
+ Whereby all seeming good and ill
+ Are reconciled.
+
+ And, seeking not for special signs
+ Of favor, is content to fall
+ Within the providence which shines
+ And rains on all.
+
+ Alone, the Thebaid hermit leaned
+ At noontime o'er the sacred word.
+ Was it an angel or a fiend
+ Whose voice be heard?
+
+ It broke the desert's hush of awe,
+ A human utterance, sweet and mild;
+ And, looking up, the hermit saw
+ A little child.
+
+ A child, with wonder-widened eyes,
+ O'erawed and troubled by the sight
+ Of hot, red sands, and brazen skies,
+ And anchorite.
+
+ "'What dost thou here, poor man? No shade
+ Of cool, green palms, nor grass, nor well,
+ Nor corn, nor vines." The hermit said
+ "With God I dwell.
+
+ "Alone with Him in this great calm,
+ I live not by the outward sense;
+ My Nile his love, my sheltering palm
+ His providence."
+
+ The child gazed round him. "Does God live
+ Here only?--where the desert's rim
+ Is green with corn, at morn and eve,
+ We pray to Him.
+
+ "My brother tills beside the Nile
+ His little field; beneath the leaves
+ My sisters sit and spin, the while
+ My mother weaves.
+
+ "And when the millet's ripe heads fall,
+ And all the bean-field hangs in pod,
+ My mother smiles, and, says that all
+ Are gifts from God."
+
+ Adown the hermit's wasted cheeks
+ Glistened the flow of human tears;
+ "Dear Lord!" he said, "Thy angel speaks,
+ Thy servant hears."
+
+ Within his arms the child he took,
+ And thought of home and life with men;
+ And all his pilgrim feet forsook
+ Returned again.
+
+ The palmy shadows cool and long,
+ The eyes that smiled through lavish locks,
+ Home's cradle-hymn and harvest-song,
+ And bleat of flocks.
+
+ "O child!" he said, "thou teachest me
+ There is no place where God is not;
+ That love will make, where'er it be,
+ A holy spot."
+
+ He rose from off the desert sand,
+ And, leaning on his staff of thorn,
+ Went with the young child hand in hand,
+ Like night with morn.
+
+ They crossed the desert's burning line,
+ And heard the palm-tree's rustling fan,
+ The Nile-bird's cry, the low of kine,
+ And voice of man.
+
+ Unquestioning, his childish guide
+ He followed, as the small hand led
+ To where a woman, gentle-eyed,
+ Her distaff fed.
+
+ She rose, she clasped her truant boy,
+ She thanked the stranger with her eyes;
+ The hermit gazed in doubt and joy
+ And dumb surprise.
+
+ And to!--with sudden warmth and light
+ A tender memory thrilled his frame;
+ New-born, the world-lost anchorite
+ A man became.
+
+ "O sister of El Zara's race,
+ Behold me!--had we not one mother?"
+ She gazed into the stranger's face
+ "Thou art my brother!"
+
+ "And when to share our evening meal,
+ She calls the stranger at the door,
+ She says God fills the hands that deal
+ Food to the poor."
+
+ "O kin of blood! Thy life of use
+ And patient trust is more than mine;
+ And wiser than the gray recluse
+ This child of thine.
+
+ "For, taught of him whom God hath sent,
+ That toil is praise, and love is prayer,
+ I come, life's cares and pains content
+ With thee to share."
+
+ Even as his foot the threshold crossed,
+ The hermit's better life began;
+ Its holiest saint the Thebaid lost,
+ And found a man!
+
+ 1854.
+
+
+
+
+MAUD MULLER.
+
+The recollection of some descendants of a Hessian deserter in the
+Revolutionary war bearing the name of Muller doubtless suggested the
+somewhat infelicitous title of a New England idyl. The poem had no real
+foundation in fact, though a hint of it may have been found in recalling
+an incident, trivial in itself, of a journey on the picturesque Maine
+seaboard with my sister some years before it was written. We had stopped
+to rest our tired horse under the shade of an apple-tree, and refresh
+him with water from a little brook which rippled through the stone wall
+across the road. A very beautiful young girl in scantest summer attire
+was at work in the hay-field, and as we talked with her we noticed that
+she strove to hide her bare feet by raking hay over them, blushing as
+she did so, through the tan of her cheek and neck.
+
+ MAUD MULLER on a summer's day,
+ Raked the meadow sweet with hay.
+
+ Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
+ Of simple beauty and rustic-health.
+
+ Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
+ The mock-bird echoed from his tree.
+
+ But when she glanced to the far-off town,
+ White from its hill-slope looking down,
+
+ The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
+ And a nameless longing filled her breast,--
+
+ A wish, that she hardly dared to own,
+ For something better than she had known.
+
+ The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
+ Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.
+
+ He drew his bridle in the shade
+ Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,
+
+ And asked a draught from the spring that flowed
+ Through the meadow across the road.
+
+ She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,
+ And filled for him her small tin cup,
+
+ And blushed as she gave it, looking down
+ On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.
+
+ "Thanks!" said the Judge; "a sweeter draught
+ From a fairer hand was never quaffed."
+
+ He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,
+ Of the singing birds and the humming bees;
+
+ Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether
+ The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.
+
+ And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown,
+ And her graceful ankles bare and brown;
+
+ And listened, while a pleased surprise
+ Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.
+
+ At last, like one who for delay
+ Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.
+
+ Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah me!
+ That I the Judge's bride might be!
+
+ "He would dress me up in silks so fine,
+ And praise and toast me at his wine.
+
+ "My father should wear a broadcloth coat;
+ My brother should sail a painted boat.
+
+ "I'd dress my mother so grand and gay,
+ And the baby should have a new toy each day.
+
+ "And I 'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor,
+ And all should bless me who left our door."
+
+ The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,
+ And saw Maud Muller standing still.
+
+ A form more fair, a face more sweet,
+ Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.
+
+ "And her modest answer and graceful air
+ Show her wise and good as she is fair.
+
+ "Would she were mine, and I to-day,
+ Like her, a harvester of hay;
+
+ "No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,
+ Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,
+
+ "But low of cattle and song of birds,
+ And health and quiet and loving words."
+
+ But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold,
+ And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.
+
+ So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
+ And Maud was left in the field alone.
+
+ But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
+ When he hummed in court an old love-tune;
+
+ And the young girl mused beside the well
+ Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.
+
+ He wedded a wife of richest dower,
+ Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
+
+ Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow,
+ He watched a picture come and go;
+
+ And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes
+ Looked out in their innocent surprise.
+
+ Oft, when the wine in his glass was red,
+ He longed for the wayside well instead;
+
+ And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms
+ To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.
+
+ And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,
+ "Ah, that I were free again!
+
+ "Free as when I rode that day,
+ Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay."
+
+ She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
+ And many children played round her door.
+
+ But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain,
+ Left their traces on heart and brain.
+
+ And oft, when the summer sun shone hot
+ On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,
+
+ And she heard the little spring brook fall
+ Over the roadside, through the wall,
+
+ In the shade of the apple-tree again
+ She saw a rider draw his rein.
+
+ And, gazing down with timid grace,
+ She felt his pleased eyes read her face.
+
+ Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
+ Stretched away into stately halls;
+
+ The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,
+ The tallow candle an astral burned,
+
+ And for him who sat by the chimney lug,
+ Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,
+
+ A manly form at her side she saw,
+ And joy was duty and love was law.
+
+ Then she took up her burden of life again,
+ Saying only, "It might have been."
+
+ Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
+ For rich repiner and household drudge!
+
+ God pity them both! and pity us all,
+ Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.
+
+ For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
+ The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
+
+ Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
+ Deeply buried from human eyes;
+
+ And, in the hereafter, angels may
+ Roll the stone from its grave away!
+
+ 1854.
+
+
+
+
+MARY GARVIN.
+
+ FROM the heart of Waumbek Methna, from the
+ lake that never fails,
+ Falls the Saco in the green lap of Conway's
+ intervales;
+ There, in wild and virgin freshness, its waters
+ foam and flow,
+ As when Darby Field first saw them, two hundred
+ years ago.
+
+ But, vexed in all its seaward course with bridges,
+ dams, and mills,
+ How changed is Saco's stream, how lost its freedom
+ of the hills,
+ Since travelled Jocelyn, factor Vines, and stately
+ Champernoon
+ Heard on its banks the gray wolf's howl, the trumpet
+ of the loon!
+
+ With smoking axle hot with speed, with steeds of
+ fire and steam,
+ Wide-waked To-day leaves Yesterday behind him
+ like a dream.
+ Still, from the hurrying train of Life, fly backward
+ far and fast
+ The milestones of the fathers, the landmarks of
+ the past.
+
+ But human hearts remain unchanged: the sorrow
+ and the sin,
+ The loves and hopes and fears of old, are to our
+ own akin;
+
+ And if, in tales our fathers told, the songs our
+ mothers sung,
+ Tradition wears a snowy beard, Romance is always
+ young.
+
+ O sharp-lined man of traffic, on Saco's banks today!
+ O mill-girl watching late and long the shuttle's
+ restless play!
+ Let, for the once, a listening ear the working hand
+ beguile,
+ And lend my old Provincial tale, as suits, a tear or
+ smile!
+
+ . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+ The evening gun had sounded from gray Fort
+ Mary's walls;
+ Through the forest, like a wild beast, roared and
+ plunged the Saco's' falls.
+
+ And westward on the sea-wind, that damp and
+ gusty grew,
+ Over cedars darkening inland the smokes of Spurwink
+ blew.
+
+ On the hearth of Farmer Garvin, blazed the crackling
+ walnut log;
+ Right and left sat dame and goodman, and between
+ them lay the dog,
+
+ Head on paws, and tail slow wagging, and beside
+ him on her mat,
+ Sitting drowsy in the firelight, winked and purred
+ the mottled cat.
+
+ "Twenty years!" said Goodman Garvin, speaking
+ sadly, under breath,
+ And his gray head slowly shaking, as one who
+ speaks of death.
+
+ The goodwife dropped her needles: "It is twenty
+ years to-day,
+ Since the Indians fell on Saco, and stole our child
+ away."
+
+ Then they sank into the silence, for each knew
+ the other's thought,
+ Of a great and common sorrow, and words were,
+ needed not.
+
+ "Who knocks?" cried Goodman Garvin. The
+ door was open thrown;
+ On two strangers, man and maiden, cloaked and
+ furred, the fire-light shone.
+
+ One with courteous gesture lifted the bear-skin
+ from his head;
+ "Lives here Elkanah Garvin?" "I am he," the
+ goodman said.
+
+ "Sit ye down, and dry and warm ye, for the night
+ is chill with rain."
+ And the goodwife drew the settle, and stirred the
+ fire amain.
+
+ The maid unclasped her cloak-hood, the firelight
+ glistened fair
+ In her large, moist eyes, and over soft folds of
+ dark brown hair.
+
+ Dame Garvin looked upon her: "It is Mary's self
+ I see!"
+ "Dear heart!" she cried, "now tell me, has my
+ child come back to me?"
+
+ "My name indeed is Mary," said the stranger sobbing
+ wild;
+ "Will you be to me a mother? I am Mary Garvin's child!"
+
+ "She sleeps by wooded Simcoe, but on her dying
+ day
+ She bade my father take me to her kinsfolk far
+ away.
+
+ "And when the priest besought her to do me no
+ such wrong,
+ She said, 'May God forgive me! I have closed
+ my heart too long.'
+
+ "'When I hid me from my father, and shut out
+ my mother's call,
+ I sinned against those dear ones, and the Father
+ of us all.
+
+ "'Christ's love rebukes no home-love, breaks no
+ tie of kin apart;
+ Better heresy in doctrine, than heresy of heart.
+
+ "'Tell me not the Church must censure: she who
+ wept the Cross beside
+ Never made her own flesh strangers, nor the claims
+ of blood denied;
+
+ "'And if she who wronged her parents, with her
+ child atones to them,
+ Earthly daughter, Heavenly Mother! thou at least
+ wilt not condemn!'
+
+ "So, upon her death-bed lying, my blessed mother
+ spake;
+ As we come to do her bidding, So receive us for her
+ sake."
+
+ "God be praised!" said Goodwife Garvin, "He taketh,
+ and He gives;
+ He woundeth, but He healeth; in her child our
+ daughter lives!"
+
+ "Amen!" the old man answered, as he brushed a
+ tear away,
+ And, kneeling by his hearthstone, said, with reverence,
+ "Let us pray."
+
+ All its Oriental symbols, and its Hebrew pararphrase,
+ Warm with earnest life and feeling, rose his prayer
+ of love and praise.
+
+ But he started at beholding, as he rose from off
+ his knee,
+ The stranger cross his forehead with the sign of
+ Papistrie.
+
+ "What is this?" cried Farmer Garvin. "Is an English
+ Christian's home
+ A chapel or a mass-house, that you make the sign
+ of Rome?"
+
+ Then the young girl knelt beside him, kissed his
+ trembling hand, and cried:
+ Oh, forbear to chide my father; in that faith my
+ mother died!
+
+ "On her wooden cross at Simcoe the dews and
+ sunshine fall,
+ As they fall on Spurwink's graveyard; and the
+ dear God watches all!"
+
+ The old man stroked the fair head that rested on
+ his knee;
+ "Your words, dear child," he answered, "are God's
+ rebuke to me.
+
+ "Creed and rite perchance may differ, yet our
+ faith and hope be one.
+ Let me be your father's father, let him be to me
+ a son."
+
+ When the horn, on Sabbath morning, through the
+ still and frosty air,
+ From Spurwink, Pool, and Black Point, called to
+ sermon and to prayer,
+
+ To the goodly house of worship, where, in order
+ due and fit,
+ As by public vote directed, classed and ranked the
+ people sit;
+
+ Mistress first and goodwife after, clerkly squire
+ before the clown,
+ "From the brave coat, lace-embroidered, to the gray
+ frock, shading down;"
+
+ From the pulpit read the preacher, "Goodman
+ Garvin and his wife
+ Fain would thank the Lord, whose kindness has
+ followed them through life,
+
+ "For the great and crowning mercy, that their
+ daughter, from the wild,
+ Where she rests (they hope in God's peace), has
+ sent to them her child;
+
+ "And the prayers of all God's people they ask,
+ that they may prove
+ Not unworthy, through their weakness, of such
+ special proof of love."
+
+ As the preacher prayed, uprising, the aged couple
+ stood,
+ And the fair Canadian also, in her modest maiden-
+ hood.
+
+ Thought the elders, grave and doubting, "She is
+ Papist born and bred;"
+ Thought the young men, "'T is an angel in Mary
+ Garvin's stead!"
+
+
+
+
+THE RANGER.
+
+Originally published as Martha Mason; a Song of the Old
+French War.
+
+ ROBERT RAWLIN!--Frosts were falling
+ When the ranger's horn was calling
+ Through the woods to Canada.
+
+ Gone the winter's sleet and snowing,
+ Gone the spring-time's bud and blowing,
+ Gone the summer's harvest mowing,
+ And again the fields are gray.
+ Yet away, he's away!
+ Faint and fainter hope is growing
+ In the hearts that mourn his stay.
+
+ Where the lion, crouching high on
+ Abraham's rock with teeth of iron,
+ Glares o'er wood and wave away,
+ Faintly thence, as pines far sighing,
+ Or as thunder spent and dying,
+ Come the challenge and replying,
+ Come the sounds of flight and fray.
+ Well-a-day! Hope and pray!
+ Some are living, some are lying
+ In their red graves far away.
+
+ Straggling rangers, worn with dangers,
+ Homeward faring, weary strangers
+ Pass the farm-gate on their way;
+ Tidings of the dead and living,
+ Forest march and ambush, giving,
+ Till the maidens leave their weaving,
+ And the lads forget their play.
+ "Still away, still away!"
+ Sighs a sad one, sick with grieving,
+ "Why does Robert still delay!"
+
+ Nowhere fairer, sweeter, rarer,
+ Does the golden-locked fruit bearer
+ Through his painted woodlands stray,
+ Than where hillside oaks and beeches
+ Overlook the long, blue reaches,
+ Silver coves and pebbled beaches,
+ And green isles of Casco Bay;
+ Nowhere day, for delay,
+ With a tenderer look beseeches,
+ "Let me with my charmed earth stay."
+
+ On the grain-lands of the mainlands
+ Stands the serried corn like train-bands,
+ Plume and pennon rustling gay;
+ Out at sea, the islands wooded,
+ Silver birches, golden-hooded,
+ Set with maples, crimson-blooded,
+ White sea-foam and sand-hills gray,
+ Stretch away, far away.
+ Dim and dreamy, over-brooded
+ By the hazy autumn day.
+
+ Gayly chattering to the clattering
+ Of the brown nuts downward pattering,
+ Leap the squirrels, red and gray.
+ On the grass-land, on the fallow,
+ Drop the apples, red and yellow;
+ Drop the russet pears and mellow,
+ Drop the red leaves all the day.
+ And away, swift away,
+ Sun and cloud, o'er hill and hollow
+ Chasing, weave their web of play.
+
+ "Martha Mason, Martha Mason,
+ Prithee tell us of the reason
+ Why you mope at home to-day
+ Surely smiling is not sinning;
+ Leave, your quilling, leave your spinning;
+ What is all your store of linen,
+ If your heart is never gay?
+ Come away, come away!
+ Never yet did sad beginning
+ Make the task of life a play."
+
+ Overbending, till she's blending
+ With the flaxen skein she's tending
+ Pale brown tresses smoothed away
+ From her face of patient sorrow,
+ Sits she, seeking but to borrow,
+ From the trembling hope of morrow,
+ Solace for the weary day.
+ "Go your way, laugh and play;
+ Unto Him who heeds the sparrow
+ And the lily, let me pray."
+
+ "With our rally, rings the valley,--
+ Join us!" cried the blue-eyed Nelly;
+ "Join us!" cried the laughing May,
+ "To the beach we all are going,
+ And, to save the task of rowing,
+ West by north the wind is blowing,
+ Blowing briskly down the bay
+ Come away, come away!
+ Time and tide are swiftly flowing,
+ Let us take them while we may!
+
+ "Never tell us that you'll fail us,
+ Where the purple beach-plum mellows
+ On the bluffs so wild and gray.
+ Hasten, for the oars are falling;
+ Hark, our merry mates are calling;
+ Time it is that we were all in,
+ Singing tideward down the bay!"
+ "Nay, nay, let me stay;
+ Sore and sad for Robert Rawlin
+ Is my heart," she said, "to-day."
+
+ "Vain your calling for Rob Rawlin
+ Some red squaw his moose-meat's broiling,
+ Or some French lass, singing gay;
+ Just forget as he's forgetting;
+ What avails a life of fretting?
+ If some stars must needs be setting,
+ Others rise as good as they."
+ "Cease, I pray; go your way!"
+ Martha cries, her eyelids wetting;
+ "Foul and false the words you say!"
+
+ "Martha Mason, hear to reason!--
+ Prithee, put a kinder face on!"
+ "Cease to vex me," did she say;
+ "Better at his side be lying,
+ With the mournful pine-trees sighing,
+ And the wild birds o'er us crying,
+ Than to doubt like mine a prey;
+ While away, far away,
+ Turns my heart, forever trying
+ Some new hope for each new day.
+
+ "When the shadows veil the meadows,
+ And the sunset's golden ladders
+ Sink from twilight's walls of gray,--
+ From the window of my dreaming,
+ I can see his sickle gleaming,
+ Cheery-voiced, can hear him teaming
+ Down the locust-shaded way;
+ But away, swift away,
+ Fades the fond, delusive seeming,
+ And I kneel again to pray.
+
+ "When the growing dawn is showing,
+ And the barn-yard cock is crowing,
+ And the horned moon pales away
+ From a dream of him awaking,
+ Every sound my heart is making
+ Seems a footstep of his taking;
+ Then I hush the thought, and say,
+ 'Nay, nay, he's away!'
+ Ah! my heart, my heart is breaking
+ For the dear one far away."
+
+ Look up, Martha! worn and swarthy,
+ Glows a face of manhood worthy
+ "Robert!" "Martha!" all they say.
+ O'er went wheel and reel together,
+ Little cared the owner whither;
+ Heart of lead is heart of feather,
+ Noon of night is noon of day!
+ Come away, come away!
+ When such lovers meet each other,
+ Why should prying idlers stay?
+
+ Quench the timber's fallen embers,
+ Quench the recd leaves in December's
+ Hoary rime and chilly spray.
+
+ But the hearth shall kindle clearer,
+ Household welcomes sound sincerer,
+ Heart to loving heart draw nearer,
+ When the bridal bells shall say:
+ "Hope and pray, trust alway;
+ Life is sweeter, love is dearer,
+ For the trial and delay!"
+
+ 1856.
+
+
+
+
+THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN.
+
+ FROM the hills of home forth looking, far beneath
+ the tent-like span
+ Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the headland
+ of Cape Ann.
+ Well I know its coves and beaches to the ebb-tide
+ glimmering down,
+ And the white-walled hamlet children of its ancient
+ fishing town.
+
+ Long has passed the summer morning, and its
+ memory waxes old,
+ When along yon breezy headlands with a pleasant
+ friend I strolled.
+ Ah! the autumn sun is shining, and the ocean
+ wind blows cool,
+ And the golden-rod and aster bloom around thy
+ grave, Rantoul!
+
+ With the memory of that morning by the summer
+ sea I blend
+ A wild and wondrous story, by the younger Mather
+ penned,
+ In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange
+ and marvellous things,
+ Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos
+ Ovid sings.
+
+ Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the dual
+ life of old,
+ Inward, grand with awe and reverence; outward,
+ mean and coarse and cold;
+ Gleams of mystic beauty playing over dull and
+ vulgar clay,
+ Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a web of
+ hodden gray.
+
+ The great eventful Present hides the Past; but
+ through the din
+ Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life
+ behind steal in;
+ And the lore of homeland fireside, and the legendary
+ rhyme,
+ Make the task of duty lighter which the true man
+ owes his time.
+
+ So, with something of the feeling which the Covenanter
+ knew,
+ When with pious chisel wandering Scotland's
+ moorland graveyards through,
+ From the graves of old traditions I part the black-
+ berry-vines,
+ Wipe the moss from off the headstones, and retouch
+ the faded lines.
+
+ Where the sea-waves back and forward, hoarse
+ with rolling pebbles, ran,
+ The garrison-house stood watching on the gray
+ rocks of Cape Ann;
+ On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and palisade,
+ And rough walls of unhewn timber with the moonlight
+ overlaid.
+
+ On his slow round walked the sentry, south and
+ eastward looking forth
+ O'er a rude and broken coast-line, white with
+ breakers stretching north,--
+ Wood and rock and gleaming sand-drift, jagged
+ capes, with bush and tree,
+ Leaning inland from the smiting of the wild and
+ gusty sea.
+
+ Before the deep-mouthed chimney, 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
+ wizards Satan-sold;
+ Of all ghostly sights and noises,--signs and wonders
+ manifold;
+ Of the spectre-ship of Salem, with the dead men
+ in her shrouds,
+ Sailing sheer above the water, in the loom of morning
+ clouds;
+
+ Of the marvellous valley hidden in the depths of
+ Gloucester woods,
+ Full of plants that love the summer,--blooms of
+ warmer latitudes;
+ Where the Arctic birch is braided by the tropic's
+ flowery vines,
+ And the white magnolia-blossoms star the twilight
+ of the pines!
+
+ But their voices sank yet lower, sank to husky
+ tones of fear,
+ As they spake of present tokens of the powers of
+ evil near;
+ Of a spectral host, defying stroke of steel and aim
+ of gun;
+ Never yet was ball to slay them in the mould of
+ mortals run.
+
+ Thrice, with plumes and flowing scalp-locks, from
+ the midnight wood they came,--
+ Thrice around the block-house marching, met, unharmed,
+ its volleyed flame;
+ Then, with mocking laugh and gesture, sunk in
+ earth or lost in air,
+ All the ghostly wonder vanished, and the moonlit
+ sands lay bare.
+
+ Midnight came; from out the forest moved a
+ dusky mass that soon
+ Grew to warriors, plumed and painted, grimly
+ marching in the moon.
+ "Ghosts or witches," said the captain, "thus I foil
+ the Evil One!"
+ And he rammed a silver button, from his doublet,
+ down his gun.
+
+ Once again the spectral horror moved the guarded
+ wall about;
+ Once again the levelled muskets through the palisades
+ flashed out,
+ With that deadly aim the squirrel on his tree-top
+ might not shun,
+ Nor the beach-bird seaward flying with his slant
+ wing to the sun.
+
+ Like the idle rain of summer sped the harmless
+ shower of lead.
+ With a laugh of fierce derision, once again the
+ phantoms fled;
+ Once again, without a shadow on the sands the
+ moonlight lay,
+ And the white smoke curling through it drifted
+ slowly down the bay!
+
+ "God preserve us!" said the captain; "never
+ mortal foes were there;
+ They have vanished with their leader, Prince and
+ Power of the air!
+ Lay aside your useless weapons; skill and prowess
+ naught avail;
+ They who do the Devil's service wear their master's
+ coat of mail!"
+
+ So the night grew near to cock-crow, when again
+ a warning call
+ Roused the score of weary soldiers 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!"
+
+ 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
+ captain led in prayer.
+
+ Ceased thereat the mystic marching of the spectres
+ round the wall,
+ But a sound abhorred, unearthly, smote the ears
+ and hearts of all,--
+ Howls of rage and shrieks of anguish! Never
+ after mortal man
+ Saw the ghostly leaguers marching round the
+ block-house of Cape Ann.
+
+ So to us who walk in summer through the cool and
+ sea-blown town,
+ From the childhood of its people comes the solemn
+ legend down.
+ Not in vain the ancient fiction, in 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
+ darkness undefined;
+ Round us throng the grim projections of the heart
+ and of the brain,
+ And our pride of strength is weakness, and the
+ cunning hand is vain.
+
+ 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!
+
+ 1857.
+
+
+
+
+THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS.
+
+ TRITEMIUS of Herbipolis, one day,
+ While kneeling at the altar's foot to pray,
+ Alone with God, as was his pious choice,
+ Heard from without a miserable voice,
+ A sound which seemed of all sad things to tell,
+ As of a lost soul crying out of hell.
+
+ Thereat the Abbot paused; the chain whereby
+ His thoughts went upward broken by that cry;
+ And, looking from the casement, saw below
+ A wretched woman, with gray hair a-flow,
+ And withered hands held up to him, who cried
+ For alms as one who might not be denied.
+
+ She cried, "For the dear love of Him who gave
+ His life for ours, my child from bondage save,--
+ My beautiful, brave first-born, chained with slaves
+ 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."--"O 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,
+ 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 aflame,
+ And, dumb with grateful wonder, to behold
+ Upon the altar candlesticks of gold!
+
+ 1857.
+
+
+
+
+SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE.
+
+In the valuable and carefully prepared History of Marblehead, published
+in 1879 by Samuel Roads, Jr., it is stated that the crew of Captain
+Ireson, rather than himself, were responsible for the abandonment of the
+disabled vessel. To screen themselves they charged their captain with
+the crime. In view of this the writer of the ballad addressed the
+following letter to the historian:--
+
+OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, 5 mo. 18, 1880.
+MY DEAR FRIEND: I heartily thank thee for a copy of thy History of
+Marblehead. I have read it with great interest and think good use has
+been made of the abundant material. No town in Essex County has a record
+more honorable than Marblehead; no one has done more to develop the
+industrial interests of our New England seaboard, and certainly none
+have given such evidence of self-sacrificing patriotism. I am glad the
+story of it has been at last told, and told so well. I have now no doubt
+that thy version of Skipper Ireson's ride is the correct one. My verse
+was founded solely on a fragment of rhyme which I heard from one of my
+early schoolmates, a native of Marblehead. I supposed the story to which
+it referred dated back at least a century. I knew nothing of the
+participators, and the narrative of the ballad was pure fancy. I am glad
+for the sake of truth and justice that the real facts are given in thy
+book. I certainly would not knowingly do injustice to any one, dead or
+living.
+
+I am very truly thy friend,
+JOHN G. WHITTIER.
+
+
+ OF all the rides since, the birth of time,
+ Told in story or sung in rhyme,--
+ On Apuleius's Golden Ass,
+ Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass;
+ Witch astride of a human back,
+ Islam's prophet on Al-Borak,--
+ The strangest ride that ever was sped
+ Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead!
+ Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
+ Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
+ By the women of Marblehead!
+ Body of turkey, head of owl,
+ Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl,
+ Feathered and ruffled in every part,
+ Skipper Ireson stood in the cart.
+ Scores of women, old and young,
+ Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue,
+ Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane,
+ Shouting and singing the shrill refrain
+ "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
+ Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
+ By the women o' Morble'ead!"
+
+ Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,
+ Girls in bloom of cheek and lips,
+ Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase
+ Bacchus round some antique vase,
+ Brief of skirt, with ankles bare,
+ Loose of kerchief and loose of hair,
+ With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang,
+ Over and over the Manads sang
+ "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
+ Torr'd an' futherr'd an dorr'd in a corrt
+ By the women o' Morble'ead!"
+
+ Small pity for him!--He sailed away
+ From a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay,--
+ Sailed away from a sinking wreck,
+ With his own town's-people on her deck!
+ "Lay by! lay by!" they called to him.
+ Back he answered, "Sink or swim!
+ Brag of your catch of fish again!"
+ And off he sailed through the fog and rain!
+ Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
+ Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
+ By the women of Marblehead!
+
+ Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur
+ That wreck shall lie forevermore.
+ Mother and sister, wife and maid,
+ Looked from the rocks of Marblehead
+ Over the moaning and rainy sea,--
+ Looked for the coming that might not be!
+ What did the winds and the sea-birds say
+ Of the cruel captain who sailed away?--
+ Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
+ Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
+ By the women of Marblehead!
+
+ Through the street, on either side,
+ Up flew windows, doors swung wide;
+ Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray,
+ Treble lent the fish-horn's bray.
+ Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound,
+ Hulks of old sailors run aground,
+ Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane,
+ And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain
+ "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
+ Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
+ By the women o''Morble'ead!"
+
+ 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 to 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' corr'd in a corrt
+ By the women o' Morble'ead!"
+
+ "Hear me, neighbors!" at last he cried,--
+ "What to me is this noisy ride?
+ What is the shame that clothes the skin
+ To the nameless horror that lives within?
+ Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck,
+ And hear a cry from a reeling deck!
+ 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!
+
+ 1857.
+
+
+
+
+THE SYCAMORES.
+
+Hugh Tallant was the first Irish resident of Haverhill, Mass. He planted
+the button-wood trees on the bank of the river below the village in the
+early part of the seventeenth century. Unfortunately this noble avenue
+is now nearly destroyed.
+
+ 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, then poor Hugh Tallant
+ Pass in jerkin green along,
+ With thy eyes brimful of laughter,
+ And thy mouth as full of song.
+
+ Pioneer of Erin's outcasts,
+ With his fiddle and his pack;
+ Little dreamed the village Saxons
+ Of the myriads at his back.
+
+ How he wrought with spade and fiddle,
+ Delved by day and sang by night,
+ With a hand that never wearied,
+ And a heart forever light,--
+
+ Still the gay tradition mingles
+ With a record grave and drear,
+ Like the rollic air of Cluny,
+ With the solemn march of Mear.
+
+ When the box-tree, white with blossoms,
+ Made the sweet May woodlands glad,
+ And the Aronia by the river
+ Lighted up the swarming shad,
+
+ And the bulging nets swept shoreward,
+ With their silver-sided haul,
+ Midst the shouts of dripping fishers,
+ He was merriest of them all.
+
+ When, among the jovial huskers,
+ Love stole in at Labor's side,
+ With the lusty airs of England,
+ Soft his Celtic measures vied.
+
+ Songs of love and wailing lyke--wake,
+ And the merry fair's carouse;
+ Of the wild Red Fox of Erin
+ And the Woman of Three Cows,
+
+ By the blazing hearths of winter,
+ Pleasant seemed his simple tales,
+ Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends
+ And the mountain myths of Wales.
+
+ How the souls in Purgatory
+ Scrambled up from fate forlorn,
+ On St. Eleven's sackcloth ladder,
+ Slyly hitched to Satan's horn.
+
+ Of the fiddler who at Tara
+ Played all night to ghosts of kings;
+ Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies
+ Dancing in their moorland rings.
+
+ Jolliest of our birds of singing,
+ Best he loved the Bob-o-link.
+ "Hush!" he 'd say, "the tipsy fairies
+ Hear the little folks in drink!"
+
+ Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle,
+ Singing through the ancient town,
+ Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant,
+ Hath Tradition handed down.
+
+ Not a stone his grave discloses;
+ But if yet his spirit walks,
+ 'T is beneath the trees he planted,
+ And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks;
+
+ Green memorials of the gleeman I
+ Linking still the river-shores,
+ With their shadows cast by sunset,
+ Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores!
+
+ When the Father of his Country
+ Through the north-land riding came,
+ And the roofs were starred with banners,
+ And the steeples rang acclaim,--
+
+ When each war-scarred Continental,
+ Leaving smithy, mill, and farm,
+ Waved his rusted sword in welcome,
+ And shot off his old king's arm,--
+
+ Slowly passed that August Presence
+ Down the thronged and shouting street;
+ Village girls as white as angels,
+ Scattering flowers around his feet.
+
+ Midway, where the plane-tree's shadow
+ Deepest fell, his rein he drew
+ On his stately head, uncovered,
+ Cool and soft the west-wind blew.
+
+ And he stood up in his stirrups,
+ Looking up and looking down
+ On the hills of Gold and Silver
+ Rimming round the little town,--
+
+ On the river, full of sunshine,
+ To the lap of greenest vales
+ Winding down from wooded headlands,
+ Willow-skirted, white with sails.
+
+ And he said, the landscape sweeping
+ Slowly with his ungloved hand,
+ "I have seen no prospect fairer
+ In this goodly Eastern land."
+
+ Then the bugles of his escort
+ Stirred to life the cavalcade
+ And that head, so bare and stately,
+ Vanished down the depths of shade.
+
+ Ever since, in town and farm-house,
+ Life has had its ebb and flow;
+ Thrice hath passed the human harvest
+ To its garner green and low.
+
+ But the trees the gleeman planted,
+ Through the changes, changeless stand;
+ As the marble calm of Tadmor
+ Mocks the desert's shifting sand.
+
+ Still the level moon at rising
+ Silvers o'er each stately shaft;
+ Still beneath them, half in shadow,
+ Singing, glides the pleasure craft;
+
+ Still beneath them, arm-enfolded,
+ Love and Youth together stray;
+ While, as heart to heart beats faster,
+ More and more their feet delay.
+
+ Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar,
+ On the open hillside wrought,
+ Singing, as he drew his stitches,
+ Songs his German masters taught,
+
+ Singing, with his gray hair floating
+ Round his rosy ample face,--
+ Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen
+ Stitch and hammer in his place.
+
+ All the pastoral lanes so grassy
+ Now are Traffic's dusty streets;
+ From the village, grown a city,
+ Fast the rural grace retreats.
+
+ But, still green, and tall, and stately,
+ On the river's winding shores,
+ Stand the Occidental plane-trees,
+ Stand, Hugh Taliant's sycamores.
+
+ 1857.
+
+
+
+
+THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW.
+
+An incident of the Sepoy mutiny.
+
+ PIPES of the misty moorlands,
+ Voice of the glens and hills;
+ The droning of the torrents,
+ The treble of the rills!
+ Not the braes of broom and heather,
+ Nor the mountains dark with rain,
+ Nor maiden bower, nor border tower,
+ Have heard your sweetest strain!
+
+ Dear to the Lowland reaper,
+ And plaided mountaineer,--
+ To the cottage and the castle
+ The Scottish pipes are dear;--
+ Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch
+ O'er mountain, loch, and glade;
+ But the sweetest of all music
+ The pipes at Lucknow played.
+
+ Day by day the Indian tiger
+ Louder yelled, and nearer crept;
+ Round and round the jungle-serpent
+ Near and nearer circles swept.
+ "Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,--
+ Pray to-day!" the soldier said;
+ "To-morrow, death's between us
+ And the wrong and shame we dread."
+
+ 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' Havelock sound!"
+
+ Hushed the wounded man his groaning;
+ Hushed the wife her little ones;
+ Alone they heard the drum-roll
+ And the roar of Sepoy guns.
+ But to sounds of home and childhood
+ The Highland ear was true;--
+ As her mother's cradle-crooning
+ The mountain pipes she knew.
+
+ Like the march of soundless music
+ Through the vision of the seer,
+ More of feeling than of hearing,
+ Of the heart than of the ear,
+ She knew the droning pibroch,
+ She knew the Campbell's call
+ "Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's,
+ The grandest o' them all!"
+
+ Oh, they listened, dumb and breathless,
+ And they caught the sound at last;
+ Faint and far beyond the Goomtee
+ Rose and fell the piper's blast
+ Then a burst of wild thanksgiving
+ Mingled woman's voice and man's;
+ "God be praised!--the march of Havelock!
+ The piping of the clans!"
+
+ Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance,
+ Sharp and shrill as swords at strife,
+ Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call,
+ Stinging all the air to life.
+ But when the far-off dust-cloud
+ To plaided legions grew,
+ Full tenderly and blithesomely
+ The pipes of rescue blew!
+
+ Round the silver domes of Lucknow,
+ Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine,
+ Breathed the air to Britons dearest,
+ The air of Auld Lang Syne.
+ O'er the cruel roll of war-drums
+ Rose that sweet and homelike strain;
+ 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.
+ Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch
+ O'er mountain, glen, and glade;
+ But the sweetest of all music
+ The Pipes at Lucknow played!
+
+ 1858.
+
+
+
+
+TELLING THE BEES.
+
+A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country, formerly prevailed
+in the rural districts of New England. On the death of a member of the
+family, the bees were at once informed of the event, and their hives
+dressed in mourning. This ceremonial was supposed to be necessary to
+prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home.
+
+ 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 beehives ranged in the sun;
+ And down by the brink
+ Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun,
+ Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.
+
+ A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,
+ Heavy and slow;
+ And the same rose blooms, and the same sun glows,
+ And the same brook sings of a year ago.
+
+ There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze;
+ And the June sun warm
+ Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,
+ Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.
+
+ I mind me how with a lover's care
+ From my Sunday coat
+ I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair,
+ And cooled at the brookside my brow and
+ throat.
+
+ Since we parted, a month had passed,--
+ To love, a year;
+ Down through the beeches I looked at last
+ On the little red gate and the well-sweep near.
+
+ I can see it all now,--the slantwise rain
+ Of light through the leaves,
+ The sundown's blaze on her window-pane,
+ The bloom of her roses under the eaves.
+
+ Just the same as a month before,--
+ The house and the trees,
+ The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,--
+ Nothing changed but the hives of bees.
+
+ Before them, under the garden wall,
+ Forward and back,
+ Went drearily singing the chore-girl small,
+ Draping each hive with a shred of black.
+
+ Trembling, I listened: the summer sun
+ Had the chill of snow;
+ For I knew she was telling the bees of one
+ Gone on the journey we all must go.
+
+ Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps
+ For the dead to-day;
+ 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.
+
+ And the song she was singing ever since
+ In my ear sounds on:--
+ "Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!
+ Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"
+
+ 1858.
+
+
+
+
+THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY.
+
+In Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts Bay front 1623 to 1636 may be
+found Anthony Thacher's Narrative of his Shipwreck. Thacher was Avery's
+companion and survived to tell the tale. Mather's Magnalia, III. 2,
+gives further Particulars of Parson Avery's End, and suggests the title
+of the poem.
+
+ WHEN the reaper's task was ended, and the
+ summer wearing late,
+ Parson Avery 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 home-roofs like brown islands amid a sea
+ of corn.
+
+ Broad meadows reached out 'seaward the tided
+ creeks between,
+ And hills rolled wave-like inland, with oaks and
+ walnuts green;--
+ A fairer home, a--goodlier land, his eyes had never
+ seen.
+
+ Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where duty led,
+ And the voice of God seemed calling, to break the
+ living bread
+ 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 prophesied.
+
+ Blotted out were all the coast-lines, gone were rock,
+ and wood, and sand;
+ Grimly anxious stood the skipper with the rudder
+ in his hand,
+ And questioned of the darkness what was sea and
+ what was land.
+
+ And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestled
+ round him, weeping sore,
+ "Never heed, my little children! Christ is walking
+ on before;
+ To the pleasant land of heaven, where the sea shall
+ be no more."
+
+ All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtain
+ drawn aside,
+ To let down the torch of lightning on the terror
+ far and wide;
+ And the thunder and the whirlwind together smote
+ the tide.
+
+ 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 I linger
+ just behind;
+ Not for life I ask, but only for the rest Thy
+ ransomed find!
+
+ "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.
+
+ The ear of God was open to His servant's last
+ request;
+ As the strong wave swept him downward the sweet
+ hymn upward pressed,
+ And the soul of Father Avery went, singing, to its
+ rest.
+
+ There was wailing on the mainland, from the rocks
+ of Marblehead;
+ In the stricken church of Newbury the notes of
+ prayer were read;
+ And long, by board and hearthstone, the living
+ mourned the dead.
+
+ And still the fishers outbound, or 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!
+
+ 1808.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY.
+
+"Concerning ye Amphisbaena, as soon as I received your commands, I made
+diligent inquiry: . . . he assures me yt it had really two heads, one
+at each end; two mouths, two stings or tongues."--REV. CHRISTOPHER
+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 Newbury town
+ And its time of fable the tale comes down
+ Of a terror which haunted bush and brake,
+ The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake!
+
+ Thou who makest the tale thy mirth,
+ Consider that strip of Christian earth
+ On the desolate shore of a sailless sea,
+ Full of terror and mystery,
+ Half redeemed from the evil hold
+ Of the wood so dreary, and dark, and old,
+ Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew
+ When Time was young, and the world was new,
+ And wove its shadows with sun and moon,
+ Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and hewn.
+ Think of the sea's dread monotone,
+ 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 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,
+ 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 beads, lurking so near!
+ Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear!
+ Think what ancient gossips might say,
+ Shaking their heads in their dreary way,
+ Between the meetings on Sabbath-day!
+ How urchins, searching at day's decline
+ The Common Pasture for sheep or kine,
+ The terrible double-ganger heard
+ In leafy rustle or whir of bird!
+ Think what a zest it gave to the sport,
+ In berry-time, of the younger sort,
+ As over pastures blackberry-twined,
+ Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind,
+ And closer and closer, for fear of harm,
+ The maiden clung to her lover's arm;
+ And how the spark, who was forced to stay,
+ By his sweetheart's fears, till the break 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 baby's cry;
+ And it served, in the worthy minister's eye,
+ To paint the primitive serpent by.
+ Cotton Mather came galloping down
+ All the way to Newbury town,
+ With his eyes agog and his ears set wide,
+ And his marvellous inkhorn at his side;
+ Stirring the while in the shallow pool
+ Of his brains for the lore he learned at school,
+ To garnish the story, with here a streak
+ Of Latin, and there another of Greek
+ And the tales he heard and the notes he took,
+ Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book?
+
+ Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill.
+ If the snake does not, the tale runs still
+ In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill.
+ And still, whenever husband and wife
+ Publish the shame of their daily strife,
+ And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strain
+ At either end of the marriage-chain,
+ The gossips say, with a knowing shake
+ Of their gray heads, "Look at the Double Snake
+ One in body and two in will,
+ The Amphisbaena is living still!"
+
+ 1859.
+
+
+
+
+MABEL MARTIN.
+
+A HARVEST IDYL.
+
+Susanna Martin, an aged woman of Amesbury, Mass., was tried and executed
+for the alleged crime of witchcraft. Her home was in what is now known
+as Pleasant Valley on the Merrimac, a little above the old Ferry way,
+where, tradition says, an attempt was made to assassinate Sir Edmund
+Andros on his way to Falmouth (afterward Portland) and Pemaquid, which
+was frustrated by a warning timely given. Goody Martin was the only
+woman hanged on the north side of the Merrimac during the dreadful
+delusion. The aged wife of Judge Bradbury who lived on the other side of
+the Powow River was imprisoned and would have been put to death but for
+the collapse of the hideous persecution.
+
+The substance of the poem which follows was published under the name of
+The Witch's Daughter, in The National Era in 1857. In 1875 my publishers
+desired to issue it with illustrations, and I then enlarged it and
+otherwise altered it to its present form. The principal addition was in
+the verses which constitute Part I.
+
+
+
+
+PROEM.
+
+ I CALL the old time back: I bring my lay
+ in tender memory of the summer day
+ When, where our native river lapsed away,
+
+ We dreamed it over, while the thrushes made
+ Songs of their own, and the great pine-trees laid
+ On warm noonlights the masses of their shade.
+
+ And she was with us, living o'er again
+ Her life in ours, despite of years and pain,--
+ The Autumn's brightness after latter rain.
+
+ Beautiful in her holy peace as one
+ Who stands, at evening, when the work is done,
+ Glorified in the setting of the sun!
+
+ Her memory makes our common 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 gold
+ Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends told,
+ And loved with us the beautiful and old.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE RIVER VALLEY.
+
+ Across the level tableland,
+ A grassy, rarely trodden way,
+ With thinnest skirt of birchen spray
+
+ And stunted growth of cedar, leads
+ To where you see the dull plain fall
+ Sheer off, steep-slanted, ploughed by all
+
+ The seasons' rainfalls. On its brink
+ The over-leaning harebells swing,
+ With roots half bare the pine-trees cling;
+
+ And, through the shadow looking west,
+ You see the wavering river flow
+ Along a vale, that far below
+
+ Holds to the sun, the sheltering hills
+ And glimmering water-line between,
+ Broad fields of corn and meadows green,
+
+ And fruit-bent orchards grouped around
+ The low brown roofs and painted eaves,
+ And chimney-tops half hid in leaves.
+
+ No warmer valley hides behind
+ Yon wind-scourged sand-dunes, cold and bleak;
+ No fairer river comes to seek
+
+ The wave-sung welcome of the sea,
+ Or mark the northmost border line
+ Of sun-loved growths of nut and vine.
+
+ Here, ground-fast in their native fields,
+ Untempted by the city's gain,
+ The quiet farmer folk remain
+
+ Who bear the pleasant name of Friends,
+ And keep their fathers' gentle ways
+ And simple speech of Bible days;
+
+ In whose neat homesteads woman holds
+ With modest ease her equal place,
+ And wears upon her tranquil face
+
+ The look of one who, merging not
+ Her self-hood in another's will,
+ Is love's and duty's handmaid still.
+
+ Pass with me down the path that winds
+ Through birches to the open land,
+ Where, close upon the river strand
+
+ You mark a cellar, vine o'errun,
+ Above whose wall of loosened stones
+ The sumach lifts its reddening cones,
+
+ And the black nightshade's berries shine,
+ And broad, unsightly burdocks fold
+ The household ruin, century-old.
+
+ Here, in the dim colonial time
+ Of sterner lives and gloomier faith,
+ A woman lived, tradition saith,
+
+ Who wrought her neighbors foul annoy,
+ And witched and plagued the country-side,
+ Till at the hangman's hand she died.
+
+ Sit with me while the westering day
+ Falls slantwise down the quiet vale,
+ And, haply ere yon loitering sail,
+
+ That rounds the upper headland, falls
+ Below Deer Island's pines, or sees
+ Behind it Hawkswood's belt of trees
+
+ Rise black against the sinking sun,
+ My idyl of its days of old,
+ The valley's legend, shall be told.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE HUSKING.
+
+ It was the pleasant harvest-time,
+ When cellar-bins are closely stowed,
+ And garrets bend beneath their load,
+
+ And the old swallow-haunted barns,--
+ Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams
+ Through which the rooted 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.
+
+ And thither came young men and maids,
+ Beneath a moon that, large and low,
+ Lit that sweet eve of long ago.
+
+ They took their places; some by chance,
+ And others by a merry voice
+ Or sweet smile guided to their choice.
+
+ How pleasantly the rising moon,
+ Between the shadow of the mows,
+ Looked on them through the great elm-boughs!
+
+ On sturdy boyhood, sun-embrowned,
+ On girlhood with its solid curves
+ Of healthful strength and painless nerves!
+
+ And jests went round, and laughs that made
+ The house-dog answer with his howl,
+ And kept astir the barn-yard fowl;
+
+ And quaint old songs their fathers sung
+ In Derby dales and Yorkshire moors,
+ Ere Norman William trod their shores;
+
+ And tales, whose merry license shook
+ The fat sides of the Saxon thane,
+ Forgetful of the hovering Dane,--
+
+ Rude plays to Celt and Cimbri known,
+ The charms and riddles that beguiled
+ On Oxus' banks the young world's child,--
+
+ That primal picture-speech wherein
+ Have youth and maid the story told,
+ So new in each, so dateless old,
+
+ Recalling pastoral Ruth in her
+ Who waited, blushing and demure,
+ The red-ear's kiss of forfeiture.
+
+ But still the sweetest voice was mute
+ That river-valley ever heard
+ From lips of maid or throat of bird;
+
+ For Mabel Martin sat apart,
+ And let the hay-mow's shadow fall
+ Upon the loveliest face of all.
+
+ She sat apart, as one forbid,
+ Who knew that none would condescend
+ To own the Witch-wife's child a friend.
+
+ The seasons scarce had gone their round,
+ Since curious thousands thronged to see
+ Her mother at the gallows-tree;
+
+ And mocked the prison-palsied limbs
+ That faltered on the fatal stairs,
+ And wan lip trembling with its prayers!
+
+ Few questioned of the sorrowing child,
+ Or, when they saw the mother die;
+ Dreamed of the daughter's agony.
+
+ They went up to their homes that day,
+ As men and Christians justified
+ God willed it, and the wretch had died!
+
+ Dear God and Father of us all,
+ Forgive our faith in cruel lies,--
+ Forgive the blindness that denies!
+
+ Forgive thy creature when he takes,
+ For the all-perfect love Thou art,
+ Some grim creation of his heart.
+
+ Cast down our idols, overturn
+ Our bloody altars; let us see
+ Thyself in Thy humanity!
+
+ Young Mabel from her mother's grave
+ Crept to her desolate hearth-stone,
+ And wrestled with her fate alone;
+
+ With love, and anger, and despair,
+ The phantoms of disordered sense,
+ The awful doubts of Providence!
+
+ Oh, dreary broke the winter days,
+ And dreary fell the winter nights
+ When, one by one, the neighboring lights
+
+ Went out, and human sounds grew still,
+ And all the phantom-peopled dark
+ Closed round her hearth-fire's dying spark.
+
+ And summer days were sad and long,
+ And sad the uncompanioned eyes,
+ And sadder sunset-tinted leaves,
+
+ And Indian Summer's airs of balm;
+ She scarcely felt the soft caress,
+ The beauty died of loneliness!
+
+ The school-boys jeered her as they passed,
+ And, when she sought the house of prayer,
+ Her mother's curse pursued her there.
+
+ And still o'er many a neighboring door
+ She saw the horseshoe's curved charm,
+ To guard against her mother's harm!
+
+ That mother, poor and sick and lame,
+ Who 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 and pained, the poor girl kept
+ Her faith, and trusted that her way,
+ So dark, would somewhere meet the day.
+
+ And still her weary wheel went round
+ Day after day, with no relief
+ Small leisure have the poor for grief.
+
+
+
+
+III. THE CHAMPION.
+
+ So in the shadow Mabel sits;
+ Untouched by mirth she sees and hears,
+ Her smile is sadder than her tears.
+
+ But cruel eyes have found her out,
+ And cruel lips repeat her name,
+ And taunt her with her mother's shame.
+
+ She answered not with railing words,
+ But drew her apron o'er her face,
+ And, sobbing, glided from the place.
+
+ And only pausing at the door,
+ Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze
+ Of one who, in her better days,
+
+ Had been her warm and steady friend,
+ Ere yet her mother's doom had made
+ Even Esek Harden half afraid.
+
+ He felt that mute appeal of tears,
+ And, starting, with an angry frown,
+ Hushed all the wicked murmurs down.
+
+ "Good neighbors mine," he sternly said,
+ "This passes harmless mirth or jest;
+ I brook no insult to my guest.
+
+ "She is indeed her mother's child;
+ But God's sweet pity ministers
+ Unto no whiter soul than hers.
+
+ "Let Goody Martin rest in peace;
+ I never knew her harm a fly,
+ And witch or not, God knows--not I.
+
+ "I know who swore her life away;
+ And as God lives, I'd not condemn
+ An Indian dog on word of them."
+
+ The broadest lands in all the town,
+ The skill to guide, the power to awe,
+ Were Harden's; and his word was law.
+
+ None dared withstand him to his face,
+ But one sly maiden spake aside
+ "The little witch is evil-eyed!
+
+ "Her mother only killed a cow,
+ Or witched a churn or dairy-pan;
+ But she, forsooth, must charm a man!"
+
+
+
+
+IV. IN THE SHADOW.
+
+ Poor Mabel, homeward turning, passed
+ The nameless terrors of the wood,
+ And saw, as if a ghost pursued,
+
+ Her shadow gliding in the moon;
+ The soft breath of the west-wind gave
+ A chill as from her mother's grave.
+
+ How dreary seemed the silent house!
+ Wide in the moonbeams' ghastly glare
+ Its windows had a dead man's stare!
+
+ And, like a gaunt and spectral hand,
+ The tremulous shadow of a birch
+ Reached out and touched the door's low porch,
+
+ As if to lift its latch; hard by,
+ A sudden warning call she beard,
+ The night-cry of a boding bird.
+
+ She leaned against the door; her face,
+ So fair, so young, so full of pain,
+ White in the moonlight's silver rain.
+
+ The river, on its pebbled rim,
+ Made music such as childhood knew;
+ The door-yard tree was whispered through
+
+ By voices such as childhood's ear
+ Had heard in moonlights long ago;
+ And through the willow-boughs below.
+
+ She saw the rippled waters shine;
+ Beyond, in waves of shade and light,
+ The hills rolled off into the night.
+
+ She saw and heard, but over all
+ A sense of some transforming spell,
+ The shadow of her sick heart fell.
+
+ And still across the wooded space
+ The harvest lights of Harden shone,
+ And song and jest and laugh went on.
+
+ And he, so gentle, true, and strong,
+ Of men the bravest and the best,
+ Had he, too, scorned her with the rest?
+
+ She strove to drown her sense of wrong,
+ And, in her old and simple way,
+ To teach her bitter heart to 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.
+
+ "O God! have mercy on Thy child,
+ Whose faith in Thee grows weak and small,
+ And take me ere I lose it all!"
+
+ A shadow on the moonlight fell,
+ And murmuring wind and wave became
+ A voice whose burden was her name.
+
+
+
+
+V. THE BETROTHAL.
+
+ 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!"
+
+ Her tears of grief were tears of joy,
+ As, folded in his strong embrace,
+ She looked in Esek Harden's face.
+
+ "O truest friend of all'" she said,
+ "God bless you for your kindly thought,
+ And make me worthy of my lot!"
+
+ He led her forth, and, blent in one,
+ Beside their happy pathway ran
+ The shadows of the maid and man.
+
+ He led her through his dewy fields,
+ To where the swinging lanterns glowed,
+ And through the doors the huskers showed.
+
+ "Good friends and neighbors!" Esek said,
+ "I'm weary of this lonely life;
+ In Mabel see my chosen wife!
+
+ "She greets you kindly, one and all;
+ The past is past, and all offence
+ Falls harmless from her innocence.
+
+ "Henceforth she stands no more alone;
+ You know what Esek Harden is;--
+ He brooks no wrong to him or his.
+
+ "Now let the merriest tales be told,
+ And let the sweetest songs be sung
+ That ever made the old heart young!
+
+ "For now the lost has found a home;
+ And a lone hearth shall brighter burn,
+ As all the household joys return!"
+
+ Oh, pleasantly the harvest-moon,
+ Between the shadow of the mows,
+ Looked on them through the great elm--boughs!
+
+ On Mabel's curls of golden hair,
+ On Esek's shaggy strength it fell;
+ And the wind whispered, "It is well!"
+
+
+
+
+THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL.
+
+The prose version of this prophecy is to be found in Sewall's The New
+Heaven upon the New Earth, 1697, quoted in Joshua Coffin's History of
+Newbury. Judge Sewall's father, Henry Sewall, was one of the pioneers
+of Newbury.
+
+ 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 veil of a closed lid
+ The ancient worthies I see again
+ I hear the tap of the elder's cane,
+ And his awful periwig I see,
+ And the silver buckles of shoe and knee.
+ Stately and slow, with thoughtful air,
+ His black cap hiding his whitened hair,
+ Walks the Judge of the great Assize,
+ Samuel Sewall the good and wise.
+ His face with lines of firmness wrought,
+ He wears the look of a man unbought,
+ Who swears to his hurt and changes not;
+ Yet, touched and softened nevertheless
+ With the grace of Christian gentleness,
+ The face that a child would climb to kiss!
+ True and tender and brave and just,
+ That man might honor and woman trust.
+
+ Touching and sad, a tale is told,
+ Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist old,
+ Of the fast which the good man lifelong kept to
+ 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!
+ All the day long, from dawn to dawn,
+ His door was bolted, his curtain drawn;
+ No foot on his silent threshold trod,
+ No eye looked on him save that of God,
+ As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with charms
+ Of penitent tears, and prayers, and psalms,
+ And, with precious proofs from the sacred word
+ Of the boundless pity and love of the Lord,
+ His faith confirmed and his trust 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!
+
+ 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 I
+ Honor and praise to the Puritan
+ Who the halting step of his age outran,
+ And, seeing the infinite worth of man
+ In the priceless gift the Father gave,
+ In the infinite love that stooped to save,
+ Dared not brand his brother a slave
+ "Who doth such wrong," he was wont to say,
+ In his own quaint, picture-loving way,
+ "Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenade
+ Which God shall cast down upon his head!"
+
+ Widely as heaven and hell, contrast
+ That brave old jurist of the past
+ And the cunning trickster and knave of courts
+ Who the holy features of Truth 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 't were 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!"
+
+ 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 homesteads 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 fireplace show,
+ Great beams sag from the ceiling low,
+ The dresser glitters with polished wares,
+ The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stairs,
+ And the low, broad chimney shows the crack
+ By the earthquake made a century back.
+ Up from their midst springs the village spire
+ With the crest of its cock in the sun afire;
+ Beyond are orchards and planting lands,
+ And great salt marshes and glimmering sands,
+ And, where north and south the coast-lines run,
+ The blink of the sea in breeze and sun!
+
+ I see it all like a chart unrolled,
+ But my thoughts are full of the past and old,
+ I hear the tales of my boyhood told;
+ And the shadows and shapes of early days
+ Flit dimly by in the veiling haze,
+ With measured movement and rhythmic chime
+ Weaving like shuttles my web of rhyme.
+ I think of the old man wise and good
+ Who once on yon misty hillsides stood,
+ (A poet who never measured rhyme,
+ A seer unknown to his dull-eared time,)
+ And, propped on his staff of age, looked down,
+ With his boyhood's love, on his native town,
+ Where, written, as if on its hills and plains,
+ His burden of prophecy yet remains,
+ For the voices of wood, and wave, and wind
+ To read in the ear of the 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,
+ When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn,
+ And the dry husks fall from the standing corn;
+ As long as Nature shall not grow old,
+ Nor drop her work from her doting hold,
+ And her care for the Indian corn forget,
+ And the yellow rows in pairs to set;--
+ So long shall Christians here be born,
+ Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn!--
+ By the beak of bird, by the breath of frost,
+ Shall never a holy ear be lost,
+ But, husked by Death in the 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 hillside berries and marish seeds,--
+ All the beautiful signs remain,
+ From spring-time sowing to autumn rain
+ The good man's vision returns again!
+ And let us hope, as well we can,
+ That the Silent Angel who garners man
+ May find some grain as of old lie found
+ In the human cornfield ripe and sound,
+ And the Lord of the Harvest deign to own
+ The precious seed by the fathers sown!
+
+ 1859.
+
+
+
+
+THE RED RIPER VOYAGEUR.
+
+ OUT and in the river is winding
+ The links of its long, red chain,
+ Through belts of dusky pine-land
+ And gusty leagues of plain.
+
+ Only, at times, a smoke-wreath
+ With the drifting cloud-rack joins,--
+ The smoke of the hunting-lodges
+ Of the wild Assiniboins.
+
+ Drearily blows the north-wind
+ From the land of ice and snow;
+ The eyes that look are weary,
+ And heavy the hands that row.
+
+ And with one foot on the water,
+ And one upon the shore,
+ The Angel of Shadow gives warning
+ That day shall be no more.
+
+ Is it the clang of wild-geese?
+ Is it the Indian's yell,
+ That lends to the voice of the north-wind
+ The tones of a far-off bell?
+
+ The voyageur smiles as he listens
+ To the sound that grows apace;
+ Well he knows the vesper ringing
+ Of the bells of St. Boniface.
+
+ The bells of the Roman Mission,
+ That call from their turrets twain,
+ To the boatman on the river,
+ To the hunter on the plain!
+
+ Even so in our mortal journey
+ The bitter north-winds blow,
+ And thus upon life's Red River
+ Our hearts, as oarsmen, row.
+
+ And when the Angel of Shadow
+ Rests his feet on wave and shore,
+ And our eyes grow dim with watching
+ And our hearts faint at the oar,
+
+ Happy is he who heareth
+ The signal of his release
+ In the bells of the Holy City,
+ The chimes of eternal peace!
+
+ 1859
+
+
+
+
+THE PREACHER.
+
+George Whitefield, the celebrated preacher, died at Newburyport in 1770,
+and was buried under the church which has since borne his name.
+
+ ITS windows flashing to the sky,
+ Beneath a thousand roofs of brown,
+ Far down the vale, my friend and I
+ Beheld the old and quiet town;
+ The ghostly sails that out at sea
+ Flapped their white wings of mystery;
+ 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.
+ It glittered on the wet sea-sands,
+ It flamed upon the city's panes,
+ Smote the white sails of ships that wore
+ Outward or in, and glided o'er
+ The steeples with their veering vanes!
+
+ Awhile my friend with rapid search
+ O'erran the landscape. "Yonder spire
+ Over gray roofs, a shaft of fire;
+ What is it, pray?"--"The 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
+ A symbol of the light became,
+ Which touched the shadows of our blame,
+ With tongues of Pentecostal flame.
+
+ Over the roofs of the pioneers
+ Gathers the moss of a hundred years;
+ On man and his works has passed the change
+ Which needs must be in a century's range.
+ The land lies open and warm in the sun,
+ Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run,--
+ Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the plain,
+ The wilderness gladdened with fruit and grain!
+ But the living faith of the settlers old
+ A dead profession their children hold;
+ To the lust of office and greed of trade
+ A stepping-stone is the altar made.
+
+ The church, to place and power the door,
+ Rebukes the sin of the world no more,
+ Nor sees its Lord in the homeless poor.
+ Everywhere is the grasping hand,
+ And eager adding of land to land;
+ And earth, which seemed to the fathers meant
+ But as a pilgrim's wayside tent,--
+ A nightly shelter to fold away
+ When the Lord should call at the break of day,--
+ Solid and steadfast seems to be,
+ And Time has forgotten Eternity!
+
+ But fresh and green from the rotting roots
+ Of primal forests the young growth shoots;
+ From the death of the old the new proceeds,
+ And the life of truth from the rot of creeds
+ On the ladder of God, which upward leads,
+ The steps of progress are human needs.
+ For His judgments still are a mighty deep,
+ And the eyes of His providence 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
+ Yet faithful still, in his daily round
+ To the weak, and the poor, and sin-sick found,
+ The schoolman's lore and the casuist's art
+ Drew warmth and life from his fervent heart.
+
+ Had he not seen in the solitudes
+ Of his deep and dark Northampton woods
+ A vision of love about him fall?
+ Not the blinding splendor which fell on Saul,
+ But the tenderer glory that rests on them
+ Who walk in the New Jerusalem,
+ Where never the sun nor moon 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 Eshcol from Canaan's shore?
+
+ As the barley-winnower, holding with pain
+ Aloft in waiting his chaff and grain,
+ Joyfully welcomes the far-off breeze
+ Sounding the pine-tree's slender keys,
+ So he who had waited long to hear
+ The sound of the Spirit drawing near,
+ Like that which the son of Iddo heard
+ When the feet of angels the myrtles stirred,
+ Felt the answer of prayer, at last,
+ As over his church the afflatus passed,
+ Breaking its sleep as breezes break
+ To sun-bright ripples a stagnant lake.
+
+ At first a tremor of silent fear,
+ The creep of the flesh at danger near,
+ A vague foreboding 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 prayer,
+ As the muezzin calls from the minaret stair.
+ Through ceiled chambers of secret sin
+ Sudden and strong the light shone in;
+ A guilty sense of his neighbor's needs
+ Startled the man of title-deeds;
+ The trembling hand of the worldling shook
+ The dust of years from the Holy Book;
+ And the psalms of David, forgotten long,
+ Took the place of the scoffer's song.
+
+ The impulse spread like the outward course
+ Of waters moved by a central force;
+ The tide of spiritual life rolled down
+ From inland mountains to seaboard town.
+
+ 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 Merrimac Whitefield stands
+ In the temple that never was made by hands,--
+ Curtains of azure, and crystal wall,
+ And dome of the sunshine over all--
+ A homeless pilgrim, with dubious name
+ Blown about on the winds of fame;
+ Now as an angel of blessing classed,
+ And now as a mad enthusiast.
+ Called in his youth to sound and gauge
+ The moral lapse of his race and age,
+ And, sharp as truth, the contrast draw
+ Of human frailty and perfect law;
+ Possessed by the one dread thought that lent
+ Its goad to his fiery temperament,
+ Up and down the world he went,
+ A John the Baptist crying, Repent!
+
+ No perfect whole can our nature make;
+ Here or there the circle will break;
+ The orb of life as it takes the light
+ On one side leaves the other in 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.
+
+ Wisely and well said the Eastern bard
+ Fear is easy, but love is hard,--
+ Easy to glow with the Santon's rage,
+ And walk on the Meccan pilgrimage;
+ But he is greatest and best who can
+ Worship Allah by loving man.
+ Thus he,--to whom, in the painful stress
+ Of zeal on fire from its own excess,
+ Heaven seemed so vast and earth so small
+ That man was nothing, since God was all,--
+ Forgot, as the best at times have done,
+ That the love of the Lord and of man are one.
+ 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 wrong,
+ 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
+ "Spare thy pity!" Krishna saith;
+ "Not in thy sword is the power of death!
+ All is illusion,--loss but seems;
+ Pleasure and pain are only dreams;
+ Who deems he slayeth doth not kill;
+ Who counts as slain is living still.
+ Strike, nor fear thy blow is crime;
+ Nothing dies but the cheats of time;
+ Slain or slayer, small the odds
+ To each, immortal as Indra's gods!"
+
+ So by Savannah's banks of shade,
+ The stones of his mission the preacher laid
+ On the heart of the negro crushed and rent,
+ And made of his blood the wall's cement;
+ Bade the slave-ship speed from coast to coast,
+ Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost;
+ And begged, for the love of Christ, the gold
+ Coined from the hearts in its groaning hold.
+ What could it matter, more or less
+ Of stripes, and hunger, and weariness?
+ Living or dying, bond or free,
+ What was time to eternity?
+
+ Alas for the preacher's cherished schemes!
+ Mission and church are now but dreams;
+ Nor prayer nor fasting availed the plan
+ To honor God through the wrong of man.
+ Of all his labors no trace remains
+ Save the bondman lifting his hands in chains.
+ The woof he wove in the righteous warp
+ Of freedom-loving Oglethorpe,
+ Clothes with curses the goodly land,
+ Changes its greenness and bloom to sand;
+ And a century's lapse reveals once more
+ The slave-ship stealing to Georgia's shore.
+ Father of Light! how blind is he
+ Who sprinkles the altar he rears to Thee
+ With the blood and tears of humanity!
+
+ He erred: shall we count His gifts as naught?
+ Was the work of God in him unwrought?
+ The servant may through his deafness err,
+ And blind may be God's messenger;
+ But the Errand is sure they go upon,--
+ The word is spoken, the deed is done.
+ Was the Hebrew temple less fair and good
+ That Solomon bowed to gods of wood?
+ For his tempted heart and wandering feet,
+ Were the songs of David less pure and sweet?
+ So in light and shadow the preacher went,
+ God's erring and human instrument;
+ And the hearts of the people where he passed
+ Swayed as the reeds sway in the blast,
+ Under the spell of a voice which took
+ In its compass the flow of Siloa's brook,
+ And the mystical chime of the bells of gold
+ On the ephod's hem of the priest of old,--
+ Now the 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;
+ The man of the market left his load,
+ The teamster leaned on his bending goad,
+ The maiden, and youth beside her, felt
+ Their hearts in a closer union melt,
+ And saw the flowers of their love in bloom
+ Down the endless vistas of life to come.
+ Old age sat feebly brushing away
+ From his ears the scanty locks of gray;
+ And careless boyhood, living the free
+ Unconscious life of bird 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 veils of sense from soul and heart,
+ Showing in light ineffable
+ The joys of heaven and woes of hell
+ All about in the misty air
+ The hills seemed kneeling in silent prayer;
+ The rustle of leaves, the moaning sedge,
+ The water's lap on its gravelled edge,
+ The wailing pines, and, far and faint,
+ The wood-dove's note of sad complaint,--
+ To the solemn voice of the preacher lent
+ An undertone as of low lament;
+ And the note of the sea from its sand coast,
+ On the easterly wind, now heard, now lost,
+ Seemed the murmurous sound of the judgment host.
+
+ Yet wise men doubted, and good men wept,
+ As that storm of passion above them swept,
+ And, comet-like, adding flame to flame,
+ The priests of the new Evangel came,--
+ Davenport, flashing upon the crowd,
+ Charged like summer's electric cloud,
+ Now holding the listener still as death
+ With terrible warnings under breath,
+ Now shouting for joy, as if he viewed
+ The vision of Heaven's beatitude!
+ And Celtic Tennant, his long coat bound
+ Like a monk's with leathern girdle round,
+ Wild with the toss of unshorn hair,
+ And wringing of hands, and, eyes aglare,
+ Groaning under the world's despair!
+ Grave pastors, grieving their flocks to lose,
+ Prophesied to the empty pews
+ That gourds would wither, and 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 counsels left at ease
+ To settle quietly on his lees,
+ And, self-concentred, to count as done
+ The work which his fathers well begun,
+ In silent protest of letting alone,
+ The Quaker kept the way of his own,--
+ A non-conductor among the wires,
+ With coat of asbestos proof to fires.
+ And quite unable to mend his pace
+ To catch the falling manna of grace,
+ He hugged the closer his little store
+ Of faith, and silently prayed for more.
+ And vague of creed and barren of rite,
+ But holding, as in his Master's sight,
+ Act and thought to the inner light,
+ The round of his simple duties walked,
+ And strove to live what the others talked.
+
+ And who shall marvel if evil went
+ Step by step with the good intent,
+ And with love and meekness, side by side,
+ Lust of the flesh and spiritual pride?--
+ That passionate longings and fancies vain
+ Set the heart on fire and crazed the brain?
+ That over the holy oracles
+ Folly sported with cap and bells?
+ That goodly women and learned men
+ Marvelling told with tongue and pen
+ How unweaned children chirped like birds
+ Texts of Scripture and solemn words,
+ Like the infant seers of the rocky glens
+ In the Puy de Dome of wild Cevennes
+ Or baby Lamas who pray and preach
+ From Tartir 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 bide.
+ 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 feel the fire
+ Wherein the sins of the age expire;
+ The fiend still rends as of old he rent
+ The tortured body from which he went.
+
+ But Time tests all. In the over-drift
+ And flow of the Nile, with its annual gift,
+ Who cares for the Hadji's relics sunk?
+ Who thinks of the drowned-out Coptic monk?
+ The tide that loosens the temple's stones,
+ And scatters the sacred ibis-bones,
+ Drives away from the valley-land
+ That Arab robber, the wandering sand,
+ Moistens the fields that know no rain,
+ Fringes the desert with belts of grain,
+ And bread to the sower brings again.
+ So the flood of emotion deep and strong
+ Troubled the land as it swept along,
+ But left a result of holier lives,
+ Tenderer-mothers and worthier wives.
+ The husband and father whose children fled
+ And sad wife wept when his drunken tread
+ Frightened peace from his roof-tree's shade,
+ And a rock of offence his hearthstone made,
+ In a strength that was not his own 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 promise of Heaven's eternal years,--
+ The peace of God for the world's annoy,--
+ Beauty for ashes, and oil of joy
+ Under the church of Federal Street,
+ Under the tread of its Sabbath feet,
+ Walled about by its basement stones,
+ Lie the marvellous preacher's bones.
+ No saintly honors to them are shown,
+ No sign nor miracle have they known;
+ But he who passes the ancient church
+ Stops in the shade of its belfry-porch,
+ And ponders the wonderful life of him
+ Who lies at rest in that charnel dim.
+ Long shall the traveller strain his eye
+ From the railroad car, as it plunges by,
+ And the vanishing town behind him search
+ For the slender spire of the Whitefield Church;
+ And feel for one moment the ghosts of trade,
+ And fashion, and folly, and pleasure laid,
+ By the thought of that life of pure 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,
+ And over a life of tune 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!
+
+ 1859.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA.
+
+In the winter of 1675-76, the Eastern Indians, who had been making war
+upon the New Hampshire settlements, were so reduced in numbers by
+fighting and famine that they agreed to a peace with Major Waldron at
+Dover, but the peace was broken in the fall of 1676. The famous chief,
+Squando, was the principal negotiator on the part of the savages. He had
+taken up the hatchet to revenge the brutal treatment of his child by
+drunken white sailors, which caused its death.
+
+It not unfrequently happened during the Border wars that young white
+children were adopted by their Indian captors, and so kindly treated
+that they were unwilling to leave the free, wild life of the woods; and
+in some instances they utterly refused to go back with their parents to
+their old homes and civilization.
+
+ 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 and valley spread
+ Once more the forest, dusk and dread,
+ With here and there a clearing cut
+ From the walled shadows round it shut;
+ Each with its farm-house builded rude,
+ By English yeoman squared and hewed,
+ And the grim, flankered block-house bound
+ With bristling palisades around.
+ So, haply shall before thine eyes
+ The dusty veil of centuries rise,
+ The old, strange scenery overlay
+ The tamer pictures of to-day,
+ While, like the actors in a play,
+ Pass in their ancient guise along
+ The figures of my border song
+ What time beside Cocheco's flood
+ The white man and the red man stood,
+ With words of peace and brotherhood;
+ When passed the sacred calumet
+ From lip to lip with 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,
+ His native pride inviolate!
+
+ "Let your ears be opened wide!
+ He who speaks has never lied.
+ Waldron of Piscataqua,
+ Hear what Squando has to say!
+
+ "Squando shuts his eyes and sees,
+ Far off, Saco's hemlock-trees.
+ In his wigwam, still as stone,
+ Sits a woman all alone,
+
+ "Wampum beads and birchen strands
+ Dropping from her careless hands,
+ Listening ever for the fleet
+ Patter of a dead child's feet!
+
+ "When the moon a year ago
+ Told the flowers the time to blow,
+ In that lonely wigwam smiled
+ Menewee, our little child.
+
+ "Ere that moon grew thin and old,
+ He was lying still and cold;
+ Sent before us, weak and small,
+ When the Master did not call!
+
+ "On his little grave I lay;
+ Three times went and came the day,
+ 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.
+
+ "I, the medicine-man, whose ear
+ All that spirits bear 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 Squando's 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!
+
+ "Waldron 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.
+
+ "Gift or favor ask I none;
+ What I have is all my own
+ Never yet the birds have sung,
+ Squando hath a beggar's tongue.'
+
+ "Yet for her who waits at home,
+ For the dead who cannot come,
+ Let the little Gold-hair be
+ In the place of Menewee!
+
+ "Mishanock, my little star!
+ Come to Saco's pines afar;
+ Where the sad one waits at home,
+ Wequashim, my moonlight, come!"
+
+ "What!" quoth 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?"
+
+ 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.
+
+ Pride was in the mother's look,
+ But her head she gravely shook,
+ And with lips that fondly smiled
+ Feigned to chide her truant child.
+
+ Unabashed, the maid began
+ "Up and down the brook I ran,
+ Where, beneath the bank so steep,
+ Lie the spotted trout asleep.
+
+ "'Chip!' went squirrel on the wall,
+ After me I heard him call,
+ And the cat-bird on the tree
+ Tried his best to mimic me.
+
+ "Where the hemlocks grew so dark
+ That I stopped to look and hark,
+ On a log, with feather-hat,
+ By the path, an Indian sat.
+
+ "Then I cried, and ran away;
+ But he called, and bade me stay;
+ And his voice was good and mild
+ As my mother's to her child.
+
+ "And he took my wampum chain,
+ Looked and looked it o'er again;
+ Gave me berries, and, beside,
+ On my neck a plaything tied."
+
+ 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.
+ 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, O painful minister!
+ Watch thy flock, but blame not her,
+ If her ear grew sharp to hear
+ All their voices whispering near.
+
+ Blame her not, as to her soul
+ All the desert's glamour stole,
+ That a tear for childhood's loss
+ Dropped upon the Indian's cross.
+
+ When, that night, the Book was read,
+ And she bowed her widowed head,
+ And a prayer for each loved name
+ Rose like incense from a flame,
+
+ With a hope the creeds forbid
+ In her pitying bosom hid,
+ To the listening ear of Heaven
+ Lo! the Indian's name was given.
+
+ 1860.
+
+
+
+
+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?
+
+ She left us in the bloom of May
+ The constant years told o'er
+ Their seasons with as sweet May morns,
+ But she came back no more.
+
+ I walk, with noiseless feet, the round
+ Of uneventful years;
+ Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring
+ And reap the autumn ears.
+
+ She lives where all the golden year
+ Her summer roses blow;
+ The dusky children of the sun
+ Before her come and go.
+
+ There haply with her jewelled hands
+ She smooths her silken gown,--
+ No more the homespun lap wherein
+ I shook the walnuts down.
+
+ The wild grapes wait us by the brook,
+ The brown nuts on the hill,
+ And still the May-day flowers make sweet
+ The woods of Follymill.
+
+ The lilies blossom in the pond,
+ The bird builds in the tree,
+ The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill
+ The slow song of the sea.
+
+ I wonder if she thinks of them,
+ And how the old time seems,--
+ If ever the pines of Ramoth wood
+ Are sounding in her dreams.
+
+ I see her face, I hear her voice;
+ Does she remember mine?
+ And what to her is now the boy
+ Who fed her father's kine?
+
+ What cares she that the orioles build
+ For other eyes than ours,--
+ That other hands with nuts are filled,
+ And other laps with flowers?
+
+ O playmate in the golden time!
+ Our mossy seat is green,
+ Its fringing violets blossom yet,
+ The old trees o'er it lean.
+
+ The winds so sweet with birch and fern
+ A sweeter memory blow;
+ 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!
+
+ 1860.
+
+
+
+
+COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION.
+
+This ballad was written on the occasion of a Horticultural Festival.
+Cobbler Keezar was a noted character among the first settlers in the
+valley of the Merrimac.
+
+ THE beaver cut his timber
+ With patient teeth that day,
+ The minks were fish-wards, and the crows
+ Surveyors of highway,--
+
+ When Keezar sat on the hillside
+ Upon his cobbler's form,
+ With a pan of coals on either hand
+ To keep his waxed-ends warm.
+
+ And there, in the golden weather,
+ He stitched and hammered and sung;
+ In the brook he moistened his leather,
+ In the pewter mug his tongue.
+
+ Well knew the tough old Teuton
+ Who brewed the stoutest ale,
+ And he paid the goodwife's reckoning
+ In the coin of song and tale.
+
+ The songs they still are singing
+ Who dress the hills of vine,
+ The tales that haunt the Brocken
+ And whisper down the Rhine.
+
+ Woodsy and wild and lonesome,
+ The swift stream wound away,
+ Through birches and scarlet maples
+ Flashing in foam and spray,--
+
+ Down on the sharp-horned ledges
+ Plunging in steep cascade,
+ Tossing its white-maned waters
+ Against the hemlock's shade.
+
+ Woodsy and wild and lonesome,
+ East and west and north and south;
+ Only the village of fishers
+ Down at the river's mouth;
+
+ Only here and there a clearing,
+ With its farm-house rude and new,
+ And tree-stumps, swart as Indians,
+ Where the scanty harvest grew.
+
+ No shout of home-bound reapers,
+ No vintage-song he heard,
+ And on the green no dancing feet
+ The merry violin stirred.
+
+ "Why should folk be glum," said Keezar,
+ "When Nature herself is glad,
+ And the painted woods are laughing
+ At the faces so sour and sad?"
+
+ Small heed had the careless cobbler
+ What sorrow of heart was theirs
+ Who travailed in pain with the births of God,
+ And planted a state with prayers,--
+
+ Hunting of witches and warlocks,
+ Smiting the heathen horde,--
+ One hand on the mason's trowel,
+ And one on the soldier's sword.
+
+ But give him his ale and cider,
+ Give him his pipe and song,
+ Little he cared for Church or State,
+ Or the balance of right and wrong.
+
+ "T is work, work, work," he muttered,--
+ "And for rest a snuffle of psalms!"
+ He smote on his leathern apron
+ With his brown and waxen palms.
+
+ "Oh for the purple harvests
+ Of the days when I was young
+ For the merry grape-stained maidens,
+ And the pleasant songs they sung!
+
+ "Oh for the breath of vineyards,
+ Of apples and nuts and wine
+ For an oar to row and a breeze to blow
+ Down the grand old river Rhine!"
+
+ A tear in his blue eye glistened,
+ And dropped on his beard so gray.
+ "Old, old am I," said Keezar,
+ "And the Rhine flows far away!"
+
+ But a cunning man was the cobbler;
+ He could call the birds from the trees,
+ Charm the black snake out of the ledges,
+ And bring back the swarming bees.
+
+ All the virtues of herbs and metals,
+ All the lore of the woods, he knew,
+ And the arts of the Old World mingle
+ With the marvels of the New.
+
+ Well he knew the tricks of magic,
+ And the lapstone on his knee
+ Had the gift of the Mormon's goggles
+ Or the stone of Doctor Dee.(11)
+
+ For the mighty master Agrippa
+ Wrought it with spell and rhyme
+ From a fragment of mystic moonstone
+ In the tower of Nettesheim.
+
+ To a cobbler Minnesinger
+ The marvellous stone gave he,--
+ And he gave it, in turn, to Keezar,
+ Who brought it over the sea.
+
+ He held up that mystic lapstone,
+ He held it up like a lens,
+ And he counted the long years coming
+ Ey twenties and by tens.
+
+ "One hundred years," quoth Keezar,
+ "And fifty have I told
+ Now open the new before me,
+ And shut me out the old!"
+
+ Like a cloud of mist, the blackness
+ Rolled from the magic stone,
+ And a marvellous picture mingled
+ The unknown and the known.
+
+ Still ran the stream to the river,
+ And river and ocean joined;
+ And there were the bluffs and the blue sea-line,
+ And cold north hills behind.
+
+ But--the mighty forest was broken
+ By many a steepled town,
+ By many a white-walled farm-house,
+ And many a garner brown.
+
+ Turning a score of mill-wheels,
+ The stream no more ran free;
+ White sails on the winding river,
+ White sails on the far-off sea.
+
+ Below in the noisy village
+ The flags were floating gay,
+ And shone on a thousand faces
+ The light of a holiday.
+
+ Swiftly the rival ploughmen
+ Turned the brown earth from their shares;
+ Here were the farmer's treasures,
+ There were the craftsman's wares.
+
+ Golden the goodwife's butter,
+ Ruby her currant-wine;
+ Grand were the strutting turkeys,
+ Fat were the beeves and swine.
+
+ Yellow and red were the apples,
+ And the ripe pears russet-brown,
+ And the peaches had stolen blushes
+ From the girls who shook them down.
+
+ And with blooms of hill and wildwood,
+ That shame the toil of art,
+ Mingled the gorgeous blossoms
+ Of the garden's tropic heart.
+
+ "What is it I see?" said Keezar
+ "Am I here, or ant I there?
+ Is it a fete at Bingen?
+ Do I look on Frankfort fair?
+
+ "But where are the clowns and puppets,
+ And imps with horns and tail?
+ And where are the Rhenish flagons?
+ And where is the foaming ale?
+
+ "Strange things, I know, will happen,--
+ Strange things the Lord permits;
+ But that droughty folk should be jolly
+ Puzzles my poor old wits.
+
+ "Here are smiling manly faces,
+ And the maiden's step is gay;
+ Nor sad by thinking, nor mad by drinking,
+ Nor mopes, nor fools, are they.
+
+ "Here's pleasure without regretting,
+ And good without abuse,
+ The holiday and the bridal
+ Of beauty and of use.
+
+ "Here's a priest and there is a Quaker,
+ Do the cat and dog agree?
+ Have they burned the stocks for ovenwood?
+ Have they cut down the gallows-tree?
+
+ "Would the old folk know their children?
+ Would they own the graceless town,
+ With never a ranter to worry
+ And never a witch to drown?"
+
+
+ Loud laughed the cobbler Keezar,
+ Laughed like a school-boy gay;
+ Tossing his arms above him,
+ The lapstone rolled away.
+
+ It rolled down the rugged hillside,
+ It spun like a wheel bewitched,
+ It plunged through the leaning willows,
+ And into the river pitched.
+
+ There, in the deep, dark water,
+ The magic stone lies still,
+ Under the leaning willows
+ In the shadow of the hill.
+
+ But oft the idle fisher
+ Sits on the shadowy bank,
+ And his dreams make marvellous pictures
+ Where the wizard's lapstone sank.
+
+ And still, in the summer twilights,
+ When the river seems to run
+ Out from the inner glory,
+ Warm with the melted sun,
+
+ The weary mill-girl lingers
+ Beside the charmed stream,
+ And the sky and the golden water
+ Shape and color her dream.
+
+ Air wave the sunset gardens,
+ The rosy signals fly;
+ Her homestead beckons from the cloud,
+ And love goes sailing by.
+
+ 1861.
+
+
+
+
+AMY WENTWORTH
+
+TO WILLIAM BRADFORD.
+
+ As they who watch by sick-beds find relief
+ Unwittingly from the great stress of grief
+ And anxious care, in fantasies outwrought
+ From the hearth's embers flickering low, or caught
+ From whispering wind, or tread of passing feet,
+ Or vagrant memory calling up some sweet
+ Snatch of old song or romance, whence or why
+ They scarcely know or ask,--so, thou and I,
+ Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is strong
+ In the endurance which outwearies Wrong,
+ With meek persistence baffling brutal force,
+ And trusting God against the universe,--
+ We, doomed to watch a strife we may not share
+ With other weapons than the patriot's prayer,
+ Yet owning, with full hearts and moistened eyes,
+ The awful beauty of self-sacrifice,
+ And wrung by keenest sympathy for all
+ Who give their loved ones for the living wall
+ 'Twixt law and treason,--in this evil day
+ May haply find, through automatic play
+ Of pen and pencil, solace to our pain,
+ And hearten others with the strength we gain.
+ I know it has been said our times require
+ No play of art, nor dalliance with the lyre,
+ No weak essay with Fancy's chloroform
+ To calm the hot, mad pulses of the storm,
+ But the stern war-blast rather, such as sets
+ The battle's teeth of serried bayonets,
+ And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet with these
+ Some softer tints may blend, and milder keys
+ Relieve the storm-stunned ear. Let us keep sweet,
+ If so we may, our hearts, even while we eat
+ The bitter harvest of our own device
+ And half a century's moral cowardice.
+ As Nurnberg sang while Wittenberg defied,
+ And Kranach painted by his Luther's side,
+ And through the war-march of the Puritan
+ The silver stream of Marvell's music ran,
+ So let the household melodies be sung,
+ The pleasant pictures on the wall be hung--
+ So let us hold against the hosts of night
+ And slavery all our vantage-ground of light.
+ Let Treason boast its savagery, and shake
+ From its flag-folds its symbol rattlesnake,
+ Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in tan,
+ And carve its pipe-bowls from the bones of man,
+ And make the tale of Fijian banquets dull
+ By drinking whiskey from a loyal skull,--
+ But let us guard, till this sad war shall cease,
+ (God grant it soon!) the graceful arts of peace
+ No foes are conquered who the victors teach
+ Their vandal manners and barbaric speech.
+
+ And while, with hearts of thankfulness, we bear
+ Of the great common burden our full share,
+ Let none upbraid us that the waves entice
+ Thy sea-dipped pencil, or some quaint device,
+ Rhythmic, and sweet, beguiles my pen away
+ From the sharp strifes and sorrows of to-day.
+ Thus, while the east-wind keen from Labrador
+ Sings it the leafless elms, and from the shore
+ Of the great sea comes the monotonous roar
+ Of the long-breaking surf, and all the sky
+ Is gray with cloud, home-bound and dull, I try
+ To time a simple legend to the sounds
+ Of winds in the woods, and waves on pebbled bounds,--
+ A song for oars to chime with, such as might
+ Be sung by tired sea-painters, who at night
+ Look from their hemlock camps, by quiet cove
+ Or beach, moon-lighted, on the waves they love.
+ (So hast thou looked, when level sunset lay
+ On the calm bosom of some Eastern bay,
+ And all the spray-moist rocks and waves that rolled
+ Up the white sand-slopes flashed with ruddy gold.)
+ Something it has--a flavor of the sea,
+ And the sea's freedom--which reminds of thee.
+ Its faded picture, dimly smiling down
+ From the blurred fresco of the ancient town,
+ I have not touched with warmer tints in vain,
+ If, in this dark, sad year, it steals one thought
+ from pain.
+
+ . . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+
+ Her fingers shame the ivory keys
+ They dance so light along;
+ The bloom upon her parted lips
+ Is sweeter than the song.
+
+ O perfumed suitor, spare thy smiles!
+ Her thoughts are not of thee;
+ She better loves the salted wind,
+ The voices of the sea.
+
+ Her heart is like an outbound ship
+ That at its anchor swings;
+ The murmur of the stranded shell
+ Is in the song she sings.
+
+ She sings, and, smiling, hears her praise,
+ But dreams the while of one
+ Who watches from his sea-blown deck
+ The icebergs in the sun.
+
+ She questions all the winds that blow,
+ And every fog-wreath dim,
+ And bids the sea-birds flying north
+ Bear messages to him.
+
+ She speeds them with the thanks of men
+ He perilled life to save,
+ And grateful prayers like holy oil
+ To smooth for him the wave.
+
+ Brown Viking of the fishing-smack!
+ Fair toast of all the town!--
+ The skipper's jerkin ill beseems
+ The lady's silken gown!
+
+ But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wear
+ For him the blush of shame
+ Who dares to set his manly gifts
+ Against her ancient name.
+
+ The stream is brightest at its spring,
+ And blood is not like wine;
+ Nor honored less than he who heirs
+ Is he who founds a line.
+
+ Full lightly shall the prize be won,
+ If love be Fortune's spur;
+ And never maiden stoops to him
+ Who lifts himself to her.
+
+ Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street,
+ With stately stairways worn
+ By feet of old Colonial knights
+ And ladies gentle-born.
+
+ Still green about its ample porch
+ The English ivy twines,
+ Trained back to show in English oak
+ The herald's carven signs.
+
+ And on her, from the wainscot old,
+ Ancestral faces frown,--
+ And this has worn the soldier's sword,
+ And that the judge's gown.
+
+ But, strong of will and proud as they,
+ She walks the gallery floor
+ As if she trod her sailor's deck
+ By stormy Labrador.
+
+ The sweetbrier blooms on Kittery-side,
+ And green are Elliot's bowers;
+ Her garden is the pebbled beach,
+ The mosses are her flowers.
+
+ She looks across the harbor-bar
+ To see the white gulls fly;
+ His greeting from the Northern sea
+ Is in their clanging cry.
+
+ She hums a song, and dreams that he,
+ As in its romance old,
+ Shall homeward ride with silken sails
+ And masts of beaten gold!
+
+ Oh, rank is good, and gold is fair,
+ And high and low mate ill;
+ But love has never known a law
+ Beyond its own sweet will!
+
+ 1862.
+
+
+
+
+THE COUNTESS.
+
+TO E. W.
+
+I inscribed this poem to Dr. Elias Weld of Haverhill, Massachusetts,
+to whose kindness I was much indebted in my boyhood. He was the one
+cultivated man in the neighborhood. His small but well-chosen library
+was placed at my disposal. He is the "wise old doctor" of Snow-Bound.
+Count Francois de Vipart with his cousin Joseph Rochemont de Poyen came
+to the United States in the early part of the present century. They took
+up their residence at Rocks Village on the Merrimac, where they both
+married. The wife of Count Vipart was Mary Ingalls, who as my father
+remembered her was a very lovely young girl. Her wedding dress, as
+described by a lady still living, was "pink satin with an overdress of
+white lace, and white satin slippers." She died in less than a year
+after her marriage. Her husband returned to his native country. He lies
+buried in the family tomb of the Viparts at Bordeaux.
+
+ I KNOW not, Time and Space so intervene,
+ Whether, still waiting with a trust serene,
+ Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten,
+ Or, called at last, art now Heaven's citizen;
+ But, here or there, a pleasant thought of thee,
+ Like an old friend, all day has been with me.
+ The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly hand
+ Smoothed his hard pathway to the wonder-land
+ Of thought and fancy, in gray manhood yet
+ Keeps green the memory of his early debt.
+ To-day, when truth and falsehood speak their words
+ Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth of swords,
+ Listening with quickened heart and ear intent
+ To each sharp clause of that stern argument,
+ I still can hear at times a softer note
+ Of the old pastoral music round me float,
+ While through the hot gleam of our civil strife
+ Looms the green mirage of a simpler life.
+ As, at his alien post, the sentinel
+ Drops the old bucket in the homestead well,
+ And hears old voices in the winds that toss
+ Above his head the live-oak's beard of moss,
+ So, in our trial-time, and under skies
+ Shadowed by swords like Islam's paradise,
+ I wait and watch, and let my fancy stray
+ To milder scenes and youth's Arcadian day;
+ And howsoe'er the pencil dipped in dreams
+ Shades the brown woods or tints the sunset streams,
+ The country doctor in the foreground seems,
+ Whose ancient sulky down the village lanes
+ Dragged, like a war-car, captive ills and pains.
+ I could not paint the scenery of my song,
+ Mindless of one who looked thereon so long;
+ Who, night and day, on duty's lonely round,
+ Made friends o' the woods and rocks, and knew the sound
+ Of each small brook, and what the hillside trees
+ Said to the winds that touched their leafy keys;
+ Who saw so keenly and so well could paint
+ The village-folk, with all their humors quaint,
+ The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan.
+ Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown;
+ The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown;
+ The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale,
+ And the loud straggler levying his blackmail,--
+ Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears,
+ All that lies buried under fifty years.
+ To thee, as is most fit, I bring my lay,
+ And, grateful, own the debt I cannot pay.
+
+ . . . . . . . . . .
+
+ Over the wooded northern ridge,
+ Between its houses brown,
+ To the dark tunnel of the bridge
+ The street comes straggling down.
+
+ You catch a glimpse, through birch and pine,
+ Of gable, roof, and porch,
+ The tavern with its swinging sign,
+ The sharp horn of the church.
+
+ The river's steel-blue crescent curves
+ To meet, in ebb and flow,
+ The single broken wharf that serves
+ For sloop and gundelow.
+
+ With salt sea-scents along its shores
+ The heavy hay-boats crawl,
+ The long antennae of their oars
+ In lazy rise and fall.
+
+ Along the gray abutment's wall
+ The idle shad-net dries;
+ The toll-man in his cobbler's stall
+ Sits smoking with closed eyes.
+
+ You hear the pier's low undertone
+ Of waves that chafe and gnaw;
+ You start,--a skipper's horn is blown
+ To raise the creaking draw.
+
+ At times a blacksmith's anvil sounds
+ With slow and sluggard beat,
+ Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds
+ Fakes up the staring street.
+
+ A place for idle eyes and ears,
+ A cobwebbed nook of dreams;
+ Left by the stream whose waves are years
+ The stranded village seems.
+
+ And there, like other moss and rust,
+ The native dweller clings,
+ And keeps, in uninquiring trust,
+ The old, dull round of things.
+
+ The fisher drops his patient lines,
+ The farmer sows his grain,
+ Content to hear the murmuring pines
+ Instead of railroad-train.
+
+ Go where, along the tangled steep
+ That slopes against the west,
+ The hamlet's buried idlers sleep
+ In still profounder rest.
+
+ Throw back the locust's flowery plume,
+ The birch's pale-green scarf,
+ And break the web of brier and bloom
+ From name and epitaph.
+
+ A simple muster-roll of death,
+ Of pomp and romance shorn,
+ The dry, old names that common breath
+ Has cheapened and outworn.
+
+ Yet pause by one low mound, and part
+ The wild vines o'er it laced,
+ And read the words by rustic art
+ Upon its headstone traced.
+
+ Haply yon white-haired villager
+ Of fourscore years can say
+ What means the noble name of her
+ Who sleeps with common clay.
+
+ An exile from the Gascon land
+ Found refuge here and rest,
+ And loved, of all the village band,
+ Its fairest and its best.
+
+ He knelt with her on Sabbath morns,
+ He worshipped through her eyes,
+ And on the pride that doubts and scorns
+ Stole in her faith's surprise.
+
+ Her simple daily life he saw
+ By homeliest duties tried,
+ In all things by an untaught law
+ Of fitness justified.
+
+ For her his rank aside he laid;
+ He took the hue and tone
+ Of lowly life and toil, and made
+ Her simple ways his own.
+
+ Yet still, in gay and careless ease,
+ To harvest-field or dance
+ He brought the gentle courtesies,
+ The nameless grace of France.
+
+ And she who taught him love not less
+ From him she loved in turn
+ Caught in her sweet unconsciousness
+ What love is quick to learn.
+
+ Each grew to each in pleased accord,
+ Nor knew the gazing town
+ If she looked upward to her lord
+ Or he to her looked down.
+
+ How sweet, when summer's day was o'er,
+ His violin's mirth and wail,
+ The walk on pleasant Newbury's shore,
+ The river's moonlit sail!
+
+ Ah! life is brief, though love be long;
+ The altar and the bier,
+ The burial hymn and bridal song,
+ Were both in one short year!
+
+ Her rest is quiet on the hill,
+ Beneath the locust's bloom
+ Far off her lover sleeps as still
+ Within his scutcheoned tomb.
+
+ The Gascon lord, the village maid,
+ In death still clasp their hands;
+ The love that levels rank and grade
+ Unites their severed lands.
+
+ What matter whose the hillside grave,
+ Or whose the blazoned stone?
+ Forever to her western wave
+ Shall whisper blue Garonne!
+
+ O Love!--so hallowing every soil
+ That gives thy sweet flower room,
+ Wherever, nursed by ease or toil,
+ The human heart takes bloom!--
+
+ Plant of lost Eden, from the sod
+ Of sinful earth unriven,
+ White blossom of the trees of God
+ Dropped down to us from heaven!
+
+ This tangled waste of mound and stone
+ Is holy for thy sale;
+ A sweetness which is all thy own
+ Breathes out from fern and brake.
+
+ And while ancestral pride shall twine
+ The Gascon's tomb with flowers,
+ Fall sweetly here, O song of mine,
+ With summer's bloom and showers!
+
+ And let the lines that severed seem
+ Unite again in thee,
+ As western wave and Gallic stream
+ Are mingled in one sea!
+
+ 1863.
+
+
+
+
+AMONG THE HILLS
+
+This poem, when originally published, was dedicated to Annie Fields,
+wife of the distinguished publisher, James T. Fields, of Boston, in
+grateful acknowledgment of the strength and inspiration I have found in
+her friendship and sympathy. The poem in its first form was entitled The
+Wife: an Idyl of Bearcamp Water, and appeared in The Atlantic Monthly
+for January, 1868. When I published the volume Among the Hills, in
+December of the same year, I expanded the Prelude and filled out also
+the outlines of the story.
+
+
+ PRELUDE.
+
+ ALONG the roadside, like the flowers of gold
+ That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought,
+ Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod,
+ And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowers
+ Hang motionless upon their upright staves.
+ The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind,
+ Vying-weary with its long flight from the south,
+ Unfelt; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf
+ With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams,
+ Confesses it. The locust by the wall
+ Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm.
+ A single hay-cart down the dusty road
+ Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep
+ On the load's top. Against the neighboring hill,
+ Huddled along the stone wall's shady side,
+ The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift still
+ Defied the dog-star. Through the open door
+ A drowsy smell of flowers-gray heliotrope,
+ And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette--
+ Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends
+ To the pervading symphony of peace.
+ No time is this for hands long over-worn
+ To task their strength; and (unto Him be praise
+ Who giveth quietness!) the stress and strain
+ Of years that did the work of centuries
+ Have ceased, and we can draw our breath once more
+ Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters
+ Make glad their nooning underneath the elms
+ With tale and riddle and old snatch of song,
+ I lay aside grave themes, and idly turn
+ The leaves of memory's sketch-book, dreaming o'er
+ Old summer pictures of the quiet hills,
+ And human life, as quiet, at their feet.
+
+ And yet not idly all. A farmer's son,
+ Proud of field-lore and harvest craft, and feeling
+ All their fine possibilities, how rich
+ And restful even poverty and toil
+ Become when beauty, harmony, and love
+ Sit at their humble hearth as angels sat
+ At evening in the patriarch's tent, when man
+ Makes labor noble, and his farmer's frock
+ The symbol of a Christian chivalry
+ Tender and just and generous to her
+ Who clothes with grace all duty; still, I know
+ Too well the picture has another side,--
+ How wearily the grind of toil goes on
+ Where love is wanting, how the eye and ear
+ And heart are starved amidst the plenitude
+ Of nature, and how hard and colorless
+ Is life without an atmosphere. I look
+ Across the lapse of half a century,
+ And call to mind old homesteads, where no flower
+ Told that the spring had come, but evil weeds,
+ Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock in the place
+ Of the sweet doorway greeting of the rose
+ And honeysuckle, where the house walls seemed
+ Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine
+ To cast the tremulous shadow of its leaves
+ Across the curtainless windows, from whose panes
+ Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness.
+ Within, the cluttered kitchen-floor, unwashed
+ (Broom-clean I think they called it); the best room
+ Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the air
+ In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless,
+ Save the inevitable sampler hung
+ Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece,
+ A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, beneath
+ Impossible willows; the wide-throated hearth
+ Bristling with faded pine-boughs half concealing
+ The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's back;
+ And, in sad keeping with all things about them,
+ Shrill, querulous-women, sour and sullen men,
+ Untidy, loveless, old before their time,
+ With scarce a human interest save their own
+ Monotonous round of small economies,
+ Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood;
+ Blind to the beauty everywhere revealed,
+ Treading the May-flowers with regardless feet;
+ For them the song-sparrow and the bobolink
+ Sang not, nor winds made music in the leaves;
+ For them in vain October's holocaust
+ Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills,
+ The sacramental mystery of the woods.
+ Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers,
+ But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew-rent,
+ Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls
+ And winter pork with the least possible outlay
+ Of salt and sanctity; in daily life
+ Showing as little actual comprehension
+ Of Christian charity and love and duty,
+ As if the Sermon on the Mount had been
+ Outdated like a last year's almanac
+ Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields,
+ And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless,
+ The veriest straggler limping on his rounds,
+ The sun and air his sole inheritance,
+ Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes,
+ And hugged his rags in self-complacency!
+
+ Not such should be the homesteads of a land
+ Where whoso wisely wills and acts may dwell
+ As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred state,
+ With beauty, art, taste, culture, books, to make
+ His hour of leisure richer than a life
+ Of fourscore to the barons of old time,
+ Our yeoman should be equal to his home
+ Set in the fair, green valleys, purple walled,
+ A man to match his mountains, not to creep
+ Dwarfed and abased below them. I would fain
+ In this light way (of which I needs must own
+ With the knife-grinder of whom Canning sings,
+ "Story, God bless you! I have none to tell you!")
+ Invite the eye to see and heart to feel
+ The beauty and the joy within their reach,--
+ Home, and home loves, and the beatitudes
+ Of nature free to all. Haply in years
+ That wait to take the places of our own,
+ Heard where some breezy balcony looks down
+ On happy homes, or where the lake in the moon
+ Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair as Ruth,
+ In the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feet
+ Of Boaz, even this simple lay of mine
+ May seem the burden of a prophecy,
+ Finding its late fulfilment in a change
+ Slow as the oak's growth, lifting manhood up
+ Through broader culture, finer manners, love,
+ And reverence, to the level of the hills.
+
+ O Golden Age, whose light is of the dawn,
+ And not of sunset, forward, not behind,
+ Flood the new heavens and earth, and with thee bring
+ All the old virtues, whatsoever things
+ Are pure and honest and of good repute,
+ But add thereto whatever bard has sung
+ Or seer has told of when in trance and dream
+ They saw the Happy Isles of prophecy
+ Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide
+ Between the right and wrong; but give the heart
+ The freedom of its fair inheritance;
+ Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved so long,
+ At Nature's table feast his ear and eye
+ With joy and wonder; let all harmonies
+ Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon
+ The princely guest, whether in soft attire
+ Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of toil,
+ And, lending life to the dead form of faith,
+ Give human nature reverence for the sake
+ Of One who bore it, making it divine
+ With the ineffable tenderness of God;
+ Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer,
+ The heirship of an unknown destiny,
+ The unsolved mystery round about us, make
+ A man more precious than the gold of Ophir.
+ Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things
+ Should minister, as outward types and signs
+ Of the eternal beauty which fulfils
+ The one great purpose of creation, Love,
+ The sole necessity of Earth and Heaven!
+
+ . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+ For weeks the clouds had raked the hills
+ And vexed the vales with raining,
+ And all the woods were sad with mist,
+ And all the brooks complaining.
+
+ At last, a sudden night-storm tore
+ The mountain veils asunder,
+ And swept the valleys clean before
+ The besom of the thunder.
+
+ Through Sandwich notch the west-wind sang
+ Good morrow to the cotter;
+ And once again Chocorua's horn
+ Of shadow pierced the water.
+
+ Above his broad lake Ossipee,
+ Once more the sunshine wearing,
+ Stooped, tracing on that silver shield
+ His grim armorial bearing.
+
+ Clear drawn against the hard blue sky,
+ The peaks had winter's keenness;
+ And, close on autumn's frost, the vales
+ Had more than June's fresh greenness.
+
+ Again the sodden forest floors
+ With golden lights were checkered,
+ Once more rejoicing leaves in wind
+ And sunshine danced and flickered.
+
+ It was as if the summer's late
+ Atoning for it's sadness
+ Had borrowed every season's charm
+ To end its days in gladness.
+
+ Rivers of gold-mist flowing down
+ From far celestial fountains,--
+ The great sun flaming through the rifts
+ Beyond the wall of mountains.
+
+ We paused at last where home-bound cows
+ Brought down the pasture's treasure,
+ And in the barn the rhythmic flails
+ Beat out a harvest measure.
+
+ We heard the night-hawk's sullen plunge,
+ The crow his tree-mates calling
+ The shadows lengthening down the slopes
+ About our feet were falling.
+
+ And through them smote the level sun
+ In broken lines of splendor,
+ Touched the gray rocks and made the green
+ Of the shorn grass more tender.
+
+ The maples bending o'er the gate,
+ Their arch of leaves just tinted
+ With yellow warmth, the golden glow
+ Of coming autumn hinted.
+
+ Keen white between the farm-house showed,
+ And smiled on porch and trellis,
+ The fair democracy of flowers
+ That equals cot and palace.
+
+ And weaving garlands for her dog,
+ 'Twixt chidings and caresses,
+ A human flower of childhood shook
+ The sunshine from her tresses.
+
+ Clear drawn against the hard blue sky,
+ The peaks had winter's keenness;
+ And, close on autumn's frost, the vales
+ Had more than June's fresh greenness.
+
+ Again the sodden forest floors
+ With golden lights were checkered,
+ Once more rejoicing leaves in wind
+ And sunshine danced and flickered.
+
+ It was as if the summer's late
+ Atoning for it's sadness
+ Had borrowed every season's charm
+ To end its days in gladness.
+
+ I call to mind those banded vales
+ Of shadow and of shining,
+ Through which, my hostess at my side,
+ I drove in day's declining.
+
+ We held our sideling way above
+ The river's whitening shallows,
+ By homesteads old, with wide-flung barns
+ Swept through and through by swallows;
+
+ By maple orchards, belts of pine
+ And larches climbing darkly
+ The mountain slopes, and, over all,
+ The great peaks rising starkly.
+
+ You should have seen that long hill-range
+ With gaps of brightness riven,--
+ How through each pass and hollow streamed
+ The purpling lights of heaven,--
+
+ On either hand we saw the signs
+ Of fancy and of shrewdness,
+ Where taste had wound its arms of vines
+ Round thrift's uncomely rudeness.
+
+ The sun-brown farmer in his frock
+ Shook hands, and called to Mary
+ Bare-armed, as Juno might, she came,
+ White-aproned from her dairy.
+
+ Her air, her smile, her motions, told
+ Of womanly completeness;
+ A music as of household songs
+ Was in her voice of sweetness.
+
+ Not fair alone in curve and line,
+ But something more and better,
+ The secret charm eluding art,
+ Its spirit, not its letter;--
+
+ An inborn grace that nothing lacked
+ Of culture or appliance,
+ The warmth of genial courtesy,
+ The calm of self-reliance.
+
+ Before her queenly womanhood
+ How dared our hostess utter
+ The paltry errand of her need
+ To buy her fresh-churned butter?
+
+ She led the way with housewife pride,
+ Her goodly store disclosing,
+ Full tenderly the golden balls
+ With practised hands disposing.
+
+ Then, while along the western hills
+ We watched the changeful glory
+ Of sunset, on our homeward way,
+ I heard her simple story.
+
+ The early crickets sang; the stream
+ Plashed through my friend's narration
+ Her rustic patois of the hills
+ Lost in my free-translation.
+
+ "More wise," she said, "than those who swarm
+ Our hills in middle summer,
+ She came, when June's first roses blow,
+ To greet the early comer.
+
+ "From school and ball and rout she came,
+ The city's fair, pale daughter,
+ To drink the wine of mountain air
+ Beside the Bearcamp Water.
+
+ "Her step grew firmer on the hills
+ That watch our homesteads over;
+ On cheek and lip, from summer fields,
+ She caught the bloom of clover.
+
+ "For health comes sparkling in the streams
+ From cool Chocorua stealing
+ There's iron in our Northern winds;
+ Our pines are trees of healing.
+
+ "She sat beneath the broad-armed elms
+ That skirt the mowing-meadow,
+ And watched the gentle west-wind weave
+ The grass with shine and shadow.
+
+ "Beside her, from the summer heat
+ To share her grateful screening,
+ With forehead bared, the farmer stood,
+ Upon his pitchfork leaning.
+
+ "Framed in its damp, dark locks, his face
+ Had nothing mean or common,--
+ Strong, manly, true, the tenderness
+ And pride beloved of woman.
+
+ "She looked up, glowing with the health
+ The country air had brought her,
+ And, laughing, said: 'You lack a wife,
+ Your mother lacks a daughter.
+
+ "'To mend your frock and bake your bread
+ You do not need a lady
+ Be sure among these brown old homes
+ Is some one waiting ready,--
+
+ "'Some fair, sweet girl with skilful hand
+ And cheerful heart for treasure,
+ Who never played with ivory keys,
+ Or danced the polka's measure.'
+
+ "He bent his black brows to a frown,
+ He set his white teeth tightly.
+ ''T is well,' he said, 'for one like you
+ To choose for me so lightly.
+
+ "You think, because my life is rude
+ I take no note of sweetness
+ I tell you love has naught to do
+ With meetness or unmeetness.
+
+ "'Itself its best excuse, it asks
+ No leave of pride or fashion
+ When silken zone or homespun frock
+ It stirs with throbs of passion.
+
+ "'You think me deaf and blind: you bring
+ Your winning graces hither
+ As free as if from cradle-time
+ We two had played together.
+
+ "'You tempt me with your laughing eyes,
+ Your cheek of sundown's blushes,
+ A motion as of waving grain,
+ A music as of thrushes.
+
+ "'The plaything of your summer sport,
+ The spells you weave around me
+ You cannot at your will undo,
+ Nor leave me as you found me.
+
+ "'You go as lightly as you came,
+ Your life is well without me;
+ What care you that these hills will close
+ Like prison-walls about me?
+
+ "'No mood is mine to seek a wife,
+ Or daughter for my mother
+ Who loves you loses in that love
+ All power to love another!
+
+ "'I dare your pity or your scorn,
+ With pride your own exceeding;
+ I fling my heart into your lap
+ Without a word of pleading.'
+
+ "She looked up in his face of pain
+ So archly, yet so tender
+ 'And if I lend you mine,' she said,
+ 'Will you forgive the lender?
+
+ "'Nor frock nor tan can hide the man;
+ And see you not, my farmer,
+ How weak and fond a woman waits
+ Behind this silken armor?
+
+ "'I love you: on that love alone,
+ And not my worth, presuming,
+ Will you not trust for summer fruit
+ The tree in May-day blooming?'
+
+ "Alone the hangbird overhead,
+ His hair-swung cradle straining,
+ Looked down to see love's miracle,--
+ The giving that is gaining.
+
+ "And so the farmer found a wife,
+ His mother found a daughter
+ There looks no happier home than hers
+ On pleasant Bearcamp Water.
+
+ "Flowers spring to blossom where she walks
+ The careful ways of duty;
+ Our hard, stiff lines of life with her
+ Are flowing curves of beauty.
+
+ "Our homes are cheerier for her sake,
+ Our door-yards brighter blooming,
+ And all about the social air
+ Is sweeter for her coming.
+
+ "Unspoken homilies of peace
+ Her daily life is preaching;
+ The still refreshment of the dew
+ Is her unconscious teaching.
+
+ "And never tenderer hand than hers
+ Unknits the brow of ailing;
+ Her garments to the sick man's ear
+ Have music in their trailing.
+
+ "And when, in pleasant harvest moons,
+ The youthful huskers gather,
+ Or sleigh-drives on the mountain ways
+ Defy the winter weather,--
+
+ "In sugar-camps, when south and warm
+ The winds of March are blowing,
+ And sweetly from its thawing veins
+ The maple's blood is flowing,--
+
+ "In summer, where some lilied pond
+ Its virgin zone is baring,
+ Or where the ruddy autumn fire
+ Lights up the apple-paring,--
+
+ "The coarseness of a ruder time
+ Her finer mirth displaces,
+ A subtler sense of pleasure fills
+ Each rustic sport she graces.
+
+ "Her presence lends its warmth and health
+ To all who come before it.
+ If woman lost us Eden, such
+ As she alone restore it.
+
+ "For larger life and wiser aims
+ The farmer is her debtor;
+ Who holds to his another's heart
+ Must needs be worse or better.
+
+ "Through her his civic service shows
+ A purer-toned ambition;
+ No double consciousness divides
+ The man and politician.
+
+ "In party's doubtful ways he trusts
+ Her instincts to determine;
+ At the loud polls, the thought of her
+ Recalls Christ's Mountain Sermon.
+
+ "He owns her logic of the heart,
+ And wisdom of unreason,
+ Supplying, while he doubts and weighs,
+ The needed word in season.
+
+ "He sees with pride her richer thought,
+ Her fancy's freer ranges;
+ And love thus deepened to respect
+ Is proof against all changes.
+
+ "And if she walks at ease in ways
+ His feet are slow to travel,
+ And if she reads with cultured eyes
+ What his may scarce unravel,
+
+ "Still clearer, for her keener sight
+ Of beauty and of wonder,
+ He learns the meaning of the hills
+ He dwelt from childhood under.
+
+ "And higher, warmed with summer lights,
+ Or winter-crowned and hoary,
+ The ridged horizon lifts for him
+ Its inner veils of glory.
+
+ "He has his own free, bookless lore,
+ The lessons nature taught him,
+ The wisdom which the woods and hills
+ And toiling men have brought him:
+
+ "The steady force of will whereby
+ Her flexile grace seems sweeter;
+ The sturdy counterpoise which makes
+ Her woman's life completer.
+
+ "A latent fire of soul which lacks
+ No breath of love to fan it;
+ And wit, that, like his native brooks,
+ Plays over solid granite.
+
+ "How dwarfed against his manliness
+ She sees the poor pretension,
+ The wants, the aims, the follies, born
+ Of fashion and convention.
+
+ "How life behind its accidents
+ Stands strong and self-sustaining,
+ The human fact transcending all
+ The losing and the gaining.
+
+ "And so in grateful interchange
+ Of teacher and of hearer,
+ Their lives their true distinctness keep
+ While daily drawing nearer.
+
+ "And if the husband or the wife
+ In home's strong light discovers
+ Such slight defaults as failed to meet
+ The blinded eyes of lovers,
+
+ "Why need we care to ask?--who dreams
+ Without their thorns of roses,
+ Or wonders that the truest steel
+ The readiest spark discloses?
+
+ "For still in mutual sufferance lies
+ The secret of true living;
+ Love scarce is love that never knows
+ The sweetness of forgiving.
+
+ "We send the Squire to General Court,
+ He takes his young wife thither;
+ No prouder man election day
+ Rides through the sweet June weather.
+
+ "He sees with eyes of manly trust
+ All hearts to her inclining;
+ Not less for him his household light
+ That others share its shining."
+
+ Thus, while my hostess spake, there grew
+ Before me, warmer tinted
+ And outlined with a tenderer grace,
+ The picture that she hinted.
+
+ The sunset smouldered as we drove
+ Beneath the deep hill-shadows.
+ Below us wreaths of white fog walked
+ Like ghosts the haunted meadows.
+
+ Sounding the summer night, the stars
+ Dropped down their golden plummets;
+ The pale arc of the Northern lights
+ Rose o'er the mountain summits,
+
+ Until, at last, beneath its bridge,
+ We heard the Bearcamp flowing,
+ And saw across the mapled lawn
+ The welcome home lights glowing.
+
+ And, musing on the tale I heard,
+ 'T were well, thought I, if often
+ To rugged farm-life came the gift
+ To harmonize and soften;
+
+ If more and more we found the troth
+ Of fact and fancy plighted,
+ And culture's charm and labor's strength
+ In rural homes united,--
+
+ The simple life, the homely hearth,
+ With beauty's sphere surrounding,
+ And blessing toil where toil abounds
+ With graces more abounding.
+
+ 1868.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL.
+
+ THE land was pale with famine
+ And racked with fever-pain;
+ The frozen fiords were fishless,
+ The earth withheld her grain.
+
+ Men saw the boding Fylgja
+ Before them come and go,
+ And, through their dreams, the Urdarmoon
+ From west to east sailed slow.
+
+ Jarl Thorkell of Thevera
+ At Yule-time made his vow;
+ On Rykdal's holy Doom-stone
+ He slew to Frey his cow.
+
+ To bounteous Frey he slew her;
+ To Skuld, the younger Norn,
+ Who watches over birth and death,
+ He gave her calf unborn.
+
+ And his little gold-haired daughter
+ Took up the sprinkling-rod,
+ And smeared with blood the temple
+ And the wide lips of the god.
+
+ Hoarse below, the winter water
+ Ground its ice-blocks o'er and o'er;
+ Jets of foam, like ghosts of dead waves,
+ Rose and fell along the shore.
+
+ The red torch of the Jokul,
+ Aloft in icy space,
+ Shone down on the bloody Horg-stones
+ And the statue's carven face.
+
+ And closer round and grimmer
+ Beneath its baleful light
+ The Jotun shapes of mountains
+ Came crowding through the night.
+
+ The gray-haired Hersir trembled
+ As a flame by wind is blown;
+ A weird power moved his white lips,
+ And their voice was not his own.
+
+ "The AEsir thirst!" he muttered;
+ "The gods must have more blood
+ Before the tun shall blossom
+ Or fish shall fill the flood.
+
+ "The AEsir thirst and hunger,
+ And hence our blight and ban;
+ The mouths of the strong gods water
+ For the flesh and blood of man!
+
+ "Whom shall we give the strong ones?
+ Not warriors, sword on thigh;
+ But let the nursling infant
+ And bedrid old man die."
+
+ "So be it!" cried the young men,
+ "There needs nor doubt nor parle."
+ But, knitting hard his red brows,
+ In silence stood the Jarl.
+
+ A sound of woman's weeping
+ At the temple door was heard,
+ But the old men bowed their white heads,
+ And answered not a word.
+
+ Then the Dream-wife of Thingvalla,
+ A Vala young and fair,
+ Sang softly, stirring with her breath
+ The veil of her loose hair.
+
+ She sang: "The winds from Alfheim
+ Bring never sound of strife;
+ The gifts for Frey the meetest
+ Are not of death, but life.
+
+ "He loves the grass-green meadows,
+ The grazing kine's sweet breath;
+ He loathes your bloody Horg-stones,
+ Your gifts that smell of death.
+
+ "No wrong by wrong is righted,
+ No pain is cured by pain;
+ The blood that smokes from Doom-rings
+ Falls back in redder rain.
+
+ "The gods are what you make them,
+ As earth shall Asgard prove;
+ And hate will come of hating,
+ And love will come of love.
+
+ "Make dole of skyr and black bread
+ That old and young may live;
+ And look to Frey for favor
+ When first like Frey you give.
+
+ "Even now o'er Njord's sea-meadows
+ The summer dawn begins
+ The tun shall have its harvest,
+ The fiord its glancing fins."
+
+ Then up and swore Jarl Thorkell
+ "By Gimli and by Hel,
+ O Vala of Thingvalla,
+ Thou singest wise and well!
+
+ "Too dear the AEsir's favors
+ Bought with our children's lives;
+ Better die than shame in living
+ Our mothers and our wives.
+
+ "The full shall give his portion
+ To him who hath most need;
+ Of curdled skyr and black bread,
+ Be daily dole decreed."
+
+ He broke from off his neck-chain
+ Three links of beaten gold;
+ And each man, at his bidding,
+ Brought gifts for young and old.
+
+ Then mothers nursed their children,
+ And daughters fed their sires,
+ And Health sat down with Plenty
+ Before the next Yule fires.
+
+ The Horg-stones stand in Rykdal;
+ The Doom-ring still remains;
+ But the snows of a thousand winters
+ Have washed away the stains.
+
+ Christ ruleth now; the Asir
+ Have found their twilight dim;
+ And, wiser than she dreamed, of old
+ The Vala sang of Him
+
+ 1868.
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO RABBINS.
+
+ THE Rabbi Nathan two-score years and ten
+ Walked blameless through the evil world, and then,
+ Just as the almond blossomed in his hair,
+ Met a temptation all too strong to bear,
+ And miserably sinned. So, adding not
+ Falsehood to guilt, he left his seat, and taught
+ No more among the elders, but went out
+ From the great congregation girt about
+ With sackcloth, and with ashes on his head,
+ Making his gray locks grayer. Long he prayed,
+ Smiting his breast; then, as the Book he laid
+ Open before him for the Bath-Col's choice,
+ Pausing to hear that Daughter of a Voice,
+ Behold the royal preacher's words: "A friend
+ Loveth at all times, yea, unto the end;
+ And for the evil day thy brother lives."
+ Marvelling, he said: "It is the Lord who gives
+ Counsel in need. At Ecbatana dwells
+ Rabbi Ben Isaac, who all men excels
+ In righteousness and wisdom, as the trees
+ Of Lebanon the small weeds that the bees
+ Bow with their weight. I will arise, and lay
+ My sins before him."
+
+ And he went his way
+ Barefooted, fasting long, with many prayers;
+ But even as one who, followed unawares,
+ Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand
+ Thrill with its touch his own, and his cheek fanned
+ By odors subtly sweet, and whispers near
+ Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose but hear,
+ So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting low
+ The wail of David's penitential woe,
+ Before him still the old temptation came,
+ And mocked him with the motion and the shame
+ Of such desires that, shuddering, he abhorred
+ Himself; and, crying mightily to the Lord
+ To free his soul and cast the demon out,
+ Smote with his staff the blankness round about.
+
+ At length, in the low light of a spent day,
+ The towers of Ecbatana far away
+ Rose on the desert's rim; and Nathan, faint
+ And footsore, pausing where for some dead saint
+ The faith of Islam reared a domed tomb,
+ Saw some one kneeling in the shadow, whom
+ He greeted kindly: "May the Holy One
+ Answer thy prayers, O stranger!" Whereupon
+ The shape stood up with a loud cry, and then,
+ Clasped in each other's arms, the two gray men
+ Wept, praising Him whose gracious providence
+ Made their paths one. But straightway, as the sense
+ Of his transgression smote him, Nathan tore
+ Himself away: "O friend beloved, no more
+ Worthy am I to touch thee, for I came,
+ Foul from my sins, to tell thee all my shame.
+ Haply thy prayers, since naught availeth mine,
+ May purge my soul, and make it white like thine.
+ Pity me, O Ben Isaac, I have sinned!"
+
+ Awestruck Ben Isaac stood. The desert wind
+ Blew his long mantle backward, laying bare
+ The mournful secret of his shirt of hair.
+ "I too, O friend, if not in act," he said,
+ "In thought have verily sinned. Hast thou not read,
+ 'Better the eye should see than that desire
+ Should wander?' Burning with a hidden fire
+ That tears and prayers quench not, I come to thee
+ For pity and for help, as thou to me.
+ Pray for me, O my friend!" But Nathan cried,
+ "Pray thou for me, Ben Isaac!"
+
+ Side by side
+ In the low sunshine by the turban stone
+ They knelt; each made his brother's woe his own,
+ Forgetting, in the agony and stress
+ Of pitying love, his claim of selfishness;
+ Peace, for his friend besought, his own became;
+ His prayers were answered in another's name;
+ And, when at last they rose up to embrace,
+ Each saw God's pardon in his brother's face!
+
+ Long after, when his headstone gathered moss,
+ Traced on the targum-marge of Onkelos
+ In Rabbi Nathan's hand these words were read:
+ "_Hope not the cure of sin till Self is dead;
+ Forget it in love's service, and the debt
+ Thou, canst not pay the angels shall forget;
+ Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes alone;
+ Save thou a soul, and it shall save thy own!_"
+
+ 1868.
+
+
+
+
+NOREMBEGA.
+
+Norembega, or Norimbegue, is the name given by early French fishermen
+and explorers to a fabulous country south of Cape Breton, first
+discovered by Verrazzani in 1524. It was supposed to have a magnificent
+city of the same name on a great river, probably the Penobscot. The site
+of this barbaric city is laid down on a map published at Antwerp in
+1570. In 1604 Champlain sailed in search of the Northern Eldorado,
+twenty-two leagues up the Penobscot from the Isle Haute. He supposed the
+river to be that of Norembega, but wisely came to the conclusion that
+those travellers who told of the great city had never seen it. He saw no
+evidences of anything like civilization, but mentions the finding of a
+cross, very old and mossy, in the woods.
+
+ THE winding way the serpent takes
+ The mystic water took,
+ From where, to count its beaded lakes,
+ The forest sped its brook.
+
+ A narrow space 'twixt shore and shore,
+ For sun or stars to fall,
+ While evermore, behind, before,
+ Closed in the forest wall.
+
+ The dim wood hiding underneath
+ Wan flowers without a name;
+ Life tangled with decay and death,
+ League after league the same.
+
+ Unbroken over swamp and hill
+ The rounding shadow lay,
+ Save where the river cut at will
+ A pathway to the day.
+
+ Beside that track of air and light,
+ Weak as a child unweaned,
+ At shut of day a Christian knight
+ Upon his henchman leaned.
+
+ The embers of the sunset's fires
+ Along the clouds burned down;
+ "I see," he said, "the domes and spires
+ Of Norembega town."
+
+ "Alack! the domes, O master mine,
+ Are golden clouds on high;
+ Yon spire is but the branchless pine
+ That cuts the evening sky."
+
+ "Oh, hush and hark! What sounds are these
+ But chants and holy hymns?"
+ "Thou hear'st the breeze that stirs the trees
+ Though all their leafy limbs."
+
+ "Is it a chapel bell that fills
+ The air with its low tone?"
+ "Thou hear'st the tinkle of the rills,
+ The insect's vesper drone."
+
+ "The Christ be praised!--He sets for me
+ A blessed cross in sight!"
+ "Now, nay, 't is but yon blasted tree
+ With two gaunt arms outright!"
+
+ "Be it wind so sad or tree so stark,
+ It mattereth not, my knave;
+ Methinks to funeral hymns I hark,
+ The cross is for my grave!
+
+ "My life is sped; I shall not see
+ My home-set sails again;
+ The sweetest eyes of Normandie
+ Shall watch for me in vain.
+
+ "Yet onward still to ear and eye
+ The baffling marvel calls;
+ I fain would look before I die
+ On Norembega's walls.
+
+ "So, haply, it shall be thy part
+ At Christian feet to lay
+ The mystery of the desert's heart
+ My dead hand plucked away.
+
+ "Leave me an hour of rest; go thou
+ And look from yonder heights;
+ Perchance the valley even now
+ Is starred with city lights."
+
+ The henchman climbed the nearest hill,
+ He saw nor tower nor town,
+ But, through the drear woods, lone and still,
+ The river rolling down.
+
+ He heard the stealthy feet of things
+ Whose shapes he could not see,
+ A flutter as of evil wings,
+ The fall of a dead tree.
+
+ The pines stood black against the moon,
+ A sword of fire beyond;
+ He heard the wolf howl, and the loon
+ Laugh from his reedy pond.
+
+ He turned him back: "O master dear,
+ We are but men misled;
+ And thou hast sought a city here
+ To find a grave instead."
+
+ "As God shall will! what matters where
+ A true man's cross may stand,
+ So Heaven be o'er it here as there
+ In pleasant Norman land?
+
+ "These woods, perchance, no secret hide
+ Of lordly tower and hall;
+ Yon river in its wanderings wide
+ Has washed no city wall;
+
+ "Yet mirrored in the sullen stream
+ The holy stars are given
+ Is Norembega, then, a dream
+ Whose waking is in Heaven?
+
+ "No builded wonder of these lands
+ My weary eyes shall see;
+ A city never made with hands
+ Alone awaiteth me--
+
+ "'_Urbs Syon mystica_;' I see
+ Its mansions passing fair,
+ '_Condita caelo_;' let me be,
+ Dear Lord, a dweller there!"
+
+ Above the dying exile hung
+ The vision of the bard,
+ As faltered on his failing tongue
+ The song of good Bernard.
+
+ The henchman dug at dawn a grave
+ Beneath the hemlocks brown,
+ And to the desert's keeping gave
+ The lord of fief and town.
+
+ Years after, when the Sieur Champlain
+ Sailed up the unknown stream,
+ And Norembega proved again
+ A shadow and a dream,
+
+ He found the Norman's nameless grave
+ Within the hemlock's shade,
+ And, stretching wide its arms to save,
+ The sign that God had made,
+
+ The cross-boughed tree that marked the spot
+ And made it holy ground
+ He needs the earthly city not
+ Who hath the heavenly found.
+
+ 1869.
+
+
+
+
+MIRIAM.
+
+TO FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD.
+
+ THE years are many since, in youth and hope,
+ Under the Charter Oak, our horoscope
+ We drew thick-studded with all favoring stars.
+ Now, with gray beards, and faces seamed with scars
+ From life's hard battle, meeting once again,
+ We smile, half sadly, over dreams so vain;
+ Knowing, at last, that it is not in man
+ Who walketh to direct his steps, or plan
+ His permanent house of life. Alike we loved
+ The muses' haunts, and all our fancies moved
+ To measures of old song. How since that day
+ Our feet have parted from the path that lay
+ So fair before us! Rich, from lifelong search
+ Of truth, within thy Academic porch
+ Thou sittest now, lord of a realm of fact,
+ Thy servitors the sciences exact;
+ Still listening with thy hand on Nature's keys,
+ To hear the Samian's spheral harmonies
+ And rhythm of law. I called from dream and song,
+ Thank God! so early to a strife so long,
+ That, ere it closed, the black, abundant hair
+ Of boyhood rested silver-sown and spare
+ On manhood's temples, now at sunset-chime
+ Tread with fond feet the path of morning time.
+ And if perchance too late I linger where
+ The flowers have ceased to blow, and trees are bare,
+ Thou, wiser in thy choice, wilt scarcely blame
+ The friend who shields his folly with thy name.
+ AMESBURY, 10th mo., 1870.
+
+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+ One Sabbath day my friend and I
+ After the meeting, quietly
+ Passed from the crowded village lanes,
+ White with dry dust for lack of rains,
+ And climbed the neighboring slope, with feet
+ Slackened and heavy from the heat,
+ Although the day was wellnigh done,
+ And the low angle of the sun
+ Along the naked hillside cast
+ Our shadows as of giants vast.
+ We reached, at length, the topmost swell,
+ Whence, either way, the green turf fell
+ In terraces of nature down
+ To fruit-hung orchards, and the town
+ With white, pretenceless houses, tall
+ Church-steeples, and, o'ershadowing all,
+ Huge mills whose windows had the look
+ Of eager eyes that ill could brook
+ The Sabbath rest. We traced the track
+ Of the sea-seeking river back,
+ Glistening for miles above its mouth,
+ Through the long valley to the south,
+ And, looking eastward, cool to view,
+ Stretched the illimitable blue
+ Of ocean, from its curved coast-line;
+ Sombred and still, the warm sunshine
+ Filled with pale gold-dust all the reach
+ Of slumberous woods from hill to beach,--
+ Slanted on walls of thronged retreats
+ From city toil and dusty streets,
+ On grassy bluff, and dune of sand,
+ And rocky islands miles from land;
+ Touched the far-glancing sails, and showed
+ White lines of foam where long waves flowed
+ Dumb in the distance. In the north,
+ Dim through their misty hair, looked forth
+ The space-dwarfed mountains to the sea,
+ From mystery to mystery!
+
+ So, sitting on that green hill-slope,
+ We talked of human life, its hope
+ And fear, and unsolved doubts, and what
+ It might have been, and yet was not.
+ And, when at last the evening air
+ Grew sweeter for the bells of prayer
+ Ringing in steeples far below,
+ We watched the people churchward go,
+ Each to his place, as if thereon
+ The true shekinah only shone;
+ And my friend queried how it came
+ To pass that they who owned the same
+ Great Master still could not agree
+ To worship Him in company.
+ Then, broadening in his thought, he ran
+ Over the whole vast field of man,--
+ The varying forms of faith and creed
+ That somehow served the holders' need;
+ In which, unquestioned, undenied,
+ Uncounted millions lived and died;
+ The bibles of the ancient folk,
+ Through which the heart of nations spoke;
+ The old moralities which lent
+ To home its sweetness and content,
+ And rendered possible to bear
+ The life of peoples everywhere
+ And asked if we, who boast of light,
+ Claim not a too exclusive right
+ To truths which must for all be meant,
+ Like rain and sunshine freely sent.
+ In bondage to the letter still,
+ We give it power to cramp and kill,--
+ To tax God's fulness with a scheme
+ Narrower than Peter's house-top dream,
+ His wisdom and his love with plans
+ Poor and inadequate as man's.
+ It must be that He witnesses
+ Somehow to all men that He is
+ That something of His saving grace
+ Reaches the lowest of the race,
+ Who, through strange creed and rite, may draw
+ The hints of a diviner law.
+ We walk in clearer light;--but then,
+ Is He not God?--are they not men?
+ Are His responsibilities
+ For us alone and not for these?
+
+ And I made answer: "Truth is one;
+ And, in all lands beneath the sun,
+ Whoso hath eyes to see may see
+ The tokens of its unity.
+ No scroll of creed its fulness wraps,
+ We trace it not by school-boy maps,
+ Free as the sun and air it is
+ Of latitudes and boundaries.
+ In Vedic verse, in dull Koran,
+ Are messages of good to man;
+ The angels to our Aryan sires
+ Talked by the earliest household fires;
+ The prophets of the elder day,
+ The slant-eyed sages of Cathay,
+ Read not the riddle all amiss
+ Of higher life evolved from this.
+
+ "Nor doth it lessen what He taught,
+ Or make the gospel Jesus brought
+ Less precious, that His lips retold
+ Some portion of that truth of old;
+ Denying not the proven seers,
+ The tested wisdom of the years;
+ Confirming with his own impress
+ The common law of righteousness.
+ We search the world for truth; we cull
+ The good, the pure, the beautiful,
+ From graven stone and written scroll,
+ From all old flower-fields of the soul;
+ And, weary seekers of the best,
+ We come back laden from our quest,
+ To find that all the sages said
+ Is in the Book our mothers read,
+ And all our treasure of old thought
+ In His harmonious fulness wrought
+ Who gathers in one sheaf complete
+ The scattered blades of God's sown wheat,
+ The common growth that maketh good
+ His all-embracing Fatherhood.
+
+ "Wherever through the ages rise
+ The altars of self-sacrifice,
+ Where love its arms has opened wide,
+ Or man for man has calmly died,
+ I see the same white wings outspread
+ That hovered o'er the Master's head!
+ Up from undated time they come,
+ The martyr souls of heathendom,
+ And to His cross and passion bring
+ Their fellowship of suffering.
+ I trace His presence in the blind
+ Pathetic gropings of my kind,--
+ In prayers from sin and sorrow wrung,
+ In cradle-hymns of life they sung,
+ Each, in its measure, but a part
+ Of the unmeasured Over-Heart;
+ And with a stronger faith confess
+ The greater that it owns the less.
+ Good cause it is for thankfulness
+ That the world-blessing of His life
+ With the long past is not at strife;
+ That the great marvel of His death
+ To the one order witnesseth,
+ No doubt of changeless goodness wakes,
+ No link of cause and sequence breaks,
+ But, one with nature, rooted is
+ In the eternal verities;
+ Whereby, while differing in degree
+ As finite from infinity,
+ The pain and loss for others borne,
+ Love's crown of suffering meekly worn,
+ The life man giveth for his friend
+ Become vicarious in the end;
+ Their healing place in nature take,
+ And make life sweeter for their sake.
+
+ "So welcome I from every source
+ The tokens of that primal Force,
+ Older than heaven itself, yet new
+ As the young heart it reaches to,
+ Beneath whose steady impulse rolls
+ The tidal wave of human souls;
+ Guide, comforter, and inward word,
+ The eternal spirit of the Lord
+ Nor fear I aught that science brings
+ From searching through material things;
+ Content to let its glasses prove,
+ Not by the letter's oldness move,
+ The myriad worlds on worlds that course
+ The spaces of the universe;
+ Since everywhere the Spirit walks
+ The garden of the heart, and talks
+ With man, as under Eden's trees,
+ In all his varied languages.
+ Why mourn above some hopeless flaw
+ In the stone tables of the law,
+ When scripture every day afresh
+ Is traced on tablets of the flesh?
+ By inward sense, by outward signs,
+ God's presence still the heart divines;
+ Through deepest joy of Him we learn,
+ In sorest grief to Him we turn,
+ And reason stoops its pride to share
+ The child-like instinct of a prayer."
+
+ And then, as is my wont, I told
+ A story of the days of old,
+ Not found in printed books,--in sooth,
+ A fancy, with slight hint of truth,
+ Showing how differing faiths agree
+ In one sweet law of charity.
+ Meanwhile the sky had golden grown,
+ Our faces in its glory shone;
+ But shadows down the valley swept,
+ And gray below the ocean slept,
+ As time and space I wandered o'er
+ To tread the Mogul's marble floor,
+ And see a fairer sunset fall
+ On Jumna's wave and Agra's wall.
+
+ The good Shah Akbar (peace be his alway!)
+ Came forth from the Divan at close of day
+ Bowed with the burden of his many cares,
+ Worn with the hearing of unnumbered prayers,--
+ Wild cries for justice, the importunate
+ Appeals of greed and jealousy and hate,
+ And all the strife of sect and creed and rite,
+ Santon and Gouroo waging holy fight
+ For the wise monarch, claiming not to be
+ Allah's avenger, left his people free,
+ With a faint hope, his Book scarce justified,
+ That all the paths of faith, though severed wide,
+ O'er which the feet of prayerful reverence passed,
+ Met at the gate of Paradise at last.
+
+ He sought an alcove of his cool hareem,
+ Where, far beneath, he heard the Jumna's stream
+ Lapse soft and low along his palace wall,
+ And all about the cool sound of the fall
+ Of fountains, and of water circling free
+ Through marble ducts along the balcony;
+ The voice of women in the distance sweet,
+ And, sweeter still, of one who, at his feet,
+ Soothed his tired ear with songs of a far land
+ Where Tagus shatters on the salt sea-sand
+ The mirror of its cork-grown hills of drouth
+ And vales of vine, at Lisbon's harbor-mouth.
+
+ The date-palms rustled not; the peepul laid
+ Its topmost boughs against the balustrade,
+ Motionless as the mimic leaves and vines
+ That, light and graceful as the shawl-designs
+ Of Delhi or Umritsir, twined in stone;
+ And the tired monarch, who aside had thrown
+ The day's hard burden, sat from care apart,
+ And let the quiet steal into his heart
+ From the still hour. Below him Agra slept,
+ By the long light of sunset overswept
+ The river flowing through a level land,
+ By mango-groves and banks of yellow sand,
+ Skirted with lime and orange, gay kiosks,
+ Fountains at play, tall minarets of mosques,
+ Fair pleasure-gardens, with their flowering trees
+ Relieved against the mournful cypresses;
+ And, air-poised lightly as the blown sea-foam,
+ The marble wonder of some holy dome
+ Hung a white moonrise over the still wood,
+ Glassing its beauty in a stiller flood.
+
+ Silent the monarch gazed, until the night
+ Swift-falling hid the city from his sight;
+ Then to the woman at his feet he said
+ "Tell me, O Miriam, something thou hast read
+ In childhood of the Master of thy faith,
+ Whom Islam also owns. Our Prophet saith
+ 'He was a true apostle, yea, a Word
+ And Spirit sent before me from the Lord.'
+ Thus the Book witnesseth; and well I know
+ By what thou art, O dearest, it is so.
+ As the lute's tone the maker's hand betrays,
+ The sweet disciple speaks her Master's praise."
+
+ Then Miriam, glad of heart, (for in some sort
+ She cherished in the Moslem's liberal court
+ The sweet traditions of a Christian child;
+ And, through her life of sense, the undefiled
+ And chaste ideal of the sinless One
+ Gazed on her with an eye she might not shun,--
+ The sad, reproachful look of pity, born
+ Of love that hath no part in wrath or scorn,)
+ Began, with low voice and moist eyes, to tell
+ Of the all-loving Christ, and what befell
+ When the fierce zealots, thirsting for her blood,
+ Dragged to his feet a shame of womanhood.
+ How, when his searching answer pierced within
+ Each heart, and touched the secret of its sin,
+ And her accusers fled his face before,
+ He bade the poor one go and sin no more.
+ And Akbar said, after a moment's thought,
+ "Wise is the lesson by thy prophet taught;
+ Woe unto him who judges and forgets
+ What hidden evil his own heart besets!
+ Something of this large charity I find
+ In all the sects that sever human kind;
+ I would to Allah that their lives agreed
+ More nearly with the lesson of their creed!
+ Those yellow Lamas who at Meerut pray
+ By wind and water power, and love to say
+ 'He who forgiveth not shall, unforgiven,
+ Fail of the rest of Buddha,' and who even
+ Spare the black gnat that stings them, vex my ears
+ With the poor hates and jealousies and fears
+ Nursed in their human hives. That lean, fierce priest
+ Of thy own people, (be his heart increased
+ By Allah's love!) his black robes smelling yet
+ Of Goa's roasted Jews, have I not met
+ Meek-faced, barefooted, crying in the street
+ The saying of his prophet true and sweet,--
+ 'He who is merciful shall mercy meet!'"
+
+ But, next day, so it chanced, as night began
+ To fall, a murmur through the hareem ran
+ That one, recalling in her dusky face
+ The full-lipped, mild-eyed beauty of a race
+ Known as the blameless Ethiops of Greek song,
+ Plotting to do her royal master wrong,
+ Watching, reproachful of the lingering light,
+ The evening shadows deepen for her flight,
+ Love-guided, to her home in a far land,
+ Now waited death at the great Shah's command.
+ Shapely as that dark princess for whose smile
+ A world was bartered, daughter of the Nile
+ Herself, and veiling in her large, soft eyes
+ The passion and the languor of her skies,
+ The Abyssinian knelt low at the feet
+ Of her stern lord: "O king, if it be meet,
+ And for thy honor's sake," she said, "that I,
+ Who am the humblest of thy slaves, should die,
+ I will not tax thy mercy to forgive.
+ Easier it is to die than to outlive
+ All that life gave me,--him whose wrong of thee
+ Was but the outcome of his love for me,
+ Cherished from childhood, when, beneath the shade
+ Of templed Axum, side by side we played.
+ Stolen from his arms, my lover followed me
+ Through weary seasons over land and sea;
+ And two days since, sitting disconsolate
+ Within the shadow of the hareem gate,
+ Suddenly, as if dropping from the sky,
+ Down from the lattice of the balcony
+ Fell the sweet song by Tigre's cowherds sung
+ In the old music of his native tongue.
+ He knew my voice, for love is quick of ear,
+ Answering in song.
+
+ This night he waited near
+ To fly with me. The fault was mine alone
+ He knew thee not, he did but seek his own;
+ Who, in the very shadow of thy throne,
+ Sharing thy bounty, knowing all thou art,
+ Greatest and best of men, and in her heart
+ Grateful to tears for favor undeserved,
+ Turned ever homeward, nor one moment swerved
+ From her young love. He looked into my eyes,
+ He heard my voice, and could not otherwise
+ Than he hath done; yet, save one wild embrace
+ When first we stood together face to face,
+ And all that fate had done since last we met
+ Seemed but a dream that left us children yet,
+ He hath not wronged thee nor thy royal bed;
+ Spare him, O king! and slay me in his stead!"
+
+ But over Akbar's brows the frown hung black,
+ And, turning to the eunuch at his back,
+ "Take them," he said, "and let the Jumna's waves
+ Hide both my shame and these accursed slaves!"
+ His loathly length the unsexed bondman bowed
+ "On my head be it!"
+
+ Straightway from a cloud
+ Of dainty shawls and veils of woven mist
+ The Christian Miriam rose, and, stooping, kissed
+ The monarch's hand. Loose down her shoulders bare
+ Swept all the rippled darkness of her hair,
+ Veiling the bosom that, with high, quick swell
+ Of fear and pity, through it rose and fell.
+
+ "Alas!" she cried, "hast thou forgotten quite
+ The words of Him we spake of yesternight?
+ Or thy own prophet's, 'Whoso doth endure
+ And pardon, of eternal life is sure'?
+ O great and good! be thy revenge alone
+ Felt in thy mercy to the erring shown;
+ Let thwarted love and youth their pardon plead,
+ Who sinned but in intent, and not in deed!"
+
+ One moment the strong frame of Akbar shook
+ With the great storm of passion. Then his look
+ Softened to her uplifted face, that still
+ Pleaded more strongly than all words, until
+ Its pride and anger seemed like overblown,
+ Spent clouds of thunder left to tell alone
+ Of strife and overcoming. With bowed head,
+ And smiting on his bosom: "God," he said,
+ "Alone is great, and let His holy name
+ Be honored, even to His servant's shame!
+ Well spake thy prophet, Miriam,--he alone
+ Who hath not sinned is meet to cast a stone
+ At such as these, who here their doom await,
+ Held like myself in the strong grasp of fate.
+ They sinned through love, as I through love forgive;
+ Take them beyond my realm, but let them live!"
+
+ And, like a chorus to the words of grace,
+ The ancient Fakir, sitting in his place,
+ Motionless as an idol and as grim,
+ In the pavilion Akbar built for him
+ Under the court-yard trees, (for he was wise,
+ Knew Menu's laws, and through his close-shut eyes
+ Saw things far off, and as an open book
+ Into the thoughts of other men could look,)
+ Began, half chant, half howling, to rehearse
+ The fragment of a holy Vedic verse;
+ And thus it ran: "He who all things forgives
+ Conquers himself and all things else, and lives
+ Above the reach of wrong or hate or fear,
+ Calm as the gods, to whom he is most dear."
+
+ Two leagues from Agra still the traveller sees
+ The tomb of Akbar through its cypress-trees;
+ And, near at hand, the marble walls that hide
+ The Christian Begum sleeping at his side.
+ And o'er her vault of burial (who shall tell
+ If it be chance alone or miracle?)
+ The Mission press with tireless hand unrolls
+ The words of Jesus on its lettered scrolls,--
+ Tells, in all tongues, the tale of mercy o'er,
+ And bids the guilty, "Go and sin no more!"
+
+ . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+ It now was dew-fall; very still
+ The night lay on the lonely hill,
+ Down which our homeward steps we bent,
+ And, silent, through great silence went,
+ Save that the tireless crickets played
+ Their long, monotonous serenade.
+ A young moon, at its narrowest,
+ Curved sharp against the darkening west;
+ And, momently, the beacon's star,
+ Slow wheeling o'er its rock afar,
+ From out the level darkness shot
+ One instant and again was not.
+ And then my friend spake quietly
+ The thought of both: "Yon crescent see!
+ Like Islam's symbol-moon it gives
+ Hints of the light whereby it lives
+ Somewhat of goodness, something true
+ From sun and spirit shining through
+ All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark
+ Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark,
+ Attests the presence everywhere
+ Of love and providential care.
+ The faith the old Norse heart confessed
+ In one dear name,--the hopefulest
+ And tenderest heard from mortal lips
+ In pangs of birth or death, from ships
+ Ice-bitten in the winter sea,
+ Or lisped beside a mother's knee,--
+ The wiser world hath not outgrown,
+ And the All-Father is our own!"
+
+
+
+
+NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON.
+
+ NAUHAUGHT, the Indian deacon, who of old
+ Dwelt, poor but blameless, where his narrowing Cape
+ Stretches its shrunk arm out to all the winds
+ And the relentless smiting of the waves,
+ Awoke one morning from a pleasant dream
+ Of a good angel dropping in his hand
+ A fair, broad gold-piece, in the name of God.
+
+ He rose and went forth with the early day
+ Far inland, where the voices of the waves
+ Mellowed and Mingled with the whispering leaves,
+ As, through the tangle of the low, thick woods,
+ He searched his traps. Therein nor beast nor bird
+ He found; though meanwhile in the reedy pools
+ The otter plashed, and underneath the pines
+ The partridge drummed: and as his thoughts went back
+ To the sick wife and little child at home,
+ What marvel that the poor man felt his faith
+ Too weak to bear its burden,--like a rope
+ That, strand by strand uncoiling, breaks above
+ The hand that grasps it. "Even now, O Lord!
+ Send me," he prayed, "the angel of my dream!
+ Nauhaught is very poor; he cannot wait."
+
+ Even as he spake he heard at his bare feet
+ A low, metallic clink, and, looking down,
+ He saw a dainty purse with disks of gold
+ Crowding its silken net. Awhile he held
+ The treasure up before his eyes, alone
+ With his great need, feeling the wondrous coins
+ Slide through his eager fingers, one by one.
+ So then the dream was true. The angel brought
+ One broad piece only; should he take all these?
+ Who would be wiser, in the blind, dumb woods?
+ The loser, doubtless rich, would scarcely miss
+ This dropped crumb from a table always full.
+ Still, while he mused, he seemed to hear the cry
+ Of a starved child; the sick face of his wife
+ Tempted him. Heart and flesh in fierce revolt
+ Urged the wild license of his savage youth
+ Against his later scruples. Bitter toil,
+ Prayer, fasting, dread of blame, and pitiless eyes
+ To watch his halting,--had he lost for these
+ The freedom of the woods;--the hunting-grounds
+ Of happy spirits for a walled-in heaven
+ Of everlasting psalms? One healed the sick
+ Very far off thousands of moons ago
+ Had he not prayed him night and day to come
+ And cure his bed-bound wife? Was there a hell?
+ Were all his fathers' people writhing there--
+ Like the poor shell-fish set to boil alive--
+ Forever, dying never? If he kept
+ This gold, so needed, would the dreadful God
+ Torment him like a Mohawk's captive stuck
+ With slow-consuming splinters? Would the saints
+ And the white angels dance and laugh to see him
+ Burn like a pitch-pine torch? His Christian garb
+ Seemed falling from him; with the fear and shame
+ Of Adam naked at the cool of day,
+ He gazed around. A black snake lay in coil
+ On the hot sand, a crow with sidelong eye
+ Watched from a dead bough. All his Indian lore
+ Of evil blending with a convert's faith
+ In the supernal terrors of the Book,
+ He saw the Tempter in the coiling snake
+ And ominous, black-winged bird; and all the while
+ The low rebuking of the distant waves
+ Stole in upon him like the voice of God
+ Among the trees of Eden. Girding up
+ His soul's loins with a resolute hand, he thrust
+ The base thought from him: "Nauhaught, be a man
+ Starve, if need be; but, while you live, look out
+ From honest eyes on all men, unashamed.
+ God help me! I am deacon of the church,
+ A baptized, praying Indian! Should I do
+ This secret meanness, even the barken knots
+ Of the old trees would turn to eyes to see it,
+ The birds would tell of it, and all the leaves
+ Whisper above me: 'Nauhaught is a thief!'
+ The sun would know it, and the stars that hide
+ Behind his light would watch me, and at night
+ Follow me with their sharp, accusing eyes.
+ Yea, thou, God, seest me!" Then Nauhaught drew
+ Closer his belt of leather, dulling thus
+ The pain of hunger, and walked bravely back
+ To the brown fishing-hamlet by the sea;
+ And, pausing at the inn-door, cheerily asked
+ "Who hath lost aught to-day?"
+ "I," said a voice;
+ "Ten golden pieces, in a silken purse,
+ My daughter's handiwork." He looked, and to
+ One stood before him in a coat of frieze,
+ And the glazed hat of a seafaring man,
+ Shrewd-faced, broad-shouldered, with no trace of wings.
+ Marvelling, he dropped within the stranger's hand
+ The silken web, and turned to go his way.
+ But the man said: "A tithe at least is yours;
+ Take it in God's name as an honest man."
+ And as the deacon's dusky fingers closed
+ Over the golden gift, "Yea, in God's name
+ I take it, with a poor man's thanks," he said.
+ So down the street that, like a river of sand,
+ Ran, white in sunshine, to the summer sea,
+ He sought his home singing and praising God;
+ And when his neighbors in their careless way
+ Spoke of the owner of the silken purse--
+ A Wellfleet skipper, known in every port
+ That the Cape opens in its sandy wall--
+ He answered, with a wise smile, to himself
+ "I saw the angel where they see a man."
+ 1870.
+
+
+
+
+THE SISTERS.
+
+ ANNIE and Rhoda, sisters twain,
+ Woke in the night to the sound of rain,
+
+ The rush of wind, the ramp and roar
+ Of great waves climbing a rocky shore.
+
+ Annie rose up in her bed-gown white,
+ And looked out into the storm and night.
+
+ "Hush, and hearken!" she cried in fear,
+ "Hearest thou nothing, sister dear?"
+
+ "I hear the sea, and the plash of rain,
+ And roar of the northeast hurricane.
+
+ "Get thee back to the bed so warm,
+ No good comes of watching a storm.
+
+ "What is it to thee, I fain would know,
+ That waves are roaring and wild winds blow?
+
+ "No lover of thine's afloat to miss
+ The harbor-lights on a night like this."
+
+ "But I heard a voice cry out my name,
+ Up from the sea on the wind it came.
+
+ "Twice and thrice have I heard it call,
+ And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall!"
+
+ On her pillow the sister tossed her head.
+ "Hall of the Heron is safe," she said.
+
+ "In the tautest schooner that ever swam
+ He rides at anchor in Anisquam.
+
+ "And, if in peril from swamping sea
+ Or lee shore rocks, would he call on thee?"
+
+ But the girl heard only the wind and tide,
+ And wringing her small white hands she cried,
+
+ "O sister Rhoda, there's something wrong;
+ I hear it again, so loud and long.
+
+ "'Annie! Annie!' I hear it call,
+ And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall!"
+
+ Up sprang the elder, with eyes aflame,
+ "Thou liest! He never would call thy name!
+
+ "If he did, I would pray the wind and sea
+ To keep him forever from thee and me!"
+
+ Then out of the sea blew a dreadful blast;
+ Like the cry of a dying man it passed.
+
+ The young girl hushed on her lips a groan,
+ But through her tears a strange light shone,--
+
+ The solemn joy of her heart's release
+ To own and cherish its love in peace.
+
+ "Dearest!" she whispered, under breath,
+ "Life was a lie, but true is death.
+
+ "The love I hid from myself away
+ Shall crown me now in the light of day.
+
+ "My ears shall never to wooer list,
+ Never by lover my lips be kissed.
+
+ "Sacred to thee am I henceforth,
+ Thou in heaven and I on earth!"
+
+ She came and stood by her sister's bed
+ "Hall of the Heron is dead!" she said.
+
+ "The wind and the waves their work have done,
+ We shall see him no more beneath the sun.
+
+ "Little will reek that heart of thine,
+ It loved him not with a love like mine.
+
+ "I, for his sake, were he but here,
+ Could hem and 'broider thy bridal gear,
+
+ "Though hands should tremble and eyes be wet,
+ And stitch for stitch in my heart be set.
+
+ "But now my soul with his soul I wed;
+ Thine the living, and mine the dead!"
+
+ 1871.
+
+
+
+
+MARGUERITE.
+
+MASSACHUSETTS BAY, 1760.
+
+Upwards of one thousand of the Acadian peasants forcibly taken from
+their homes on the Gaspereau and Basin of Minas were assigned to the
+several towns of the Massachusetts colony, the children being bound by
+the authorities to service or labor.
+
+ THE robins sang in the orchard, the buds into
+ blossoms grew;
+ Little of human sorrow the buds and the robins
+ knew!
+ Sick, in an alien household, the poor French
+ neutral lay;
+ Into her lonesome garret fell the light of the April
+ day,
+ Through the dusty window, curtained by the spider's
+ warp and woof,
+ On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on oaken ribs
+ of roof,
+ The bedquilt's faded patchwork, the teacups on the
+ stand,
+ The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it dropped from
+ her sick hand.
+
+ What to her was the song of the robin, or warm
+ morning light,
+ As she lay in the trance of the dying, heedless of
+ sound or sight?
+
+ Done was the work of her bands, she had eaten her
+ bitter bread;
+ The world of the alien people lay behind her dim
+ and dead.
+
+ But her soul went back to its child-time; she saw
+ the sun o'erflow
+ With gold the Basin of Minas, and set over
+ Gaspereau;
+
+ The low, bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush of the sea
+ at flood,
+ Through inlet and creek and river, from dike to
+ upland wood;
+
+ The gulls in the red of morning, the fish-hawk's
+ rise and fall,
+ The drift of the fog in moonshine, over the dark
+ coast-wall.
+
+ She saw the face of her mother, she heard the song
+ she sang;
+ And far off, faintly, slowly, the bell for vespers
+ rang.
+
+ By her bed the hard-faced mistress sat, smoothing
+ the wrinkled sheet,
+ Peering into the face, so helpless, and feeling the
+ ice-cold feet.
+
+ With a vague remorse atoning for her greed and
+ long abuse,
+ By care no longer heeded and pity too late for use.
+
+ Up the stairs of the garret softly the son of the
+ mistress stepped,
+ Leaned over the head-board, covering his face with
+ his hands, and wept.
+
+ Outspake the mother, who watched him sharply,
+ with brow a-frown
+ "What! love you the Papist, the beggar, the
+ charge of the town?"
+
+ Be she Papist or beggar who lies here, I know
+ and God knows
+ I love her, and fain would go with her wherever
+ she goes!
+
+ "O mother! that sweet face came pleading, for
+ love so athirst.
+ You saw but the town-charge; I knew her God's
+ angel at first."
+
+ Shaking her gray head, the mistress hushed down
+ a bitter cry;
+ And awed by the silence and shadow of death
+ drawing nigh,
+
+ She murmured a psalm of the Bible; but closer
+ the young girl pressed,
+ With the last of her life in her fingers, the cross
+ to her breast.
+
+ "My son, come away," cried the mother, her voice
+ cruel grown.
+ "She is joined to her idols, like Ephraim; let her
+ alone!"
+
+ But he knelt with his hand on her forehead, his
+ lips to her ear,
+ And he called back the soul that was passing
+ "Marguerite, do you hear?"
+
+ She paused on the threshold of Heaven; love, pity,
+ surprise,
+ Wistful, tender, lit up for an instant the cloud of
+ her eyes.
+
+ With his heart on his lips he kissed her, but never
+ her cheek grew red,
+ And the words the living long for he spake in the
+ ear of the dead.
+
+ And the robins sang in the orchard, where buds to
+ blossoms grew;
+ Of the folded hands and the still face never the
+ robins knew!
+
+ 1871.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROBIN.
+
+ MY old Welsh neighbor over the way
+ Crept slowly out in the sun of spring,
+ Pushed from her ears the locks of gray,
+ And listened to hear the robin sing.
+
+ Her grandson, playing at marbles, stopped,
+ And, cruel in sport as boys will be,
+ Tossed a stone at the bird, who hopped
+ From bough to bough in the apple-tree.
+
+ "Nay!" said the grandmother; "have you not heard,
+ My poor, bad boy! of the fiery pit,
+ And how, drop by drop, this merciful bird
+ Carries the water that quenches it?
+
+ "He brings cool dew in his little bill,
+ And lets it fall on the souls of sin
+ You can see the mark on his red breast still
+ Of fires that scorch as he drops it in.
+
+ "My poor Bron rhuddyn! my breast-burned bird,
+ Singing so sweetly from limb to limb,
+ Very dear to the heart of Our Lord
+ Is he who pities the lost like Him!"
+
+ "Amen!" I said to the beautiful myth;
+ "Sing, bird of God, in my heart as well:
+ Each good thought is a drop wherewith
+ To cool and lessen the fires of hell.
+
+ "Prayers of love like rain-drops fall,
+ Tears of pity are cooling dew,
+ And dear to the heart of Our Lord are all
+ Who suffer like Him in the good they do!"
+
+ 1871.
+
+
+
+
+THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM.
+
+INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
+
+THE beginning of German emigration to America may be traced to the
+personal influence of William Penn, who in 1677 visited the Continent,
+and made the acquaintance of an intelligent and highly cultivated circle
+of Pietists, or Mystics, who, reviving in the seventeenth century the
+spiritual faith and worship of Tauler and the "Friends of God" in the
+fourteenth, gathered about the pastor Spener, and the young and
+beautiful Eleonora Johanna Von Merlau. In this circle originated the
+Frankfort Land Company, which bought of William Penn, the Governor of
+Pennsylvania, a tract of land near the new city of Philadelphia. The
+company's agent in the New World was a rising young lawyer, Francis
+Daniel Pastorius, son of Judge Pastorius, of Windsheim, who, at the age
+of seventeen, entered the University of Altorf. He studied law at,
+Strasburg, Basle, and Jena, and at Ratisbon, the seat of the Imperial
+Government, obtained a practical knowledge of international polity.
+Successful in all his examinations and disputations, he received the
+degree of Doctor of Law at Nuremberg in 1676. In 1679 he was a
+law-lecturer at Frankfort, where he became deeply interested in the
+teachings of Dr. Spener. In 1680-81 he travelled in France, England,
+Ireland, and Italy with his friend Herr Von Rodeck. "I was," he says,
+"glad to enjoy again the company of my Christian friends, rather than be
+with Von Rodeck feasting and dancing." In 1683, in company with a small
+number of German Friends, he emigrated to America, settling upon the
+Frankfort Company's tract between the Schuylkill and the Delaware
+rivers. The township was divided into four hamlets, namely, Germantown,
+Krisheim, Crefield, and Sommerhausen. Soon after his arrival he united
+himself with the Society of Friends, and became one of its most able and
+devoted members, as well as the recognized head and lawgiver of the
+settlement. He married, two years after his arrival, Anneke (Anna),
+daughter of Dr. Klosterman, of Muhlheim. In the year 1688 he drew up a
+memorial against slaveholding, which was adopted by the Germantown
+Friends and sent up to the Monthly Meeting, and thence to the Yearly
+Meeting at Philadelphia. It is noteworthy as the first protest made by
+a religious body against Negro Slavery. The original document was
+discovered in 1844 by the Philadelphia antiquarian, Nathan Kite, and
+published in The Friend (Vol. XVIII. No. 16). It is a bold and direct
+appeal to the best instincts of the heart. "Have not," he asks, "these
+negroes as much right to fight for their freedom as you have to keep
+them slaves?" Under the wise direction of Pastorius, the German-town
+settlement grew and prospered. The inhabitants planted orchards and
+vineyards, and surrounded themselves with souvenirs of their old home.
+A large number of them were linen-weavers, as well as small farmers.
+The Quakers were the principal sect, but men of all religions were
+tolerated, and lived together in harmony. In 1692 Richard Frame
+published, in what he called verse, a Description of Pennsylvania, in
+which he alludes to the settlement:--
+
+ "The German town of which I spoke before,
+ Which is at least in length one mile or more,
+ Where lives High German people and Low Dutch,
+ Whose trade in weaving linen cloth is much,
+ --There grows the flax, as also you may know
+ That from the same they do divide the tow.
+ Their trade suits well their habitation,
+ We find convenience for their occupation."
+
+Pastorius seems to have been on intimate terms with William Penn, Thomas
+Lloyd, Chief Justice Logan, Thomas Story, and other leading men in the
+Province belonging to his own religious society, as also with Kelpius,
+the learned Mystic of the Wissahickon, with the pastor of the Swedes'
+church, and the leaders of the Mennonites. He wrote a description of
+Pennsylvania, which was published at Frankfort and Leipsic in 1700 and
+1701. His Lives of the Saints, etc., written in German and dedicated to
+Professor Schurmberg, his old teacher, was published in 1690. He left
+behind him many unpublished manuscripts covering a very wide range of
+subjects, most of which are now lost. One huge manuscript folio,
+entitled Hive Beestock, Melliotropheum Alucar, or Rusca Apium, still
+remains, containing one thousand pages with about one hundred lines to a
+page. It is a medley of knowledge and fancy, history, philosophy, and
+poetry, written in seven languages. A large portion of his poetry is
+devoted to the pleasures of gardening, the description of flowers, and
+the care of bees. The following specimen of his punning Latin is
+addressed to an orchard-pilferer:--
+
+ "Quisquis in haec furtim reptas viridaria nostra
+ Tangere fallaci poma caveto mane,
+ Si non obsequeris faxit Deus omne quod opto,
+ Cum malis nostris ut mala cuncta feras."
+
+Professor Oswald Seidensticker, to whose papers in Der Deutsche Pioneer
+and that able periodical the Penn Monthly, of Philadelphia, I am
+indebted for many of the foregoing facts in regard to the German
+pilgrims of the New World, thus closes his notice of Pastorius:--
+"No tombstone, not even a record of burial, indicates where his remains
+have found their last resting-place, and the pardonable desire to
+associate the homage due to this distinguished man with some visible
+memento can not be gratified. There is no reason to suppose that he was
+interred in any other place than the Friends' old burying-ground in
+Germantown, though the fact is not attested by any definite source of
+information. After all, this obliteration of the last trace of his
+earthly existence is but typical of what has overtaken the times which
+he represents; that Germantown which he founded, which saw him live and
+move, is at present but a quaint idyl of the past, almost a myth, barely
+remembered and little cared for by the keener race that has succeeded.
+The Pilgrims of Plymouth have not lacked historian and poet. Justice has
+been done to their faith, courage, and self-sacrifice, and to the mighty
+influence of their endeavors to establish righteousness on the earth.
+The Quaker pilgrims of Pennsylvania, seeking the same object by
+different means, have not been equally fortunate. The power of their
+testimony for truth and holiness, peace and freedom, enforced only by
+what Milton calls "the unresistible might of meekness," has been felt
+through two centuries in the amelioration of penal severities, the
+abolition of slavery, the reform of the erring, the relief of the poor
+and suffering,--felt, in brief, in every step of human progress. But of
+the men themselves, with the single exception of William Penn, scarcely
+anything is known. Contrasted, from the outset, with the stern,
+aggressive Puritans of New England, they have come to be regarded as
+"a feeble folk," with a personality as doubtful as their unrecorded
+graves. They were not soldiers, like Miles Standish; they had no figure
+so picturesque as Vane, no leader so rashly brave and haughty as
+Endicott. No Cotton Mather wrote their Magnalia; they had no awful drama
+of supernaturalism in which Satan and his angels were actors; and the
+only witch mentioned in their simple annals was a poor old Swedish
+woman, who, on complaint of her countrywomen, was tried and acquitted
+of everything but imbecility and folly. Nothing but common-place offices
+of civility came to pass between them and the Indians; indeed, their
+enemies taunted them with the fact that the savages did not regard them
+as Christians, but just such men as themselves. Yet it must be apparent
+to every careful observer of the progress of American civilization that
+its two principal currents had their sources in the entirely opposite
+directions of the Puritan and Quaker colonies. To use the words of a
+late writer: (1) "The historical forces, with which no others may be
+compared in their influence on the people, have been those of the
+Puritan and the Quaker. The strength of the one was in the confession of
+an invisible Presence, a righteous, eternal Will, which would establish
+righteousness on earth; and thence arose the conviction of a direct
+personal responsibility, which could be tempted by no external splendor
+and could be shaken by no internal agitation, and could not be evaded or
+transferred. The strength of the other was the witness in the human
+spirit to an eternal Word, an Inner Voice which spoke to each alone,
+while yet it spoke to every man; a Light which each was to follow, and
+which yet was the light of the world; and all other voices were silent
+before this, and the solitary path whither it led was more sacred than
+the worn ways of cathedral-aisles." It will be sufficiently apparent to
+the reader that, in the poem which follows, I have attempted nothing
+beyond a study of the life and times of the Pennsylvania colonist,--a
+simple picture of a noteworthy man and his locality. The colors of my
+sketch are all very sober, toned down to the quiet and dreamy atmosphere
+through which its subject is visible. Whether, in the glare and tumult
+of the present time, such a picture will find favor may well be
+questioned. I only know that it has beguiled for me some hours of
+weariness, and that, whatever may be its measure of public appreciation,
+it has been to me its own reward.
+ J. G. W.
+AMESBURY, 5th mo., 1872.
+
+
+ HAIL to posterity!
+ Hail, future men of Germanopolis!
+ Let the young generations yet to be
+ Look kindly upon this.
+ Think how your fathers left their native land,--
+ Dear German-land! O sacred hearths and homes!--
+
+ And, where the wild beast roams,
+ In patience planned
+ New forest-homes beyond the mighty sea,
+ There undisturbed and free
+ To live as brothers of one family.
+ What pains and cares befell,
+ What trials and what fears,
+ Remember, and wherein we have done well
+ Follow our footsteps, men of coming years!
+ Where we have failed to do
+ Aright, or wisely live,
+ Be warned by us, the better way pursue,
+ And, knowing we were human, even as you,
+ Pity us and forgive!
+ Farewell, Posterity!
+ Farewell, dear Germany
+ Forevermore farewell!
+
+ (From the Latin of Francis DANIEL PASTORIUS in
+ the Germantown Records. 1688.)
+
+
+ PRELUDE.
+
+ I SING the Pilgrim of a softer clime
+ And milder speech than those brave men's who brought
+ To the ice and iron of our winter time
+ A will as firm, a creed as stern, and wrought
+ With one mailed hand, and with the other fought.
+ Simply, as fits my theme, in homely rhyme
+ I sing the blue-eyed German Spener taught,
+ Through whose veiled, mystic faith the Inward Light,
+ Steady and still, an easy brightness, shone,
+ Transfiguring all things in its radiance white.
+ The garland which his meekness never sought
+ I bring him; over fields of harvest sown
+ With seeds of blessing, now to ripeness grown,
+ I bid the sower pass before the reapers' sight.
+
+ . . . . . . . . . .
+
+ Never in tenderer quiet lapsed the day
+ From Pennsylvania's vales of spring away,
+ Where, forest-walled, the scattered hamlets lay
+
+ Along the wedded rivers. One long bar
+ Of purple cloud, on which the evening star
+ Shone like a jewel on a scimitar,
+
+ Held the sky's golden gateway. Through the deep
+ Hush of the woods a murmur seemed to creep,
+ The Schuylkill whispering in a voice of sleep.
+
+ All else was still. The oxen from their ploughs
+ Rested at last, and from their long day's browse
+ Came the dun files of Krisheim's home-bound cows.
+
+ And the young city, round whose virgin zone
+ The rivers like two mighty arms were thrown,
+ Marked by the smoke of evening fires alone,
+
+ Lay in the distance, lovely even then
+ With its fair women and its stately men
+ Gracing the forest court of William Penn,
+
+ Urban yet sylvan; in its rough-hewn frames
+ Of oak and pine the dryads held their claims,
+ And lent its streets their pleasant woodland names.
+
+ Anna Pastorius down the leafy lane
+ Looked city-ward, then stooped to prune again
+ Her vines and simples, with a sigh of pain.
+
+ For fast the streaks of ruddy sunset paled
+ In the oak clearing, and, as daylight failed,
+ Slow, overhead, the dusky night-birds sailed.
+
+ Again she looked: between green walls of shade,
+ With low-bent head as if with sorrow weighed,
+ Daniel Pastorius slowly came and said,
+
+ "God's peace be with thee, Anna!" Then he stood
+ Silent before her, wrestling with the mood
+ Of one who sees the evil and not good.
+
+ "What is it, my Pastorius?" As she spoke,
+ A slow, faint smile across his features broke,
+ Sadder than tears. "Dear heart," he said, "our folk
+
+ "Are even as others. Yea, our goodliest Friends
+ Are frail; our elders have their selfish ends,
+ And few dare trust the Lord to make amends
+
+ "For duty's loss. So even our feeble word
+ For the dumb slaves the startled meeting heard
+ As if a stone its quiet waters stirred;
+
+ "And, as the clerk ceased reading, there began
+ A ripple of dissent which downward ran
+ In widening circles, as from man to man.
+
+ "Somewhat was said of running before sent,
+ Of tender fear that some their guide outwent,
+ Troublers of Israel. I was scarce intent
+
+ "On hearing, for behind the reverend row
+ Of gallery Friends, in dumb and piteous show,
+ I saw, methought, dark faces full of woe.
+
+ "And, in the spirit, I was taken where
+ They toiled and suffered; I was made aware
+ Of shame and wrath and anguish and despair!
+
+ "And while the meeting smothered our poor plea
+ With cautious phrase, a Voice there seemed to be,
+ As ye have done to these ye do to me!'
+
+ "So it all passed; and the old tithe went on
+ Of anise, mint, and cumin, till the sun
+ Set, leaving still the weightier work undone.
+
+ "Help, for the good man faileth! Who is strong,
+ If these be weak? Who shall rebuke the wrong,
+ If these consent? How long, O Lord! how long!"
+
+ He ceased; and, bound in spirit with the bound,
+ With folded arms, and eyes that sought the ground,
+ Walked musingly his little garden round.
+
+ About him, beaded with the falling dew,
+ Rare plants of power and herbs of healing grew,
+ Such as Van Helmont and Agrippa knew.
+
+ For, by the lore of Gorlitz' gentle sage,
+ With the mild mystics of his dreamy age
+ He read the herbal signs of nature's page,
+
+ As once he heard in sweet Von Merlau's' bowers
+ Fair as herself, in boyhood's happy hours,
+ The pious Spener read his creed in flowers.
+
+ "The dear Lord give us patience!" said his wife,
+ Touching with finger-tip an aloe, rife
+ With leaves sharp-pointed like an Aztec knife
+
+ Or Carib spear, a gift to William Penn
+ From the rare gardens of John Evelyn,
+ Brought from the Spanish Main by merchantmen.
+
+ "See this strange plant its steady purpose hold,
+ And, year by year, its patient leaves unfold,
+ Till the young eyes that watched it first are old.
+
+ "But some time, thou hast told me, there shall come
+ A sudden beauty, brightness, and perfume,
+ The century-moulded bud shall burst in bloom.
+
+ "So may the seed which hath been sown to-day
+ Grow with the years, and, after long delay,
+ Break into bloom, and God's eternal Yea!
+
+ "Answer at last the patient prayers of them
+ Who now, by faith alone, behold its stem
+ Crowned with the flowers of Freedom's diadem.
+
+ "Meanwhile, to feel and suffer, work and wait,
+ Remains for us. The wrong indeed is great,
+ But love and patience conquer soon or late."
+
+ "Well hast thou said, my Anna!" Tenderer
+ Than youth's caress upon the head of her
+ Pastorius laid his hand. "Shall we demur
+
+ "Because the vision tarrieth? In an hour
+ We dream not of, the slow-grown bud may flower,
+ And what was sown in weakness rise in power!"
+
+ Then through the vine-draped door whose legend read,
+ "Procul este profani!" Anna led
+ To where their child upon his little bed
+
+ Looked up and smiled. "Dear heart," she said, "if we
+ Must bearers of a heavy burden be,
+ Our boy, God willing, yet the day shall see
+
+ "When from the gallery to the farthest seat,
+ Slave and slave-owner shall no longer meet,
+ But all sit equal at the Master's feet."
+
+ On the stone hearth the blazing walnut block
+ Set the low walls a-glimmer, showed the cock
+ Rebuking Peter on the Van Wyck clock,
+
+ Shone on old tomes of law and physic, side
+ By side with Fox and Belimen, played at hide
+ And seek with Anna, midst her household pride
+
+ Of flaxen webs, and on the table, bare
+ Of costly cloth or silver cup, but where,
+ Tasting the fat shads of the Delaware,
+
+ The courtly Penn had praised the goodwife's cheer,
+ And quoted Horace o'er her home brewed beer,
+ Till even grave Pastorius smiled to hear.
+
+ In such a home, beside the Schuylkill's wave,
+ He dwelt in peace with God and man, and gave
+ Food to the poor and shelter to the slave.
+
+ For all too soon the New World's scandal shamed
+ The righteous code by Penn and Sidney framed,
+ And men withheld the human rights they claimed.
+
+ And slowly wealth and station sanction lent,
+ And hardened avarice, on its gains intent,
+ Stifled the inward whisper of dissent.
+
+ Yet all the while the burden rested sore
+ On tender hearts. At last Pastorius bore
+ Their warning message to the Church's door
+
+ In God's name; and the leaven of the word
+ Wrought ever after in the souls who heard,
+ And a dead conscience in its grave-clothes stirred
+
+ To troubled life, and urged the vain excuse
+ Of Hebrew custom, patriarchal use,
+ Good in itself if evil in abuse.
+
+ Gravely Pastorius listened, not the less
+ Discerning through the decent fig-leaf dress
+ Of the poor plea its shame of selfishness.
+
+ One Scripture rule, at least, was unforgot;
+ He hid the outcast, and betrayed him not;
+ And, when his prey the human hunter sought,
+
+ He scrupled not, while Anna's wise delay
+ And proffered cheer prolonged the master's stay,
+ To speed the black guest safely on his way.
+
+ Yet, who shall guess his bitter grief who lends
+ His life to some great cause, and finds his friends
+ Shame or betray it for their private ends?
+
+ How felt the Master when his chosen strove
+ In childish folly for their seats above;
+ And that fond mother, blinded by her love,
+
+ Besought him that her sons, beside his throne,
+ Might sit on either hand? Amidst his own
+ A stranger oft, companionless and lone,
+
+ God's priest and prophet stands. The martyr's pain
+ Is not alone from scourge and cell and chain;
+ Sharper the pang when, shouting in his train,
+
+ His weak disciples by their lives deny
+ The loud hosannas of their daily cry,
+ And make their echo of his truth a lie.
+
+ His forest home no hermit's cell he found,
+ Guests, motley-minded, drew his hearth around,
+ And held armed truce upon its neutral ground.
+
+ There Indian chiefs with battle-bows unstrung,
+ Strong, hero-limbed, like those whom Homer sung,
+ Pastorius fancied, when the world was young,
+
+ Came with their tawny women, lithe and tall,
+ Like bronzes in his friend Von Rodeck's hall,
+ Comely, if black, and not unpleasing all.
+
+ There hungry folk in homespun drab and gray
+ Drew round his board on Monthly Meeting day,
+ Genial, half merry in their friendly way.
+
+ Or, haply, pilgrims from the Fatherland,
+ Weak, timid, homesick, slow to understand
+ The New World's promise, sought his helping hand.
+
+ Or painful Kelpius (13) from his hermit den
+ By Wissahickon, maddest of good men,
+ Dreamed o'er the Chiliast dreams of Petersen.
+
+ Deep in the woods, where the small river slid
+ Snake-like in shade, the Helmstadt Mystic hid,
+ Weird as a wizard, over arts forbid,
+
+ Reading the books of Daniel and of John,
+ And Behmen's Morning-Redness, through the Stone
+ Of Wisdom, vouchsafed to his eyes alone,
+
+ Whereby he read what man ne'er read before,
+ And saw the visions man shall see no more,
+ Till the great angel, striding sea and shore,
+
+ Shall bid all flesh await, on land or ships,
+ The warning trump of the Apocalypse,
+ Shattering the heavens before the dread eclipse.
+
+ Or meek-eyed Mennonist his bearded chin
+ Leaned o'er the gate; or Ranter, pure within,
+ Aired his perfection in a world of sin.
+
+ Or, talking of old home scenes, Op der Graaf
+ Teased the low back-log with his shodden staff,
+ Till the red embers broke into a laugh
+
+ And dance of flame, as if they fain would cheer
+ The rugged face, half tender, half austere,
+ Touched with the pathos of a homesick tear!
+
+ Or Sluyter, (14) saintly familist, whose word
+ As law the Brethren of the Manor heard,
+ Announced the speedy terrors of the Lord,
+
+ And turned, like Lot at Sodom, from his race,
+ Above a wrecked world with complacent face
+ Riding secure upon his plank of grace!
+
+ Haply, from Finland's birchen groves exiled,
+ Manly in thought, in simple ways a child,
+ His white hair floating round his visage mild,
+
+ The Swedish pastor sought the Quaker's door,
+ Pleased from his neighbor's lips to hear once more
+ His long-disused and half-forgotten lore.
+
+ For both could baffle Babel's lingual curse,
+ And speak in Bion's Doric, and rehearse
+ Cleanthes' hymn or Virgil's sounding verse.
+
+ And oft Pastorius and the meek old man
+ Argued as Quaker and as Lutheran,
+ Ending in Christian love, as they began.
+
+ With lettered Lloyd on pleasant morns he strayed
+ Where Sommerhausen over vales of shade
+ Looked miles away, by every flower delayed,
+
+ Or song of bird, happy and free with one
+ Who loved, like him, to let his memory run
+ Over old fields of learning, and to sun
+
+ Himself in Plato's wise philosophies,
+ And dream with Philo over mysteries
+ Whereof the dreamer never finds the keys;
+
+ To touch all themes of thought, nor weakly stop
+ For doubt of truth, but let the buckets drop
+ Deep down and bring the hidden waters up (15)
+
+ For there was freedom in that wakening time
+ Of tender souls; to differ was not crime;
+ The varying bells made up the perfect chime.
+
+ On lips unlike was laid the altar's coal,
+ The white, clear light, tradition-colored, stole
+ Through the stained oriel of each human soul.
+
+ Gathered from many sects, the Quaker brought
+ His old beliefs, adjusting to the thought
+ That moved his soul the creed his fathers taught.
+
+ One faith alone, so broad that all mankind
+ Within themselves its secret witness find,
+ The soul's communion with the Eternal Mind,
+
+ The Spirit's law, the Inward Rule and Guide,
+ Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, allied,
+ The polished Penn and Cromwell's Ironside.
+
+ As still in Hemskerck's Quaker Meeting, (16) face
+ By face in Flemish detail, we may trace
+ How loose-mouthed boor and fine ancestral grace
+
+ Sat in close contrast,--the clipt-headed churl,
+ Broad market-dame, and simple serving-girl
+ By skirt of silk and periwig in curl
+
+ For soul touched soul; the spiritual treasure-trove
+ Made all men equal, none could rise above
+ Nor sink below that level of God's love.
+
+ So, with his rustic neighbors sitting down,
+ The homespun frock beside the scholar's gown,
+ Pastorius to the manners of the town
+
+ Added the freedom of the woods, and sought
+ The bookless wisdom by experience taught,
+ And learned to love his new-found home, while not
+
+ Forgetful of the old; the seasons went
+ Their rounds, and somewhat to his spirit lent
+ Of their own calm and measureless content.
+
+ Glad even to tears, he heard the robin sing
+ His song of welcome to the Western spring,
+ And bluebird borrowing from the sky his wing.
+
+ And when the miracle of autumn came,
+ And all the woods with many-colored flame
+ Of splendor, making summer's greenness tame,
+
+ Burned, unconsumed, a voice without a sound
+ Spake to him from each kindled bush around,
+ And made the strange, new landscape holy ground
+
+ And when the bitter north-wind, keen and swift,
+ Swept the white street and piled the dooryard drift,
+ He exercised, as Friends might say, his gift
+
+ Of verse, Dutch, English, Latin, like the hash
+ Of corn and beans in Indian succotash;
+ Dull, doubtless, but with here and there a flash
+
+ Of wit and fine conceit,--the good man's play
+ Of quiet fancies, meet to while away
+ The slow hours measuring off an idle day.
+
+ At evening, while his wife put on her look
+ Of love's endurance, from its niche he took
+ The written pages of his ponderous book.
+
+ And read, in half the languages of man,
+ His "Rusca Apium," which with bees began,
+ And through the gamut of creation ran.
+
+ Or, now and then, the missive of some friend
+ In gray Altorf or storied Nurnberg penned
+ Dropped in upon him like a guest to spend
+
+ The night beneath his roof-tree. Mystical
+ The fair Von Merlau spake as waters fall
+ And voices sound in dreams, and yet withal
+
+ Human and sweet, as if each far, low tone,
+ Over the roses of her gardens blown
+ Brought the warm sense of beauty all her own.
+
+ Wise Spener questioned what his friend could trace
+ Of spiritual influx or of saving grace
+ In the wild natures of the Indian race.
+
+ And learned Schurmberg, fain, at times, to look
+ From Talmud, Koran, Veds, and Pentateuch,
+ Sought out his pupil in his far-off nook,
+
+ To query with him of climatic change,
+ Of bird, beast, reptile, in his forest range,
+ Of flowers and fruits and simples new and strange.
+
+ And thus the Old and New World reached their hands
+ Across the water, and the friendly lands
+ Talked with each other from their severed strands.
+
+ Pastorius answered all: while seed and root
+ Sent from his new home grew to flower and fruit
+ Along the Rhine and at the Spessart's foot;
+
+ And, in return, the flowers his boyhood knew
+ Smiled at his door, the same in form and hue,
+ And on his vines the Rhenish clusters grew.
+
+ No idler he; whoever else might shirk,
+ He set his hand to every honest work,--
+ Farmer and teacher, court and meeting clerk.
+
+ Still on the town seal his device is found,
+ Grapes, flax, and thread-spool on a trefoil ground,
+ With "Vinum, Linum et Textrinum" wound.
+
+ One house sufficed for gospel and for law,
+ Where Paul and Grotius, Scripture text and saw,
+ Assured the good, and held the rest in awe.
+
+ Whatever legal maze he wandered through,
+ He kept the Sermon on the Mount in view,
+ And justice always into mercy grew.
+
+ No whipping-post he needed, stocks, nor jail,
+ Nor ducking-stool; the orchard-thief grew pale
+ At his rebuke, the vixen ceased to rail,
+
+ The usurer's grasp released the forfeit land;
+ The slanderer faltered at the witness-stand,
+ And all men took his counsel for command.
+
+ Was it caressing air, the brooding love
+ Of tenderer skies than German land knew of,
+ Green calm below, blue quietness above,
+
+ Still flow of water, deep repose of wood
+ That, with a sense of loving Fatherhood
+ And childlike trust in the Eternal Good,
+
+ Softened all hearts, and dulled the edge of hate,
+ Hushed strife, and taught impatient zeal to wait
+ The slow assurance of the better state?
+
+ Who knows what goadings in their sterner way
+ O'er jagged ice, relieved by granite gray,
+ Blew round the men of Massachusetts Bay?
+
+ What hate of heresy the east-wind woke?
+ What hints of pitiless power and terror spoke
+ In waves that on their iron coast-line broke?
+
+ Be it as it may: within the Land of Penn
+ The sectary yielded to the citizen,
+ And peaceful dwelt the many-creeded men.
+
+ Peace brooded over all. No trumpet stung
+ The air to madness, and no steeple flung
+ Alarums down from bells at midnight rung.
+
+ The land slept well. The Indian from his face
+ Washed all his war-paint off, and in the place
+ Of battle-marches sped the peaceful chase,
+
+ Or wrought for wages at the white man's side,--
+ Giving to kindness what his native pride
+ And lazy freedom to all else denied.
+
+ And well the curious scholar loved the old
+ Traditions that his swarthy neighbors told
+ By wigwam-fires when nights were growing cold,
+
+ Discerned the fact round which their fancy drew
+ Its dreams, and held their childish faith more true
+ To God and man than half the creeds he knew.
+
+ The desert blossomed round him; wheat-fields rolled
+ Beneath the warm wind waves of green and gold;
+ The planted ear returned its hundred-fold.
+
+ Great clusters ripened in a warmer sun
+ Than that which by the Rhine stream shines upon
+ The purpling hillsides with low vines o'errun.
+
+ About each rustic porch the humming-bird
+ Tried with light bill, that scarce a petal stirred,
+ The Old World flowers to virgin soil transferred;
+
+ And the first-fruits of pear and apple, bending
+ The young boughs down, their gold and russet blending,
+ Made glad his heart, familiar odors lending
+
+ To the fresh fragrance of the birch and pine,
+ Life-everlasting, bay, and eglantine,
+ And all the subtle scents the woods combine.
+
+ Fair First-Day mornings, steeped in summer calm,
+ Warm, tender, restful, sweet with woodland balm,
+ Came to him, like some mother-hallowed psalm
+
+ To the tired grinder at the noisy wheel
+ Of labor, winding off from memory's reel
+ A golden thread of music. With no peal
+
+ Of bells to call them to the house of praise,
+ The scattered settlers through green forest-ways
+ Walked meeting-ward. In reverent amaze
+
+ The Indian trapper saw them, from the dim
+ Shade of the alders on the rivulet's rim,
+ Seek the Great Spirit's house to talk with Him.
+
+ There, through the gathered stillness multiplied
+ And made intense by sympathy, outside
+ The sparrows sang, and the gold-robin cried,
+
+ A-swing upon his elm. A faint perfume
+ Breathed through the open windows of the room
+ From locust-trees, heavy with clustered bloom.
+
+ Thither, perchance, sore-tried confessors came,
+ Whose fervor jail nor pillory could tame,
+ Proud of the cropped ears meant to be their shame,
+
+ Men who had eaten slavery's bitter bread
+ In Indian isles; pale women who had bled
+ Under the hangman's lash, and bravely said
+
+ God's message through their prison's iron bars;
+ And gray old soldier-converts, seamed with scars
+ From every stricken field of England's wars.
+
+ Lowly before the Unseen Presence knelt
+ Each waiting heart, till haply some one felt
+ On his moved lips the seal of silence melt.
+
+ Or, without spoken words, low breathings stole
+ Of a diviner life from soul to soul,
+ Baptizing in one tender thought the whole.
+
+ When shaken hands announced the meeting o'er,
+ The friendly group still lingered at the door,
+ Greeting, inquiring, sharing all the store
+
+ Of weekly tidings. Meanwhile youth and maid
+ Down the green vistas of the woodland strayed,
+ Whispered and smiled and oft their feet delayed.
+
+ Did the boy's whistle answer back the thrushes?
+ Did light girl laughter ripple through the bushes,
+ As brooks make merry over roots and rushes?
+
+ Unvexed the sweet air seemed. Without a wound
+ The ear of silence heard, and every sound
+ Its place in nature's fine accordance found.
+
+ And solemn meeting, summer sky and wood,
+ Old kindly faces, youth and maidenhood
+ Seemed, like God's new creation, very good!
+
+ And, greeting all with quiet smile and word,
+ Pastorius went his way. The unscared bird
+ Sang at his side; scarcely the squirrel stirred
+
+ At his hushed footstep on the mossy sod;
+ And, wheresoe'er the good man looked or trod,
+ He felt the peace of nature and of God.
+
+ His social life wore no ascetic form,
+ He loved all beauty, without fear of harm,
+ And in his veins his Teuton blood ran warm.
+
+ Strict to himself, of other men no spy,
+ He made his own no circuit-judge to try
+ The freer conscience of his neighbors by.
+
+ With love rebuking, by his life alone,
+ Gracious and sweet, the better way was shown,
+ The joy of one, who, seeking not his own,
+
+ And faithful to all scruples, finds at last
+ The thorns and shards of duty overpast,
+ And daily life, beyond his hope's forecast,
+
+ Pleasant and beautiful with sight and sound,
+ And flowers upspringing in its narrow round,
+ And all his days with quiet gladness crowned.
+
+ He sang not; but, if sometimes tempted strong,
+ He hummed what seemed like Altorf's Burschen-song;
+ His good wife smiled, and did not count it wrong.
+
+ For well he loved his boyhood's brother band;
+ His Memory, while he trod the New World's strand,
+ A double-ganger walked the Fatherland
+
+ If, when on frosty Christmas eves the light
+ Shone on his quiet hearth, he missed the sight
+ Of Yule-log, Tree, and Christ-child all in white;
+
+ And closed his eyes, and listened to the sweet
+ Old wait-songs sounding down his native street,
+ And watched again the dancers' mingling feet;
+
+ Yet not the less, when once the vision passed,
+ He held the plain and sober maxims fast
+ Of the dear Friends with whom his lot was cast.
+
+ Still all attuned to nature's melodies,
+ He loved the bird's song in his dooryard trees,
+ And the low hum of home-returning bees;
+
+ The blossomed flax, the tulip-trees in bloom
+ Down the long street, the beauty and perfume
+ Of apple-boughs, the mingling light and gloom
+
+ Of Sommerhausen's woodlands, woven through
+ With sun--threads; and the music the wind drew,
+ Mournful and sweet, from leaves it overblew.
+
+ And evermore, beneath this outward sense,
+ And through the common sequence of events,
+ He felt the guiding hand of Providence
+
+ Reach out of space. A Voice spake in his ear,
+ And to all other voices far and near
+ Died at that whisper, full of meanings clear.
+
+ The Light of Life shone round him; one by one
+ The wandering lights, that all-misleading run,
+ Went out like candles paling in the sun.
+
+ That Light he followed, step by step, where'er
+ It led, as in the vision of the seer
+ The wheels moved as the spirit in the clear
+
+ And terrible crystal moved, with all their eyes
+ Watching the living splendor sink or rise,
+ Its will their will, knowing no otherwise.
+
+ Within himself he found the law of right,
+ He walked by faith and not the letter's sight,
+ And read his Bible by the Inward Light.
+
+ And if sometimes the slaves of form and rule,
+ Frozen in their creeds like fish in winter's pool,
+ Tried the large tolerance of his liberal school,
+
+ His door was free to men of every name,
+ He welcomed all the seeking souls who came,
+ And no man's faith he made a cause of blame.
+
+ But best he loved in leisure hours to see
+ His own dear Friends sit by him knee to knee,
+ In social converse, genial, frank, and free.
+
+ There sometimes silence (it were hard to tell
+ Who owned it first) upon the circle fell,
+ Hushed Anna's busy wheel, and laid its spell
+
+ On the black boy who grimaced by the hearth,
+ To solemnize his shining face of mirth;
+ Only the old clock ticked amidst the dearth
+
+ Of sound; nor eye was raised nor hand was stirred
+ In that soul-sabbath, till at last some word
+ Of tender counsel or low prayer was heard.
+
+ Then guests, who lingered but farewell to say
+ And take love's message, went their homeward way;
+ So passed in peace the guileless Quaker's day.
+
+ His was the Christian's unsung Age of Gold,
+ A truer idyl than the bards have told
+ Of Arno's banks or Arcady of old.
+
+ Where still the Friends their place of burial keep,
+ And century-rooted mosses o'er it creep,
+ The Nurnberg scholar and his helpmeet sleep.
+
+ And Anna's aloe? If it flowered at last
+ In Bartram's garden, did John Woolman cast
+ A glance upon it as he meekly passed?
+
+ And did a secret sympathy possess
+ That tender soul, and for the slave's redress
+ Lend hope, strength, patience? It were vain to
+ guess.
+
+ Nay, were the plant itself but mythical,
+ Set in the fresco of tradition's wall
+ Like Jotham's bramble, mattereth not at all.
+
+ Enough to know that, through the winter's frost
+ And summer's heat, no seed of truth is lost,
+ And every duty pays at last its cost.
+
+ For, ere Pastorius left the sun and air,
+ God sent the answer to his life-long prayer;
+ The child was born beside the Delaware,
+
+ Who, in the power a holy purpose lends,
+ Guided his people unto nobler ends,
+ And left them worthier of the name of Friends.
+
+ And to! the fulness of the time has come,
+ And over all the exile's Western home,
+ From sea to sea the flowers of freedom bloom!
+
+ And joy-bells ring, and silver trumpets blow;
+ But not for thee, Pastorius! Even so
+ The world forgets, but the wise angels know.
+
+
+
+
+KING VOLMER AND ELSIE.
+
+AFTER THE DANISH OF CHRISTIAN WINTER.
+
+ WHERE, over heathen doom-rings and gray stones
+ of the Horg,
+ In its little Christian city stands the church of
+ Vordingborg,
+ In merry mood King Volmer sat, forgetful of his
+ power,
+ As idle as the Goose of Gold that brooded on his
+ tower.
+
+ Out spake the King to Henrik, his young and faithful
+ squire
+ "Dar'st trust thy little Elsie, the maid of thy
+ desire?"
+ "Of all the men in Denmark she loveth only me
+ As true to me is Elsie as thy Lily is to thee."
+
+ Loud laughed the king: "To-morrow shall bring
+ another day, (18)
+ When I myself will test her; she will not say me
+ nay."
+ Thereat the lords and gallants, that round about
+ him stood,
+ Wagged all their heads in concert and smiled as
+ courtiers should.
+
+ The gray lark sings o'er Vordingborg, and on the
+ ancient town
+ From the tall tower of Valdemar the Golden Goose
+ looks down;
+ The yellow grain is waving in the pleasant wind of
+ morn,
+ The wood resounds with cry of hounds and blare
+ of hunter's horn.
+
+ In the garden of her father little Elsie sits and
+ spins,
+ And, singing with the early birds, her daily task,
+ begins.
+ Gay tulips bloom and sweet mint curls around her
+ garden-bower,
+ But she is sweeter than the mint and fairer than
+ the flower.
+
+ About her form her kirtle blue clings lovingly, and,
+ white
+ As snow, her loose sleeves only leave her small,
+ round wrists in sight;
+ Below, the modest petticoat can only half conceal
+ The motion of the lightest foot that ever turned a
+ wheel.
+
+ The cat sits purring at her side, bees hum in
+ sunshine warm;
+ But, look! she starts, she lifts her face, she shades
+ it with her arm.
+ And, hark! a train of horsemen, with sound of
+ dog and horn,
+ Come leaping o'er the ditches, come trampling
+ down the corn!
+
+ Merrily rang the bridle-reins, and scarf and plume
+ streamed gay,
+ As fast beside her father's gate the riders held
+ their way;
+ And one was brave in scarlet cloak, with golden
+ spur on heel,
+ And, as he checked his foaming steed, the maiden
+ checked her wheel.
+
+ "All hail among thy roses, the fairest rose to me!
+ For weary months in secret my heart has longed for
+ thee!"
+ What noble knight was this? What words for
+ modest maiden's ear?
+ She dropped a lowly courtesy of bashfulness and
+ fear.
+
+ She lifted up her spinning-wheel; she fain would
+ seek the door,
+ Trembling in every limb, her cheek with blushes
+ crimsoned o'er.
+ "Nay, fear me not," the rider said, "I offer heart
+ and hand,
+ Bear witness these good Danish knights who round
+ about me stand.
+
+ "I grant you time to think of this, to answer as
+ you may,
+ For to-morrow, little Elsie, shall bring another day."
+ He spake the old phrase slyly as, glancing round
+ his train,
+ He saw his merry followers seek to hide their
+ smiles in vain.
+
+ "The snow of pearls I'll scatter in your curls of
+ golden hair,
+ I'll line with furs the velvet of the kirtle that you
+ wear;
+ All precious gems shall twine your neck; and in
+ a chariot gay
+ You shall ride, my little Elsie, behind four steeds
+ of gray.
+
+ "And harps shall sound, and flutes shall play, and
+ brazen lamps shall glow;
+ On marble floors your feet shall weave the dances
+ to and fro.
+ At frosty eventide for us the blazing hearth shall
+ shine,
+ While, at our ease, we play at draughts, and drink
+ the blood-red wine."
+
+ Then Elsie raised her head and met her wooer face
+ to face;
+ A roguish smile shone in her eye and on her lip
+ found place.
+ Back from her low white forehead the curls of
+ gold she threw,
+ And lifted up her eyes to his, steady and clear and
+ blue.
+
+ "I am a lowly peasant, and you a gallant knight;
+ I will not trust a love that soon may cool and turn
+ to slight.
+ If you would wed me henceforth be a peasant, not
+ a lord;
+ I bid you hang upon the wall your tried and trusty
+ sword."
+
+ "To please you, Elsie, I will lay keen Dynadel
+ away,
+ And in its place will swing the scythe and mow
+ your father's hay."
+ "Nay, but your gallant scarlet cloak my eyes can
+ never bear;
+ A Vadmal coat, so plain and gray, is all that you
+ must wear."
+
+ "Well, Vadmal will I wear for you," the rider
+ gayly spoke,
+ "And on the Lord's high altar I'll lay my scarlet
+ cloak."
+ "But mark," she said, "no stately horse my peasant
+ love must ride,
+ A yoke of steers before the plough is all that he
+ must guide."
+
+ The knight looked down upon his steed: "Well,
+ let him wander free
+ No other man must ride the horse that has been
+ backed by me.
+ Henceforth I'll tread the furrow and to my oxen
+ talk,
+ If only little Elsie beside my plough will walk."
+
+ "You must take from out your cellar cask of wine
+ and flask and can;
+ The homely mead I brew you may serve a peasant.
+ man."
+ "Most willingly, fair Elsie, I'll drink that mead
+ of thine,
+ And leave my minstrel's thirsty throat to drain
+ my generous wine."
+
+ "Now break your shield asunder, and shatter sign
+ and boss,
+ Unmeet for peasant-wedded arms, your knightly
+ knee across.
+ And pull me down your castle from top to basement
+ wall,
+ And let your plough trace furrows in the ruins of
+ your hall!"
+
+ Then smiled he with a lofty pride; right well at
+ last he knew
+ The maiden of the spinning-wheel was to her troth.
+ plight true.
+ "Ah, roguish little Elsie! you act your part full
+ well
+ You know that I must bear my shield and in my
+ castle dwell!
+
+ "The lions ramping on that shield between the
+ hearts aflame
+ Keep watch o'er Denmark's honor, and guard her
+ ancient name.
+
+ "For know that I am Volmer; I dwell in yonder
+ towers,
+ Who ploughs them ploughs up Denmark, this
+ goodly home of ours'.
+
+ "I tempt no more, fair Elsie! your heart I know
+ is true;
+ Would God that all our maidens were good and
+ pure as you!
+ Well have you pleased your monarch, and he shall
+ well repay;
+ God's peace! Farewell! To-morrow will bring
+ another day!"
+
+ He lifted up his bridle hand, he spurred his good
+ steed then,
+ And like a whirl-blast swept away with all his
+ gallant men.
+ The steel hoofs beat the rocky path; again on
+ winds of morn
+ The wood resounds with cry of hounds and blare
+ of hunter's horn.
+
+ "Thou true and ever faithful!" the listening
+ Henrik cried;
+ And, leaping o'er the green hedge, he stood by
+ Elsie's side.
+ None saw the fond embracing, save, shining from
+ afar,
+ The Golden Goose that watched them from the
+ tower of Valdemar.
+
+ O darling girls of Denmark! of all the flowers
+ that throng
+ Her vales of spring the fairest, I sing for you my
+ song.
+ No praise as yours so bravely rewards the singer's
+ skill;
+ Thank God! of maids like Elsie the land has
+ plenty still!
+
+ 1872.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE BELLS.
+
+ BENEATH the low-hung night cloud
+ That raked her splintering mast
+ The good ship settled slowly,
+ The cruel leak gained fast.
+
+ Over the awful ocean
+ Her signal guns pealed out.
+ Dear God! was that Thy answer
+ From the horror round about?
+
+ A voice came down the wild wind,
+ "Ho! ship ahoy!" its cry
+ "Our stout Three Bells of Glasgow
+ Shall lay till daylight by!"
+
+ Hour after hour crept slowly,
+ Yet on the heaving swells
+ Tossed up and down the ship-lights,
+ The lights of the Three Bells!
+
+ And ship to ship made signals,
+ Man answered back to man,
+ While oft, to cheer and hearten,
+ The Three Bells nearer ran;
+
+ And the captain from her taffrail
+ Sent down his hopeful cry
+ "Take heart! Hold on!" he shouted;
+ "The Three Bells shall lay by!"
+
+ All night across the waters
+ The tossing lights shone clear;
+ All night from reeling taffrail
+ The Three Bells sent her cheer.
+
+ And when the dreary watches
+ Of storm and darkness passed,
+ Just as the wreck lurched under,
+ All souls were saved at last.
+
+ Sail on, Three Bells, forever,
+ In grateful memory sail!
+ Ring on, Three Bells of rescue,
+ Above the wave and gale!
+
+ Type of the Love eternal,
+ Repeat the Master's cry,
+ As tossing through our darkness
+ The lights of God draw nigh!
+
+ 1872.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN UNDERHILL.
+
+ A SCORE of years had come and gone
+ Since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth stone,
+ When Captain Underhill, bearing scars
+ From Indian ambush and Flemish wars,
+ Left three-hilled Boston and wandered down,
+ East by north, to Cocheco town.
+
+ With Vane the younger, in counsel sweet,
+ He had sat at Anna Hutchinson's feet,
+ And, when the bolt of banishment fell
+ On the head of his saintly oracle,
+ He had shared her ill as her good report,
+ And braved the wrath of the General Court.
+
+ He shook from his feet as he rode away
+ The dust of the Massachusetts Bay.
+ The world might bless and the world might ban,
+ What did it matter the perfect man,
+ To whom the freedom of earth was given,
+ Proof against sin, and sure of heaven?
+
+ He cheered his heart as he rode along
+ With screed of Scripture and holy song,
+ Or thought how he rode with his lances free
+ By the Lower Rhine and the Zuyder-Zee,
+ Till his wood-path grew to a trodden road,
+ And Hilton Point in the distance showed.
+
+ He saw the church with the block-house nigh,
+ The two fair rivers, the flakes thereby,
+ And, tacking to windward, low and crank,
+ The little shallop from Strawberry Bank;
+ And he rose in his stirrups and looked abroad
+ Over land and water, and praised the Lord.
+
+ Goodly and stately and grave to see,
+ Into the clearing's space rode he,
+ With the sun on the hilt of his sword in sheath,
+ And his silver buckles and spurs beneath,
+ And the settlers welcomed him, one and all,
+ From swift Quampeagan to Gonic Fall.
+
+ And he said to the elders: "Lo, I come
+ As the way seemed open to seek a home.
+ Somewhat the Lord hath wrought by my hands
+ In the Narragansett and Netherlands,
+ And if here ye have work for a Christian man,
+ I will tarry, and serve ye as best I can.
+
+ "I boast not of gifts, but fain would own
+ The wonderful favor God hath shown,
+ The special mercy vouchsafed one day
+ On the shore of Narragansett Bay,
+ As I sat, with my pipe, from the camp aside,
+ And mused like Isaac at eventide.
+
+ "A sudden sweetness of peace I found,
+ A garment of gladness wrapped me round;
+ I felt from the law of works released,
+ The strife of the flesh and spirit ceased,
+ My faith to a full assurance grew,
+ And all I had hoped for myself I knew.
+
+ "Now, as God appointeth, I keep my way,
+ I shall not stumble, I shall not stray;
+ He hath taken away my fig-leaf dress,
+ I wear the robe of His righteousness;
+ And the shafts of Satan no more avail
+ Than Pequot arrows on Christian mail."
+
+ "Tarry with us," the settlers cried,
+ "Thou man of God, as our ruler and guide."
+ And Captain Underhill bowed his head.
+ "The will of the Lord be done!" he said.
+ And the morrow beheld him sitting down
+ In the ruler's seat in Cocheco town.
+
+ And he judged therein as a just man should;
+ His words were wise and his rule was good;
+ He coveted not his neighbor's land,
+ From the holding of bribes he shook his hand;
+ And through the camps of the heathen ran
+ A wholesome fear of the valiant man.
+
+ But the heart is deceitful, the good Book saith,
+ And life hath ever a savor of death.
+ Through hymns of triumph the tempter calls,
+ And whoso thinketh he standeth falls.
+ Alas! ere their round the seasons ran,
+ There was grief in the soul of the saintly man.
+
+ The tempter's arrows that rarely fail
+ Had found the joints of his spiritual mail;
+ And men took note of his gloomy air,
+ The shame in his eye, the halt in his prayer,
+ The signs of a battle lost within,
+ The pain of a soul in the coils of sin.
+
+ Then a whisper of scandal linked his name
+ With broken vows and a life of blame;
+ And the people looked askance on him
+ As he walked among them sullen and grim,
+ Ill at ease, and bitter of word,
+ And prompt of quarrel with hand or sword.
+
+ None knew how, with prayer and fasting still,
+ He strove in the bonds of his evil will;
+ But he shook himself like Samson at length,
+ And girded anew his loins of strength,
+ And bade the crier go up and down
+ And call together the wondering town.
+
+ Jeer and murmur and shaking of head
+ Ceased as he rose in his place and said
+ "Men, brethren, and fathers, well ye know
+ How I came among you a year ago,
+ Strong in the faith that my soul was freed
+ From sin of feeling, or thought, or deed.
+
+ "I have sinned, I own it with grief and shame,
+ But not with a lie on my lips I came.
+ In my blindness I verily thought my heart
+ Swept and garnished in every part.
+ He chargeth His angels with folly; He sees
+ The heavens unclean. Was I more than these?
+
+ "I urge no plea. At your feet I lay
+ The trust you gave me, and go my way.
+ Hate me or pity me, as you will,
+ The Lord will have mercy on sinners still;
+ And I, who am chiefest, say to all,
+ Watch and pray, lest ye also fall."
+
+ No voice made answer: a sob so low
+ That only his quickened ear could know
+ Smote his heart with a bitter pain,
+ As into the forest he rode again,
+ And the veil of its oaken leaves shut down
+ On his latest glimpse of Cocheco town.
+
+ Crystal-clear on the man of sin
+ The streams flashed up, and the sky shone in;
+ On his cheek of fever the cool wind blew,
+ The leaves dropped on him their tears of dew,
+ And angels of God, in the pure, sweet guise
+ Of flowers, looked on him with sad surprise.
+
+ Was his ear at fault that brook and breeze
+ Sang in their saddest of minor keys?
+ What was it the mournful wood-thrush said?
+ What whispered the pine-trees overhead?
+ Did he hear the Voice on his lonely way
+ That Adam heard in the cool of day?
+
+ Into the desert alone rode he,
+ Alone with the Infinite Purity;
+ And, bowing his soul to its tender rebuke,
+ As Peter did to the Master's look,
+ He measured his path with prayers of pain
+ For peace with God and nature again.
+
+ And in after years to Cocheco came
+ The bruit of a once familiar name;
+ How among the Dutch of New Netherlands,
+ From wild Danskamer to Haarlem sands,
+ A penitent soldier preached the Word,
+ And smote the heathen with Gideon's sword!
+
+ And the heart of Boston was glad to hear
+ How he harried the foe on the long frontier,
+ And heaped on the land against him barred
+ The coals of his generous watch and ward.
+ Frailest and bravest! the Bay State still
+ Counts with her worthies John Underhill.
+
+ 1873.
+
+
+
+
+CONDUCTOR BRADLEY.
+
+A railway conductor who lost his life in an accident on a Connecticut
+railway, May 9, 1873.
+
+
+ CONDUCTOR BRADLEY, (always may his name
+ Be said with reverence!) as the swift doom came,
+ Smitten to death, a crushed and mangled frame,
+
+ Sank, with the brake he grasped just where he stood
+ To do the utmost that a brave man could,
+ And die, if needful, as a true man should.
+
+ Men stooped above him; women dropped their tears
+ On that poor wreck beyond all hopes or fears,
+ Lost in the strength and glory of his years.
+
+ What heard they? Lo! the ghastly lips of pain,
+ Dead to all thought save duty's, moved again
+ "Put out the signals for the other train!"
+
+ No nobler utterance since the world began
+ From lips of saint or martyr ever ran,
+ Electric, through the sympathies of man.
+
+ Ah me! how poor and noteless seem to this
+ The sick-bed dramas of self-consciousness,
+ Our sensual fears of pain and hopes of bliss!
+
+ Oh, grand, supreme endeavor! Not in vain
+ That last brave act of failing tongue and brain
+ Freighted with life the downward rushing train,
+
+ Following the wrecked one, as wave follows wave,
+ Obeyed the warning which the dead lips gave.
+ Others he saved, himself he could not save.
+
+ Nay, the lost life was saved. He is not dead
+ Who in his record still the earth shall tread
+ With God's clear aureole shining round his head.
+
+ We bow as in the dust, with all our pride
+ Of virtue dwarfed the noble deed beside.
+ God give us grace to live as Bradley died!
+
+ 1873.
+
+
+
+
+THE WITCH OF WENHAM.
+
+The house is still standing in Danvers, Mass., where, it is said, a
+suspected witch was confined overnight in the attic, which was bolted
+fast. In the morning when the constable came to take her to Salem for
+trial she was missing, although the door was still bolted. Her escape
+was doubtless aided by her friends, but at the time it was attributed
+to Satanic interference.
+
+
+ I.
+
+ ALONG Crane River's sunny slopes
+ Blew warm the winds of May,
+ And over Naumkeag's ancient oaks
+ The green outgrew the gray.
+
+ The grass was green on Rial-side,
+ The early birds at will
+ Waked up the violet in its dell,
+ The wind-flower on its hill.
+
+ "Where go you, in your Sunday coat,
+ Son Andrew, tell me, pray."
+ For striped perch in Wenham Lake
+ I go to fish to-day."
+
+ "Unharmed of thee in Wenham Lake
+ The mottled perch shall be
+ A blue-eyed witch sits on the bank
+ And weaves her net for thee.
+
+ "She weaves her golden hair; she sings
+ Her spell-song low and faint;
+ The wickedest witch in Salem jail
+ Is to that girl a saint."
+
+ "Nay, mother, hold thy cruel tongue;
+ God knows," the young man cried,
+ "He never made a whiter soul
+ Than hers by Wenham side.
+
+ "She tends her mother sick and blind,
+ And every want supplies;
+ To her above the blessed Book
+ She lends her soft blue eyes.
+
+ "Her voice is glad with holy songs,
+ Her lips are sweet with prayer;
+ Go where you will, in ten miles round
+ Is none more good and fair."
+
+ "Son Andrew, for the love of God
+ And of thy mother, stay!"
+ She clasped her hands, she wept aloud,
+ But Andrew rode away.
+
+ "O reverend sir, my Andrew's soul
+ The Wenham witch has caught;
+ She holds him with the curled gold
+ Whereof her snare is wrought.
+
+ "She charms him with her great blue eyes,
+ She binds him with her hair;
+ Oh, break the spell with holy words,
+ Unbind him with a prayer!"
+
+ "Take heart," the painful preacher said,
+ "This mischief shall not be;
+ The witch shall perish in her sins
+ And Andrew shall go free.
+
+ "Our poor Ann Putnam testifies
+ She saw her weave a spell,
+ Bare-armed, loose-haired, at full of moon,
+ Around a dried-up well.
+
+ "'Spring up, O well!' she softly sang
+ The Hebrew's old refrain
+ (For Satan uses Bible words),
+ Till water flowed a-main.
+
+ "And many a goodwife heard her speak
+ By Wenham water words
+ That made the buttercups take wings
+ And turn to yellow birds.
+
+ "They say that swarming wild bees seek
+ The hive at her command;
+ And fishes swim to take their food
+ From out her dainty hand.
+
+ "Meek as she sits in meeting-time,
+ The godly minister
+ Notes well the spell that doth compel
+ The young men's eyes to her.
+
+ "The mole upon her dimpled chin
+ Is Satan's seal and sign;
+ Her lips are red with evil bread
+ And stain of unblest wine.
+
+ "For Tituba, my Indian, saith
+ At Quasycung she took
+ The Black Man's godless sacrament
+ And signed his dreadful book.
+
+ "Last night my sore-afflicted child
+ Against the young witch cried.
+ To take her Marshal Herrick rides
+ Even now to Wenham side."
+
+ The marshal in his saddle sat,
+ His daughter at his knee;
+ "I go to fetch that arrant witch,
+ Thy fair playmate," quoth he.
+
+ "Her spectre walks the parsonage,
+ And haunts both hall and stair;
+ They know her by the great blue eyes
+ And floating gold of hair."
+
+ "They lie, they lie, my father dear!
+ No foul old witch is she,
+ But sweet and good and crystal-pure
+ As Wenham waters be."
+
+ "I tell thee, child, the Lord hath set
+ Before us good and ill,
+ And woe to all whose carnal loves
+ Oppose His righteous will.
+
+ "Between Him and the powers of hell
+ Choose thou, my child, to-day
+ No sparing hand, no pitying eye,
+ When God commands to slay!"
+
+ He went his way; the old wives shook
+ With fear as he drew nigh;
+ The children in the dooryards held
+ Their breath as he passed by.
+
+ Too well they knew the gaunt gray horse
+ The grim witch-hunter rode
+ The pale Apocalyptic beast
+ By grisly Death bestrode.
+
+
+ II.
+
+ Oh, fair the face of Wenham Lake
+ Upon the young girl's shone,
+ Her tender mouth, her dreaming eyes,
+ Her yellow hair outblown.
+
+ By happy youth and love attuned
+ To natural harmonies,
+ The singing birds, the whispering wind,
+ She sat beneath the trees.
+
+ Sat shaping for her bridal dress
+ Her mother's wedding gown,
+ When lo! the marshal, writ in hand,
+ From Alford hill rode down.
+
+ His face was hard with cruel fear,
+ He grasped the maiden's hands
+ "Come with me unto Salem town,
+ For so the law commands!"
+
+ "Oh, let me to my mother say
+ Farewell before I go!"
+ He closer tied her little hands
+ Unto his saddle bow.
+
+ "Unhand me," cried she piteously,
+ "For thy sweet daughter's sake."
+ "I'll keep my daughter safe," he said,
+ "From the witch of Wenham Lake."
+
+ "Oh, leave me for my mother's sake,
+ She needs my eyes to see."
+ "Those eyes, young witch, the crows shall peck
+ From off the gallows-tree."
+
+ He bore her to a farm-house old,
+ And up its stairway long,
+ And closed on her the garret-door
+ With iron bolted strong.
+
+ The day died out, the night came down
+ Her evening prayer she said,
+ While, through the dark, strange faces seemed
+ To mock her as she prayed.
+
+ The present horror deepened all
+ The fears her childhood knew;
+ The awe wherewith the air was filled
+ With every breath she drew.
+
+ And could it be, she trembling asked,
+ Some secret thought or sin
+ Had shut good angels from her heart
+ And let the bad ones in?
+
+ Had she in some forgotten dream
+ Let go her hold on Heaven,
+ And sold herself unwittingly
+ To spirits unforgiven?
+
+ Oh, weird and still the dark hours passed;
+ No human sound she heard,
+ But up and down the chimney stack
+ The swallows moaned and stirred.
+
+ And o'er her, with a dread surmise
+ Of evil sight and sound,
+ The blind bats on their leathern wings
+ Went wheeling round and round.
+
+ Low hanging in the midnight sky
+ Looked in a half-faced moon.
+ Was it a dream, or did she hear
+ Her lover's whistled tune?
+
+ She forced the oaken scuttle back;
+ A whisper reached her ear
+ "Slide down the roof to me," it said,
+ "So softly none may hear."
+
+ She slid along the sloping roof
+ Till from its eaves she hung,
+ And felt the loosened shingles yield
+ To which her fingers clung.
+
+ Below, her lover stretched his hands
+ And touched her feet so small;
+ "Drop down to me, dear heart," he said,
+ "My arms shall break the fall."
+
+ He set her on his pillion soft,
+ Her arms about him twined;
+ And, noiseless as if velvet-shod,
+ They left the house behind.
+
+ But when they reached the open way,
+ Full free the rein he cast;
+ Oh, never through the mirk midnight
+ Rode man and maid more fast.
+
+ Along the wild wood-paths they sped,
+ The bridgeless streams they swam;
+ At set of moon they passed the Bass,
+ At sunrise Agawam.
+
+ At high noon on the Merrimac
+ The ancient ferryman
+ Forgot, at times, his idle oars,
+ So fair a freight to scan.
+
+ And when from off his grounded boat
+ He saw them mount and ride,
+ "God keep her from the evil eye,
+ And harm of witch!" he cried.
+
+ The maiden laughed, as youth will laugh
+ At all its fears gone by;
+ "He does not know," she whispered low,
+ "A little witch am I."
+
+ All day he urged his weary horse,
+ And, in the red sundown,
+ Drew rein before a friendly door
+ In distant Berwick town.
+
+ A fellow-feeling for the wronged
+ The Quaker people felt;
+ And safe beside their kindly hearths
+ The hunted maiden dwelt,
+
+ Until from off its breast the land
+ The haunting horror threw,
+ And hatred, born of ghastly dreams,
+ To shame and pity grew.
+
+ Sad were the year's spring morns, and sad
+ Its golden summer day,
+ But blithe and glad its withered fields,
+ And skies of ashen gray;
+
+ For spell and charm had power no more,
+ The spectres ceased to roam,
+ And scattered households knelt again
+ Around the hearths of home.
+
+ And when once more by Beaver Dam
+ The meadow-lark outsang,
+ And once again on all the hills
+ The early violets sprang,
+
+ And all the windy pasture slopes
+ Lay green within the arms
+ Of creeks that bore the salted sea
+ To pleasant inland farms,
+
+ The smith filed off the chains he forged,
+ The jail-bolts backward fell;
+ And youth and hoary age came forth
+ Like souls escaped from hell.
+
+ 1877
+
+
+
+
+KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS
+
+ OUT from Jerusalem
+ The king rode with his great
+ War chiefs and lords of state,
+ And Sheba's queen with them;
+
+ Comely, but black withal,
+ To whom, perchance, belongs
+ That wondrous Song of songs,
+ Sensuous and mystical,
+
+ Whereto devout souls turn
+ In fond, ecstatic dream,
+ And through its earth-born theme
+ The Love of loves discern.
+
+ Proud in the Syrian sun,
+ In gold and purple sheen,
+ The dusky Ethiop queen
+ Smiled on King Solomon.
+
+ Wisest of men, he knew
+ The languages of all
+ The creatures great or small
+ That trod the earth or flew.
+
+ Across an ant-hill led
+ The king's path, and he heard
+ Its small folk, and their word
+ He thus interpreted:
+
+ "Here comes the king men greet
+ As wise and good and just,
+ To crush us in the dust
+ Under his heedless feet."
+
+ The great king bowed his head,
+ And saw the wide surprise
+ Of the Queen of Sheba's eyes
+ As he told her what they said.
+
+ "O king!" she whispered sweet,
+ "Too happy fate have they
+ Who perish in thy way
+ Beneath thy gracious feet!
+
+ "Thou of the God-lent crown,
+ Shall these vile creatures dare
+ Murmur against thee where
+ The knees of kings kneel down?"
+
+ "Nay," Solomon replied,
+ "The wise and strong should seek
+ The welfare of the weak,"
+ And turned his horse aside.
+
+ His train, with quick alarm,
+ Curved with their leader round
+ The ant-hill's peopled mound,
+ And left it free from harm.
+
+ The jewelled head bent low;
+ "O king!" she said, "henceforth
+ The secret of thy worth
+ And wisdom well I know.
+
+ "Happy must be the State
+ Whose ruler heedeth more
+ The murmurs of the poor
+ Than flatteries of the great."
+
+ 1877.
+
+
+
+
+IN THE "OLD SOUTH."
+
+On the 8th of July, 1677, Margaret Brewster with four other Friends
+went into the South Church in time of meeting, "in sack-cloth, with
+ashes upon her head, barefoot, and her face blackened," and delivered
+"a warning from the great God of Heaven and Earth to the Rulers and
+Magistrates of Boston." For the offence she was sentenced to be "whipped
+at a cart's tail up and down the Town, with twenty lashes."
+
+ SHE came and stood in the Old South Church,
+ A wonder and a sign,
+ With a look the old-time sibyls wore,
+ Half-crazed and half-divine.
+
+ Save the mournful sackcloth about her wound,
+ Unclothed as the primal mother,
+ With limbs that trembled and eyes that blazed
+ With a fire she dare not smother.
+
+ Loose on her shoulders fell her hair,
+ With sprinkled ashes gray;
+ She stood in the broad aisle strange and weird
+ As a soul at the judgment day.
+
+ And the minister paused in his sermon's midst,
+ And the people held their breath,
+ For these were the words the maiden spoke
+ Through lips as the lips of death:
+
+ "Thus saith the Lord, with equal feet
+ All men my courts shall tread,
+ And priest and ruler no more shall eat
+ My people up like bread!
+
+ "Repent! repent! ere the Lord shall speak
+ In thunder and breaking seals
+ Let all souls worship Him in the way
+ His light within reveals."
+
+ She shook the dust from her naked feet,
+ And her sackcloth closer drew,
+ And into the porch of the awe-hushed church
+ She passed like a ghost from view.
+
+ They whipped her away at the tail o' the cart
+ Through half the streets of the town,
+ But the words she uttered that day nor fire
+ Could burn nor water drown.
+
+ And now the aisles of the ancient church
+ By equal feet are trod,
+ And the bell that swings in its belfry rings
+ Freedom to worship God!
+
+ And now whenever a wrong is done
+ It thrills the conscious walls;
+ The stone from the basement cries aloud
+ And the beam from the timber calls.
+
+ There are steeple-houses on every hand,
+ And pulpits that bless and ban,
+ And the Lord will not grudge the single church
+ That is set apart for man.
+
+ For in two commandments are all the law
+ And the prophets under the sun,
+ And the first is last and the last is first,
+ And the twain are verily one.
+
+ So, long as Boston shall Boston be,
+ And her bay-tides rise and fall,
+ Shall freedom stand in the Old South Church
+ And plead for the rights of all!
+
+ 1877.
+
+
+
+
+THE HENCHMAN.
+
+ MY lady walks her morning round,
+ My lady's page her fleet greyhound,
+ My lady's hair the fond winds stir,
+ And all the birds make songs for her.
+
+ Her thrushes sing in Rathburn bowers,
+ And Rathburn side is gay with flowers;
+ But ne'er like hers, in flower or bird,
+ Was beauty seen or music heard.
+
+ The distance of the stars is hers;
+ The least of all her worshippers,
+ The dust beneath her dainty heel,
+ She knows not that I see or feel.
+
+ Oh, proud and calm!--she cannot know
+ Where'er she goes with her I go;
+ Oh, cold and fair!--she cannot guess
+ I kneel to share her hound's caress!
+
+ Gay knights beside her hunt and hawk,
+ I rob their ears of her sweet talk;
+ Her suitors come from east and west,
+ I steal her smiles from every guest.
+
+ Unheard of her, in loving words,
+ I greet her with the song of birds;
+ I reach her with her green-armed bowers,
+ I kiss her with the lips of flowers.
+
+ The hound and I are on her trail,
+ The wind and I uplift her veil;
+ As if the calm, cold moon she were,
+ And I the tide, I follow her.
+
+ As unrebuked as they, I share
+ The license of the sun and air,
+ And in a common homage hide
+ My worship from her scorn and pride.
+
+ World-wide apart, and yet so near,
+ I breathe her charmed atmosphere,
+ Wherein to her my service brings
+ The reverence due to holy things.
+
+ Her maiden pride, her haughty name,
+ My dumb devotion shall not shame;
+ The love that no return doth crave
+ To knightly levels lifts the slave,
+
+ No lance have I, in joust or fight,
+ To splinter in my lady's sight
+ But, at her feet, how blest were I
+ For any need of hers to die!
+
+ 1877.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEAD FEAST OF THE KOL-FOLK.
+
+E. B. Tylor in his Primitive Culture, chapter xii., gives an account of
+the reverence paid the dead by the Kol tribes of Chota Nagpur, Assam.
+"When a Ho or Munda," he says, "has been burned on the funeral pile,
+collected morsels of his bones are carried in procession with a solemn,
+ghostly, sliding step, keeping time to the deep-sounding drum, and when
+the old woman who carries the bones on her bamboo tray lowers it from
+time to time, then girls who carry pitchers and brass vessels mournfully
+reverse them to show that they are empty; thus the remains are taken to
+visit every house in the village, and every dwelling of a friend or
+relative for miles, and the inmates come out to mourn and praise the
+goodness of the departed; the bones are carried to all the dead man's
+favorite haunts, to the fields he cultivated, to the grove he planted,
+to the threshing-floor where he worked, to the village dance-room where
+he made merry. At last they are taken to the grave, and buried in an
+earthen vase upon a store of food, covered with one of those huge stone
+slabs which European visitors wonder at in the districts of the
+aborigines of India." In the Journal of the Asiatic Society, Bengal,
+vol. ix., p. 795, is a Ho dirge.
+
+
+ WE have opened the door,
+ Once, twice, thrice!
+ We have swept the floor,
+ We have boiled the rice.
+ Come hither, come hither!
+ Come from the far lands,
+ Come from the star lands,
+ Come as before!
+ We lived long together,
+ We loved one another;
+ Come back to our life.
+ Come father, come mother,
+ Come sister and brother,
+ Child, husband, and wife,
+ For you we are sighing.
+ Come take your old places,
+ Come look in our faces,
+ The dead on the dying,
+ Come home!
+
+ We have opened the door,
+ Once, twice, thrice!
+ We have kindled the coals,
+ And we boil the rice
+ For the feast of souls.
+ Come hither, come hither!
+ Think not we fear you,
+ Whose hearts are so near you.
+ Come tenderly thought on,
+ Come all unforgotten,
+ Come from the shadow-lands,
+ From the dim meadow-lands
+ Where the pale grasses bend
+ Low to our sighing.
+ Come father, come mother,
+ Come sister and brother,
+ Come husband and friend,
+ The dead to the dying,
+ Come home!
+
+ We have opened the door
+ You entered so oft;
+ For the feast of souls
+ We have kindled the coals,
+ And we boil the rice soft.
+ Come you who are dearest
+ To us who are nearest,
+ Come hither, come hither,
+ From out the wild weather;
+ The storm clouds are flying,
+ The peepul is sighing;
+ Come in from the rain.
+ Come father, come mother,
+ Come sister and brother,
+ Come husband and lover,
+ Beneath our roof-cover.
+ Look on us again,
+ The dead on the dying,
+ Come home!
+
+ We have opened the door!
+ For the feast of souls
+ We have kindled the coals
+ We may kindle no more!
+ Snake, fever, and famine,
+ The curse of the Brahmin,
+ The sun and the dew,
+ They burn us, they bite us,
+ They waste us and smite us;
+ Our days are but few
+ In strange lands far yonder
+ To wonder and wander
+ We hasten to you.
+ List then to our sighing,
+ While yet we are here
+ Nor seeing nor hearing,
+ We wait without fearing,
+ To feel you draw near.
+ O dead, to the dying
+ Come home!
+
+ 1879.
+
+
+
+
+THE KHAN'S DEVIL.
+
+
+ THE Khan came from Bokhara town
+ To Hamza, santon of renown.
+
+ "My head is sick, my hands are weak;
+ Thy help, O holy man, I seek."
+
+ In silence marking for a space
+ The Khan's red eyes and purple face,
+
+ Thick voice, and loose, uncertain tread,
+ "Thou hast a devil!" Hamza said.
+
+ "Allah forbid!" exclaimed the Khan.
+ Rid me of him at once, O man!"
+
+ "Nay," Hamza said, "no spell of mine
+ Can slay that cursed thing of thine.
+
+ "Leave feast and wine, go forth and drink
+ Water of healing on the brink
+
+ "Where clear and cold from mountain snows,
+ The Nahr el Zeben downward flows.
+
+ "Six moons remain, then come to me;
+ May Allah's pity go with thee!"
+
+ Awestruck, from feast and wine the Khan
+ Went forth where Nahr el Zeben ran.
+
+ Roots were his food, the desert dust
+ His bed, the water quenched his thirst;
+
+ And when the sixth moon's scimetar
+ Curved sharp above the evening star,
+
+ He sought again the santon's door,
+ Not weak and trembling as before,
+
+ But strong of limb and clear of brain;
+ "Behold," he said, "the fiend is slain."
+
+ "Nay," Hamza answered, "starved and drowned,
+ The curst one lies in death-like swound.
+
+ "But evil breaks the strongest gyves,
+ And jins like him have charmed lives.
+
+ "One beaker of the juice of grape
+ May call him up in living shape.
+
+ "When the red wine of Badakshan
+ Sparkles for thee, beware, O Khan,
+
+ "With water quench the fire within,
+ And drown each day thy devilkin!"
+
+ Thenceforth the great Khan shunned the cup
+ As Shitan's own, though offered up,
+
+ With laughing eyes and jewelled hands,
+ By Yarkand's maids and Samarcand's.
+
+ And, in the lofty vestibule
+ Of the medress of Kaush Kodul,
+
+ The students of the holy law
+ A golden-lettered tablet saw,
+
+ With these words, by a cunning hand,
+ Graved on it at the Khan's command:
+
+ "In Allah's name, to him who hath
+ A devil, Khan el Hamed saith,
+
+ "Wisely our Prophet cursed the vine
+ The fiend that loves the breath of wine,
+
+ "No prayer can slay, no marabout
+ Nor Meccan dervis can drive out.
+
+ "I, Khan el Hamed, know the charm
+ That robs him of his power to harm.
+
+ "Drown him, O Islam's child! the spell
+ To save thee lies in tank and well!"
+
+ 1879.
+
+
+
+
+THE KING'S MISSIVE.
+
+1661.
+
+This ballad, originally written for The Memorial History of Boston,
+describes, with pardonable poetic license, a memorable incident in the
+annals of the city. The interview between Shattuck and the Governor took
+place, I have since learned, in the residence of the latter, and not
+in the Council Chamber. The publication of the ballad led to some
+discussion as to the historical truthfulness of the picture, but I have
+seen no reason to rub out any of the figures or alter the lines and
+colors.
+
+
+ UNDER the great hill sloping bare
+ To cove and meadow and Common lot,
+ In his council chamber and oaken chair,
+ Sat the worshipful Governor Endicott.
+ A grave, strong man, who knew no peer
+ In the pilgrim land, where he ruled in fear
+ Of God, not man, and for good or ill
+ Held his trust with an iron will.
+
+ He had shorn with his sword the cross from out
+ The flag, and cloven the May-pole down,
+ Harried the heathen round about,
+ And whipped the Quakers from town to town.
+ Earnest and honest, a man at need
+ To burn like a torch for his own harsh creed,
+ He kept with the flaming brand of his zeal
+ The gate of the holy common weal.
+
+ His brow was clouded, his eye was stern,
+ With a look of mingled sorrow and wrath;
+ "Woe's me!" he murmured: "at every turn
+ The pestilent Quakers are in my path!
+ Some we have scourged, and banished some,
+ Some hanged, more doomed, and still they come,
+ Fast as the tide of yon bay sets in,
+ Sowing their heresy's seed of sin.
+
+ "Did we count on this? Did we leave behind
+ The graves of our kin, the comfort and ease
+ Of our English hearths and homes, to find
+ Troublers of Israel such as these?
+ Shall I spare? Shall I pity them? God forbid!
+ I will do as the prophet to Agag did
+ They come to poison the wells of the Word,
+ I will hew them in pieces before the Lord!"
+
+ The door swung open, and Rawson the clerk
+ Entered, and whispered under breath,
+ "There waits below for the hangman's work
+ A fellow banished on pain of death--
+ Shattuck, of Salem, unhealed of the whip,
+ Brought over in Master Goldsmith's ship
+ At anchor here in a Christian port,
+ With freight of the devil and all his sort!"
+
+ Twice and thrice on the chamber floor
+ Striding fiercely from wall to wall,
+ "The Lord do so to me and more,"
+ The Governor cried, "if I hang not all!
+ Bring hither the Quaker." Calm, sedate,
+ With the look of a man at ease with fate,
+ Into that presence grim and dread
+ Came Samuel Shattuck, with hat on head.
+
+ "Off with the knave's hat!" An angry hand
+ Smote down the offence; but the wearer said,
+ With a quiet smile, "By the king's command
+ I bear his message and stand in his stead."
+ In the Governor's hand a missive he laid
+ With the royal arms on its seal displayed,
+ And the proud man spake as he gazed thereat,
+ Uncovering, "Give Mr. Shattuck his hat."
+
+ He turned to the Quaker, bowing low,--
+ "The king commandeth your friends' release;
+ Doubt not he shall be obeyed, although
+ To his subjects' sorrow and sin's increase.
+ What he here enjoineth, John Endicott,
+ His loyal servant, questioneth not.
+ You are free! God grant the spirit you own
+ May take you from us to parts unknown."
+
+ So the door of the jail was open cast,
+ And, like Daniel, out of the lion's den
+ Tender youth and girlhood passed,
+ With age-bowed women and gray-locked men.
+ And the voice of one appointed to die
+ Was lifted in praise and thanks on high,
+ And the little maid from New Netherlands
+ Kissed, in her joy, the doomed man's hands.
+
+ And one, whose call was to minister
+ To the souls in prison, beside him went,
+ An ancient woman, bearing with her
+ The linen shroud for his burial meant.
+ For she, not counting her own life dear,
+ In the strength of a love that cast out fear,
+ Had watched and served where her brethren died,
+ Like those who waited the cross beside.
+
+ One moment they paused on their way to look
+ On the martyr graves by the Common side,
+ And much scourged Wharton of Salem took
+ His burden of prophecy up and cried
+ "Rest, souls of the valiant! Not in vain
+ Have ye borne the Master's cross of pain;
+ Ye have fought the fight, ye are victors crowned,
+ With a fourfold chain ye have Satan bound!"
+
+ The autumn haze lay soft and still
+ On wood and meadow and upland farms;
+ On the brow of Snow Hill the great windmill
+ Slowly and lazily swung its arms;
+ Broad in the sunshine stretched away,
+ With its capes and islands, the turquoise bay;
+ And over water and dusk of pines
+ Blue hills lifted their faint outlines.
+
+ The topaz leaves of the walnut glowed,
+ The sumach added its crimson fleck,
+ And double in air and water showed
+ The tinted maples along the Neck;
+ Through frost flower clusters of pale star-mist,
+ And gentian fringes of amethyst,
+ And royal plumes of golden-rod,
+ The grazing cattle on Centry trod.
+
+ But as they who see not, the Quakers saw
+ The world about them; they only thought
+ With deep thanksgiving and pious awe
+ On the great deliverance God had wrought.
+ Through lane and alley the gazing town
+ Noisily followed them up and down;
+ Some with scoffing and brutal jeer,
+ Some with pity and words of cheer.
+
+ One brave voice rose above the din.
+ Upsall, gray with his length of days,
+ Cried from the door of his Red Lion Inn
+ "Men of Boston, give God the praise
+ No more shall innocent blood call down
+ The bolts of wrath on your guilty town.
+ The freedom of worship, dear to you,
+ Is dear to all, and to all is due.
+
+ "I see the vision of days to come,
+ When your beautiful City of the Bay
+ Shall be Christian liberty's chosen home,
+ And none shall his neighbor's rights gainsay.
+ The varying notes of worship shall blend
+ And as one great prayer to God ascend,
+ And hands of mutual charity raise
+ Walls of salvation and gates of praise."
+
+ So passed the Quakers through Boston town,
+ Whose painful ministers sighed to see
+ The walls of their sheep-fold falling down,
+ And wolves of heresy prowling free.
+ But the years went on, and brought no wrong;
+ With milder counsels the State grew strong,
+ As outward Letter and inward Light
+ Kept the balance of truth aright.
+
+ The Puritan spirit perishing not,
+ To Concord's yeomen the signal sent,
+ And spake in the voice of the cannon-shot
+ That severed the chains of a continent.
+ With its gentler mission of peace and good-will
+ The thought of the Quaker is living still,
+ And the freedom of soul he prophesied
+ Is gospel and law where the martyrs died.
+
+ 1880.
+
+
+
+
+VALUATION.
+
+ THE old Squire said, as he stood by his gate,
+ And his neighbor, the Deacon, went by,
+ "In spite of my bank stock and real estate,
+ You are better off, Deacon, than I.
+
+ "We're both growing old, and the end's drawing near,
+ You have less of this world to resign,
+ But in Heaven's appraisal your assets, I fear,
+ Will reckon up greater than mine.
+
+ "They say I am rich, but I'm feeling so poor,
+ I wish I could swap with you even
+ The pounds I have lived for and laid up in store
+ For the shillings and pence you have given."
+
+ "Well, Squire," said the Deacon, with shrewd
+ common sense,
+ While his eye had a twinkle of fun,
+ "Let your pounds take the way of my shillings
+ and pence,
+ And the thing can be easily done!"
+
+ 1880.
+
+
+
+
+RABBI ISHMAEL.
+
+"Rabbi Ishmael Ben Elisha said, Once, I entered into the Holy of Holies
+(as High Priest) to burn incense, when I saw Aktriel (the Divine Crown)
+Jah, Lord of Hosts, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, who said
+unto me, 'Ishmael, my son, bless me.' I answered, 'May it please Thee to
+make Thy compassion prevail over Thine anger; may it be revealed above
+Thy other attributes; mayest Thou deal with Thy children according to
+it, and not according to the strict measure of judgment.' It seemed to
+me that He bowed His head, as though to answer Amen to my blessing."--
+Talmud (Beraehoth, I. f. 6. b.)
+
+
+ THE Rabbi Ishmael, with the woe and sin
+ Of the world heavy upon him, entering in
+ The Holy of Holies, saw an awful Face
+ With terrible splendor filling all the place.
+ "O Ishmael Ben Elisha!" said a voice,
+ "What seekest thou? What blessing is thy choice?"
+ And, knowing that he stood before the Lord,
+ Within the shadow of the cherubim,
+ Wide-winged between the blinding light and him,
+ He bowed himself, and uttered not a word,
+ But in the silence of his soul was prayer
+ "O Thou Eternal! I am one of all,
+ And nothing ask that others may not share.
+ Thou art almighty; we are weak and small,
+ And yet Thy children: let Thy mercy spare!"
+ Trembling, he raised his eyes, and in the place
+ Of the insufferable glory, lo! a face
+ Of more than mortal tenderness, that bent
+ Graciously down in token of assent,
+ And, smiling, vanished! With strange joy elate,
+ The wondering Rabbi sought the temple's gate.
+ Radiant as Moses from the Mount, he stood
+ And cried aloud unto the multitude
+ "O Israel, hear! The Lord our God is good!
+ Mine eyes have seen his glory and his grace;
+ Beyond his judgments shall his love endure;
+ The mercy of the All Merciful is sure!"
+
+ 1881.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROCK-TOMB OF BRADORE.
+
+H. Y. Hind, in Explorations in the Interior of the Labrador Peninsula
+(ii. 166) mentions the finding of a rock tomb near the little fishing
+port of Bradore, with the inscription upon it which is given in the
+poem.
+
+ A DREAR and desolate shore!
+ Where no tree unfolds its leaves,
+ And never the spring wind weaves
+ Green grass for the hunter's tread;
+ A land forsaken and dead,
+ Where the ghostly icebergs go
+ And come with the ebb and flow
+ Of the waters of Bradore!
+
+ A wanderer, from a land
+ By summer breezes fanned,
+ Looked round him, awed, subdued,
+ By the dreadful solitude,
+ Hearing alone the cry
+ Of sea-birds clanging by,
+ The crash and grind of the floe,
+ Wail of wind and wash of tide.
+ "O wretched land!" he cried,
+ "Land of all lands the worst,
+ God forsaken and curst!
+ Thy gates of rock should show
+ The words the Tuscan seer
+ Read in the Realm of Woe
+ Hope entereth not here!"
+
+ Lo! at his feet there stood
+ A block of smooth larch wood,
+ Waif of some wandering wave,
+ Beside a rock-closed cave
+ By Nature fashioned for a grave;
+ Safe from the ravening bear
+ And fierce fowl of the air,
+ Wherein to rest was laid
+ A twenty summers' maid,
+ Whose blood had equal share
+ Of the lands of vine and snow,
+ Half French, half Eskimo.
+ In letters uneffaced,
+ Upon the block were traced
+ The grief and hope of man,
+ And thus the legend ran
+ "We loved her!
+ Words cannot tell how well!
+ We loved her!
+ God loved her!
+ And called her home to peace and rest.
+ We love her."
+
+ The stranger paused and read.
+ "O winter land!" he said,
+ "Thy right to be I own;
+ God leaves thee not alone.
+ And if thy fierce winds blow
+ Over drear wastes of rock and snow,
+ And at thy iron gates
+ The ghostly iceberg waits,
+ Thy homes and hearts are dear.
+ Thy sorrow o'er thy sacred dust
+ Is sanctified by hope and trust;
+ God's love and man's are here.
+ And love where'er it goes
+ Makes its own atmosphere;
+ Its flowers of Paradise
+ Take root in the eternal ice,
+ And bloom through Polar snows!"
+
+ 1881.
+
+
+
+
+THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS.
+
+The volume in which "The Bay of Seven Islands" was published was
+dedicated to the late Edwin Percy Whipple, to whom more than to any
+other person I was indebted for public recognition as one worthy of a
+place in American literature, at a time when it required a great degree
+of courage to urge such a claim for a pro-scribed abolitionist. Although
+younger than I, he had gained the reputation of a brilliant essayist,
+and was regarded as the highest American authority in criticism. His wit
+and wisdom enlivened a small literary circle of young men including
+Thomas Starr King, the eloquent preacher, and Daniel N. Haskell of the
+Daily Transcript, who gathered about our common friend dames T. Fields
+at the Old Corner Bookstore. The poem which gave title to the volume I
+inscribed to my friend and neighbor Harriet Prescott Spofford, whose
+poems have lent a new interest to our beautiful river-valley.
+
+ FROM the green Amesbury hill which bears the name
+ Of that half mythic ancestor of mine
+ Who trod its slopes two hundred years ago,
+ Down the long valley of the Merrimac,
+ Midway between me and the river's mouth,
+ I see thy home, set like an eagle's nest
+ Among Deer Island's immemorial pines,
+ Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaks
+ Its last red arrow. Many a tale and song,
+ Which thou bast told or sung, I call to mind,
+ Softening with silvery mist the woods and hills,
+ The out-thrust headlands and inreaching bays
+ Of our northeastern coast-line, trending where
+ The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill blockade
+ Of icebergs stranded at its northern gate.
+
+ To thee the echoes of the Island Sound
+ Answer not vainly, nor in vain the moan
+ Of the South Breaker prophesying storm.
+ And thou hast listened, like myself, to men
+ Sea-periled oft where Anticosti lies
+ Like a fell spider in its web of fog,
+ Or where the Grand Bank shallows with the wrecks
+ Of sunken fishers, and to whom strange isles
+ And frost-rimmed bays and trading stations seem
+ Familiar as Great Neck and Kettle Cove,
+ Nubble and Boon, the common names of home.
+ So let me offer thee this lay of mine,
+ Simple and homely, lacking much thy play
+ Of color and of fancy. If its theme
+ And treatment seem to thee befitting youth
+ Rather than age, let this be my excuse
+ It has beguiled some heavy hours and called
+ Some pleasant memories up; and, better still,
+ Occasion lent me for a kindly word
+ To one who is my neighbor and my friend.
+
+ 1883.
+
+ . . . . . . . . . .
+
+
+ The skipper sailed out of the harbor mouth,
+ Leaving the apple-bloom of the South
+ For the ice of the Eastern seas,
+ In his fishing schooner Breeze.
+
+ Handsome and brave and young was he,
+ And the maids of Newbury sighed to see
+ His lessening white sail fall
+ Under the sea's blue wall.
+
+ Through the Northern Gulf and the misty screen
+ Of the isles of Mingan and Madeleine,
+ St. Paul's and Blanc Sablon,
+ The little Breeze sailed on,
+
+ Backward and forward, along the shore
+ Of lorn and desolate Labrador,
+ And found at last her way
+ To the Seven Islands Bay.
+
+ The little hamlet, nestling below
+ Great hills white with lingering snow,
+ With its tin-roofed chapel stood
+ Half hid in the dwarf spruce wood;
+
+ Green-turfed, flower-sown, the last outpost
+ Of summer upon the dreary coast,
+ With its gardens small and spare,
+ Sad in the frosty air.
+
+ Hard by where the skipper's schooner lay,
+ A fisherman's cottage looked away
+ Over isle and bay, and behind
+ On mountains dim-defined.
+
+ And there twin sisters, fair and young,
+ Laughed with their stranger guest, and sung
+ In their native tongue the lays
+ Of the old Provencal days.
+
+ Alike were they, save the faint outline
+ Of a scar on Suzette's forehead fine;
+ And both, it so befell,
+ Loved the heretic stranger well.
+
+ Both were pleasant to look upon,
+ But the heart of the skipper clave to one;
+ Though less by his eye than heart
+ He knew the twain apart.
+
+ Despite of alien race and creed,
+ Well did his wooing of Marguerite speed;
+ And the mother's wrath was vain
+ As the sister's jealous pain.
+
+ The shrill-tongued mistress her house forbade,
+ And solemn warning was sternly said
+ By the black-robed priest, whose word
+ As law the hamlet heard.
+
+ But half by voice and half by signs
+ The skipper said, "A warm sun shines
+ On the green-banked Merrimac;
+ Wait, watch, till I come back.
+
+ "And when you see, from my mast head,
+ The signal fly of a kerchief red,
+ My boat on the shore shall wait;
+ Come, when the night is late."
+
+ Ah! weighed with childhood's haunts and friends,
+ And all that the home sky overbends,
+ Did ever young love fail
+ To turn the trembling scale?
+
+ Under the night, on the wet sea sands,
+ Slowly unclasped their plighted hands
+ One to the cottage hearth,
+ And one to his sailor's berth.
+
+ What was it the parting lovers heard?
+ Nor leaf, nor ripple, nor wing of bird,
+ But a listener's stealthy tread
+ On the rock-moss, crisp and dead.
+
+ He weighed his anchor, and fished once more
+ By the black coast-line of Labrador;
+ And by love and the north wind driven,
+ Sailed back to the Islands Seven.
+
+ In the sunset's glow the sisters twain
+ Saw the Breeze come sailing in again;
+ Said Suzette, "Mother dear,
+ The heretic's sail is here."
+
+ "Go, Marguerite, to your room, and hide;
+ Your door shall be bolted!" the mother cried:
+ While Suzette, ill at ease,
+ Watched the red sign of the Breeze.
+
+ At midnight, down to the waiting skiff
+ She stole in the shadow of the cliff;
+ And out of the Bay's mouth ran
+ The schooner with maid and man.
+
+ And all night long, on a restless bed,
+ Her prayers to the Virgin Marguerite said
+ And thought of her lover's pain
+ Waiting for her in vain.
+
+ Did he pace the sands? Did he pause to hear
+ The sound of her light step drawing near?
+ And, as the slow hours passed,
+ Would he doubt her faith at last?
+
+ But when she saw through the misty pane,
+ The morning break on a sea of rain,
+ Could even her love avail
+ To follow his vanished sail?
+
+ Meantime the Breeze, with favoring wind,
+ Left the rugged Moisic hills behind,
+ And heard from an unseen shore
+ The falls of Manitou roar.
+
+ On the morrow's morn, in the thick, gray weather
+ They sat on the reeling deck together,
+ Lover and counterfeit,
+ Of hapless Marguerite.
+
+ With a lover's hand, from her forehead fair
+ He smoothed away her jet-black hair.
+ What was it his fond eyes met?
+ The scar of the false Suzette!
+
+ Fiercely he shouted: "Bear away
+ East by north for Seven Isles Bay!"
+ The maiden wept and prayed,
+ But the ship her helm obeyed.
+
+ Once more the Bay of the Isles they found
+ They heard the bell of the chapel sound,
+ And the chant of the dying sung
+ In the harsh, wild Indian tongue.
+
+ A feeling of mystery, change, and awe
+ Was in all they heard and all they saw
+ Spell-bound the hamlet lay
+ In the hush of its lonely bay.
+
+ And when they came to the cottage door,
+ The mother rose up from her weeping sore,
+ And with angry gestures met
+ The scared look of Suzette.
+
+ "Here is your daughter," the skipper said;
+ "Give me the one I love instead."
+ But the woman sternly spake;
+ "Go, see if the dead will wake!"
+
+ He looked. Her sweet face still and white
+ And strange in the noonday taper light,
+ She lay on her little bed,
+ With the cross at her feet and head.
+
+ In a passion of grief the strong man bent
+ Down to her face, and, kissing it, went
+ Back to the waiting Breeze,
+ Back to the mournful seas.
+
+ Never again to the Merrimac
+ And Newbury's homes that bark came back.
+ Whether her fate she met
+ On the shores of Carraquette,
+
+ Miscou, or Tracadie, who can say?
+ But even yet at Seven Isles Bay
+ Is told the ghostly tale
+ Of a weird, unspoken sail,
+
+ In the pale, sad light of the Northern day
+ Seen by the blanketed Montagnais,
+ Or squaw, in her small kyack,
+ Crossing the spectre's track.
+
+ On the deck a maiden wrings her hands;
+ Her likeness kneels on the gray coast sands;
+ One in her wild despair,
+ And one in the trance of prayer.
+
+ She flits before no earthly blast,
+ The red sign fluttering from her mast,
+ Over the solemn seas,
+ The ghost of the schooner Breeze!
+
+ 1882.
+
+
+
+
+THE WISHING BRIDGE.
+
+ AMONG the legends sung or said
+ Along our rocky shore,
+ The Wishing Bridge of Marblehead
+ May well be sung once more.
+
+ An hundred years ago (so ran
+ The old-time story) all
+ Good wishes said above its span
+ Would, soon or late, befall.
+
+ If pure and earnest, never failed
+ The prayers of man or maid
+ For him who on the deep sea sailed,
+ For her at home who stayed.
+
+ Once thither came two girls from school,
+ And wished in childish glee
+ And one would be a queen and rule,
+ And one the world would see.
+
+ Time passed; with change of hopes and fears,
+ And in the self-same place,
+ Two women, gray with middle years,
+ Stood, wondering, face to face.
+
+ With wakened memories, as they met,
+ They queried what had been
+ "A poor man's wife am I, and yet,"
+ Said one, "I am a queen.
+
+ "My realm a little homestead is,
+ Where, lacking crown and throne,
+ I rule by loving services
+ And patient toil alone."
+
+ The other said: "The great world lies
+ Beyond me as it lay;
+ O'er love's and duty's boundaries
+ My feet may never stray.
+
+ "I see but common sights of home,
+ Its common sounds I hear,
+ My widowed mother's sick-bed room
+ Sufficeth for my sphere.
+
+ "I read to her some pleasant page
+ Of travel far and wide,
+ And in a dreamy pilgrimage
+ We wander side by side.
+
+ "And when, at last, she falls asleep,
+ My book becomes to me
+ A magic glass: my watch I keep,
+ But all the world I see.
+
+ "A farm-wife queen your place you fill,
+ While fancy's privilege
+ Is mine to walk the earth at will,
+ Thanks to the Wishing Bridge."
+
+ "Nay, leave the legend for the truth,"
+ The other cried, "and say
+ God gives the wishes of our youth,
+ But in His own best way!"
+
+ 1882.
+
+
+
+
+HOW THE WOMEN WENT FROM DOVER.
+
+The following is a copy of the warrant issued by Major Waldron, of
+Dover, in 1662. The Quakers, as was their wont, prophesied against him,
+and saw, as they supposed, the fulfilment of their prophecy when, many
+years after, he was killed by the Indians.
+
+ To the constables of Dover, Hampton, Salisbury, Newbury, Rowley,
+ Ipswich, Wenham, Lynn, Boston, Roxbury, Dedham, and until these
+ vagabond Quakers are carried out of this jurisdiction. You, and
+ every one of you, are required, in the King's Majesty's name, to
+ take these vagabond Quakers, Anne Colman, Mary Tomkins, and Alice
+ Ambrose, and make them fast to the cart's tail, and driving the
+ cart through your several towns, to whip them upon their naked
+ backs not exceeding ten stripes apiece on each of them, in each
+ town; and so to convey them from constable to constable till they
+ are out of this jurisdiction, as you will answer it at your peril;
+ and this shall be your warrant.
+ RICHARD WALDRON.
+ Dated at Dover, December 22, 1662.
+
+This warrant was executed only in Dover and Hampton. At Salisbury the
+constable refused to obey it. He was sustained by the town's people, who
+were under the influence of Major Robert Pike, the leading man in the
+lower valley of the Merrimac, who stood far in advance of his time, as
+an advocate of religious freedom, and an opponent of ecclesiastical
+authority. He had the moral courage to address an able and manly letter
+to the court at Salem, remonstrating against the witchcraft trials.
+
+
+ THE tossing spray of Cocheco's fall
+ Hardened to ice on its rocky wall,
+ As through Dover town in the chill, gray dawn,
+ Three women passed, at the cart-tail drawn!
+
+ Bared to the waist, for the north wind's grip
+ And keener sting of the constable's whip,
+ The blood that followed each hissing blow
+ Froze as it sprinkled the winter snow.
+
+ Priest and ruler, boy and maid
+ Followed the dismal cavalcade;
+ And from door and window, open thrown,
+ Looked and wondered gaffer and crone.
+
+ "God is our witness," the victims cried,
+ We suffer for Him who for all men died;
+ The wrong ye do has been done before,
+ We bear the stripes that the Master bore!
+
+ And thou, O Richard Waldron, for whom
+ We hear the feet of a coming doom,
+ On thy cruel heart and thy hand of wrong
+ Vengeance is sure, though it tarry long.
+
+ "In the light of the Lord, a flame we see
+ Climb and kindle a proud roof-tree;
+ And beneath it an old man lying dead,
+ With stains of blood on his hoary head."
+
+ "Smite, Goodman Hate-Evil!--harder still!"
+ The magistrate cried, "lay on with a will!
+ Drive out of their bodies the Father of Lies,
+ Who through them preaches and prophesies!"
+
+ So into the forest they held their way,
+ By winding river and frost-rimmed bay,
+ Over wind-swept hills that felt the beat
+ Of the winter sea at their icy feet.
+
+ The Indian hunter, searching his traps,
+ Peered stealthily through the forest gaps;
+ And the outlying settler shook his head,--
+ "They're witches going to jail," he said.
+
+ At last a meeting-house came in view;
+ A blast on his horn the constable blew;
+ And the boys of Hampton cried up and down,
+ "The Quakers have come!" to the wondering town.
+
+ From barn and woodpile the goodman came;
+ The goodwife quitted her quilting frame,
+ With her child at her breast; and, hobbling slow,
+ The grandam followed to see the show.
+
+ Once more the torturing whip was swung,
+ Once more keen lashes the bare flesh stung.
+ "Oh, spare! they are bleeding!"' a little maid cried,
+ And covered her face the sight to hide.
+
+ A murmur ran round the crowd: "Good folks,"
+ Quoth the constable, busy counting the strokes,
+ "No pity to wretches like these is due,
+ They have beaten the gospel black and blue!"
+
+ Then a pallid woman, in wild-eyed fear,
+ With her wooden noggin of milk drew near.
+ "Drink, poor hearts!" a rude hand smote
+ Her draught away from a parching throat.
+
+ "Take heed," one whispered, "they'll take your cow
+ For fines, as they took your horse and plough,
+ And the bed from under you." "Even so,"
+ She said; "they are cruel as death, I know."
+
+ Then on they passed, in the waning day,
+ Through Seabrook woods, a weariful way;
+ By great salt meadows and sand-hills bare,
+ And glimpses of blue sea here and there.
+
+ By the meeting-house in Salisbury town,
+ The sufferers stood, in the red sundown,
+ Bare for the lash! O pitying Night,
+ Drop swift thy curtain and hide the sight.
+
+ With shame in his eye and wrath on his lip
+ The Salisbury constable dropped his whip.
+ "This warrant means murder foul and red;
+ Cursed is he who serves it," he said.
+
+ "Show me the order, and meanwhile strike
+ A blow at your peril!" said Justice Pike.
+ Of all the rulers the land possessed,
+ Wisest and boldest was he and best.
+
+ He scoffed at witchcraft; the priest he met
+ As man meets man; his feet he set
+ Beyond his dark age, standing upright,
+ Soul-free, with his face to the morning light.
+
+ He read the warrant: "These convey
+ From our precincts; at every town on the way
+ Give each ten lashes." "God judge the brute!
+ I tread his order under my foot!
+
+ "Cut loose these poor ones and let them go;
+ Come what will of it, all men shall know
+ No warrant is good, though backed by the Crown,
+ For whipping women in Salisbury town!"
+
+ The hearts of the villagers, half released
+ From creed of terror and rule of priest,
+ By a primal instinct owned the right
+ Of human pity in law's despite.
+
+ For ruth and chivalry only slept,
+ His Saxon manhood the yeoman kept;
+ Quicker or slower, the same blood ran
+ In the Cavalier and the Puritan.
+
+ The Quakers sank on their knees in praise
+ And thanks. A last, low sunset blaze
+ Flashed out from under a cloud, and shed
+ A golden glory on each bowed head.
+
+ The tale is one of an evil time,
+ When souls were fettered and thought was crime,
+ And heresy's whisper above its breath
+ Meant shameful scourging and bonds and death!
+
+ What marvel, that hunted and sorely tried,
+ Even woman rebuked and prophesied,
+ And soft words rarely answered back
+ The grim persuasion of whip and rack.
+
+ If her cry from the whipping-post and jail
+ Pierced sharp as the Kenite's driven nail,
+ O woman, at ease in these happier days,
+ Forbear to judge of thy sister's ways!
+
+ How much thy beautiful life may owe
+ To her faith and courage thou canst not know,
+ Nor how from the paths of thy calm retreat
+ She smoothed the thorns with her bleeding feet.
+
+ 1883.
+
+
+
+
+SAINT GREGORY'S GUEST.
+
+ A TALE for Roman guides to tell
+ To careless, sight-worn travellers still,
+ Who pause beside the narrow cell
+ Of Gregory on the Caelian Hill.
+
+ One day before the monk's door came
+ A beggar, stretching empty palms,
+ Fainting and fast-sick, in the name
+ Of the Most Holy asking alms.
+
+ And the monk answered, "All I have
+ In this poor cell of mine I give,
+ The silver cup my mother gave;
+ In Christ's name take thou it, and live."
+
+ Years passed; and, called at last to bear
+ The pastoral crook and keys of Rome,
+ The poor monk, in Saint Peter's chair,
+ Sat the crowned lord of Christendom.
+
+ "Prepare a feast," Saint Gregory cried,
+ "And let twelve beggars sit thereat."
+ The beggars came, and one beside,
+ An unknown stranger, with them sat.
+
+ "I asked thee not," the Pontiff spake,
+ "O stranger; but if need be thine,
+ I bid thee welcome, for the sake
+ Of Him who is thy Lord and mine."
+
+ A grave, calm face the stranger raised,
+ Like His who on Gennesaret trod,
+ Or His on whom the Chaldeans gazed,
+ Whose form was as the Son of God.
+
+ "Know'st thou," he said, "thy gift of old?"
+ And in the hand he lifted up
+ The Pontiff marvelled to behold
+ Once more his mother's silver cup.
+
+ "Thy prayers and alms have risen, and bloom
+ Sweetly among the flowers of heaven.
+ I am The Wonderful, through whom
+ Whate'er thou askest shall be given."
+
+ He spake and vanished. Gregory fell
+ With his twelve guests in mute accord
+ Prone on their faces, knowing well
+ Their eyes of flesh had seen the Lord.
+
+ The old-time legend is not vain;
+ Nor vain thy art, Verona's Paul,
+ Telling it o'er and o'er again
+ On gray Vicenza's frescoed wall.
+
+ Still wheresoever pity shares
+ Its bread with sorrow, want, and sin,
+ And love the beggar's feast prepares,
+ The uninvited Guest comes in.
+
+ Unheard, because our ears are dull,
+ Unseen, because our eyes are dim,
+ He walks our earth, The Wonderful,
+ And all good deeds are done to Him.
+
+ 1883.
+
+
+
+
+BIRCHBROOK MILL.
+
+ A NOTELESS stream, the Birchbrook runs
+ Beneath its leaning trees;
+ That low, soft ripple is its own,
+ That dull roar is the sea's.
+
+ Of human signs it sees alone
+ The distant church spire's tip,
+ And, ghost-like, on a blank of gray,
+ The white sail of a ship.
+
+ No more a toiler at the wheel,
+ It wanders at its will;
+ Nor dam nor pond is left to tell
+ Where once was Birchbrook mill.
+
+ The timbers of that mill have fed
+ Long since a farmer's fires;
+ His doorsteps are the stones that ground
+ The harvest of his sires.
+
+ Man trespassed here; but Nature lost
+ No right of her domain;
+ She waited, and she brought the old
+ Wild beauty back again.
+
+ By day the sunlight through the leaves
+ Falls on its moist, green sod,
+ And wakes the violet bloom of spring
+ And autumn's golden-rod.
+
+ Its birches whisper to the wind,
+ The swallow dips her wings
+ In the cool spray, and on its banks
+ The gray song-sparrow sings.
+
+ But from it, when the dark night falls,
+ The school-girl shrinks with dread;
+ The farmer, home-bound from his fields,
+ Goes by with quickened tread.
+
+ They dare not pause to hear the grind
+ Of shadowy stone on stone;
+ The plashing of a water-wheel
+ Where wheel there now is none.
+
+ Has not a cry of pain been heard
+ Above the clattering mill?
+ The pawing of an unseen horse,
+ Who waits his mistress still?
+
+ Yet never to the listener's eye
+ Has sight confirmed the sound;
+ A wavering birch line marks alone
+ The vacant pasture ground.
+
+ No ghostly arms fling up to heaven
+ The agony of prayer;
+ No spectral steed impatient shakes
+ His white mane on the air.
+
+ The meaning of that common dread
+ No tongue has fitly told;
+ The secret of the dark surmise
+ The brook and birches hold.
+
+ What nameless horror of the past
+ Broods here forevermore?
+ What ghost his unforgiven sin
+ Is grinding o'er and o'er?
+
+ Does, then, immortal memory play
+ The actor's tragic part,
+ Rehearsals of a mortal life
+ And unveiled human heart?
+
+ God's pity spare a guilty soul
+ That drama of its ill,
+ And let the scenic curtain fall
+ On Birchbrook's haunted mill
+
+ 1884.
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO ELIZABETHS.
+
+Read at the unveiling of the bust of Elizabeth Fry at the Friends'
+School, Providence, R. I.
+
+A. D. 1209.
+
+ AMIDST Thuringia's wooded hills she dwelt,
+ A high-born princess, servant of the poor,
+ Sweetening with gracious words the food she dealt
+ To starving throngs at Wartburg's blazoned door.
+
+ A blinded zealot held her soul in chains,
+ Cramped the sweet nature that he could not kill,
+ Scarred her fair body with his penance-pains,
+ And gauged her conscience by his narrow will.
+
+ God gave her gifts of beauty and of grace,
+ With fast and vigil she denied them all;
+ Unquestioning, with sad, pathetic face,
+ She followed meekly at her stern guide's call.
+
+ So drooped and died her home-blown rose of bliss
+ In the chill rigor of a discipline
+ That turned her fond lips from her children's kiss,
+ And made her joy of motherhood a sin.
+
+ To their sad level by compassion led,
+ One with the low and vile herself she made,
+ While thankless misery mocked the hand that fed,
+ And laughed to scorn her piteous masquerade.
+
+ But still, with patience that outwearied hate,
+ She gave her all while yet she had to give;
+ And then her empty hands, importunate,
+ In prayer she lifted that the poor might live.
+
+ Sore pressed by grief, and wrongs more hard to bear,
+ And dwarfed and stifled by a harsh control,
+ She kept life fragrant with good deeds and prayer,
+ And fresh and pure the white flower of her soul.
+
+ Death found her busy at her task: one word
+ Alone she uttered as she paused to die,
+ "Silence!"--then listened even as one who heard
+ With song and wing the angels drawing nigh!
+
+ Now Fra Angelico's roses fill her hands,
+ And, on Murillo's canvas, Want and Pain
+ Kneel at her feet. Her marble image stands
+ Worshipped and crowned in Marburg's holy fane.
+
+ Yea, wheresoe'er her Church its cross uprears,
+ Wide as the world her story still is told;
+ In manhood's reverence, woman's prayers and tears,
+ She lives again whose grave is centuries old.
+
+ And still, despite the weakness or the blame
+ Of blind submission to the blind, she hath
+ A tender place in hearts of every name,
+ And more than Rome owns Saint Elizabeth!
+
+
+ A. D. 1780.
+
+ Slow ages passed: and lo! another came,
+ An English matron, in whose simple faith
+ Nor priestly rule nor ritual had claim,
+ A plain, uncanonized Elizabeth.
+
+ No sackcloth robe, nor ashen-sprinkled hair,
+ Nor wasting fast, nor scourge, nor vigil long,
+ Marred her calm presence. God had made her fair,
+ And she could do His goodly work no wrong.
+
+ Their yoke is easy and their burden light
+ Whose sole confessor is the Christ of God;
+ Her quiet trust and faith transcending sight
+ Smoothed to her feet the difficult paths she trod.
+
+ And there she walked, as duty bade her go,
+ Safe and unsullied as a cloistered nun,
+ Shamed with her plainness Fashion's gaudy show,
+ And overcame the world she did not shun.
+
+ In Earlham's bowers, in Plashet's liberal hall,
+ In the great city's restless crowd and din,
+ Her ear was open to the Master's call,
+ And knew the summons of His voice within.
+
+ Tender as mother, beautiful as wife,
+ Amidst the throngs of prisoned crime she stood
+ In modest raiment faultless as her life,
+ The type of England's worthiest womanhood.
+
+ To melt the hearts that harshness turned to stone
+ The sweet persuasion of her lips sufficed,
+ And guilt, which only hate and fear had known,
+ Saw in her own the pitying love of Christ.
+
+ So wheresoe'er the guiding Spirit went
+ She followed, finding every prison cell
+ It opened for her sacred as a tent
+ Pitched by Gennesaret or by Jacob's well.
+
+ And Pride and Fashion felt her strong appeal,
+ And priest and ruler marvelled as they saw
+ How hand in hand went wisdom with her zeal,
+ And woman's pity kept the bounds of law.
+
+ She rests in God's peace; but her memory stirs
+ The air of earth as with an angel's wings,
+ And warms and moves the hearts of men like hers,
+ The sainted daughter of Hungarian kings.
+
+ United now, the Briton and the Hun,
+ Each, in her own time, faithful unto death,
+ Live sister souls! in name and spirit one,
+ Thuringia's saint and our Elizabeth!
+
+ 1885.
+
+
+
+
+REQUITAL.
+
+ As Islam's Prophet, when his last day drew
+ Nigh to its close, besought all men to say
+ Whom he had wronged, to whom he then should pay
+ A debt forgotten, or for pardon sue,
+ And, through the silence of his weeping friends,
+ A strange voice cried: "Thou owest me a debt,"
+ "Allah be praised!" he answered. "Even yet
+ He gives me power to make to thee amends.
+ O friend! I thank thee for thy timely word."
+ So runs the tale. Its lesson all may heed,
+ For all have sinned in thought, or word, or deed,
+ Or, like the Prophet, through neglect have erred.
+ All need forgiveness, all have debts to pay
+ Ere the night cometh, while it still is day.
+
+ 1885.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOMESTEAD.
+
+ AGAINST the wooded hills it stands,
+ Ghost of a dead home, staring through
+ Its broken lights on wasted lands
+ Where old-time harvests grew.
+
+ Unploughed, unsown, by scythe unshorn,
+ The poor, forsaken farm-fields lie,
+ Once rich and rife with golden corn
+ And pale green breadths of rye.
+
+ Of healthful herb and flower bereft,
+ The garden plot no housewife keeps;
+ Through weeds and tangle only left,
+ The snake, its tenant, creeps.
+
+ A lilac spray, still blossom-clad,
+ Sways slow before the empty rooms;
+ Beside the roofless porch a sad
+ Pathetic red rose blooms.
+
+ His track, in mould and dust of drouth,
+ On floor and hearth the squirrel leaves,
+ And in the fireless chimney's mouth
+ His web the spider weaves.
+
+ The leaning barn, about to fall,
+ Resounds no more on husking eves;
+ No cattle low in yard or stall,
+ No thresher beats his sheaves.
+
+ So sad, so drear! It seems almost
+ Some haunting Presence makes its sign;
+ That down yon shadowy lane some ghost
+ Might drive his spectral kine!
+
+ O home so desolate and lorn!
+ Did all thy memories die with thee?
+ Were any wed, were any born,
+ Beneath this low roof-tree?
+
+ Whose axe the wall of forest broke,
+ And let the waiting sunshine through?
+ What goodwife sent the earliest smoke
+ Up the great chimney flue?
+
+ Did rustic lovers hither come?
+ Did maidens, swaying back and forth
+ In rhythmic grace, at wheel and loom,
+ Make light their toil with mirth?
+
+ Did child feet patter on the stair?
+ Did boyhood frolic in the snow?
+ Did gray age, in her elbow chair,
+ Knit, rocking to and fro?
+
+ The murmuring brook, the sighing breeze,
+ The pine's slow whisper, cannot tell;
+ Low mounds beneath the hemlock-trees
+ Keep the home secrets well.
+
+ Cease, mother-land, to fondly boast
+ Of sons far off who strive and thrive,
+ Forgetful that each swarming host
+ Must leave an emptier hive.
+
+ O wanderers from ancestral soil,
+ Leave noisome mill and chaffering store:
+ Gird up your loins for sturdier toil,
+ And build the home once more!
+
+ Come back to bayberry-scented slopes,
+ And fragrant fern, and ground-nut vine;
+ Breathe airs blown over holt and copse
+ Sweet with black birch and pine.
+
+ What matter if the gains are small
+ That life's essential wants supply?
+ Your homestead's title gives you all
+ That idle wealth can buy.
+
+ All that the many-dollared crave,
+ The brick-walled slaves of 'Change and mart,
+ Lawns, trees, fresh air, and flowers, you have,
+ More dear for lack of art.
+
+ Your own sole masters, freedom-willed,
+ With none to bid you go or stay,
+ Till the old fields your fathers tilled,
+ As manly men as they!
+
+ With skill that spares your toiling hands,
+ And chemic aid that science brings,
+ Reclaim the waste and outworn lands,
+ And reign thereon as kings
+
+ 1886.
+
+
+
+
+HOW THE ROBIN CAME.
+
+AN ALGONQUIN LEGEND.
+
+ HAPPY young friends, sit by me,
+ Under May's blown apple-tree,
+ While these home-birds in and out
+ Through the blossoms flit about.
+ Hear a story, strange and old,
+ By the wild red Indians told,
+ How the robin came to be:
+
+ Once a great chief left his son,--
+ Well-beloved, his only one,--
+ When the boy was well-nigh grown,
+ In the trial-lodge alone.
+ Left for tortures long and slow
+ Youths like him must undergo,
+ Who their pride of manhood test,
+ Lacking water, food, and rest.
+
+ Seven days the fast he kept,
+ Seven nights he never slept.
+ Then the young boy, wrung with pain,
+ Weak from nature's overstrain,
+ Faltering, moaned a low complaint
+ "Spare me, father, for I faint!"
+ But the chieftain, haughty-eyed,
+ Hid his pity in his pride.
+ "You shall be a hunter good,
+ Knowing never lack of food;
+ You shall be a warrior great,
+ Wise as fox and strong as bear;
+ Many scalps your belt shall wear,
+ If with patient heart you wait
+ Bravely till your task is done.
+ Better you should starving die
+ Than that boy and squaw should cry
+ Shame upon your father's son!"
+
+ When next morn the sun's first rays
+ Glistened on the hemlock sprays,
+ Straight that lodge the old chief sought,
+ And boiled sainp and moose meat brought.
+ "Rise and eat, my son!" he said.
+ Lo, he found the poor boy dead!
+
+ As with grief his grave they made,
+ And his bow beside him laid,
+ Pipe, and knife, and wampum-braid,
+ On the lodge-top overhead,
+ Preening smooth its breast of red
+ And the brown coat that it wore,
+ Sat a bird, unknown before.
+ And as if with human tongue,
+ "Mourn me not," it said, or sung;
+ "I, a bird, am still your son,
+ Happier than if hunter fleet,
+ Or a brave, before your feet
+ Laying scalps in battle won.
+ Friend of man, my song shall cheer
+ Lodge and corn-land; hovering near,
+ To each wigwam I shall bring
+ Tidings of the corning spring;
+ Every child my voice shall know
+ In the moon of melting snow,
+ When the maple's red bud swells,
+ And the wind-flower lifts its bells.
+ As their fond companion
+ Men shall henceforth own your son,
+ And my song shall testify
+ That of human kin am I."
+
+ Thus the Indian legend saith
+ How, at first, the robin came
+ With a sweeter life from death,
+ Bird for boy, and still the same.
+ If my young friends doubt that this
+ Is the robin's genesis,
+ Not in vain is still the myth
+ If a truth be found therewith
+ Unto gentleness belong
+ Gifts unknown to pride and wrong;
+ Happier far than hate is praise,--
+ He who sings than he who slays.
+
+
+
+
+BANISHED FROM MASSACHUSETTS.
+
+1660.
+
+On a painting by E. A. Abbey. The General Court of Massachusetts enacted
+Oct. 19, 1658, that "any person or persons of the cursed sect of
+Quakers" should, on conviction of the same, be banished, on pain
+of death, from the jurisdiction of the common-wealth.
+
+
+ OVER the threshold of his pleasant home
+ Set in green clearings passed the exiled Friend,
+ In simple trust, misdoubting not the end.
+ "Dear heart of mine!" he said, "the time has come
+ To trust the Lord for shelter." One long gaze
+ The goodwife turned on each familiar thing,--
+ The lowing kine, the orchard blossoming,
+ The open door that showed the hearth-fire's blaze,--
+ And calmly answered, "Yes, He will provide."
+ Silent and slow they crossed the homestead's bound,
+ Lingering the longest by their child's grave-mound.
+ "Move on, or stay and hang!" the sheriff cried.
+ They left behind them more than home or land,
+ And set sad faces to an alien strand.
+
+ Safer with winds and waves than human wrath,
+ With ravening wolves than those whose zeal for God
+ Was cruelty to man, the exiles trod
+ Drear leagues of forest without guide or path,
+ Or launching frail boats on the uncharted sea,
+ Round storm-vexed capes, whose teeth of granite ground
+ The waves to foam, their perilous way they wound,
+ Enduring all things so their souls were free.
+ Oh, true confessors, shaming them who did
+ Anew the wrong their Pilgrim Fathers bore
+ For you the Mayflower spread her sail once more,
+ Freighted with souls, to all that duty bid
+ Faithful as they who sought an unknown land,
+ O'er wintry seas, from Holland's Hook of Sand!
+
+ So from his lost home to the darkening main,
+ Bodeful of storm, stout Macy held his way,
+ And, when the green shore blended with the gray,
+ His poor wife moaned: "Let us turn back again."
+ "Nay, woman, weak of faith, kneel down," said he,
+ And say thy prayers: the Lord himself will steer;
+ And led by Him, nor man nor devils I fear!
+ So the gray Southwicks, from a rainy sea,
+ Saw, far and faint, the loom of land, and gave
+ With feeble voices thanks for friendly ground
+ Whereon to rest their weary feet, and found
+ A peaceful death-bed and a quiet grave
+ Where, ocean-walled, and wiser than his age,
+ The lord of Shelter scorned the bigot's rage.
+ Aquidneck's isle, Nantucket's lonely shores,
+ And Indian-haunted Narragansett saw
+ The way-worn travellers round their camp-fire draw,
+ Or heard the plashing of their weary oars.
+ And every place whereon they rested grew
+ Happier for pure and gracious womanhood,
+ And men whose names for stainless honor stood,
+ Founders of States and rulers wise and true.
+ The Muse of history yet shall make amends
+ To those who freedom, peace, and justice taught,
+ Beyond their dark age led the van of thought,
+ And left unforfeited the name of Friends.
+ O mother State, how foiled was thy design
+ The gain was theirs, the loss alone was thine.
+
+
+
+
+THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN.
+
+The hint of this ballad is found in Arndt's Murchen, Berlin, 1816. The
+ballad appeared first in St. Nicholas, whose young readers were advised,
+while smiling at the absurd superstition, to remember that bad
+companionship and evil habits, desires, and passions are more to be
+dreaded now than the Elves and Trolls who frightened the children of
+past ages.
+
+
+ THE pleasant isle of Rugen looks the Baltic water o'er,
+ To the silver-sanded beaches of the Pomeranian
+ shore;
+
+ And in the town of Rambin a little boy and maid
+ Plucked the meadow-flowers together and in the
+ sea-surf played.
+
+ Alike were they in beauty if not in their degree
+ He was the Amptman's first-born, the miller's
+ child was she.
+
+ Now of old the isle of Rugen was full of Dwarfs
+ and Trolls,
+ The brown-faced little Earth-men, the people without
+ souls;
+
+ And for every man and woman in Rugen's island
+ found
+ Walking in air and sunshine, a Troll was
+ underground.
+
+ It chanced the little maiden, one morning, strolled
+ away
+ Among the haunted Nine Hills, where the elves
+ and goblins play.
+
+ That day, in barley-fields below, the harvesters had
+ known
+ Of evil voices in the air, and heard the small horns
+ blown.
+
+ She came not back; the search for her in field and
+ wood was vain
+ They cried her east, they cried her west, but she
+ came not again.
+
+ "She's down among the Brown Dwarfs," said the
+ dream-wives wise and old,
+ And prayers were made, and masses said, and
+ Rambin's church bell tolled.
+
+ Five years her father mourned her; and then John
+ Deitrich said
+ "I will find my little playmate, be she alive or
+ dead."
+
+ He watched among the Nine Hills, he heard the
+ Brown Dwarfs sing,
+ And saw them dance by moonlight merrily in a
+ ring.
+
+ And when their gay-robed leader tossed up his cap
+ of red,
+ Young Deitrich caught it as it fell, and thrust it
+ on his head.
+
+ The Troll came crouching at his feet and wept for
+ lack of it.
+ "Oh, give me back my magic cap, for your great
+ head unfit!"
+
+ "Nay," Deitrich said; "the Dwarf who throws his
+ charmed cap away,
+ Must serve its finder at his will, and for his folly
+ pay.
+
+ "You stole my pretty Lisbeth, and hid her in the
+ earth;
+ And you shall ope the door of glass and let me
+ lead her forth."
+
+ "She will not come; she's one of us; she's
+ mine!" the Brown Dwarf said;
+ The day is set, the cake is baked, to-morrow we
+ shall wed."
+
+ "The fell fiend fetch thee!" Deitrich cried, "and
+ keep thy foul tongue still.
+ Quick! open, to thy evil world, the glass door of
+ the hill!"
+
+ The Dwarf obeyed; and youth and Troll down, the
+ long stair-way passed,
+ And saw in dim and sunless light a country strange
+ and vast.
+
+ Weird, rich, and wonderful, he saw the elfin
+ under-land,--
+ Its palaces of precious stones, its streets of golden
+ sand.
+
+ He came unto a banquet-hall with tables richly
+ spread,
+ Where a young maiden served to him the red wine
+ and the bread.
+
+ How fair she seemed among the Trolls so ugly and
+ so wild!
+ Yet pale and very sorrowful, like one who never
+ smiled!
+
+ Her low, sweet voice, her gold-brown hair, her tender
+ blue eyes seemed
+ Like something he had seen elsewhere or some.
+ thing he had dreamed.
+
+ He looked; he clasped her in his arms; he knew
+ the long-lost one;
+ "O Lisbeth! See thy playmate--I am the
+ Amptman's son!"
+
+ She leaned her fair head on his breast, and through
+ her sobs she spoke
+ "Oh, take me from this evil place, and from the
+ elfin folk,
+
+ "And let me tread the grass-green fields and smell
+ the flowers again,
+ And feel the soft wind on my cheek and hear the
+ dropping rain!
+
+ "And oh, to hear the singing bird, the rustling of
+ the tree,
+ The lowing cows, the bleat of sheep, the voices of
+ the sea;
+
+ "And oh, upon my father's knee to sit beside the
+ door,
+ And hear the bell of vespers ring in Rambin
+ church once more!"
+
+ He kissed her cheek, he kissed her lips; the Brown
+ Dwarf groaned to see,
+ And tore his tangled hair and ground his long
+ teeth angrily.
+
+ But Deitrich said: "For five long years this tender
+ Christian maid
+ Has served you in your evil world and well must
+ she be paid!
+
+ "Haste!--hither bring me precious gems, the
+ richest in your store;
+ Then when we pass the gate of glass, you'll take
+ your cap once more."
+
+ No choice was left the baffled Troll, and, murmuring,
+ he obeyed,
+ And filled the pockets of the youth and apron of
+ the maid.
+
+ They left the dreadful under-land and passed the
+ gate of glass;
+ They felt the sunshine's warm caress, they trod the
+ soft, green grass.
+
+ And when, beneath, they saw the Dwarf stretch up
+ to them his brown
+ And crooked claw-like fingers, they tossed his red
+ cap down.
+
+ Oh, never shone so bright a sun, was never sky so
+ blue,
+ As hand in hand they homeward walked the pleasant
+ meadows through!
+
+ And never sang the birds so sweet in Rambin's
+ woods before,
+ And never washed the waves so soft along the Baltic
+ shore;
+
+ And when beneath his door-yard trees the father
+ met his child,
+ The bells rung out their merriest peal, the folks
+ with joy ran wild.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME II. POEMS OF NATURE plus POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT and RELIGIOUS POEMS
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+POEMS OF NATURE:
+ THE FROST SPIRIT
+ THE MERRIMAC
+ HAMPTON BEACH
+ A DREAM OF SUMMER
+ THE LAKESIDE
+ AUTUMN THOUGHTS
+ ON RECEIVING AN EAGLE'S QUILL FROM LAKE SUPERIOR
+ APRIL
+ PICTURES
+ SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE
+ THE FRUIT-GIFT
+ FLOWERS IN WINTER
+ THE MAYFLOWERS
+ THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN
+ THE FIRST FLOWERS
+ THE OLD BURYING-GROUND
+ THE PALM-TREE
+ THE RIVER PATH
+ MOUNTAIN PICTURES
+ I. FRANCONIA FROM THE PEMIGEWASSET
+ II. MONADNOCK FROM WACHUSET
+ THE VANISHERS
+ THE PAGEANT
+ THE PRESSED GENTIAN
+ A MYSTERY
+ A SEA DREAM
+ HAZEL BLOSSOMS
+ SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP
+ THE SEEKING OF THE WATERFALL
+ THE TRAILING ARBUTUS
+ ST. MARTINS SUMMER
+ STORM ON LAKE ASQUAM
+ A SUMMER PILGRIMAGE
+ SWEET FERN
+ THE WOOD GIANT
+ A DAY
+
+
+POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT:
+ MEMORIES
+ RAPHAEL
+ EGO
+ THE PUMPKIN
+ FORGIVENESS
+ TO MY SISTER
+ MY THANKS
+ REMEMBRANCE
+ MY NAMESAKE
+ A MEMORY
+ MY DREAM
+ THE BAREFOOT BOY
+ MY PSALM
+ THE WAITING
+ SNOW-BOUND
+ MY TRIUMPH
+ IN SCHOOL-DAYS
+ MY BIRTHDAY
+ RED RIDING-HOOD
+ RESPONSE
+ AT EVENTIDE
+ VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE
+ MY TRUST
+ A NAME
+ GREETING
+ CONTENTS
+ AN AUTOGRAPH
+ ABRAM MORRISON
+ A LEGACY
+
+RELIGIOUS POEMS:
+ THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM
+ THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN
+ THE CALL OF THE CHRISTIAN
+ THE CRUCIFIXION
+ PALESTINE
+ HYMNS FROM THE FRENCH OF LAMARTINE
+ I. ENCORE UN HYMNE
+ II. LE CRI DE L'AME
+ THE FAMILIST'S HYMN
+ EZEKIEL
+ WHAT THE VOICE SAID
+ THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE
+ THE WIFE OF MANOAH TO HER HUSBAND
+ MY SOUL AND I
+ WORSHIP
+ THE HOLY LAND
+ THE REWARD
+ THE WISH OF TO-DAY
+ ALL'S WELL
+ INVOCATION
+ QUESTIONS OF LIFE
+ FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS
+ TRUST
+ TRINITAS
+ THE SISTERS
+ "THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR
+ THE OVER-HEART
+ THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT
+ THE CRY OF A LOST SOUL
+ ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER
+ THE ANSWER
+ THE ETERNAL GOODNESS
+ THE COMMON QUESTION
+ OUR MASTER
+ THE MEETING
+ THE CLEAR VISION
+ DIVINE COMPASSION
+ THE PRAYER-SEEKER
+ THE BREWING OF SOMA
+ A WOMAN
+ THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ
+ IN QUEST
+ THE FRIEND'S BURIAL
+ A CHRISTMAS CARMEN
+ VESTA
+ CHILD-SONGS
+ THE HEALER
+ THE TWO ANGELS
+ OVERRULED
+ HYMN OF THE DUNKERS
+ GIVING AND TAKING
+ THE VISION OF ECHARD
+ INSCRIPTIONS
+ ON A SUN-DIAL
+ ON A FOUNTAIN
+ THE MINISTER'S DAUGHTER
+ BY THEIR WORKS
+ THE WORD
+ THE BOOK
+ REQUIREMENT
+ HELP
+ UTTERANCE
+ ORIENTAL MAXIMS
+ THE INWARD JUDGE
+ LAYING UP TREASURE
+ CONDUCT
+ AN EASTER FLOWER GIFT
+ THE MYSTIC'S CHRISTMAS
+ AT LAST
+ WHAT THE TRAVELLER SAID AT SUNSET
+ THE "STORY OF IDA"
+ THE LIGHT THAT IS FELT
+ THE TWO LOVES
+ ADJUSTMENT
+ HYMNS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ
+ REVELATION
+
+
+
+
+
+POEMS OF NATURE
+
+
+
+
+THE FROST SPIRIT
+
+ He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes
+ You may trace his footsteps now
+ On the naked woods and the blasted fields and the
+ brown hill's withered brow.
+ He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees
+ where their pleasant green came forth,
+ And the winds, which follow wherever he goes,
+ have shaken them down to earth.
+
+ He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes!
+ from the frozen Labrador,
+ From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, which
+ the white bear wanders o'er,
+ Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice, and the
+ luckless forms below
+ In the sunless cold of the lingering night into
+ marble statues grow
+
+ He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes
+ on the rushing Northern blast,
+ And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed as his
+ fearful breath went past.
+ With an unscorched wing he has hurried on,
+ where the fires of Hecla glow
+ On the darkly beautiful sky above and the ancient
+ ice below.
+
+ He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes
+ and the quiet lake shall feel
+ The torpid touch of his glazing breath, and ring to
+ the skater's heel;
+ And the streams which danced on the broken
+ rocks, or sang to the leaning grass,
+ Shall bow again to their winter chain, and in
+ mournful silence pass.
+ He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes!
+ Let us meet him as we may,
+ And turn with the light of the parlor-fire his evil
+ power away;
+ And gather closer the circle round, when that
+ fire-light dances high,
+ And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend as
+ his sounding wing goes by!
+
+ 1830.
+
+
+
+THE MERRIMAC.
+
+ "The Indians speak of a beautiful river, far to the south,
+ which they call Merrimac."--SIEUR. DE MONTS, 1604.
+
+
+ Stream of my fathers! sweetly still
+ The sunset rays thy valley fill;
+ Poured slantwise down the long defile,
+ Wave, wood, and spire beneath them smile.
+ I see the winding Powow fold
+ The green hill in its belt of gold,
+ And following down its wavy line,
+ Its sparkling waters blend with thine.
+ There 's not a tree upon thy side,
+ Nor rock, which thy returning tide
+ As yet hath left abrupt and stark
+ Above thy evening water-mark;
+ No calm cove with its rocky hem,
+ No isle whose emerald swells begin
+ Thy broad, smooth current; not a sail
+ Bowed to the freshening ocean gale;
+ No small boat with its busy oars,
+ Nor gray wall sloping to thy shores;
+ Nor farm-house with its maple shade,
+ Or rigid poplar colonnade,
+ But lies distinct and full in sight,
+ Beneath this gush of sunset light.
+ Centuries ago, that harbor-bar,
+ Stretching its length of foam afar,
+ And Salisbury's beach of shining sand,
+ And yonder island's wave-smoothed strand,
+ Saw the adventurer's tiny sail,
+ Flit, stooping from the eastern gale;
+ And o'er these woods and waters broke
+ The cheer from Britain's hearts of oak,
+ As brightly on the voyager's eye,
+ Weary of forest, sea, and sky,
+ Breaking the dull continuous wood,
+ The Merrimac rolled down his flood;
+ Mingling that clear pellucid brook,
+ Which channels vast Agioochook
+ When spring-time's sun and shower unlock
+ The frozen fountains of the rock,
+ And more abundant waters given
+ From that pure lake, "The Smile of Heaven,"
+ Tributes from vale and mountain-side,--
+ With ocean's dark, eternal tide!
+
+ On yonder rocky cape, which braves
+ The stormy challenge of the waves,
+ Midst tangled vine and dwarfish wood,
+ The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood,
+ Planting upon the topmost crag
+ The staff of England's battle-flag;
+ And, while from out its heavy fold
+ Saint George's crimson cross unrolled,
+ Midst roll of drum and trumpet blare,
+ And weapons brandishing in air,
+ He gave to that lone promontory
+ The sweetest name in all his story;
+ Of her, the flower of Islam's daughters,
+ Whose harems look on Stamboul's waters,--
+ Who, when the chance of war had bound
+ The Moslem chain his limbs around,
+ Wreathed o'er with silk that iron chain,
+ Soothed with her smiles his hours of pain,
+ And fondly to her youthful slave
+ A dearer gift than freedom gave.
+
+ But look! the yellow light no more
+ Streams down on wave and verdant shore;
+ And clearly on the calm air swells
+ The twilight voice of distant bells.
+ From Ocean's bosom, white and thin,
+ The mists come slowly rolling in;
+ Hills, woods, the river's rocky rim,
+ Amidst the sea--like vapor swim,
+ While yonder lonely coast-light, set
+ Within its wave-washed minaret,
+ Half quenched, a beamless star and pale,
+ Shines dimly through its cloudy veil!
+
+ Home of my fathers!--I have stood
+ Where Hudson rolled his lordly flood
+ Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade
+ Along his frowning Palisade;
+ Looked down the Appalachian peak
+ On Juniata's silver streak;
+ Have seen along his valley gleam
+ The Mohawk's softly winding stream;
+ The level light of sunset shine
+ Through broad Potomac's hem of pine;
+ And autumn's rainbow-tinted banner
+ Hang lightly o'er the Susquehanna;
+ Yet wheresoe'er his step might be,
+ Thy wandering child looked back to thee!
+ Heard in his dreams thy river's sound
+ Of murmuring on its pebbly bound,
+ The unforgotten swell and roar
+ Of waves on thy familiar shore;
+ And saw, amidst the curtained gloom
+ And quiet of his lonely room,
+ Thy sunset scenes before him pass;
+ As, in Agrippa's magic glass,
+ The loved and lost arose to view,
+ Remembered groves in greenness grew,
+ Bathed still in childhood's morning dew,
+ Along whose bowers of beauty swept
+ Whatever Memory's mourners wept,
+ Sweet faces, which the charnel kept,
+ Young, gentle eyes, which long had slept;
+ And while the gazer leaned to trace,
+ More near, some dear familiar face,
+ He wept to find the vision flown,--
+ A phantom and a dream alone!
+
+ 1841.
+
+
+
+
+HAMPTON BEACH
+
+ The sunlight glitters keen and bright,
+ Where, miles away,
+ Lies stretching to my dazzled sight
+ A luminous belt, a misty light,
+ Beyond the dark pine bluffs and wastes of sandy gray.
+
+ The tremulous shadow of the Sea!
+ Against its ground
+ Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree,
+ Still as a picture, clear and free,
+ With varying outline mark the coast for miles around.
+
+ On--on--we tread with loose-flung rein
+ Our seaward way,
+ Through dark-green fields and blossoming grain,
+ Where the wild brier-rose skirts the lane,
+ And bends above our heads the flowering locust spray.
+
+ Ha! like a kind hand on my brow
+ Comes this fresh breeze,
+ Cooling its dull and feverish glow,
+ While through my being seems to flow
+ The breath of a new life, the healing of the seas!
+
+ Now rest we, where this grassy mound
+ His feet hath set
+ In the great waters, which have bound
+ His granite ankles greenly round
+ With long and tangled moss, and weeds with cool spray wet.
+
+ Good-by to Pain and Care! I take
+ Mine ease to-day
+ Here where these sunny waters break,
+ And ripples this keen breeze, I shake
+ All burdens from the heart, all weary thoughts away.
+
+ I draw a freer breath, I seem
+ Like all I see--
+ Waves in the sun, the white-winged gleam
+ Of sea-birds in the slanting beam,
+ And far-off sails which flit before the south-wind free.
+
+ So when Time's veil shall fall asunder,
+ The soul may know
+ No fearful change, nor sudden wonder,
+ Nor sink the weight of mystery under,
+ But with the upward rise, and with the vastness grow.
+
+ And all we shrink from now may seem
+ No new revealing;
+ Familiar as our childhood's stream,
+ Or pleasant memory of a dream
+ The loved and cherished Past upon the new life stealing.
+
+ Serene and mild the untried light
+ May have its dawning;
+ And, as in summer's northern night
+ The evening and the dawn unite,
+ The sunset hues of Time blend with the soul's new morning.
+
+ I sit alone; in foam and spray
+ Wave after wave
+ Breaks on the rocks which, stern and gray,
+ Shoulder the broken tide away,
+ Or murmurs hoarse and strong through mossy cleft and cave.
+
+ What heed I of the dusty land
+ And noisy town?
+ I see the mighty deep expand
+ From its white line of glimmering sand
+ To where the blue of heaven on bluer waves shuts down!
+
+ In listless quietude of mind,
+ I yield to all
+ The change of cloud and wave and wind
+ And passive on the flood reclined,
+ I wander with the waves, and with them rise and fall.
+
+ But look, thou dreamer! wave and shore
+ In shadow lie;
+ The night-wind warns me back once more
+ To where, my native hill-tops o'er,
+ Bends like an arch of fire the glowing sunset sky.
+
+ So then, beach, bluff, and wave, farewell!
+ I bear with me
+ No token stone nor glittering shell,
+ But long and oft shall Memory tell
+ Of this brief thoughtful hour of musing by the Sea.
+
+ 1843.
+
+
+
+
+A DREAM OF SUMMER.
+
+ Bland as the morning breath of June
+ The southwest breezes play;
+ And, through its haze, the winter noon
+ Seems warm as summer's day.
+ The snow-plumed Angel of the North
+ Has dropped his icy spear;
+ Again the mossy earth looks forth,
+ Again the streams gush clear.
+
+ The fox his hillside cell forsakes,
+ The muskrat leaves his nook,
+ The bluebird in the meadow brakes
+ Is singing with the brook.
+ "Bear up, O Mother Nature!" cry
+ Bird, breeze, and streamlet free;
+ "Our winter voices prophesy
+ Of summer days to thee!"
+
+ So, in those winters of the soul,
+ By bitter blasts and drear
+ O'erswept from Memory's frozen pole,
+ Will sunny days appear.
+ Reviving Hope and Faith, they show
+ The soul its living powers,
+ And how beneath the winter's snow
+ Lie germs of summer flowers!
+
+ The Night is mother of the Day,
+ The Winter of the Spring,
+ And ever upon old Decay
+ The greenest mosses cling.
+ Behind the cloud the starlight lurks,
+ Through showers the sunbeams fall;
+ For God, who loveth all His works,
+ Has left His hope with all!
+
+ 4th 1st month, 1847.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAKESIDE
+
+ The shadows round the inland sea
+ Are deepening into night;
+ Slow up the slopes of Ossipee
+ They chase the lessening light.
+ Tired of the long day's blinding heat,
+ I rest my languid eye,
+ Lake of the Hills! where, cool and sweet,
+ Thy sunset waters lie!
+
+ Along the sky, in wavy lines,
+ O'er isle and reach and bay,
+ Green-belted with eternal pines,
+ The mountains stretch away.
+ Below, the maple masses sleep
+ Where shore with water blends,
+ While midway on the tranquil deep
+ The evening light descends.
+
+ So seemed it when yon hill's red crown,
+ Of old, the Indian trod,
+ And, through the sunset air, looked down
+ Upon the Smile of God.
+ To him of light and shade the laws
+ No forest skeptic taught;
+ Their living and eternal Cause
+ His truer instinct sought.
+
+ He saw these mountains in the light
+ Which now across them shines;
+ This lake, in summer sunset bright,
+ Walled round with sombering pines.
+ God near him seemed; from earth and skies
+ His loving voice he beard,
+ As, face to face, in Paradise,
+ Man stood before the Lord.
+
+ Thanks, O our Father! that, like him,
+ Thy tender love I see,
+ In radiant hill and woodland dim,
+ And tinted sunset sea.
+ For not in mockery dost Thou fill
+ Our earth with light and grace;
+ Thou hid'st no dark and cruel will
+ Behind Thy smiling face!
+
+ 1849.
+
+
+
+
+AUTUMN THOUGHTS
+
+ Gone hath the Spring, with all its flowers,
+ And gone the Summer's pomp and show,
+ And Autumn, in his leafless bowers,
+ Is waiting for the Winter's snow.
+
+ I said to Earth, so cold and gray,
+ "An emblem of myself thou art."
+ "Not so," the Earth did seem to say,
+ "For Spring shall warm my frozen heart."
+ I soothe my wintry sleep with dreams
+ Of warmer sun and softer rain,
+ And wait to hear the sound of streams
+ And songs of merry birds again.
+
+ But thou, from whom the Spring hath gone,
+ For whom the flowers no longer blow,
+ Who standest blighted and forlorn,
+ Like Autumn waiting for the snow;
+
+ No hope is thine of sunnier hours,
+ Thy Winter shall no more depart;
+ No Spring revive thy wasted flowers,
+ Nor Summer warm thy frozen heart.
+
+ 1849.
+
+
+
+
+ON RECEIVING AN EAGLE'S QUILL FROM LAKE SUPERIOR.
+
+ All day the darkness and the cold
+ Upon my heart have lain,
+ Like shadows on the winter sky,
+ Like frost upon the pane;
+
+ But now my torpid fancy wakes,
+ And, on thy Eagle's plume,
+ Rides forth, like Sindbad on his bird,
+ Or witch upon her broom!
+
+ Below me roar the rocking pines,
+ Before me spreads the lake
+ Whose long and solemn-sounding waves
+ Against the sunset break.
+
+ I hear the wild Rice-Eater thresh
+ The grain he has not sown;
+ I see, with flashing scythe of fire,
+ The prairie harvest mown!
+
+ I hear the far-off voyager's horn;
+ I see the Yankee's trail,--
+ His foot on every mountain-pass,
+ On every stream his sail.
+
+ By forest, lake, and waterfall,
+ I see his pedler show;
+ The mighty mingling with the mean,
+ The lofty with the low.
+
+ He's whittling by St. Mary's Falls,
+ Upon his loaded wain;
+ He's measuring o'er the Pictured Rocks,
+ With eager eyes of gain.
+
+ I hear the mattock in the mine,
+ The axe-stroke in the dell,
+ The clamor from the Indian lodge,
+ The Jesuit chapel bell!
+
+ I see the swarthy trappers come
+ From Mississippi's springs;
+ And war-chiefs with their painted brows,
+ And crests of eagle wings.
+
+ Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe,
+ The steamer smokes and raves;
+ And city lots are staked for sale
+ Above old Indian graves.
+
+ I hear the tread of pioneers
+ Of nations yet to be;
+ The first low wash of waves, where soon
+ Shall roll a human sea.
+
+ The rudiments of empire here
+ Are plastic yet and warm;
+ The chaos of a mighty world
+ Is rounding into form!
+
+ Each rude and jostling fragment soon
+ Its fitting place shall find,--
+ The raw material of a State,
+ Its muscle and its mind!
+
+ And, westering still, the star which leads
+ The New World in its train
+ Has tipped with fire the icy spears
+ Of many a mountain chain.
+
+ The snowy cones of Oregon
+ Are kindling on its way;
+ And California's golden sands
+ Gleam brighter in its ray!
+
+ Then blessings on thy eagle quill,
+ As, wandering far and wide,
+ I thank thee for this twilight dream
+ And Fancy's airy ride!
+
+ Yet, welcomer than regal plumes,
+ Which Western trappers find,
+ Thy free and pleasant thoughts, chance sown,
+ Like feathers on the wind.
+
+ Thy symbol be the mountain-bird,
+ Whose glistening quill I hold;
+ Thy home the ample air of hope,
+ And memory's sunset gold!
+
+ In thee, let joy with duty join,
+ And strength unite with love,
+ The eagle's pinions folding round
+ The warm heart of the dove!
+
+ So, when in darkness sleeps the vale
+ Where still the blind bird clings
+ The sunshine of the upper sky
+ Shall glitter on thy wings!
+
+ 1849.
+
+
+
+
+APRIL.
+
+ "The spring comes slowly up this way."
+ Christabel.
+
+
+ 'T is the noon of the spring-time, yet never a bird
+ In the wind-shaken elm or the maple is heard;
+ For green meadow-grasses wide levels of snow,
+ And blowing of drifts where the crocus should blow;
+ Where wind-flower and violet, amber and white,
+ On south-sloping brooksides should smile in the light,
+ O'er the cold winter-beds of their late-waking roots
+ The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal shoots;
+ And, longing for light, under wind-driven heaps,
+ Round the boles of the pine-wood the ground-laurel creeps,
+ Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers,
+ With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst into flowers
+ We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south!
+ For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy mouth;
+ For the yearly evangel thou bearest from God,
+ Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod!
+ Up our long river-valley, for days, have not ceased
+ The wail and the shriek of the bitter northeast,
+ Raw and chill, as if winnowed through ices and snow,
+ All the way from the land of the wild Esquimau,
+ Until all our dreams of the land of the blest,
+ Like that red hunter's, turn to the sunny southwest.
+ O soul of the spring-time, its light and its breath,
+ Bring warmth to this coldness, bring life to this death;
+ Renew the great miracle; let us behold
+ The stone from the mouth of the sepulchre rolled,
+ And Nature, like Lazarus, rise, as of old!
+ Let our faith, which in darkness and coldness has lain,
+ Revive with the warmth and the brightness again,
+ And in blooming of flower and budding of tree
+ The symbols and types of our destiny see;
+ The life of the spring-time, the life of the whole,
+ And, as sun to the sleeping earth, love to the soul!
+
+ 1852.
+
+
+
+
+PICTURES
+
+
+ I.
+
+ Light, warmth, and sprouting greenness, and o'er all
+ Blue, stainless, steel-bright ether, raining down
+ Tranquillity upon the deep-hushed town,
+ The freshening meadows, and the hillsides brown;
+ Voice of the west-wind from the hills of pine,
+ And the brimmed river from its distant fall,
+ Low hum of bees, and joyous interlude
+ Of bird-songs in the streamlet-skirting wood,--
+ Heralds and prophecies of sound and sight,
+ Blessed forerunners of the warmth and light,
+ Attendant angels to the house of prayer,
+ With reverent footsteps keeping pace with mine,--
+ Once more, through God's great love, with you I share
+ A morn of resurrection sweet and fair
+ As that which saw, of old, in Palestine,
+ Immortal Love uprising in fresh bloom
+ From the dark night and winter of the tomb!
+
+ 2d, 5th mo., 1852.
+
+
+ II.
+
+ White with its sun-bleached dust, the pathway winds
+ Before me; dust is on the shrunken grass,
+ And on the trees beneath whose boughs I pass;
+ Frail screen against the Hunter of the sky,
+ Who, glaring on me with his lidless eye,
+ While mounting with his dog-star high and higher
+ Ambushed in light intolerable, unbinds
+ The burnished quiver of his shafts of fire.
+ Between me and the hot fields of his South
+ A tremulous glow, as from a furnace-mouth,
+ Glimmers and swims before my dazzled sight,
+ As if the burning arrows of his ire
+ Broke as they fell, and shattered into light;
+ Yet on my cheek I feel the western wind,
+ And hear it telling to the orchard trees,
+ And to the faint and flower-forsaken bees,
+ Tales of fair meadows, green with constant streams,
+ And mountains rising blue and cool behind,
+ Where in moist dells the purple orchis gleams,
+ And starred with white the virgin's bower is twined.
+ So the o'erwearied pilgrim, as he fares
+ Along life's summer waste, at times is fanned,
+ Even at noontide, by the cool, sweet airs
+ Of a serener and a holier land,
+ Fresh as the morn, and as the dewfall bland.
+ Breath of the blessed Heaven for which we pray,
+ Blow from the eternal hills! make glad our earthly way!
+
+ 8th mo., 1852.
+
+
+
+
+SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE
+
+LAKE WINNIPESAUKEE.
+
+
+ I. NOON.
+
+ White clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep,
+ Light mists, whose soft embraces keep
+ The sunshine on the hills asleep!
+
+ O isles of calm! O dark, still wood!
+ And stiller skies that overbrood
+ Your rest with deeper quietude!
+
+ O shapes and hues, dim beckoning, through
+ Yon mountain gaps, my longing view
+ Beyond the purple and the blue,
+
+ To stiller sea and greener land,
+ And softer lights and airs more bland,
+ And skies,--the hollow of God's hand!
+
+ Transfused through you, O mountain friends!
+ With mine your solemn spirit blends,
+ And life no more hath separate ends.
+
+ I read each misty mountain sign,
+ I know the voice of wave and pine,
+ And I am yours, and ye are mine.
+
+ Life's burdens fall, its discords cease,
+ I lapse into the glad release
+ Of Nature's own exceeding peace.
+
+ O welcome calm of heart and mind!
+ As falls yon fir-tree's loosened rind
+ To leave a tenderer growth behind,
+
+ So fall the weary years away;
+ A child again, my head I lay
+ Upon the lap of this sweet day.
+
+ This western wind hath Lethean powers,
+ Yon noonday cloud nepenthe showers,
+ The lake is white with lotus-flowers!
+
+ Even Duty's voice is faint and low,
+ And slumberous Conscience, waking slow,
+ Forgets her blotted scroll to show.
+
+ The Shadow which pursues us all,
+ Whose ever-nearing steps appall,
+ Whose voice we hear behind us call,--
+
+ That Shadow blends with mountain gray,
+ It speaks but what the light waves say,--
+ Death walks apart from Fear to-day!
+
+ Rocked on her breast, these pines and I
+ Alike on Nature's love rely;
+ And equal seems to live or die.
+
+ Assured that He whose presence fills
+ With light the spaces of these hills
+ No evil to His creatures wills,
+
+ The simple faith remains, that He
+ Will do, whatever that may be,
+ The best alike for man and tree.
+
+ What mosses over one shall grow,
+ What light and life the other know,
+ Unanxious, leaving Him to show.
+
+
+ II. EVENING.
+
+ Yon mountain's side is black with night,
+ While, broad-orhed, o'er its gleaming crown
+ The moon, slow-rounding into sight,
+ On the hushed inland sea looks down.
+
+ How start to light the clustering isles,
+ Each silver-hemmed! How sharply show
+ The shadows of their rocky piles,
+ And tree-tops in the wave below!
+
+ How far and strange the mountains seem,
+ Dim-looming through the pale, still light
+ The vague, vast grouping of a dream,
+ They stretch into the solemn night.
+
+ Beneath, lake, wood, and peopled vale,
+ Hushed by that presence grand and grave,
+ Are silent, save the cricket's wail,
+ And low response of leaf and wave.
+
+ Fair scenes! whereto the Day and Night
+ Make rival love, I leave ye soon,
+ What time before the eastern light
+ The pale ghost of the setting moon
+
+ Shall hide behind yon rocky spines,
+ And the young archer, Morn, shall break
+ His arrows on the mountain pines,
+ And, golden-sandalled, walk the lake!
+
+ Farewell! around this smiling bay
+ Gay-hearted Health, and Life in bloom,
+ With lighter steps than mine, may stray
+ In radiant summers yet to come.
+
+ But none shall more regretful leave
+ These waters and these hills than I
+ Or, distant, fonder dream how eve
+ Or dawn is painting wave and sky;
+
+ How rising moons shine sad and mild
+ On wooded isle and silvering bay;
+ Or setting suns beyond the piled
+ And purple mountains lead the day;
+
+ Nor laughing girl, nor bearding boy,
+ Nor full-pulsed manhood, lingering here,
+ Shall add, to life's abounding joy,
+ The charmed repose to suffering dear.
+
+ Still waits kind Nature to impart
+ Her choicest gifts to such as gain
+ An entrance to her loving heart
+ Through the sharp discipline of pain.
+
+ Forever from the Hand that takes
+ One blessing from us others fall;
+ And, soon or late, our Father makes
+ His perfect recompense to all!
+
+ Oh, watched by Silence and the Night,
+ And folded in the strong embrace
+ Of the great mountains, with the light
+ Of the sweet heavens upon thy face,
+
+ Lake of the Northland! keep thy dower
+ Of beauty still, and while above
+ Thy solemn mountains speak of power,
+ Be thou the mirror of God's love.
+
+ 1853.
+
+
+
+
+THE FRUIT-GIFT.
+
+ Last night, just as the tints of autumn's sky
+ Of sunset faded from our hills and streams,
+ I sat, vague listening, lapped in twilight dreams,
+ To the leaf's rustle, and the cricket's cry.
+
+ Then, like that basket, flush with summer fruit,
+ Dropped by the angels at the Prophet's foot,
+ Came, unannounced, a gift of clustered sweetness,
+ Full-orbed, and glowing with the prisoned beams
+ Of summery suns, and rounded to completeness
+ By kisses of the south-wind and the dew.
+ Thrilled with a glad surprise, methought I knew
+ The pleasure of the homeward-turning Jew,
+ When Eshcol's clusters on his shoulders lay,
+ Dropping their sweetness on his desert way.
+
+ I said, "This fruit beseems no world of sin.
+ Its parent vine, rooted in Paradise,
+ O'ercrept the wall, and never paid the price
+ Of the great mischief,--an ambrosial tree,
+ Eden's exotic, somehow smuggled in,
+ To keep the thorns and thistles company."
+ Perchance our frail, sad mother plucked in haste
+ A single vine-slip as she passed the gate,
+ Where the dread sword alternate paled and burned,
+ And the stern angel, pitying her fate,
+ Forgave the lovely trespasser, and turned
+ Aside his face of fire; and thus the waste
+ And fallen world hath yet its annual taste
+ Of primal good, to prove of sin the cost,
+ And show by one gleaned ear the mighty harvest lost.
+
+ 1854.
+
+
+
+
+FLOWERS IN WINTER
+
+PAINTED UPON A PORTE LIVRE.
+
+ How strange to greet, this frosty morn,
+ In graceful counterfeit of flowers,
+ These children of the meadows, born
+ Of sunshine and of showers!
+
+ How well the conscious wood retains
+ The pictures of its flower-sown home,
+ The lights and shades, the purple stains,
+ And golden hues of bloom!
+
+ It was a happy thought to bring
+ To the dark season's frost and rime
+ This painted memory of spring,
+ This dream of summer-time.
+
+ Our hearts are lighter for its sake,
+ Our fancy's age renews its youth,
+ And dim-remembered fictions take
+ The guise of--present truth.
+
+ A wizard of the Merrimac,--
+ So old ancestral legends say,
+ Could call green leaf and blossom back
+ To frosted stem and spray.
+
+ The dry logs of the cottage wall,
+ Beneath his touch, put out their leaves
+ The clay-bound swallow, at his call,
+ Played round the icy eaves.
+
+ The settler saw his oaken flail
+ Take bud, and bloom before his eyes;
+ From frozen pools he saw the pale,
+ Sweet summer lilies rise.
+
+ To their old homes, by man profaned,
+ Came the sad dryads, exiled long,
+ And through their leafy tongues complained
+ Of household use and wrong.
+
+ The beechen platter sprouted wild,
+ The pipkin wore its old-time green
+ The cradle o'er the sleeping child
+ Became a leafy screen.
+
+ Haply our gentle friend hath met,
+ While wandering in her sylvan quest,
+ Haunting his native woodlands yet,
+ That Druid of the West;
+
+ And, while the dew on leaf and flower
+ Glistened in moonlight clear and still,
+ Learned the dusk wizard's spell of power,
+ And caught his trick of skill.
+
+ But welcome, be it new or old,
+ The gift which makes the day more bright,
+ And paints, upon the ground of cold
+ And darkness, warmth and light.
+
+ Without is neither gold nor green;
+ Within, for birds, the birch-logs sing;
+ Yet, summer-like, we sit between
+ The autumn and the spring.
+
+ The one, with bridal blush of rose,
+ And sweetest breath of woodland balm,
+ And one whose matron lips unclose
+ In smiles of saintly calm.
+
+ Fill soft and deep, O winter snow!
+ The sweet azalea's oaken dells,
+ And hide the bank where roses blow,
+ And swing the azure bells!
+
+ O'erlay the amber violet's leaves,
+ The purple aster's brookside home,
+ Guard all the flowers her pencil gives
+ A life beyond their bloom.
+
+ And she, when spring comes round again,
+ By greening slope and singing flood
+ Shall wander, seeking, not in vain,
+ Her darlings of the wood.
+
+ 1855.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAYFLOWERS
+
+The trailing arbutus, or mayflower, grows abundantly in the vicinity of
+Plymouth, and was the first flower that greeted the Pilgrims after their
+fearful winter. The name mayflower was familiar in England, as the
+application of it to the historic vessel shows, but it was applied by
+the English, and still is, to the hawthorn. Its use in New England in
+connection with _Epigma repens _dates from a very early day, some
+claiming that the first Pilgrims so used it, in affectionate memory of
+the vessel and its English flower association.
+
+ Sad Mayflower! watched by winter stars,
+ And nursed by winter gales,
+ With petals of the sleeted spars,
+ And leaves of frozen sails!
+
+ What had she in those dreary hours,
+ Within her ice-rimmed bay,
+ In common with the wild-wood flowers,
+ The first sweet smiles of May?
+
+ Yet, "God be praised!" the Pilgrim said,
+ Who saw the blossoms peer
+ Above the brown leaves, dry and dead,
+ "Behold our Mayflower here!"
+
+ "God wills it: here our rest shall be,
+ Our years of wandering o'er;
+ For us the Mayflower of the sea
+ Shall spread her sails no more."
+
+ O sacred flowers of faith and hope,
+ As sweetly now as then
+ Ye bloom on many a birchen slope,
+ In many a pine-dark glen.
+
+ Behind the sea-wall's rugged length,
+ Unchanged, your leaves unfold,
+ Like love behind the manly strength
+ Of the brave hearts of old.
+
+ So live the fathers in their sons,
+ Their sturdy faith be ours,
+ And ours the love that overruns
+ Its rocky strength with flowers!
+
+ The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day
+ Its shadow round us draws;
+ The Mayflower of his stormy bay,
+ Our Freedom's struggling cause.
+
+ But warmer suns erelong shall bring
+ To life the frozen sod;
+ And through dead leaves of hope shall spring
+ Afresh the flowers of God!
+
+ 1856.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN.
+
+ I.
+ O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched hands
+ Plead with the leaden heavens in vain,
+ I see, beyond the valley lands,
+ The sea's long level dim with rain.
+ Around me all things, stark and dumb,
+ Seem praying for the snows to come,
+ And, for the summer bloom and greenness gone,
+ With winter's sunset lights and dazzling morn atone.
+
+ II.
+ Along the river's summer walk,
+ The withered tufts of asters nod;
+ And trembles on its arid stalk
+ The boar plume of the golden-rod.
+ And on a ground of sombre fir,
+ And azure-studded juniper,
+ The silver birch its buds of purple shows,
+ And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet wild-rose!
+
+ III.
+ With mingled sound of horns and bells,
+ A far-heard clang, the wild geese fly,
+ Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and fells,
+ Like a great arrow through the sky,
+ Two dusky lines converged in one,
+ Chasing the southward-flying sun;
+ While the brave snow-bird and the hardy jay
+ Call to them from the pines, as if to bid them stay.
+
+ IV.
+ I passed this way a year ago
+ The wind blew south; the noon of day
+ Was warm as June's; and save that snow
+ Flecked the low mountains far away,
+ And that the vernal-seeming breeze
+ Mocked faded grass and leafless trees,
+ I might have dreamed of summer as I lay,
+ Watching the fallen leaves with the soft wind at play.
+
+ V.
+ Since then, the winter blasts have piled
+ The white pagodas of the snow
+ On these rough slopes, and, strong and wild,
+ Yon river, in its overflow
+ Of spring-time rain and sun, set free,
+ Crashed with its ices to the sea;
+ And over these gray fields, then green and gold,
+ The summer corn has waved, the thunder's organ rolled.
+
+ VI.
+ Rich gift of God! A year of time
+ What pomp of rise and shut of day,
+ What hues wherewith our Northern clime
+ Makes autumn's dropping woodlands gay,
+ What airs outblown from ferny dells,
+ And clover-bloom and sweetbrier smells,
+ What songs of brooks and birds, what fruits and flowers,
+ Green woods and moonlit snows, have in its round been ours!
+
+ VII.
+ I know not how, in other lands,
+ The changing seasons come and go;
+ What splendors fall on Syrian sands,
+ What purple lights on Alpine snow!
+ Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits
+ On Venice at her watery gates;
+ A dream alone to me is Arno's vale,
+ And the Alhambra's halls are but a traveller's tale.
+
+ VIII.
+ Yet, on life's current, he who drifts
+ Is one with him who rows or sails
+ And he who wanders widest lifts
+ No more of beauty's jealous veils
+ Than he who from his doorway sees
+ The miracle of flowers and trees,
+ Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air,
+ And from cloud minarets hears the sunset call to prayer!
+
+ IX.
+ The eye may well be glad that looks
+ Where Pharpar's fountains rise and fall;
+ But he who sees his native brooks
+ Laugh in the sun, has seen them all.
+ The marble palaces of Ind
+ Rise round him in the snow and wind;
+ From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hafiz smiles,
+ And Rome's cathedral awe is in his woodland aisles.
+
+ X.
+ And thus it is my fancy blends
+ The near at hand and far and rare;
+ And while the same horizon bends
+ Above the silver-sprinkled hair
+ Which flashed the light of morning skies
+ On childhood's wonder-lifted eyes,
+ Within its round of sea and sky and field,
+ Earth wheels with all her zones, the Kosmos stands revealed.
+
+ XI.
+ And thus the sick man on his bed,
+ The toiler to his task-work bound,
+ Behold their prison-walls outspread,
+ Their clipped horizon widen round!
+ While freedom-giving fancy waits,
+ Like Peter's angel at the gates,
+ The power is theirs to baffle care and pain,
+ To bring the lost world back, and make it theirs again!
+
+ XII.
+ What lack of goodly company,
+ When masters of the ancient lyre
+ Obey my call, and trace for me
+ Their words of mingled tears and fire!
+ I talk with Bacon, grave and wise,
+ I read the world with Pascal's eyes;
+ And priest and sage, with solemn brows austere,
+ And poets, garland-bound, the Lords of Thought, draw near.
+
+ XIII.
+ Methinks, O friend, I hear thee say,
+ "In vain the human heart we mock;
+ Bring living guests who love the day,
+ Not ghosts who fly at crow of cock!
+ The herbs we share with flesh and blood
+ Are better than ambrosial food
+ With laurelled shades." I grant it, nothing loath,
+ But doubly blest is he who can partake of both.
+
+ XIV.
+ He who might Plato's banquet grace,
+ Have I not seen before me sit,
+ And watched his puritanic face,
+ With more than Eastern wisdom lit?
+ Shrewd mystic! who, upon the back
+ Of his Poor Richard's Almanac,
+ Writing the Sufi's song, the Gentoo's dream,
+ Links Manu's age of thought to Fulton's age of steam!
+
+ XV.
+ Here too, of answering love secure,
+ Have I not welcomed to my hearth
+ The gentle pilgrim troubadour,
+ Whose songs have girdled half the earth;
+ Whose pages, like the magic mat
+ Whereon the Eastern lover sat,
+ Have borne me over Rhine-land's purple vines,
+ And Nubia's tawny sands, and Phrygia's mountain pines!
+
+ XVI.
+ And he, who to the lettered wealth
+ Of ages adds the lore unpriced,
+ The wisdom and the moral health,
+ The ethics of the school of Christ;
+ The statesman to his holy trust,
+ As the Athenian archon, just,
+ Struck down, exiled like him for truth alone,
+ Has he not graced my home with beauty all his own?
+
+ XVII.
+ What greetings smile, what farewells wave,
+ What loved ones enter and depart!
+ The good, the beautiful, the brave,
+ The Heaven-lent treasures of the heart!
+ How conscious seems the frozen sod
+ And beechen slope whereon they trod
+ The oak-leaves rustle, and the dry grass bends
+ Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or absent friends.
+
+ XVIII.
+ Then ask not why to these bleak hills
+ I cling, as clings the tufted moss,
+ To bear the winter's lingering chills,
+ The mocking spring's perpetual loss.
+ I dream of lands where summer smiles,
+ And soft winds blow from spicy isles,
+ But scarce would Ceylon's breath of flowers be sweet,
+ Could I not feel thy soil, New England, at my feet!
+
+ XIX.
+ At times I long for gentler skies,
+ And bathe in dreams of softer air,
+ But homesick tears would fill the eyes
+ That saw the Cross without the Bear.
+ The pine must whisper to the palm,
+ The north-wind break the tropic calm;
+ And with the dreamy languor of the Line,
+ The North's keen virtue blend, and strength to beauty join.
+
+ XX.
+ Better to stem with heart and hand
+ The roaring tide of life, than lie,
+ Unmindful, on its flowery strand,
+ Of God's occasions drifting by
+ Better with naked nerve to bear
+ The needles of this goading air,
+ Than, in the lap of sensual ease, forego
+ The godlike power to do, the godlike aim to know.
+
+ XXI.
+ Home of my heart! to me more fair
+ Than gay Versailles or Windsor's halls,
+ The painted, shingly town-house where
+ The freeman's vote for Freedom falls!
+ The simple roof where prayer is made,
+ Than Gothic groin and colonnade;
+ The living temple of the heart of man,
+ Than Rome's sky-mocking vault, or many-spired Milan!
+
+ XXII.
+ More dear thy equal village schools,
+ Where rich and poor the Bible read,
+ Than classic halls where Priestcraft rules,
+ And Learning wears the chains of Creed;
+ Thy glad Thanksgiving, gathering in
+ The scattered sheaves of home and kin,
+ Than the mad license ushering Lenten pains,
+ Or holidays of slaves who laugh and dance in chains.
+
+ XXIII.
+ And sweet homes nestle in these dales,
+ And perch along these wooded swells;
+ And, blest beyond Arcadian vales,
+ They hear the sound of Sabbath bells!
+ Here dwells no perfect man sublime,
+ Nor woman winged before her time,
+ But with the faults and follies of the race,
+ Old home-bred virtues hold their not unhonored place.
+
+ XXIV.
+ Here manhood struggles for the sake
+ Of mother, sister, daughter, wife,
+ The graces and the loves which make
+ The music of the march of life;
+ And woman, in her daily round
+ Of duty, walks on holy ground.
+ No unpaid menial tills the soil, nor here
+ Is the bad lesson learned at human rights to sneer.
+
+ XXV.
+ Then let the icy north-wind blow
+ The trumpets of the coming storm,
+ To arrowy sleet and blinding snow
+ Yon slanting lines of rain transform.
+ Young hearts shall hail the drifted cold,
+ As gayly as I did of old;
+ And I, who watch them through the frosty pane,
+ Unenvious, live in them my boyhood o'er again.
+
+ XXVI.
+ And I will trust that He who heeds
+ The life that hides in mead and wold,
+ Who hangs yon alder's crimson beads,
+ And stains these mosses green and gold,
+ Will still, as He hath done, incline
+ His gracious care to me and mine;
+ Grant what we ask aright, from wrong debar,
+ And, as the earth grows dark, make brighter every star!
+
+ XXVII.
+ I have not seen, I may not see,
+ My hopes for man take form in fact,
+ But God will give the victory
+ In due time; in that faith I act.
+ And lie who sees the future sure,
+ The baffling present may endure,
+ And bless, meanwhile, the unseen Hand that leads
+ The heart's desires beyond the halting step of deeds.
+
+ XXVIII.
+ And thou, my song, I send thee forth,
+ Where harsher songs of mine have flown;
+ Go, find a place at home and hearth
+ Where'er thy singer's name is known;
+ Revive for him the kindly thought
+ Of friends; and they who love him not,
+ Touched by some strain of thine, perchance may take
+ The hand he proffers all, and thank him for thy sake.
+
+ 1857.
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRST FLOWERS
+
+ For ages on our river borders,
+ These tassels in their tawny bloom,
+ And willowy studs of downy silver,
+ Have prophesied of Spring to come.
+
+ For ages have the unbound waters
+ Smiled on them from their pebbly hem,
+ And the clear carol of the robin
+ And song of bluebird welcomed them.
+
+ But never yet from smiling river,
+ Or song of early bird, have they
+ Been greeted with a gladder welcome
+ Than whispers from my heart to-day.
+
+ They break the spell of cold and darkness,
+ The weary watch of sleepless pain;
+ And from my heart, as from the river,
+ The ice of winter melts again.
+
+ Thanks, Mary! for this wild-wood token
+ Of Freya's footsteps drawing near;
+ Almost, as in the rune of Asgard,
+ The growing of the grass I hear.
+
+ It is as if the pine-trees called me
+ From ceiled room and silent books,
+ To see the dance of woodland shadows,
+ And hear the song of April brooks!
+
+ As in the old Teutonic ballad
+ Of Odenwald live bird and tree,
+ Together live in bloom and music,
+ I blend in song thy flowers and thee.
+
+ Earth's rocky tablets bear forever
+ The dint of rain and small bird's track
+ Who knows but that my idle verses
+ May leave some trace by Merrimac!
+
+ The bird that trod the mellow layers
+ Of the young earth is sought in vain;
+ The cloud is gone that wove the sandstone,
+ From God's design, with threads of rain!
+
+ So, when this fluid age we live in
+ Shall stiffen round my careless rhyme,
+ Who made the vagrant tracks may puzzle
+ The savants of the coming time;
+
+ And, following out their dim suggestions,
+ Some idly-curious hand may draw
+ My doubtful portraiture, as Cuvier
+ Drew fish and bird from fin and claw.
+
+ And maidens in the far-off twilights,
+ Singing my words to breeze and stream,
+ Shall wonder if the old-time Mary
+ Were real, or the rhymer's dream!
+
+ 1st 3d mo., 1857.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+ There, sheep that graze the neighboring plain
+ Like white ghosts come and go,
+ The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain,
+ The cow-bell tinkles slow.
+
+ Low moans the river from its bed,
+ The distant pines reply;
+ Like mourners shrinking from the dead,
+ They stand apart and sigh.
+
+ Unshaded smites the summer sun,
+ Unchecked the winter blast;
+ The school-girl learns the place to shun,
+ With glances backward cast.
+
+ For thus our fathers testified,
+ That he might read who ran,
+ The emptiness of human pride,
+ The nothingness of man.
+
+ They dared not plant the grave with flowers,
+ Nor dress the funeral sod,
+ Where, with a love as deep as ours,
+ They left their dead with God.
+
+ The hard and thorny path they kept
+ From beauty turned aside;
+ Nor missed they over those who slept
+ The grace to life denied.
+
+ Yet still the wilding flowers would blow,
+ The golden leaves would fall,
+ The seasons come, the seasons go,
+ And God be good to all.
+
+ Above the graves the' blackberry hung
+ In bloom and green its wreath,
+ And harebells swung as if they rung
+ The chimes of peace beneath.
+
+ The beauty Nature loves to share,
+ The gifts she hath for all,
+ The common light, the common air,
+ 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.
+
+ 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,
+ The 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.
+
+ Secure on God's all-tender heart
+ Alike rest great and small;
+ Why fear to lose our little part,
+ When He is pledged for all?
+
+ O fearful heart and troubled brain
+ Take hope and strength from this,--
+ That Nature never hints in vain,
+ Nor prophesies amiss.
+
+ Her wild birds sing the same sweet stave,
+ Her lights and airs are given
+ Alike to playground and the grave;
+ And over both is Heaven.
+
+ 1858
+
+
+
+
+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?
+
+ 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 one!
+
+ To him the palm is a gift divine,
+ Wherein all uses of man combine,--
+ House, and raiment, and food, and wine!
+
+ And, in the hour of his great release,
+ His need of the palm shall only cease
+ With the shroud wherein he lieth in peace.
+
+ "Allah il Allah!" he sings his psalm,
+ On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm;
+ "Thanks to Allah who gives the palm!"
+
+ 1858.
+
+
+
+
+THE RIVER PATH.
+
+ No bird-song floated down the hill,
+ The tangled bank below was still;
+
+ No rustle from the birchen stem,
+ No ripple from the water's hem.
+
+ The dusk of twilight round us grew,
+ We felt the falling of the dew;
+
+ For, from us, ere the day was done,
+ The wooded hills shut out the sun.
+
+ But on the river's farther side
+ We saw the hill-tops glorified,--
+
+ A tender glow, exceeding fair,
+ A dream of day without its glare.
+
+ With us the damp, the chill, the gloom
+ With them the sunset's rosy bloom;
+
+ While dark, through willowy vistas seen,
+ The river rolled in shade between.
+
+ From out the darkness where we trod,
+ We gazed upon those bills of God,
+
+ Whose light seemed not of moon or sun.
+ We spake not, but our thought was one.
+
+ We paused, as if from that bright shore
+ Beckoned our dear ones gone before;
+
+ And stilled our beating hearts to hear
+ The voices lost to mortal ear!
+
+ Sudden our pathway turned from night;
+ The hills swung open to the light;
+
+ Through their green gates the sunshine showed,
+ A long, slant splendor downward flowed.
+
+ Down glade and glen and bank it rolled;
+ It bridged the shaded stream with gold;
+
+ And, borne on piers of mist, allied
+ The shadowy with the sunlit side!
+
+ "So," prayed we, "when our feet draw near
+ The river dark, with mortal fear,
+
+ "And the night cometh chill with dew,
+ O Father! let Thy light break through!
+
+ "So let the hills of doubt divide,
+ So bridge with faith the sunless tide!
+
+ "So let the eyes that fail on earth
+ On Thy eternal hills look forth;
+
+ "And in Thy beckoning angels know
+ The dear ones whom we loved below!"
+
+ 1880.
+
+
+
+MOUNTAIN PICTURES.
+
+ I. FRANCONIA FROM THE PEMIGEWASSET
+
+ Once more, O Mountains of the North, unveil
+ Your brows, and lay your cloudy mantles by
+ And once more, ere the eyes that seek ye fail,
+ Uplift against the blue walls of the sky
+ Your mighty shapes, and let the sunshine weave
+ Its golden net-work in your belting woods,
+ Smile down in rainbows from your falling floods,
+ And on your kingly brows at morn and eve
+ Set crowns of fire! So shall my soul receive
+ Haply the secret of your calm and strength,
+ Your unforgotten beauty interfuse
+ My common life, your glorious shapes and hues
+ And sun-dropped splendors at my bidding come,
+ Loom vast through dreams, and stretch in billowy length
+ From the sea-level of my lowland home!
+
+ They rise before me! Last night's thunder-gust
+ Roared not in vain: for where its lightnings thrust
+ Their tongues of fire, the great peaks seem so near,
+ Burned clean of mist, so starkly bold and clear,
+ I almost pause the wind in the pines to hear,
+ The loose rock's fall, the steps of browsing deer.
+ The clouds that shattered on yon slide-worn walls
+ And splintered on the rocks their spears of rain
+ Have set in play a thousand waterfalls,
+ Making the dusk and silence of the woods
+ Glad with the laughter of the chasing floods,
+ And luminous with blown spray and silver gleams,
+ While, in the vales below, the dry-lipped streams
+ Sing to the freshened meadow-lands again.
+ So, let me hope, the battle-storm that beats
+ The land with hail and fire may pass away
+ With its spent thunders at the break of day,
+ Like last night's clouds, and leave, as it retreats,
+ A greener earth and fairer sky behind,
+ Blown crystal-clear by Freedom's Northern wind!
+
+ II. MONADNOCK FROM WACHUSET.
+
+ I would I were a painter, for the sake
+ Of a sweet picture, and of her who led,
+ A fitting guide, with reverential tread,
+ Into that mountain mystery. First a lake
+ Tinted with sunset; next the wavy lines
+ Of far receding hills; and yet more far,
+ Monadnock lifting from his night of pines
+ His rosy forehead to the evening star.
+ Beside us, purple-zoned, Wachuset laid
+ His head against the West, whose warm light made
+ His aureole; and o'er him, sharp and clear,
+ Like a shaft of lightning in mid-launching stayed,
+ A single level cloud-line, shone upon
+ By the fierce glances of the sunken sun,
+ Menaced the darkness with its golden spear!
+
+ So twilight deepened round us. Still and black
+ The great woods climbed the mountain at our back;
+ And on their skirts, where yet the lingering day
+ On the shorn greenness of the clearing lay,
+ The brown old farm-house like a bird's-nest hung.
+ With home-life sounds the desert air was stirred
+ The bleat of sheep along the hill we heard,
+ The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet well,
+ The pasture-bars that clattered as they fell;
+ Dogs barked, fowls fluttered, cattle lowed; the gate
+ Of the barn-yard creaked beneath the merry weight
+ Of sun-brown children, listening, while they swung,
+ The welcome sound of supper-call to hear;
+ And down the shadowy lane, in tinklings clear,
+ The pastoral curfew of the cow-bell rung.
+ Thus soothed and pleased, our backward path we took,
+ Praising the farmer's home. He only spake,
+ Looking into the sunset o'er the lake,
+ Like one to whom the far-off is most near:
+ "Yes, most folks think it has a pleasant look;
+ I love it for my good old mother's sake,
+ Who lived and died here in the peace of God!"
+ The lesson of his words we pondered o'er,
+ As silently we turned the eastern flank
+ Of the mountain, where its shadow deepest sank,
+ Doubling the night along our rugged road:
+ We felt that man was more than his abode,--
+ The inward life than Nature's raiment more;
+ And the warm sky, the sundown-tinted hill,
+ The forest and the lake, seemed dwarfed and dim
+ Before the saintly soul, whose human will
+ Meekly in the Eternal footsteps trod,
+ Making her homely toil and household ways
+ An earthly echo of the song of praise
+ Swelling from angel lips and harps of seraphim.
+
+ 1862.
+
+
+
+
+THE VANISHERS.
+
+ Sweetest of all childlike dreams
+ In the simple Indian lore
+ Still to me the legend seems
+ Of the shapes who flit before.
+
+ Flitting, passing, seen and gone,
+ Never reached nor found at rest,
+ Baffling search, but beckoning on
+ To the Sunset of the Blest.
+
+ From the clefts of mountain rocks,
+ Through the dark of lowland firs,
+ Flash the eyes and flow the locks
+ Of the mystic Vanishers!
+
+ And the fisher in his skiff,
+ And the hunter on the moss,
+ Hear their call from cape and cliff,
+ See their hands the birch-leaves toss.
+
+ Wistful, longing, through the green
+ Twilight of the clustered pines,
+ In their faces rarely seen
+ Beauty more than mortal shines.
+
+ Fringed with gold their mantles flow
+ On the slopes of westering knolls;
+ In the wind they whisper low
+ Of the Sunset Land of Souls.
+
+ Doubt who may, O friend of mine!
+ Thou and I have seen them too;
+ On before with beck and sign
+ Still they glide, and we pursue.
+
+ More than clouds of purple trail
+ In the gold of setting day;
+ More than gleams of wing or sail
+ Beckon from the sea-mist gray.
+
+ Glimpses of immortal youth,
+ Gleams and glories seen and flown,
+ Far-heard voices sweet with truth,
+ Airs from viewless Eden blown;
+
+ Beauty that eludes our grasp,
+ Sweetness that transcends our taste,
+ Loving hands we may not clasp,
+ Shining feet that mock our haste;
+
+ Gentle eyes we closed below,
+ Tender voices heard once more,
+ Smile and call us, as they go
+ On and onward, still before.
+
+ Guided thus, O friend of mine
+ Let us walk our little way,
+ Knowing by each beckoning sign
+ That we are not quite astray.
+
+ Chase we still, with baffled feet,
+ Smiling eye and waving hand,
+ Sought and seeker soon shall meet,
+ Lost and found, in Sunset Land.
+
+ 1864.
+
+
+
+
+THE PAGEANT.
+
+ A sound as if from bells of silver,
+ Or elfin cymbals smitten clear,
+ Through the frost-pictured panes I hear.
+
+ A brightness which outshines the morning,
+ A splendor brooking no delay,
+ Beckons and tempts my feet away.
+
+ I leave the trodden village highway
+ For virgin snow-paths glimmering through
+ A jewelled elm-tree avenue;
+
+ Where, keen against the walls of sapphire,
+ The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-embossed,
+ Hold up their chandeliers of frost.
+
+ I tread in Orient halls enchanted,
+ I dream the Saga's dream of caves
+ Gem-lit beneath the North Sea waves!
+
+ I walk the land of Eldorado,
+ I touch its mimic garden bowers,
+ Its silver leaves and diamond flowers!
+
+ The flora of the mystic mine-world
+ Around me lifts on crystal stems
+ The petals of its clustered gems!
+
+ What miracle of weird transforming
+ In this wild work of frost and light,
+ This glimpse of glory infinite!
+
+ This foregleam of the Holy City
+ Like that to him of Patmos given,
+ The white bride coming down from heaven!
+
+ How flash the ranked and mail-clad alders,
+ Through what sharp-glancing spears of reeds
+ The brook its muffled water leads!
+
+ Yon maple, like the bush of Horeb,
+ Burns unconsumed: a white, cold fire
+ Rays out from every grassy spire.
+
+ Each slender rush and spike of mullein,
+ Low laurel shrub and drooping fern,
+ Transfigured, blaze where'er I turn.
+
+ How yonder Ethiopian hemlock
+ Crowned with his glistening circlet stands!
+ What jewels light his swarthy hands!
+
+ Here, where the forest opens southward,
+ Between its hospitable pines,
+ As through a door, the warm sun shines.
+
+ The jewels loosen on the branches,
+ And lightly, as the soft winds blow,
+ Fall, tinkling, on the ice below.
+
+ And through the clashing of their cymbals
+ I hear the old familiar fall
+ Of water down the rocky wall,
+
+ Where, from its wintry prison breaking,
+ In dark and silence hidden long,
+ The brook repeats its summer song.
+
+ One instant flashing in the sunshine,
+ Keen as a sabre from its sheath,
+ Then lost again the ice beneath.
+
+ I hear the rabbit lightly leaping,
+ The foolish screaming of the jay,
+ The chopper's axe-stroke far away;
+
+ The clamor of some neighboring barn-yard,
+ The lazy cock's belated crow,
+ Or cattle-tramp in crispy snow.
+
+ And, as in some enchanted forest
+ The lost knight hears his comrades sing,
+ And, near at hand, their bridles ring,--
+
+ So welcome I these sounds and voices,
+ These airs from far-off summer blown,
+ This life that leaves me not alone.
+
+ For the white glory overawes me;
+ The crystal terror of the seer
+ Of Chebar's vision blinds me here.
+
+ Rebuke me not, O sapphire heaven!
+ Thou stainless earth, lay not on me,
+ Thy keen reproach of purity,
+
+ If, in this August presence-chamber,
+ I sigh for summer's leaf-green gloom
+ And warm airs thick with odorous bloom!
+
+ Let the strange frost-work sink and crumble,
+ And let the loosened tree-boughs swing,
+ Till all their bells of silver ring.
+
+ Shine warmly down, thou sun of noontime,
+ On this chill pageant, melt and move
+ The winter's frozen heart with love.
+
+ And, soft and low, thou wind south-blowing,
+ Breathe through a veil of tenderest haze
+ Thy prophecy of summer days.
+
+ Come with thy green relief of promise,
+ And to this dead, cold splendor bring
+ The living jewels of the spring!
+
+ 1869.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRESSED GENTIAN.
+
+ The time of gifts has come again,
+ And, on my northern window-pane,
+ Outlined against the day's brief light,
+ A Christmas token hangs in sight.
+
+ The wayside travellers, as they pass,
+ Mark the gray disk of clouded glass;
+ And the dull blankness seems, perchance,
+ Folly to their wise ignorance.
+
+ They cannot from their outlook see
+ The perfect grace it hath for me;
+ For there the flower, whose fringes through
+ The frosty breath of autumn blew,
+ Turns from without its face of bloom
+ To the warm tropic of my room,
+ As fair as when beside its brook
+ The hue of bending skies it took.
+
+ So from the trodden ways of earth,
+ Seem some sweet souls who veil their worth,
+ And offer to the careless glance
+ The clouding gray of circumstance.
+ They blossom best where hearth-fires burn,
+ To loving eyes alone they turn
+ The flowers of inward grace, that hide
+ Their beauty from the world outside.
+
+ But deeper meanings come to me,
+ My half-immortal flower, from thee!
+ Man judges from a partial view,
+ None ever yet his brother knew;
+ The Eternal Eye that sees the whole
+ May better read the darkened soul,
+ And find, to outward sense denied,
+ The flower upon its inmost side
+
+ 1872.
+
+
+
+
+A MYSTERY.
+
+ The river hemmed with leaning trees
+ Wound through its meadows green;
+ A low, blue line of mountains showed
+ The open pines between.
+
+ One sharp, tall peak above them all
+ Clear into sunlight sprang
+ I saw the river of my dreams,
+ The mountains that I sang!
+
+ No clue of memory led me on,
+ But well the ways I knew;
+ A feeling of familiar things
+ With every footstep grew.
+
+ Not otherwise above its crag
+ Could lean the blasted pine;
+ Not otherwise the maple hold
+ Aloft its red ensign.
+
+ So up the long and shorn foot-hills
+ The mountain road should creep;
+ So, green and low, the meadow fold
+ Its red-haired kine asleep.
+
+ The river wound as it should wind;
+ Their place the mountains took;
+ The white torn fringes of their clouds
+ Wore no unwonted look.
+
+ Yet ne'er before that river's rim
+ Was pressed by feet of mine,
+ Never before mine eyes had crossed
+ That broken mountain line.
+
+ A presence, strange at once and known,
+ Walked with me as my guide;
+ The skirts of some forgotten life
+ Trailed noiseless at my side.
+
+ Was it a dim-remembered dream?
+ Or glimpse through ions old?
+ The secret which the mountains kept
+ The river never told.
+
+ But from the vision ere it passed
+ A tender hope I drew,
+ And, pleasant as a dawn of spring,
+ The thought within me grew,
+
+ That love would temper every change,
+ And soften all surprise,
+ And, misty with the dreams of earth,
+ The hills of Heaven arise.
+
+ 1873.
+
+
+
+
+A SEA DREAM.
+
+ We saw the slow tides go and come,
+ The curving surf-lines lightly drawn,
+ The gray rocks touched with tender bloom
+ Beneath the fresh-blown rose of dawn.
+
+ We saw in richer sunsets lost
+ The sombre pomp of showery noons;
+ And signalled spectral sails that crossed
+ The weird, low light of rising moons.
+
+ On stormy eves from cliff and head
+ We saw the white spray tossed and spurned;
+ While over all, in gold and red,
+ Its face of fire the lighthouse turned.
+
+ The rail-car brought its daily crowds,
+ Half curious, half indifferent,
+ Like passing sails or floating clouds,
+ We saw them as they came and went.
+
+ But, one calm morning, as we lay
+ And watched the mirage-lifted wall
+ Of coast, across the dreamy bay,
+ And heard afar the curlew call,
+
+ And nearer voices, wild or tame,
+ Of airy flock and childish throng,
+ Up from the water's edge there came
+ Faint snatches of familiar song.
+
+ Careless we heard the singer's choice
+ Of old and common airs; at last
+ The tender pathos of his voice
+ In one low chanson held us fast.
+
+ A song that mingled joy and pain,
+ And memories old and sadly sweet;
+ While, timing to its minor strain,
+ The waves in lapsing cadence beat.
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ The waves are glad in breeze and sun;
+ The rocks are fringed with foam;
+ I walk once more a haunted shore,
+ A stranger, yet at home,
+ A land of dreams I roam.
+
+ Is this the wind, the soft sea wind
+ That stirred thy locks of brown?
+ Are these the rocks whose mosses knew
+ The trail of thy light gown,
+ Where boy and girl sat down?
+
+ I see the gray fort's broken wall,
+ The boats that rock below;
+ And, out at sea, the passing sails
+ We saw so long ago
+ Rose-red in morning's glow.
+
+ The freshness of the early time
+ On every breeze is blown;
+ As glad the sea, as blue the sky,--
+ The change is ours alone;
+ The saddest is my own.
+
+ A stranger now, a world-worn man,
+ Is he who bears my name;
+ But thou, methinks, whose mortal life
+ Immortal youth became,
+ Art evermore the same.
+
+ Thou art not here, thou art not there,
+ Thy place I cannot see;
+ I only know that where thou art
+ The blessed angels be,
+ And heaven is glad for thee.
+
+ Forgive me if the evil years
+ Have left on me their sign;
+ Wash out, O soul so beautiful,
+ The many stains of mine
+ In tears of love divine!
+
+ I could not look on thee and live,
+ If thou wert by my side;
+ The vision of a shining one,
+ The white and heavenly bride,
+ Is well to me denied.
+
+ But turn to me thy dear girl-face
+ Without the angel's crown,
+ The wedded roses of thy lips,
+ Thy loose hair rippling down
+ In waves of golden brown.
+
+ Look forth once more through space and time,
+ And let thy sweet shade fall
+ In tenderest grace of soul and form
+ On memory's frescoed wall,
+ A shadow, and yet all!
+
+ Draw near, more near, forever dear!
+ Where'er I rest or roam,
+ Or in the city's crowded streets,
+ Or by the blown sea foam,
+ The thought of thee is home!
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ At breakfast hour the singer read
+ The city news, with comment wise,
+ Like one who felt the pulse of trade
+ Beneath his finger fall and rise.
+
+ His look, his air, his curt speech, told
+ The man of action, not of books,
+ To whom the corners made in gold
+ And stocks were more than seaside nooks.
+
+ Of life beneath the life confessed
+ His song had hinted unawares;
+ Of flowers in traffic's ledgers pressed,
+ Of human hearts in bulls and bears.
+
+ But eyes in vain were turned to watch
+ That face so hard and shrewd and strong;
+ And ears in vain grew sharp to catch
+ The meaning of that morning song.
+
+ In vain some sweet-voiced querist sought
+ To sound him, leaving as she came;
+ Her baited album only caught
+ A common, unromantic name.
+
+ No word betrayed the mystery fine,
+ That trembled on the singer's tongue;
+ He came and went, and left no sign
+ Behind him save the song he sung.
+
+ 1874.
+
+
+
+
+HAZEL BLOSSOMS.
+
+ The summer warmth has left the sky,
+ The summer songs have died away;
+ And, withered, in the footpaths lie
+ The fallen leaves, but yesterday
+ With ruby and with topaz gay.
+
+ The grass is browning on the hills;
+ No pale, belated flowers recall
+ The astral fringes of the rills,
+ And drearily the dead vines fall,
+ Frost-blackened, from the roadside wall.
+
+ Yet through the gray and sombre wood,
+ Against the dusk of fir and pine,
+ Last of their floral sisterhood,
+ The hazel's yellow blossoms shine,
+ The tawny gold of Afric's mine!
+
+ Small beauty hath my unsung flower,
+ For spring to own or summer hail;
+ But, in the season's saddest hour,
+ To skies that weep and winds that wail
+ Its glad surprisals never fail.
+
+ O days grown cold! O life grown old
+ No rose of June may bloom again;
+ But, like the hazel's twisted gold,
+ Through early frost and latter rain
+ Shall hints of summer-time remain.
+
+ And as within the hazel's bough
+ A gift of mystic virtue dwells,
+ That points to golden ores below,
+ And in dry desert places tells
+ Where flow unseen the cool, sweet wells,
+
+ So, in the wise Diviner's hand,
+ Be mine the hazel's grateful part
+ To feel, beneath a thirsty land,
+ The living waters thrill and start,
+ The beating of the rivulet's heart!
+
+ Sufficeth me the gift to light
+ With latest bloom the dark, cold days;
+ To call some hidden spring to sight
+ That, in these dry and dusty ways,
+ Shall sing its pleasant song of praise.
+
+ O Love! the hazel-wand may fail,
+ But thou canst lend the surer spell,
+ That, passing over Baca's vale,
+ Repeats the old-time miracle,
+ And makes the desert-land a well.
+
+ 1874.
+
+
+
+
+SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP.
+
+ A gold fringe on the purpling hem
+ Of hills the river runs,
+ As down its long, green valley falls
+ The last of summer's suns.
+
+ Along its tawny gravel-bed
+ Broad-flowing, swift, and still,
+ As if its meadow levels felt
+ The hurry of the hill,
+ Noiseless between its banks of green
+ From curve to curve it slips;
+ The drowsy maple-shadows rest
+ Like fingers on its lips.
+
+ A waif from Carroll's wildest hills,
+ Unstoried and unknown;
+ The ursine legend of its name
+ Prowls on its banks alone.
+ Yet flowers as fair its slopes adorn
+ As ever Yarrow knew,
+ Or, under rainy Irish skies,
+ By Spenser's Mulla grew;
+ And through the gaps of leaning trees
+ Its mountain cradle shows
+ The gold against the amethyst,
+ The green against the rose.
+
+ Touched by a light that hath no name,
+ A glory never sung,
+ Aloft on sky and mountain wall
+ Are God's great pictures hung.
+ How changed the summits vast and old!
+ No longer granite-browed,
+ They melt in rosy mist; the rock
+ Is softer than the cloud;
+ The valley holds its breath; no leaf
+ Of all its elms is twirled
+ The silence of eternity
+ Seems falling on the world.
+
+ The pause before the breaking seals
+ Of mystery is this;
+ Yon miracle-play of night and day
+ Makes dumb its witnesses.
+ What unseen altar crowns the hills
+ That reach up stair on stair?
+ What eyes look through, what white wings fan
+ These purple veils of air?
+ What Presence from the heavenly heights
+ To those of earth stoops down?
+ Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods
+ On Ida's snowy crown!
+
+ Slow fades the vision of the sky,
+ The golden water pales,
+ And over all the valley-land
+ A gray-winged vapor sails.
+ I go the common way of all;
+ The sunset fires will burn,
+ The flowers will blow, the river flow,
+ When I no more return.
+ No whisper from the mountain pine
+ Nor lapsing stream shall tell
+ The stranger, treading where I tread,
+ Of him who loved them well.
+
+ But beauty seen is never lost,
+ God's colors all are fast;
+ The glory of this sunset heaven
+ Into my soul has passed,
+ A sense of gladness unconfined
+ To mortal date or clime;
+ As the soul liveth, it shall live
+ Beyond the years of time.
+ Beside the mystic asphodels
+ Shall bloom the home-born flowers,
+ And new horizons flush and glow
+ With sunset hues of ours.
+
+ Farewell! these smiling hills must wear
+ Too soon their wintry frown,
+ And snow-cold winds from off them shake
+ The maple's red leaves down.
+ But I shall see a summer sun
+ Still setting broad and low;
+ The mountain slopes shall blush and bloom,
+ The golden water flow.
+ A lover's claim is mine on all
+ I see to have and hold,--
+ The rose-light of perpetual hills,
+ And sunsets never cold!
+
+ 1876
+
+
+
+
+THE SEEKING OF THE WATERFALL.
+
+ They left their home of summer ease
+ Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees,
+ To seek, by ways unknown to all,
+ The promise of the waterfall.
+
+ Some vague, faint rumor to the vale
+ Had crept--perchance a hunter's tale--
+ Of its wild mirth of waters lost
+ On the dark woods through which it tossed.
+
+ Somewhere it laughed and sang; somewhere
+ Whirled in mad dance its misty hair;
+ But who had raised its veil, or seen
+ The rainbow skirts of that Undine?
+
+ They sought it where the mountain brook
+ Its swift way to the valley took;
+ Along the rugged slope they clomb,
+ Their guide a thread of sound and foam.
+
+ Height after height they slowly won;
+ The fiery javelins of the sun
+ Smote the bare ledge; the tangled shade
+ With rock and vine their steps delayed.
+
+ But, through leaf-openings, now and then
+ They saw the cheerful homes of men,
+ And the great mountains with their wall
+ Of misty purple girdling all.
+
+ The leaves through which the glad winds blew
+ Shared the wild dance the waters knew;
+ And where the shadows deepest fell
+ The wood-thrush rang his silver bell.
+
+ Fringing the stream, at every turn
+ Swung low the waving fronds of fern;
+ From stony cleft and mossy sod
+ Pale asters sprang, and golden-rod.
+
+ And still the water sang the sweet,
+ Glad song that stirred its gliding feet,
+ And found in rock and root the keys
+ Of its beguiling melodies.
+
+ Beyond, above, its signals flew
+ Of tossing foam the birch-trees through;
+ Now seen, now lost, but baffling still
+ The weary seekers' slackening will.
+
+ Each called to each: "Lo here! Lo there!
+ Its white scarf flutters in the air!"
+ They climbed anew; the vision fled,
+ To beckon higher overhead.
+
+ So toiled they up the mountain-slope
+ With faint and ever fainter hope;
+ With faint and fainter voice the brook
+ Still bade them listen, pause, and look.
+
+ Meanwhile below the day was done;
+ Above the tall peaks saw the sun
+ Sink, beam-shorn, to its misty set
+ Behind the hills of violet.
+
+ "Here ends our quest!" the seekers cried,
+ "The brook and rumor both have lied!
+ The phantom of a waterfall
+ Has led us at its beck and call."
+
+ But one, with years grown wiser, said
+ "So, always baffled, not misled,
+ We follow where before us runs
+ The vision of the shining ones.
+
+ "Not where they seem their signals fly,
+ Their voices while we listen die;
+ We cannot keep, however fleet,
+ The quick time of their winged feet.
+
+ "From youth to age unresting stray
+ These kindly mockers in our way;
+ Yet lead they not, the baffling elves,
+ To something better than themselves?
+
+ "Here, though unreached the goal we sought,
+ Its own reward our toil has brought:
+ The winding water's sounding rush,
+ The long note of the hermit thrush,
+
+ "The turquoise lakes, the glimpse of pond
+ And river track, and, vast, beyond
+ Broad meadows belted round with pines,
+ The grand uplift of mountain lines!
+
+ "What matter though we seek with pain
+ The garden of the gods in vain,
+ If lured thereby we climb to greet
+ Some wayside blossom Eden-sweet?
+
+ "To seek is better than to gain,
+ The fond hope dies as we attain;
+ Life's fairest things are those which seem,
+ The best is that of which we dream.
+
+ "Then let us trust our waterfall
+ Still flashes down its rocky wall,
+ With rainbow crescent curved across
+ Its sunlit spray from moss to moss.
+
+ "And we, forgetful of our pain,
+ In thought shall seek it oft again;
+ Shall see this aster-blossomed sod,
+ This sunshine of the golden-rod,
+
+ "And haply gain, through parting boughs,
+ Grand glimpses of great mountain brows
+ Cloud-turbaned, and the sharp steel sheen
+ Of lakes deep set in valleys green.
+
+ "So failure wins; the consequence
+ Of loss becomes its recompense;
+ And evermore the end shall tell
+ The unreached ideal guided well.
+
+ "Our sweet illusions only die
+ Fulfilling love's sure prophecy;
+ And every wish for better things
+ An undreamed beauty nearer brings.
+
+ "For fate is servitor of love;
+ Desire and hope and longing prove
+ The secret of immortal youth,
+ And Nature cheats us into truth.
+
+ "O kind allurers, wisely sent,
+ Beguiling with benign intent,
+ Still move us, through divine unrest,
+ To seek the loveliest and the best!
+
+ "Go with us when our souls go free,
+ And, in the clear, white light to be,
+ Add unto Heaven's beatitude
+ The old delight of seeking good!"
+
+ 1878.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRAILING ARBUTUS
+
+ I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made
+ Against the bitter East their barricade,
+ And, guided by its sweet
+ Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell,
+ The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell
+ Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet.
+
+ From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines
+ Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines
+ Lifted their glad surprise,
+ While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees
+ His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze,
+ And snow-drifts lingered under April skies.
+
+ As, pausing, o'er the lonely flower I bent,
+ I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent,
+ Which yet find room,
+ Through care and cumber, coldness and decay,
+ To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day
+ And make the sad earth happier for their bloom.
+
+ 1879.
+
+
+
+
+ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER.
+
+This name in some parts of Europe is given to the season we call Indian
+Summer, in honor of the good St. Martin. The title of the poem was
+suggested by the fact that the day it refers to was the exact date of
+that set apart to the Saint, the 11th of November.
+
+ Though flowers have perished at the touch
+ Of Frost, the early comer,
+ I hail the season loved so much,
+ The good St. Martin's summer.
+
+ O gracious morn, with rose-red dawn,
+ And thin moon curving o'er it!
+ The old year's darling, latest born,
+ More loved than all before it!
+
+ How flamed the sunrise through the pines!
+ How stretched the birchen shadows,
+ Braiding in long, wind-wavered lines
+ The westward sloping meadows!
+
+ The sweet day, opening as a flower
+ Unfolds its petals tender,
+ Renews for us at noontide's hour
+ The summer's tempered splendor.
+
+ The birds are hushed; alone the wind,
+ That through the woodland searches,
+ The red-oak's lingering leaves can find,
+ And yellow plumes of larches.
+
+ But still the balsam-breathing pine
+ Invites no thought of sorrow,
+ No hint of loss from air like wine
+ The earth's content can borrow.
+
+ The summer and the winter here
+ Midway a truce are holding,
+ A soft, consenting atmosphere
+ Their tents of peace enfolding.
+
+ The silent woods, the lonely hills,
+ Rise solemn in their gladness;
+ The quiet that the valley fills
+ Is scarcely joy or sadness.
+
+ How strange! The autumn yesterday
+ In winter's grasp seemed dying;
+ On whirling winds from skies of gray
+ The early snow was flying.
+
+ And now, while over Nature's mood
+ There steals a soft relenting,
+ I will not mar the present good,
+ Forecasting or lamenting.
+
+ My autumn time and Nature's hold
+ A dreamy tryst together,
+ And, both grown old, about us fold
+ The golden-tissued weather.
+
+ I lean my heart against the day
+ To feel its bland caressing;
+ I will not let it pass away
+ Before it leaves its blessing.
+
+ God's angels come not as of old
+ The Syrian shepherds knew them;
+ In reddening dawns, in sunset gold,
+ And warm noon lights I view them.
+
+ Nor need there is, in times like this
+ When heaven to earth draws nearer,
+ Of wing or song as witnesses
+ To make their presence clearer.
+
+ O stream of life, whose swifter flow
+ Is of the end forewarning,
+ Methinks thy sundown afterglow
+ Seems less of night than morning!
+
+ Old cares grow light; aside I lay
+ The doubts and fears that troubled;
+ The quiet of the happy day
+ Within my soul is doubled.
+
+ That clouds must veil this fair sunshine
+ Not less a joy I find it;
+ Nor less yon warm horizon line
+ That winter lurks behind it.
+
+ The mystery of the untried days
+ I close my eyes from reading;
+ His will be done whose darkest ways
+ To light and life are leading!
+
+ Less drear the winter night shall be,
+ If memory cheer and hearten
+ Its heavy hours with thoughts of thee,
+ Sweet summer of St. Martin!
+
+ 1880.
+
+
+
+
+STORM ON LAKE ASQUAM.
+
+ A cloud, like that the old-time Hebrew saw
+ On Carmel prophesying rain, began
+ To lift itself o'er wooded Cardigan,
+ Growing and blackening. Suddenly, a flaw
+
+ Of chill wind menaced; then a strong blast beat
+ Down the long valley's murmuring pines, and woke
+ The noon-dream of the sleeping lake, and broke
+ Its smooth steel mirror at the mountains' feet.
+
+ Thunderous and vast, a fire-veined darkness swept
+ Over the rough pine-bearded Asquam range;
+ A wraith of tempest, wonderful and strange,
+ From peak to peak the cloudy giant stepped.
+
+ One moment, as if challenging the storm,
+ Chocorua's tall, defiant sentinel
+ Looked from his watch-tower; then the shadow fell,
+ And the wild rain-drift blotted out his form.
+
+ And over all the still unhidden sun,
+ Weaving its light through slant-blown veils of rain,
+ Smiled on the trouble, as hope smiles on pain;
+ And, when the tumult and the strife were done,
+
+ With one foot on the lake and one on land,
+ Framing within his crescent's tinted streak
+ A far-off picture of the Melvin peak,
+ Spent broken clouds the rainbow's angel spanned.
+
+ 1882.
+
+
+
+
+A SUMMER PILGRIMAGE.
+
+ To kneel before some saintly shrine,
+ To breathe the health of airs divine,
+ Or bathe where sacred rivers flow,
+ The cowled and turbaned pilgrims go.
+ I too, a palmer, take, as they
+ With staff and scallop-shell, my way
+ To feel, from burdening cares and ills,
+ The strong uplifting of the hills.
+
+ The years are many since, at first,
+ For dreamed-of wonders all athirst,
+ I saw on Winnipesaukee fall
+ The shadow of the mountain wall.
+ Ah! where are they who sailed with me
+ The beautiful island-studded sea?
+ And am I he whose keen surprise
+ Flashed out from such unclouded eyes?
+
+ Still, when the sun of summer burns,
+ My longing for the hills returns;
+ And northward, leaving at my back
+ The warm vale of the Merrimac,
+ I go to meet the winds of morn,
+ Blown down the hill-gaps, mountain-born,
+ Breathe scent of pines, and satisfy
+ The hunger of a lowland eye.
+
+ Again I see the day decline
+ Along a ridged horizon line;
+ Touching the hill-tops, as a nun
+ Her beaded rosary, sinks the sun.
+ One lake lies golden, which shall soon
+ Be silver in the rising moon;
+ And one, the crimson of the skies
+ And mountain purple multiplies.
+
+ With the untroubled quiet blends
+ The distance-softened voice of friends;
+ The girl's light laugh no discord brings
+ To the low song the pine-tree sings;
+ And, not unwelcome, comes the hail
+ Of boyhood from his nearing sail.
+ The human presence breaks no spell,
+ And sunset still is miracle!
+
+ Calm as the hour, methinks I feel
+ A sense of worship o'er me steal;
+ Not that of satyr-charming Pan,
+ No cult of Nature shaming man,
+ Not Beauty's self, but that which lives
+ And shines through all the veils it weaves,--
+ Soul of the mountain, lake, and wood,
+ Their witness to the Eternal Good!
+
+ And if, by fond illusion, here
+ The earth to heaven seems drawing near,
+ And yon outlying range invites
+ To other and serener heights,
+ Scarce hid behind its topmost swell,
+ The shining Mounts Delectable
+ A dream may hint of truth no less
+ Than the sharp light of wakefulness.
+
+ As through her vale of incense smoke.
+ Of old the spell-rapt priestess spoke,
+ More than her heathen oracle,
+ May not this trance of sunset tell
+ That Nature's forms of loveliness
+ Their heavenly archetypes confess,
+ Fashioned like Israel's ark alone
+ From patterns in the Mount made known?
+
+ A holier beauty overbroods
+ These fair and faint similitudes;
+ Yet not unblest is he who sees
+ Shadows of God's realities,
+ And knows beyond this masquerade
+ Of shape and color, light and shade,
+ And dawn and set, and wax and wane,
+ Eternal verities remain.
+
+ O gems of sapphire, granite set!
+ O hills that charmed horizons fret
+ I know how fair your morns can break,
+ In rosy light on isle and lake;
+ How over wooded slopes can run
+ The noonday play of cloud and sun,
+ And evening droop her oriflamme
+ Of gold and red in still Asquam.
+
+ The summer moons may round again,
+ And careless feet these hills profane;
+ These sunsets waste on vacant eyes
+ The lavish splendor of the skies;
+ Fashion and folly, misplaced here,
+ Sigh for their natural atmosphere,
+ And travelled pride the outlook scorn
+ Of lesser heights than Matterhorn.
+
+ But let me dream that hill and sky
+ Of unseen beauty prophesy;
+ And in these tinted lakes behold
+ The trailing of the raiment fold
+ Of that which, still eluding gaze,
+ Allures to upward-tending ways,
+ Whose footprints make, wherever found,
+ Our common earth a holy ground.
+
+ 1883.
+
+
+
+
+SWEET FERN.
+
+ The subtle power in perfume found
+ Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned;
+ On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound
+ No censer idly burned.
+
+ That power the old-time worships knew,
+ The Corybantes' frenzied dance,
+ The Pythian priestess swooning through
+ The wonderland of trance.
+
+ And Nature holds, in wood and field,
+ Her thousand sunlit censers still;
+ To spells of flower and shrub we yield
+ Against or with our will.
+
+ I climbed a hill path strange and new
+ With slow feet, pausing at each turn;
+ A sudden waft of west wind blew
+ The breath of the sweet fern.
+
+ That fragrance from my vision swept
+ The alien landscape; in its stead,
+ Up fairer hills of youth I stepped,
+ As light of heart as tread.
+
+ I saw my boyhood's lakelet shine
+ Once more through rifts of woodland shade;
+ I knew my river's winding line
+ By morning mist betrayed.
+
+ With me June's freshness, lapsing brook,
+ Murmurs of leaf and bee, the call
+ Of birds, and one in voice and look
+ In keeping with them all.
+
+ A fern beside the way we went
+ She plucked, and, smiling, held it up,
+ While from her hand the wild, sweet scent
+ I drank as from a cup.
+
+ O potent witchery of smell!
+ The dust-dry leaves to life return,
+ And she who plucked them owns the spell
+ And lifts her ghostly fern.
+
+ Or sense or spirit? Who shall say
+ What touch the chord of memory thrills?
+ It passed, and left the August day
+ Ablaze on lonely hills.
+
+
+
+
+THE WOOD GIANT
+
+ From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome,
+ From Mad to Saco river,
+ For patriarchs of the primal wood
+ We sought with vain endeavor.
+
+ And then we said: "The giants old
+ Are lost beyond retrieval;
+ This pygmy growth the axe has spared
+ Is not the wood primeval.
+
+ "Look where we will o'er vale and hill,
+ How idle are our searches
+ For broad-girthed maples, wide-limbed oaks,
+ Centennial pines and birches.
+
+ "Their tortured limbs the axe and saw
+ Have changed to beams and trestles;
+ They rest in walls, they float on seas,
+ They rot in sunken vessels.
+
+ "This shorn and wasted mountain land
+ Of underbrush and boulder,--
+ Who thinks to see its full-grown tree
+ Must live a century older."
+
+ At last to us a woodland path,
+ To open sunset leading,
+ Revealed the Anakim of pines
+ Our wildest wish exceeding.
+
+ Alone, the level sun before;
+ Below, the lake's green islands;
+ Beyond, in misty distance dim,
+ The rugged Northern Highlands.
+
+ Dark Titan on his Sunset Hill
+ Of time and change defiant
+ How dwarfed the common woodland seemed,
+ Before the old-time giant!
+
+ What marvel that, in simpler days
+ Of the world's early childhood,
+ Men crowned with garlands, gifts, and praise
+ Such monarchs of the wild-wood?
+
+ That Tyrian maids with flower and song
+ Danced through the hill grove's spaces,
+ And hoary-bearded Druids found
+ In woods their holy places?
+
+ With somewhat of that Pagan awe
+ With Christian reverence blending,
+ We saw our pine-tree's mighty arms
+ Above our heads extending.
+
+ We heard his needles' mystic rune,
+ Now rising, and now dying,
+ As erst Dodona's priestess heard
+ The oak leaves prophesying.
+
+ Was it the half-unconscious moan
+ Of one apart and mateless,
+ The weariness of unshared power,
+ The loneliness of greatness?
+
+ O dawns and sunsets, lend to him
+ Your beauty and your wonder!
+ Blithe sparrow, sing thy summer song
+ His solemn shadow under!
+
+ Play lightly on his slender keys,
+ O wind of summer, waking
+ For hills like these the sound of seas
+ On far-off beaches breaking,
+
+ And let the eagle and the crow
+ Find shelter in his branches,
+ When winds shake down his winter snow
+ In silver avalanches.
+
+ The brave are braver for their cheer,
+ The strongest need assurance,
+ The sigh of longing makes not less
+ The lesson of endurance.
+
+ 1885.
+
+
+
+
+A DAY.
+
+ Talk not of sad November, when a day
+ Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon,
+ And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June,
+ Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray.
+
+ On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines
+ Lay their long shafts of shadow: the small rill,
+ Singing a pleasant song of summer still,
+ A line of silver, down the hill-slope shines.
+
+ Hushed the bird-voices and the hum of bees,
+ In the thin grass the crickets pipe no more;
+ But still the squirrel hoards his winter store,
+ And drops his nut-shells from the shag-bark trees.
+
+ Softly the dark green hemlocks whisper: high
+ Above, the spires of yellowing larches show,
+ Where the woodpecker and home-loving crow
+ And jay and nut-hatch winter's threat defy.
+
+ O gracious beauty, ever new and old!
+ O sights and sounds of nature, doubly dear
+ When the low sunshine warns the closing year
+ Of snow-blown fields and waves of Arctic cold!
+
+ Close to my heart I fold each lovely thing
+ The sweet day yields; and, not disconsolate,
+ With the calm patience of the woods I wait
+ For leaf and blossom when God gives us Spring!
+
+ 29th, Eleventh Month, 1886.
+
+
+
+
+
+POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT MEMORIES
+
+ A beautiful and happy girl,
+ With step as light as summer air,
+ Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl,
+ Shadowed by many a careless curl
+ Of unconfined and flowing hair;
+ A seeming child in everything,
+ Save thoughtful brow and ripening charms,
+ As Nature wears the smile of Spring
+ When sinking into Summer's arms.
+
+ A mind rejoicing in the light
+ Which melted through its graceful bower,
+ Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright,
+ And stainless in its holy white,
+ Unfolding like a morning flower
+ A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute,
+ With every breath of feeling woke,
+ And, even when the tongue was mute,
+ From eye and lip in music spoke.
+
+ How thrills once more the lengthening chain
+ Of memory, at the thought of thee!
+ Old hopes which long in dust have lain
+ Old dreams, come thronging back again,
+ And boyhood lives again in me;
+ I feel its glow upon my cheek,
+ Its fulness of the heart is mine,
+ As when I leaned to hear thee speak,
+ Or raised my doubtful eye to thine.
+
+ I hear again thy low replies,
+ I feel thy arm within my own,
+ And timidly again uprise
+ The fringed lids of hazel eyes,
+ With soft brown tresses overblown.
+ Ah! memories of sweet summer eves,
+ Of moonlit wave and willowy way,
+ Of stars and flowers, and dewy leaves,
+ And smiles and tones more dear than they!
+
+ Ere this, thy quiet eye hath smiled
+ My picture of thy youth to see,
+ When, half a woman, half a child,
+ Thy very artlessness beguiled,
+ And folly's self seemed wise in thee;
+ I too can smile, when o'er that hour
+ The lights of memory backward stream,
+ Yet feel the while that manhood's power
+ Is vainer than my boyhood's dream.
+
+ Years have passed on, and left their trace,
+ Of graver care and deeper thought;
+ And unto me the calm, cold face
+ Of manhood, and to thee the grace
+ Of woman's pensive beauty brought.
+ More wide, perchance, for blame than praise,
+ The school-boy's humble name has flown;
+ Thine, in the green and quiet ways
+ Of unobtrusive goodness known.
+
+ And wider yet in thought and deed
+ Diverge our pathways, one in youth;
+ Thine the Genevan's sternest creed,
+ While answers to my spirit's need
+ The Derby dalesman's simple truth.
+ For thee, the priestly rite and prayer,
+ And holy day, and solemn psalm;
+ For me, the silent reverence where
+ My brethren gather, slow and calm.
+
+ Yet hath thy spirit left on me
+ An impress Time has worn not out,
+ And something of myself in thee,
+ A shadow from the past, I see,
+ Lingering, even yet, thy way about;
+ Not wholly can the heart unlearn
+ That lesson of its better hours,
+ Not yet has Time's dull footstep worn
+ To common dust that path of flowers.
+
+ Thus, while at times before our eyes
+ The shadows melt, and fall apart,
+ And, smiling through them, round us lies
+ The warm light of our morning skies,--
+ The Indian Summer of the heart!
+ In secret sympathies of mind,
+ In founts of feeling which retain
+ Their pure, fresh flow, we yet may find
+ Our early dreams not wholly vain
+
+ 1841.
+
+
+
+
+RAPHAEL.
+
+Suggested by the portrait of Raphael, at the age of fifteen.
+
+ I shall not soon forget that sight
+ The glow of Autumn's westering day,
+ A hazy warmth, a dreamy light,
+ On Raphael's picture lay.
+
+ It was a simple print I saw,
+ The fair face of a musing boy;
+ Yet, while I gazed, a sense of awe
+ Seemed blending with my joy.
+
+ A simple print,--the graceful flow
+ Of boyhood's soft and wavy hair,
+ And fresh young lip and cheek, and brow
+ Unmarked and clear, were there.
+
+ Yet through its sweet and calm repose
+ I saw the inward spirit shine;
+ It was as if before me rose
+ The white veil of a shrine.
+
+ As if, as Gothland's sage has told,
+ The hidden life, the man within,
+ Dissevered from its frame and mould,
+ By mortal eye were seen.
+
+ Was it the lifting of that eye,
+ The waving of that pictured hand?
+ Loose as a cloud-wreath on the sky,
+ I saw the walls expand.
+
+ The narrow room had vanished,--space,
+ Broad, luminous, remained alone,
+ Through which all hues and shapes of grace
+ And beauty looked or shone.
+
+ Around the mighty master came
+ The marvels which his pencil wrought,
+ Those miracles of power whose fame
+ Is wide as human thought.
+
+ There drooped thy more than mortal face,
+ O Mother, beautiful and mild
+ Enfolding in one dear embrace
+ Thy Saviour and thy Child!
+
+ The rapt brow of the Desert John;
+ The awful glory of that day
+ When all the Father's brightness shone
+ Through manhood's veil of clay.
+
+ And, midst gray prophet forms, and wild
+ Dark visions of the days of old,
+ How sweetly woman's beauty smiled
+ Through locks of brown and gold!
+
+ There Fornarina's fair young face
+ Once more upon her lover shone,
+ Whose model of an angel's grace
+ He borrowed from her own.
+
+ Slow passed that vision from my view,
+ But not the lesson which it taught;
+ The soft, calm shadows which it threw
+ Still rested on my thought:
+
+ The truth, that painter, bard, and sage,
+ Even in Earth's cold and changeful clime,
+ Plant for their deathless heritage
+ The fruits and flowers of time.
+
+ We shape ourselves the joy or fear
+ Of which the coming life is made,
+ And fill our Future's atmosphere
+ With sunshine or with shade.
+
+ The tissue of the Life to be
+ We weave with colors all our own,
+ And in the field of Destiny
+ We reap as we have sown.
+
+ Still shall the soul around it call
+ The shadows which it gathered here,
+ And, painted on the eternal wall,
+ The Past shall reappear.
+
+ Think ye the notes of holy song
+ On Milton's tuneful ear have died?
+ Think ye that Raphael's angel throng
+ Has vanished from his side?
+
+ Oh no!--We live our life again;
+ Or warmly touched, or coldly dim,
+ The pictures of the Past remain,---
+ Man's works shall follow him!
+
+ 1842.
+
+
+
+
+EGO.
+
+WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM OF A FRIEND.
+
+ On page of thine I cannot trace
+ The cold and heartless commonplace,
+ A statue's fixed and marble grace.
+
+ For ever as these lines I penned,
+ Still with the thought of thee will blend
+ That of some loved and common friend,
+
+ Who in life's desert track has made
+ His pilgrim tent with mine, or strayed
+ Beneath the same remembered shade.
+
+ And hence my pen unfettered moves
+ In freedom which the heart approves,
+ The negligence which friendship loves.
+
+ And wilt thou prize my poor gift less
+ For simple air and rustic dress,
+ And sign of haste and carelessness?
+
+ Oh, more than specious counterfeit
+ Of sentiment or studied wit,
+ A heart like thine should value it.
+
+ Yet half I fear my gift will be
+ Unto thy book, if not to thee,
+ Of more than doubtful courtesy.
+
+ A banished name from Fashion's sphere,
+ A lay unheard of Beauty's ear,
+ Forbid, disowned,--what do they here?
+
+ Upon my ear not all in vain
+ Came the sad captive's clanking chain,
+ The groaning from his bed of pain.
+
+ And sadder still, I saw the woe
+ Which only wounded spirits know
+ When Pride's strong footsteps o'er them go.
+
+ Spurned not alone in walks abroad,
+ But from the temples of the Lord
+ Thrust out apart, like things abhorred.
+
+ Deep as I felt, and stern and strong,
+ In words which Prudence smothered long,
+ My soul spoke out against the wrong;
+
+ Not mine alone the task to speak
+ Of comfort to the poor and weak,
+ And dry the tear on Sorrow's cheek;
+
+ But, mingled in the conflict warm,
+ To pour the fiery breath of storm
+ Through the harsh trumpet of Reform;
+
+ To brave Opinion's settled frown,
+ From ermined robe and saintly gown,
+ While wrestling reverenced Error down.
+
+ Founts gushed beside my pilgrim way,
+ Cool shadows on the greensward lay,
+ Flowers swung upon the bending spray.
+
+ And, broad and bright, on either hand,
+ Stretched the green slopes of Fairy-land,
+ With Hope's eternal sunbow spanned;
+
+ Whence voices called me like the flow,
+ Which on the listener's ear will grow,
+ Of forest streamlets soft and low.
+
+ And gentle eyes, which still retain
+ Their picture on the heart and brain,
+ Smiled, beckoning from that path of pain.
+
+ In vain! nor dream, nor rest, nor pause
+ Remain for him who round him draws
+ The battered mail of Freedom's cause.
+
+ From youthful hopes, from each green spot
+ Of young Romance, and gentle Thought,
+ Where storm and tumult enter not;
+
+ From each fair altar, where belong
+ The offerings Love requires of Song
+ In homage to her bright-eyed throng;
+
+ With soul and strength, with heart and hand,
+ I turned to Freedom's struggling band,
+ To the sad Helots of our land.
+
+ What marvel then that Fame should turn
+ Her notes of praise to those of scorn;
+ Her gifts reclaimed, her smiles withdrawn?
+
+ What matters it? a few years more,
+ Life's surge so restless heretofore
+ Shall break upon the unknown shore!
+
+ In that far land shall disappear
+ The shadows which we follow here,
+ The mist-wreaths of our atmosphere!
+
+ Before no work of mortal hand,
+ Of human will or strength expand
+ The pearl gates of the Better Land;
+
+ Alone in that great love which gave
+ Life to the sleeper of the grave,
+ Resteth the power to seek and save.
+
+ Yet, if the spirit gazing through
+ The vista of the past can view
+ One deed to Heaven and virtue true;
+
+ If through the wreck of wasted powers,
+ Of garlands wreathed from Folly's bowers,
+ Of idle aims and misspent hours,
+
+ The eye can note one sacred spot
+ By Pride and Self profaned not,
+ A green place in the waste of thought,
+
+ Where deed or word hath rendered less
+ The sum of human wretchedness,
+ And Gratitude looks forth to bless;
+
+ The simple burst of tenderest feeling
+ From sad hearts worn by evil-dealing,
+ For blessing on the hand of healing;
+
+ Better than Glory's pomp will be
+ That green and blessed spot to me,
+ A palm-shade in Eternity!
+
+ Something of Time which may invite
+ The purified and spiritual sight
+ To rest on with a calm delight.
+
+ And when the summer winds shall sweep
+ With their light wings my place of sleep,
+ And mosses round my headstone creep;
+
+ If still, as Freedom's rallying sign,
+ Upon the young heart's altars shine
+ The very fires they caught from mine;
+
+ If words my lips once uttered still,
+ In the calm faith and steadfast will
+ Of other hearts, their work fulfil;
+
+ Perchance with joy the soul may learn
+ These tokens, and its eye discern
+ The fires which on those altars burn;
+
+ A marvellous joy that even then,
+ The spirit hath its life again,
+ In the strong hearts of mortal men.
+
+ Take, lady, then, the gift I bring,
+ No gay and graceful offering,
+ No flower-smile of the laughing spring.
+
+ Midst the green buds of Youth's fresh May,
+ With Fancy's leaf-enwoven bay,
+ My sad and sombre gift I lay.
+
+ And if it deepens in thy mind
+ A sense of suffering human-kind,--
+ The outcast and the spirit-blind;
+
+ Oppressed and spoiled on every side,
+ By Prejudice, and Scorn, and Pride,
+ Life's common courtesies denied;
+
+ Sad mothers mourning o'er their trust,
+ Children by want and misery nursed,
+ Tasting life's bitter cup at first;
+
+ If to their strong appeals which come
+ From fireless hearth, and crowded room,
+ And the close alley's noisome gloom,--
+
+ Though dark the hands upraised to thee
+ In mute beseeching agony,
+ Thou lend'st thy woman's sympathy;
+
+ Not vainly on thy gentle shrine,
+ Where Love, and Mirth, and Friendship twine
+ Their varied gifts, I offer mine.
+
+ 1843.
+
+
+
+
+THE PUMPKIN.
+
+ Oh, greenly and fair in the lands of the sun,
+ The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run,
+ And the rock and the tree and the cottage enfold,
+ With broad leaves all greenness and blossoms all gold,
+ Like that which o'er Nineveh's prophet once grew,
+ While he waited to know that his warning was true,
+ And longed for the storm-cloud, and listened in vain
+ For the rush of the whirlwind and red fire-rain.
+
+ On the banks of the Xenil the dark Spanish maiden
+ Comes up with the fruit of the tangled vine laden;
+ And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to behold
+ Through orange-leaves shining the broad spheres of gold;
+ Yet with dearer delight from his home in the North,
+ On the fields of his harvest the Yankee looks forth,
+ Where crook-necks are coiling and yellow fruit shines,
+ And the sun of September melts down on his vines.
+
+ Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West,
+ From North and from South come the pilgrim and guest,
+ When the gray-haired New-Englander sees round his board
+ The old broken links of affection restored,
+ When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
+ And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before,
+ What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye?
+ What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie?
+
+ Oh, fruit loved of boyhood! the old days recalling,
+ When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!
+ When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin,
+ Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!
+ When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune,
+ Our chair a broad pumpkin,--our lantern the moon,
+ Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam,
+ In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team
+ Then thanks for thy present! none sweeter or better
+ E'er smoked from an oven or circled a platter!
+ Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine,
+ Brighter eyes never watched o'er its baking, than thine!
+ And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express,
+ Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less,
+ That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below,
+ And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow,
+ And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky
+ Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie!
+
+ 1844.
+
+
+
+
+FORGIVENESS.
+
+ My heart was heavy, for its trust had been
+ Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong;
+ So, turning gloomily from my fellow-men,
+ One summer Sabbath day I strolled among
+ The green mounds of the village burial-place;
+ Where, pondering how all human love and hate
+ Find one sad level; and how, soon or late,
+ Wronged and wrongdoer, each with meekened face,
+ And cold hands folded over a still heart,
+ Pass the green threshold of our common grave,
+ Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart,
+ Awed for myself, and pitying my race,
+ Our common sorrow, like a nighty wave,
+ Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave!
+
+ 1846.
+
+
+
+
+TO MY SISTER,
+
+WITH A COPY OF "THE SUPERNATURALISM OF NEW ENGLAND."
+
+The work referred to was a series of papers under this title,
+contributed to the Democratic Review and afterward collected into a
+volume, in which I noted some of the superstitions and folklore
+prevalent in New England. The volume has not been kept in print, but
+most of its contents are distributed in my Literary Recreations and
+Miscellanies.
+
+ Dear Sister! while the wise and sage
+ Turn coldly from my playful page,
+ And count it strange that ripened age
+ Should stoop to boyhood's folly;
+ I know that thou wilt judge aright
+ Of all which makes the heart more light,
+ Or lends one star-gleam to the night
+ Of clouded Melancholy.
+
+ Away with weary cares and themes!
+ Swing wide the moonlit gate of dreams!
+ Leave free once more the land which teems
+ With wonders and romances
+ Where thou, with clear discerning eyes,
+ Shalt rightly read the truth which lies
+ Beneath the quaintly masking guise
+ Of wild and wizard fancies.
+
+ Lo! once again our feet we set
+ On still green wood-paths, twilight wet,
+ By lonely brooks, whose waters fret
+ The roots of spectral beeches;
+ Again the hearth-fire glimmers o'er
+ Home's whitewashed wall and painted floor,
+ And young eyes widening to the lore
+ Of faery-folks and witches.
+
+ Dear heart! the legend is not vain
+ Which lights that holy hearth again,
+ And calling back from care and pain,
+ And death's funereal sadness,
+ Draws round its old familiar blaze
+ The clustering groups of happier days,
+ And lends to sober manhood's gaze
+ A glimpse of childish gladness.
+
+ And, knowing how my life hath been
+ A weary work of tongue and pen,
+ A long, harsh strife with strong-willed men,
+ Thou wilt not chide my turning
+ To con, at times, an idle rhyme,
+ To pluck a flower from childhood's clime,
+ Or listen, at Life's noonday chime,
+ For the sweet bells of Morning!
+
+ 1847.
+
+
+
+
+MY THANKS,
+
+ACCOMPANYING MANUSCRIPTS PRESENTED TO A FRIEND.
+
+ 'T is said that in the Holy Land
+ The angels of the place have blessed
+ The pilgrim's bed of desert sand,
+ Like Jacob's stone of rest.
+
+ That down the hush of Syrian skies
+ Some sweet-voiced saint at twilight sings
+ The song whose holy symphonies
+ Are beat by unseen wings;
+
+ Till starting from his sandy bed,
+ The wayworn wanderer looks to see
+ The halo of an angel's head
+ Shine through the tamarisk-tree.
+
+ So through the shadows of my way
+ Thy smile hath fallen soft and clear,
+ So at the weary close of day
+ Hath seemed thy voice of cheer.
+
+ That pilgrim pressing to his goal
+ May pause not for the vision's sake,
+ Yet all fair things within his soul
+ The thought of it shall wake:
+
+ The graceful palm-tree by the well,
+ Seen on the far horizon's rim;
+ The dark eyes of the fleet gazelle,
+ Bent timidly on him;
+
+ Each pictured saint, whose golden hair
+ Streams sunlike through the convent's gloom;
+ Pale shrines of martyrs young and fair,
+ And loving Mary's tomb;
+
+ And thus each tint or shade which falls,
+ From sunset cloud or waving tree,
+ Along my pilgrim path, recalls
+ The pleasant thought of thee.
+
+ Of one in sun and shade the same,
+ In weal and woe my steady friend,
+ Whatever by that holy name
+ The angels comprehend.
+
+ Not blind to faults and follies, thou
+ Hast never failed the good to see,
+ Nor judged by one unseemly bough
+ The upward-struggling tree.
+
+ These light leaves at thy feet I lay,--
+ Poor common thoughts on common things,
+ Which time is shaking, day by day,
+ Like feathers from his wings;
+
+ Chance shootings from a frail life-tree,
+ To nurturing care but little known,
+ Their good was partly learned of thee,
+ Their folly is my own.
+
+ That tree still clasps the kindly mould,
+ Its leaves still drink the twilight dew,
+ And weaving its pale green with gold,
+ Still shines the sunlight through.
+
+ There still the morning zephyrs play,
+ And there at times the spring bird sings,
+ And mossy trunk and fading spray
+ Are flowered with glossy wings.
+
+ Yet, even in genial sun and rain,
+ Root, branch, and leaflet fail and fade;
+ The wanderer on its lonely plain
+ Erelong shall miss its shade.
+
+ O friend beloved, whose curious skill
+ Keeps bright the last year's leaves and flowers,
+ With warm, glad, summer thoughts to fill
+ The cold, dark, winter hours
+
+ Pressed on thy heart, the leaves I bring
+ May well defy the wintry cold,
+ Until, in Heaven's eternal spring,
+ Life's fairer ones unfold.
+
+ 1847.
+
+
+
+
+REMEMBRANCE
+
+WITH COPIES OF THE AUTHOR'S WRITINGS.
+
+ Friend of mine! whose lot was cast
+ With me in the distant past;
+ Where, like shadows flitting fast,
+
+ Fact and fancy, thought and theme,
+ Word and work, begin to seem
+ Like a half-remembered dream!
+
+ Touched by change have all things been,
+ Yet I think of thee as when
+ We had speech of lip and pen.
+
+ For the calm thy kindness lent
+ To a path of discontent,
+ Rough with trial and dissent;
+
+ Gentle words where such were few,
+ Softening blame where blame was true,
+ Praising where small praise was due;
+
+ For a waking dream made good,
+ For an ideal understood,
+ For thy Christian womanhood;
+
+ For thy marvellous gift to cull
+ From our common life and dull
+ Whatsoe'er is beautiful;
+
+ Thoughts and fancies, Hybla's bees
+ Dropping sweetness; true heart's-ease
+ Of congenial sympathies;--
+
+ Still for these I own my debt;
+ Memory, with her eyelids wet,
+ Fain would thank thee even yet!
+
+ And as one who scatters flowers
+ Where the Queen of May's sweet hours
+ Sits, o'ertwined with blossomed bowers,
+
+ In superfluous zeal bestowing
+ Gifts where gifts are overflowing,
+ So I pay the debt I'm owing.
+
+ To thy full thoughts, gay or sad,
+ Sunny-hued or sober clad,
+ Something of my own I add;
+
+ Well assured that thou wilt take
+ Even the offering which I make
+ Kindly for the giver's sake.
+
+ 1851.
+
+
+
+
+MY NAMESAKE.
+
+Addressed to Francis Greenleaf Allison of Burlington, New Jersey.
+
+ You scarcely need my tardy thanks,
+ Who, self-rewarded, nurse and tend--
+ A green leaf on your own Green Banks--
+ The memory of your friend.
+
+ For me, no wreath, bloom-woven, hides
+ The sobered brow and lessening hair
+ For aught I know, the myrtled sides
+ Of Helicon are bare.
+
+ Their scallop-shells so many bring
+ The fabled founts of song to try,
+ They've drained, for aught I know, the spring
+ Of Aganippe dry.
+
+ Ah well!--The wreath the Muses braid
+ Proves often Folly's cap and bell;
+ Methinks, my ample beaver's shade
+ May serve my turn as well.
+
+ Let Love's and Friendship's tender debt
+ Be paid by those I love in life.
+ Why should the unborn critic whet
+ For me his scalping-knife?
+
+ Why should the stranger peer and pry
+ One's vacant house of life about,
+ And drag for curious ear and eye
+ His faults and follies out?--
+
+ Why stuff, for fools to gaze upon,
+ With chaff of words, the garb he wore,
+ As corn-husks when the ear is gone
+ Are rustled all the more?
+
+ Let kindly Silence close again,
+ The picture vanish from the eye,
+ And on the dim and misty main
+ Let the small ripple die.
+
+ Yet not the less I own your claim
+ To grateful thanks, dear friends of mine.
+ Hang, if it please you so, my name
+ Upon your household line.
+
+ Let Fame from brazen lips blow wide
+ Her chosen names, I envy none
+ A mother's love, a father's pride,
+ Shall keep alive my own!
+
+ Still shall that name as now recall
+ The young leaf wet with morning dew,
+ The glory where the sunbeams fall
+ The breezy woodlands through.
+
+ That name shall be a household word,
+ A spell to waken smile or sigh;
+ In many an evening prayer be heard
+ And cradle lullaby.
+
+ And thou, dear child, in riper days
+ When asked the reason of thy name,
+ Shalt answer: One 't were vain to praise
+ Or censure bore the same.
+
+ "Some blamed him, some believed him good,
+ The truth lay doubtless 'twixt the two;
+ He reconciled as best he could
+ Old faith and fancies new.
+
+ "In him the grave and playful mixed,
+ And wisdom held with folly truce,
+ And Nature compromised betwixt
+ Good fellow and recluse.
+
+ "He loved his friends, forgave his foes;
+ And, if his words were harsh at times,
+ He spared his fellow-men,--his blows
+ Fell only on their crimes.
+
+ "He loved the good and wise, but found
+ His human heart to all akin
+ Who met him on the common ground
+ Of suffering and of sin.
+
+ "Whate'er his neighbors might endure
+ Of pain or grief his own became;
+ For all the ills he could not cure
+ He held himself to blame.
+
+ "His good was mainly an intent,
+ His evil not of forethought done;
+ The work he wrought was rarely meant
+ Or finished as begun.
+
+ "Ill served his tides of feeling strong
+ To turn the common mills of use;
+ And, over restless wings of song,
+ His birthright garb hung loose!
+
+ "His eye was beauty's powerless slave,
+ And his the ear which discord pains;
+ Few guessed beneath his aspect grave
+ What passions strove in chains.
+
+ "He had his share of care and pain,
+ No holiday was life to him;
+ Still in the heirloom cup we drain
+ The bitter drop will swim.
+
+ "Yet Heaven was kind, and here a bird
+ And there a flower beguiled his way;
+ And, cool, in summer noons, he heard
+ The fountains plash and play.
+
+ "On all his sad or restless moods
+ The patient peace of Nature stole;
+ The quiet of the fields and woods
+ Sank deep into his soul.
+
+ "He worshipped as his fathers did,
+ And kept the faith of childish days,
+ And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid,
+ He loved the good old ways.
+
+ "The simple tastes, the kindly traits,
+ The tranquil air, and gentle speech,
+ The silence of the soul that waits
+ For more than man to teach.
+
+ "The cant of party, school, and sect,
+ Provoked at times his honest scorn,
+ And Folly, in its gray respect,
+ He tossed on satire's horn.
+
+ "But still his heart was full of awe
+ And reverence for all sacred things;
+ And, brooding over form and law,'
+ He saw the Spirit's wings!
+
+ "Life's mystery wrapt him like a cloud;
+ He heard far voices mock his own,
+ The sweep of wings unseen, the loud,
+ Long roll of waves unknown.
+
+ "The arrows of his straining sight
+ Fell quenched in darkness; priest and sage,
+ Like lost guides calling left and right,
+ Perplexed his doubtful age.
+
+ "Like childhood, listening for the sound
+ Of its dropped pebbles in the well,
+ All vainly down the dark profound
+ His brief-lined plummet fell.
+
+ "So, scattering flowers with pious pains
+ On old beliefs, of later creeds,
+ Which claimed a place in Truth's domains,
+ He asked the title-deeds.
+
+ "He saw the old-time's groves and shrines
+ In the long distance fair and dim;
+ And heard, like sound of far-off pines,
+ The century-mellowed hymn!
+
+ "He dared not mock the Dervish whirl,
+ The Brahmin's rite, the Lama's spell;
+ God knew the heart; Devotion's pearl
+ Might sanctify the shell.
+
+ "While others trod the altar stairs
+ He faltered like the publican;
+ And, while they praised as saints, his prayers
+ Were those of sinful man.
+
+ "For, awed by Sinai's Mount of Law,
+ The trembling faith alone sufficed,
+ That, through its cloud and flame, he saw
+ The sweet, sad face of Christ!
+
+ "And listening, with his forehead bowed,
+ Heard the Divine compassion fill
+ The pauses of the trump and cloud
+ With whispers small and still.
+
+ "The words he spake, the thoughts he penned,
+ Are mortal as his hand and brain,
+ But, if they served the Master's end,
+ He has not lived in vain!"
+
+ Heaven make thee better than thy name,
+ Child of my friends!--For thee I crave
+ What riches never bought, nor fame
+ To mortal longing gave.
+
+ I pray the prayer of Plato old:
+ God make thee beautiful within,
+ And let thine eyes the good behold
+ In everything save sin!
+
+ Imagination held in check
+ To serve, not rule, thy poised mind;
+ Thy Reason, at the frown or beck
+ Of Conscience, loose or bind.
+
+ No dreamer thou, but real all,--
+ Strong manhood crowning vigorous youth;
+ Life made by duty epical
+ And rhythmic with the truth.
+
+ So shall that life the fruitage yield
+ Which trees of healing only give,
+ And green-leafed in the Eternal field
+ Of God, forever live!
+
+ 1853.
+
+
+
+
+A MEMORY
+
+ Here, while the loom of Winter weaves
+ The shroud of flowers and fountains,
+ I think of thee and summer eves
+ Among the Northern mountains.
+
+ When thunder tolled the twilight's close,
+ And winds the lake were rude on,
+ And thou wert singing, _Ca' the Yowes_,
+ The bonny yowes of Cluden!
+
+ When, close and closer, hushing breath,
+ Our circle narrowed round thee,
+ And smiles and tears made up the wreath
+ Wherewith our silence crowned thee;
+
+ And, strangers all, we felt the ties
+ Of sisters and of brothers;
+ Ah! whose of all those kindly eyes
+ Now smile upon another's?
+
+ The sport of Time, who still apart
+ The waifs of life is flinging;
+ Oh, nevermore shall heart to heart
+ Draw nearer for that singing!
+
+ Yet when the panes are frosty-starred,
+ And twilight's fire is gleaming,
+ I hear the songs of Scotland's bard
+ Sound softly through my dreaming!
+
+ A song that lends to winter snows
+ The glow of summer weather,--
+ Again I hear thee ca' the yowes
+ To Cluden's hills of heather
+
+ 1854.
+
+
+
+
+MY DREAM.
+
+ In my dream, methought I trod,
+ Yesternight, a mountain road;
+ Narrow as Al Sirat's span,
+ High as eagle's flight, it ran.
+
+ Overhead, a roof of cloud
+ With its weight of thunder bowed;
+ Underneath, to left and right,
+ Blankness and abysmal night.
+
+ Here and there a wild-flower blushed,
+ Now and then a bird-song gushed;
+ Now and then, through rifts of shade,
+ Stars shone out, and sunbeams played.
+
+ But the goodly company,
+ Walking in that path with me,
+ One by one the brink o'erslid,
+ One by one the darkness hid.
+
+ Some with wailing and lament,
+ Some with cheerful courage went;
+ But, of all who smiled or mourned,
+ Never one to us returned.
+
+ Anxiously, with eye and ear,
+ Questioning that shadow drear,
+ Never hand in token stirred,
+ Never answering voice I heard!
+
+ Steeper, darker!--lo! I felt
+ From my feet the pathway melt.
+ Swallowed by the black despair,
+ And the hungry jaws of air,
+
+ Past the stony-throated caves,
+ Strangled by the wash of waves,
+ Past the splintered crags, I sank
+ On a green and flowery bank,--
+
+ Soft as fall of thistle-down,
+ Lightly as a cloud is blown,
+ Soothingly as childhood pressed
+ To the bosom of its rest.
+
+ Of the sharp-horned rocks instead,
+ Green the grassy meadows spread,
+ Bright with waters singing by
+ Trees that propped a golden sky.
+
+ Painless, trustful, sorrow-free,
+ Old lost faces welcomed me,
+ With whose sweetness of content
+ Still expectant hope was blent.
+
+ Waking while the dawning gray
+ Slowly brightened into day,
+ Pondering that vision fled,
+ Thus unto myself I said:--
+
+ "Steep and hung with clouds of strife
+ Is our narrow path of life;
+ And our death the dreaded fall
+ Through the dark, awaiting all.
+
+ "So, with painful steps we climb
+ Up the dizzy ways of time,
+ Ever in the shadow shed
+ By the forecast of our dread.
+
+ "Dread of mystery solved alone,
+ Of the untried and unknown;
+ Yet the end thereof may seem
+ Like the falling of my dream.
+
+ "And this heart-consuming care,
+ All our fears of here or there,
+ Change and absence, loss and death,
+ Prove but simple lack of faith."
+
+ Thou, O Most Compassionate!
+ Who didst stoop to our estate,
+ Drinking of the cup we drain,
+ Treading in our path of pain,--
+
+ Through the doubt and mystery,
+ Grant to us thy steps to see,
+ And the grace to draw from thence
+ Larger hope and confidence.
+
+ Show thy vacant tomb, and let,
+ As of old, the angels sit,
+ Whispering, by its open door
+ "Fear not! He hath gone before!"
+
+ 1855.
+
+
+
+
+THE BAREFOOT BOY.
+
+ Blessings on thee, little man,
+ Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan
+ With thy turned-up pantaloons,
+ And thy merry whistled tunes;
+ With thy red lip, redder still
+ Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
+ With the sunshine on thy face,
+ Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace;
+ From my heart I give thee joy,--
+ I was once a barefoot boy!
+
+ Prince thou art,--the grown-up man
+ Only is republican.
+ Let the million-dollared ride!
+ Barefoot, trudging at his side,
+ Thou hast more than he can buy
+ In the reach of ear and eye,--
+ Outward sunshine, inward joy
+ Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!
+
+ Oh for boyhood's painless play,
+ Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
+ Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
+ Knowledge never learned of schools,
+ Of the wild bee's morning chase,
+ Of the wild-flower's time and place,
+ Flight of fowl and habitude
+ Of the tenants of the wood;
+ How the tortoise bears his shell,
+ How the woodchuck digs his cell,
+ And the ground-mole sinks his well;
+ How the robin feeds her young,
+ How the oriole's nest is hung;
+ Where the whitest lilies blow,
+ Where the freshest berries grow,
+ Where the ground-nut trails its vine,
+ Where the wood-grape's clusters shine;
+ Of the black wasp's cunning way,
+ Mason of his walls of clay,
+ And the architectural plans
+ Of gray hornet artisans!
+ For, eschewing books and tasks,
+ Nature answers all he asks,
+ Hand in hand with her he walks,
+ Face to face with her he talks,
+ Part and parcel of her joy,--
+ Blessings on the barefoot boy!
+
+ Oh for boyhood's time of June,
+ Crowding years in one brief moon,
+ When all things I heard or saw,
+ Me, their master, waited for.
+ I was rich in flowers and trees,
+ Humming-birds and honey-bees;
+ For my sport the squirrel played,
+ Plied the snouted mole his spade;
+ For my taste the blackberry cone
+ Purpled over hedge and stone;
+ Laughed the brook for my delight
+ Through the day and through the night,
+ Whispering at the garden wall,
+ Talked with me from fall to fall;
+ Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
+ Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
+ Mine, on bending orchard trees,
+ Apples of Hesperides!
+ Still as my horizon grew,
+ Larger grew my riches too;
+ All the world I saw or knew
+ Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
+ Fashioned for a barefoot boy!
+
+ Oh for festal dainties spread,
+ Like my bowl of milk and bread;
+ Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
+ On the door-stone, gray and rude!
+ O'er me, like a regal tent,
+ Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
+ Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
+ Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
+ While for music came the play
+ Of the pied frogs' orchestra;
+ And, to light the noisy choir,
+ Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
+ I was monarch: pomp and joy
+ Waited on the barefoot boy!
+
+ Cheerily, then, my little man,
+ Live and laugh, as boyhood can
+ Though the flinty slopes be hard,
+ Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
+ Every morn shall lead thee through
+ Fresh baptisms of the dew;
+ Every evening from thy feet
+ Shall the cool wind kiss the heat
+ All too soon these feet must hide
+ In the prison cells of pride,
+ Lose the freedom of the sod,
+ Like a colt's for work be shod,
+ Made to tread the mills of toil,
+ Up and down in ceaseless moil
+ Happy if their track be found
+ Never on forbidden ground;
+ Happy if they sink not in
+ Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
+ Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
+ Ere it passes, barefoot boy!
+
+ 1855.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+ 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.
+
+ 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 wheresoe'er my feet have swerved,
+ His chastening turned me back;
+
+ That more and more a Providence
+ Of love is understood,
+ Making the springs of time and sense
+ Sweet with eternal good;--
+
+ That death seems but a covered way
+ Which opens into light,
+ Wherein no blinded child can stray
+ Beyond the Father's sight;
+
+ That care and trial seem at last,
+ Through Memory's sunset air,
+ Like mountain-ranges overpast,
+ In purple distance fair;
+
+ That all the jarring notes of life
+ Seem blending in a psalm,
+ And all the angles of its strife
+ Slow rounding into calm.
+
+ And so the shadows fall apart,
+ And so the west-winds play;
+ And all the windows of my heart
+ I open to the day.
+
+ 1859.
+
+
+
+
+THE WAITING.
+
+ I wait and watch: before my eyes
+ Methinks the night grows thin and gray;
+ I wait and watch the eastern skies
+ To see the golden spears uprise
+ Beneath the oriflamme of day!
+
+ Like one whose limbs are bound in trance
+ I hear the day-sounds swell and grow,
+ And see across the twilight glance,
+ Troop after troop, in swift advance,
+ The shining ones with plumes of snow!
+
+ I know the errand of their feet,
+ I know what mighty work is theirs;
+ I can but lift up hands unmeet,
+ The threshing-floors of God to beat,
+ And speed them with unworthy prayers.
+
+ I will not dream in vain despair
+ The steps of progress wait for me
+ The puny leverage of a hair
+ The planet's impulse well may spare,
+ A drop of dew the tided sea.
+
+ The loss, if loss there be, is mine,
+ And yet not mine if understood;
+ For one shall grasp and one resign,
+ One drink life's rue, and one its wine,
+ And God shall make the balance good.
+
+ Oh power to do! Oh baffled will!
+ Oh prayer and action! ye are one.
+ Who may not strive, may yet fulfil
+ The harder task of standing still,
+ And good but wished with God is done!
+
+ 1862.
+
+
+
+
+SNOW-BOUND. A WINTER IDYL.
+
+ TO THE MEMORY
+
+ OF
+
+ THE HOUSEHOLD IT DESCRIBES,
+
+ THIS POEM IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.
+
+The inmates of the family at the Whittier homestead who are referred to
+in the poem were my father, mother, my brother and two sisters, and my
+uncle and aunt both unmarried. In addition, there was the district
+school-master who boarded with us. The "not unfeared, half-welcome
+guest" was Harriet Livermore, daughter of Judge Livermore, of New
+Hampshire, a young woman of fine natural ability, enthusiastic,
+eccentric, with slight control over her violent temper, which sometimes
+made her religious profession doubtful. She was equally ready to exhort
+in school-house prayer-meetings and dance in a Washington ball-room,
+while her father was a member of Congress. She early embraced the
+doctrine of the Second Advent, and felt it her duty to proclaim the
+Lord's speedy coming. With this message she crossed the Atlantic and
+spent the greater part of a long life in travelling over Europe and
+Asia. She lived some time with Lady Hester Stanhope, a woman as
+fantastic and mentally strained as herself, on the slope of Mt. Lebanon,
+but finally quarrelled with her in regard to two white horses with red
+marks on their backs which suggested the idea of saddles, on which her
+titled hostess expected to ride into Jerusalem with the Lord. A friend
+of mine found her, when quite an old woman, wandering in Syria with a
+tribe of Arabs, who with the Oriental notion that madness is
+inspiration, accepted her as their prophetess and leader. At the time
+referred to in Snow-Bound she was boarding at the Rocks Village about
+two miles from us.
+
+In my boyhood, in our lonely farm-house, we had scanty sources of
+information; few books and only a small weekly newspaper. Our only
+annual was the Almanac. Under such circumstances story-telling was a
+necessary resource in the long winter evenings. My father when a young
+man had traversed the wilderness to Canada, and could tell us of his
+adventures with Indians and wild beasts, and of his sojourn in the
+French villages. My uncle was ready with his record of hunting and
+fishing and, it must be confessed, with stories which he at least half
+believed, of witchcraft and apparitions. My mother, who was born in the
+Indian-haunted region of Somersworth, New Hampshire, between Dover and
+Portsmouth, told us of the inroads of the savages, and the narrow escape
+of her ancestors. She described strange people who lived on the
+Piscataqua and Cocheco, among whom was Bantam the sorcerer. I have in my
+possession the wizard's "conjuring book," which he solemnly opened when
+consulted. It is a copy of Cornelius Agrippa's Magic printed in 1651,
+dedicated to Dr. Robert Child, who, like Michael Scott, had learned "the
+art of glammorie In Padua beyond the sea," and who is famous in the
+annals of Massachusetts, where he was at one time a resident, as the
+first man who dared petition the General Court for liberty of
+conscience. The full title of the book is Three Books of Occult
+Philosophy, by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Knight, Doctor of both Laws,
+Counsellor to Caesar's Sacred Majesty and Judge of the Prerogative
+Court.
+
+"As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits,
+which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine light of
+the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire: and as the Celestial Fire
+drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same."
+--Cor. AGRIPPA, Occult Philosophy, Book I. ch. v.
+
+ "Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
+ Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
+ Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
+ Hides hills and woods, the rivet and the heaven,
+ And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
+ The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
+ Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
+ Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
+ In a tumultuous privacy of storm."
+ Emerson. The Snow Storm.
+
+
+ The sun that brief December day
+ Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
+ And, darkly circled, gave at noon
+ A sadder light than waning moon.
+ Slow tracing down the thickening sky
+ Its mute and ominous prophecy,
+ A portent seeming less than threat,
+ It sank from sight before it set.
+ A chill no coat, however stout,
+ Of homespun stuff could quite, shut out,
+ A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
+ That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
+ Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
+ The coming of the snow-storm told.
+ The wind blew east; we heard the roar
+ Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
+ And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
+ Beat with low rhythm our inland air.
+
+ Meanwhile we did our nightly chores,--
+ Brought in the wood from out of doors,
+ Littered the stalls, and from the mows
+ Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows
+ Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
+ And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
+ Impatient down the stanchion rows
+ The cattle shake their walnut bows;
+ While, peering from his early perch
+ Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,
+ The cock his crested helmet bent
+ And down his querulous challenge sent.
+
+ Unwarmed by any sunset light
+ The gray day darkened into night,
+ A night made hoary with the swarm,
+ And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
+ As zigzag, wavering to and fro,
+ Crossed and recrossed the winged snow
+ And ere the early bedtime came
+ The white drift piled the window-frame,
+ And through the glass the clothes-line posts
+ Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.
+
+ So all night long the storm roared on
+ The morning broke without a sun;
+ In tiny spherule traced with lines
+ Of Nature's geometric signs,
+ In starry flake, and pellicle,
+ All day the hoary meteor fell;
+ And, when the second morning shone,
+ We looked upon a world unknown,
+ On nothing we could call our own.
+ Around the glistening wonder bent
+ The blue walls of the firmament,
+ No cloud above, no earth below,--
+ A universe of sky and snow
+ The old familiar sights of ours
+ Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers
+ Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,
+ Or garden-wall, or belt of wood;
+ A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,
+ A fenceless drift what once was road;
+ The bridle-post an old man sat
+ With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;
+ The well-curb had a Chinese roof;
+ And even the long sweep, high aloof,
+ In its slant splendor, seemed to tell
+ Of Pisa's leaning miracle.
+
+ A prompt, decisive man, no breath
+ Our father wasted: "Boys, a path!"
+ Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy
+ Count such a summons less than joy?)
+ Our buskins on our feet we drew;
+ With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,
+ To guard our necks and ears from snow,
+ We cut the solid whiteness through.
+ And, where the drift was deepest, made
+ A tunnel walled and overlaid
+ With dazzling crystal: we had read
+ Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave,
+ And to our own his name we gave,
+ With many a wish the luck were ours
+ To test his lamp's supernal powers.
+ We reached the barn with merry din,
+ And roused the prisoned brutes within.
+ The old horse thrust his long head out,
+ And grave with wonder gazed about;
+ The cock his lusty greeting said,
+ And forth his speckled harem led;
+ The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,
+ And mild reproach of hunger looked;
+ The horned patriarch of the sheep,
+ Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep,
+ Shook his sage head with gesture mute,
+ And emphasized with stamp of foot.
+
+ All day the gusty north-wind bore
+ The loosening drift its breath before;
+ Low circling round its southern zone,
+ The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.
+ No church-bell lent its Christian tone
+ To the savage air, no social smoke
+ Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.
+ A solitude made more intense
+ By dreary-voiced elements,
+ The shrieking of the mindless wind,
+ The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,
+ And on the glass the unmeaning beat
+ Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.
+ Beyond the circle of our hearth
+ No welcome sound of toil or mirth
+ Unbound the spell, and testified
+ Of human life and thought outside.
+ We minded that the sharpest ear
+ The buried brooklet could not hear,
+ The music of whose liquid lip
+ Had been to us companionship,
+ And, in our lonely life, had grown
+ To have an almost human tone.
+
+ As night drew on, and, from the crest
+ Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
+ The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank
+ From sight beneath the smothering bank,
+ We piled, with care, our nightly stack
+ Of wood against the chimney-back,--
+ The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
+ And on its top the stout back-stick;
+ The knotty forestick laid apart,
+ And filled between with curious art
+ The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
+ We watched the first red blaze appear,
+ Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
+ On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
+ Until the old, rude-furnished room
+ Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;
+ While radiant with a mimic flame
+ Outside the sparkling drift became,
+ And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
+ Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.
+ The crane and pendent trammels showed,
+ The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed;
+ While childish fancy, prompt to tell
+ The meaning of the miracle,
+ Whispered the old rhyme: "_Under the tree,
+ When fire outdoors burns merrily,
+ There the witches are making tea_."
+
+ The moon above the eastern wood
+ Shone at its full; the hill-range stood
+ Transfigured in the silver flood,
+ Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,
+ Dead white, save where some sharp ravine
+ Took shadow, or the sombre green
+ Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black
+ Against the whiteness at their back.
+ For such a world and such a night
+ Most fitting that unwarming light,
+ Which only seemed where'er it fell
+ To make the coldness visible.
+
+ Shut in from all the world without,
+ We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
+ Content to let the north-wind roar
+ In baffled rage at pane and door,
+ While the red logs before us beat
+ The frost-line back with tropic heat;
+ And ever, when a louder blast
+ Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
+ The merrier up its roaring draught
+ The great throat of the chimney laughed;
+ The house-dog on his paws outspread
+ Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
+ The cat's dark silhouette on the wall
+ A couchant tiger's seemed to fall;
+ And, for the winter fireside meet,
+ Between the andirons' straddling feet,
+ The mug of cider simmered slow,
+ The apples sputtered in a row,
+ And, close at hand, the basket stood
+ With nuts from brown October's wood.
+
+ What matter how the night behaved?
+ What matter how the north-wind raved?
+ Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
+ Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow.
+ O Time and Change!--with hair as gray
+ As was my sire's that winter day,
+ How strange it seems, with so much gone
+ Of life and love, to still live on!
+ Ah, brother! only I and thou
+ Are left of all that circle now,--
+ The dear home faces whereupon
+ That fitful firelight paled and shone.
+ Henceforward, listen as we will,
+ The voices of that hearth are still;
+ Look where we may, the wide earth o'er
+ Those lighted faces smile no more.
+ We tread the paths their feet have worn,
+ We sit beneath their orchard trees,
+ We hear, like them, the hum of bees
+ And rustle of the bladed corn;
+ We turn the pages that they read,
+ Their written words we linger o'er,
+ But in the sun they cast no shade,
+ No voice is heard, no sign is made,
+ No step is on the conscious floor!
+ Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,
+ (Since He who knows our need is just,)
+ That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
+ Alas for him who never sees
+ The stars shine through his cypress-trees
+ Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
+ Nor looks to see the breaking day
+ Across the mournful marbles play!
+ Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
+ The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
+ That Life is ever lord of Death,
+ And Love can never lose its own!
+
+ We sped the time with stories old,
+ Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told,
+ Or stammered from our school-book lore
+ The Chief of Gambia's "golden shore."
+ How often since, when all the land
+ Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand,
+ As if a far-blown trumpet stirred
+ The languorous sin-sick air, I heard
+ "_Does not the voice of reason cry,
+ Claim the first right which Nature gave,
+ From the red scourge of bondage fly,
+ Nor deign to live a burdened slave_!"
+ Our father rode again his ride
+ On Memphremagog's wooded side;
+ Sat down again to moose and samp
+ In trapper's hut and Indian camp;
+ Lived o'er the old idyllic ease
+ Beneath St. Francois' hemlock-trees;
+ Again for him the moonlight shone
+ On Norman cap and bodiced zone;
+ Again he heard the violin play
+ Which led the village dance away,
+ And mingled in its merry whirl
+ The grandam and the laughing girl.
+ Or, nearer home, our steps he led
+ Where Salisbury's level marshes spread
+ Mile-wide as flies the laden bee;
+ Where merry mowers, hale and strong,
+ Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along
+ The low green prairies of the sea.
+ We shared the fishing off Boar's Head,
+ And round the rocky Isles of Shoals
+ The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals;
+ The chowder on the sand-beach made,
+ Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot,
+ With spoons of clam-shell from the pot.
+ We heard the tales of witchcraft old,
+ And dream and sign and marvel told
+ To sleepy listeners as they lay
+ Stretched idly on the salted hay,
+ Adrift along the winding shores,
+ When favoring breezes deigned to blow
+ The square sail of the gundelow
+ And idle lay the useless oars.
+
+ Our mother, while she turned her wheel
+ Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,
+ Told how the Indian hordes came down
+ At midnight on Cocheco town,
+ And how her own great-uncle bore
+ His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.
+ Recalling, in her fitting phrase,
+ So rich and picturesque and free,
+ (The common unrhymed poetry
+ Of simple life and country ways,)
+ The story of her early days,--
+ She made us welcome to her home;
+ Old hearths grew wide to give us room;
+ We stole with her a frightened look
+ At the gray wizard's conjuring-book,
+ The fame whereof went far and wide
+ Through all the simple country side;
+ We heard the hawks at twilight play,
+ The boat-horn on Piscataqua,
+ The loon's weird laughter far away;
+ We fished her little trout-brook, knew
+ What flowers in wood and meadow grew,
+ What sunny hillsides autumn-brown
+ She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down,
+ Saw where in sheltered cove and bay
+ The ducks' black squadron anchored lay,
+ And heard the wild-geese calling loud
+ Beneath the gray November cloud.
+
+ Then, haply, with a look more grave,
+ And soberer tone, some tale she gave
+ From painful Sewell's ancient tome,
+ Beloved in every Quaker home,
+ Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom,
+ Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint,--
+ Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint!--
+ Who, when the dreary calms prevailed,
+ And water-butt and bread-cask failed,
+ And cruel, hungry eyes pursued
+ His portly presence mad for food,
+ With dark hints muttered under breath
+ Of casting lots for life or death,
+ Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies,
+ To be himself the sacrifice.
+ Then, suddenly, as if to save
+ The good man from his living grave,
+ A ripple on the water grew,
+ A school of porpoise flashed in view.
+ "Take, eat," he said, "and be content;
+ These fishes in my stead are sent
+ By Him who gave the tangled ram
+ To spare the child of Abraham."
+
+ Our uncle, innocent of books,
+ Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,
+ The ancient teachers never dumb
+ Of Nature's unhoused lyceum.
+ In moons and tides and weather wise,
+ He read the clouds as prophecies,
+ And foul or fair could well divine,
+ By many an occult hint and sign,
+ Holding the cunning-warded keys
+ To all the woodcraft mysteries;
+ Himself to Nature's heart so near
+ That all her voices in his ear
+ Of beast or bird had meanings clear,
+ Like Apollonius of old,
+ Who knew the tales the sparrows told,
+ Or Hermes who interpreted
+ What the sage cranes of Nilus said;
+
+ Content to live where life began;
+ A simple, guileless, childlike man,
+ Strong only on his native grounds,
+ The little world of sights and sounds
+ Whose girdle was the parish bounds,
+ Whereof his fondly partial pride
+ The common features magnified,
+ As Surrey hills to mountains grew
+ In White of Selborne's loving view,--
+ He told how teal and loon he shot,
+ And how the eagle's eggs he got,
+ The feats on pond and river done,
+ The prodigies of rod and gun;
+ Till, warming with the tales he told,
+ Forgotten was the outside cold,
+ The bitter wind unheeded blew,
+ From ripening corn the pigeons flew,
+ The partridge drummed I' the wood, the mink
+ Went fishing down the river-brink.
+ In fields with bean or clover gay,
+ The woodchuck, like a hermit gray,
+ Peered from the doorway of his cell;
+ The muskrat plied the mason's trade,
+ And tier by tier his mud-walls laid;
+ And from the shagbark overhead
+ The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell.
+
+ Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer
+ And voice in dreams I see and hear,--
+ The sweetest woman ever Fate
+ Perverse denied a household mate,
+ Who, lonely, homeless, not the less
+ Found peace in love's unselfishness,
+ And welcome wheresoe'er she went,
+ A calm and gracious element,--
+ Whose presence seemed the sweet income
+ And womanly atmosphere of home,--
+ Called up her girlhood memories,
+ The huskings and the apple-bees,
+ The sleigh-rides and the summer sails,
+ Weaving through all the poor details
+ And homespun warp of circumstance
+ A golden woof-thread of romance.
+ For well she kept her genial mood
+ And simple faith of maidenhood;
+ Before her still a cloud-land lay,
+ The mirage loomed across her way;
+ The morning dew, that dries so soon
+ With others, glistened at her noon;
+ Through years of toil and soil and care,
+ From glossy tress to thin gray hair,
+ All unprofaned she held apart
+ The virgin fancies of the heart.
+ Be shame to him of woman born
+ Who hath for such but thought of scorn.
+
+ There, too, our elder sister plied
+ Her evening task the stand beside;
+ A full, rich nature, free to trust,
+ Truthful and almost sternly just,
+ Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
+ And make her generous thought a fact,
+ Keeping with many a light disguise
+ The secret of self-sacrifice.
+ O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best
+ That Heaven itself could give thee,--rest,
+
+ Rest from all bitter thoughts and things!
+ How many a poor one's blessing went
+ With thee beneath the low green tent
+ Whose curtain never outward swings!
+
+ As one who held herself a part
+ Of all she saw, and let her heart
+ Against the household bosom lean,
+ Upon the motley-braided mat
+ Our youngest and our dearest sat,
+ Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,
+ Now bathed in the unfading green
+ And holy peace of Paradise.
+ Oh, looking from some heavenly hill,
+ Or from the shade of saintly palms,
+ Or silver reach of river calms,
+ Do those large eyes behold me still?
+ With me one little year ago:--
+ The chill weight of the winter snow
+ For months upon her grave has lain;
+ And now, when summer south-winds blow
+ And brier and harebell bloom again,
+ I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
+ I see the violet-sprinkled sod
+ Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak
+ The hillside flowers she loved to seek,
+ Yet following me where'er I went
+ With dark eyes full of love's content.
+ The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills
+ The air with sweetness; all the hills
+ Stretch green to June's unclouded sky;
+ But still I wait with ear and eye
+ For something gone which should be nigh,
+ A loss in all familiar things,
+ In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.
+ And yet, dear heart' remembering thee,
+ Am I not richer than of old?
+ Safe in thy immortality,
+ What change can reach the wealth I hold?
+ What chance can mar the pearl and gold
+ Thy love hath left in trust with me?
+ And while in life's late afternoon,
+ Where cool and long the shadows grow,
+ I walk to meet the night that soon
+ Shall shape and shadow overflow,
+ I cannot feel that thou art far,
+ Since near at need the angels are;
+ And when the sunset gates unbar,
+ Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
+ And, white against the evening star,
+ The welcome of thy beckoning hand?
+
+ Brisk wielder of the birch and rule,
+ The master of the district school
+ Held at the fire his favored place,
+ Its warm glow lit a laughing face
+ Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared
+ The uncertain prophecy of beard.
+ He teased the mitten-blinded cat,
+ Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat,
+ Sang songs, and told us what befalls
+ In classic Dartmouth's college halls.
+ Born the wild Northern hills among,
+ From whence his yeoman father wrung
+ By patient toil subsistence scant,
+ Not competence and yet not want,
+
+ He early gained the power to pay
+ His cheerful, self-reliant way;
+ Could doff at ease his scholar's gown
+ To peddle wares from town to town;
+ Or through the long vacation's reach
+ In lonely lowland districts teach,
+ Where all the droll experience found
+ At stranger hearths in boarding round,
+ The moonlit skater's keen delight,
+ The sleigh-drive through the frosty night,
+ The rustic party, with its rough
+ Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff,
+ And whirling plate, and forfeits paid,
+ His winter task a pastime made.
+ Happy the snow-locked homes wherein
+ He tuned his merry violin,
+ Or played the athlete in the barn,
+ Or held the good dame's winding-yarn,
+ Or mirth-provoking versions told
+ Of classic legends rare and old,
+ Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome
+ Had all the commonplace of home,
+ And little seemed at best the odds
+ 'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods;
+ Where Pindus-born Arachthus took
+ The guise of any grist-mill brook,
+ And dread Olympus at his will
+ Became a huckleberry hill.
+
+ A careless boy that night he seemed;
+ But at his desk he had the look
+ And air of one who wisely schemed,
+ And hostage from the future took
+ In trained thought and lore of book.
+ Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he
+ Shall Freedom's young apostles be,
+ Who, following in War's bloody trail,
+ Shall every lingering wrong assail;
+ All chains from limb and spirit strike,
+ Uplift the black and white alike;
+ Scatter before their swift advance
+ The darkness and the ignorance,
+ The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth,
+ Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth,
+ Made murder pastime, and the hell
+ Of prison-torture possible;
+ The cruel lie of caste refute,
+ Old forms remould, and substitute
+ For Slavery's lash the freeman's will,
+ For blind routine, wise-handed skill;
+ A school-house plant on every hill,
+ Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence
+ The quick wires of intelligence;
+ Till North and South together brought
+ Shall own the same electric thought,
+ In peace a common flag salute,
+ And, side by side in labor's free
+ And unresentful rivalry,
+ Harvest the fields wherein they fought.
+
+ Another guest that winter night
+ Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light.
+ Unmarked by time, and yet not young,
+ The honeyed music of her tongue
+ And words of meekness scarcely told
+ A nature passionate and bold,
+ Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide,
+ Its milder features dwarfed beside
+ Her unbent will's majestic pride.
+ She sat among us, at the best,
+ A not unfeared, half-welcome guest,
+ Rebuking with her cultured phrase
+ Our homeliness of words and ways.
+ A certain pard-like, treacherous grace
+ Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash,
+ Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash;
+ And under low brows, black with night,
+ Rayed out at times a dangerous light;
+ The sharp heat-lightnings of her face
+ Presaging ill to him whom Fate
+ Condemned to share her love or hate.
+ A woman tropical, intense
+ In thought and act, in soul and sense,
+ She blended in a like degree
+ The vixen and the devotee,
+ Revealing with each freak or feint
+ The temper of Petruchio's Kate,
+ The raptures of Siena's saint.
+ Her tapering hand and rounded wrist
+ Had facile power to form a fist;
+ The warm, dark languish of her eyes
+ Was never safe from wrath's surprise.
+ Brows saintly calm and lips devout
+ Knew every change of scowl and pout;
+ And the sweet voice had notes more high
+ And shrill for social battle-cry.
+
+ Since then what old cathedral town
+ Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown,
+ What convent-gate has held its lock
+ Against the challenge of her knock!
+ Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares,
+ Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs,
+ Gray olive slopes of hills that hem
+ Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem,
+ Or startling on her desert throne
+ The crazy Queen of Lebanon s
+ With claims fantastic as her own,
+ Her tireless feet have held their way;
+ And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray,
+ She watches under Eastern skies,
+ With hope each day renewed and fresh,
+ The Lord's quick coming in the flesh,
+ Whereof she dreams and prophesies!
+
+ Where'er her troubled path may be,
+ The Lord's sweet pity with her go!
+ The outward wayward life we see,
+ The hidden springs we may not know.
+ Nor is it given us to discern
+ What threads the fatal sisters spun,
+ Through what ancestral years has run
+ The sorrow with the woman born,
+ What forged her cruel chain of moods,
+ What set her feet in solitudes,
+ And held the love within her mute,
+ What mingled madness in the blood,
+ A life-long discord and annoy,
+ Water of tears with oil of joy,
+ And hid within the folded bud
+ Perversities of flower and fruit.
+ It is not ours to separate
+ The tangled skein of will and fate,
+ To show what metes and bounds should stand
+ Upon the soul's debatable land,
+ And between choice and Providence
+ Divide the circle of events;
+ But lie who knows our frame is just,
+ Merciful and compassionate,
+ And full of sweet assurances
+ And hope for all the language is,
+ That He remembereth we are dust!
+
+ At last the great logs, crumbling low,
+ Sent out a dull and duller glow,
+ The bull's-eye watch that hung in view,
+ Ticking its weary circuit through,
+ Pointed with mutely warning sign
+ Its black hand to the hour of nine.
+ That sign the pleasant circle broke
+ My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,
+ Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray,
+ And laid it tenderly away,
+ Then roused himself to safely cover
+ The dull red brands with ashes over.
+ And while, with care, our mother laid
+ The work aside, her steps she stayed
+ One moment, seeking to express
+ Her grateful sense of happiness
+ For food and shelter, warmth and health,
+ And love's contentment more than wealth,
+ With simple wishes (not the weak,
+ Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek,
+ But such as warm the generous heart,
+ O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part)
+ That none might lack, that bitter night,
+ For bread and clothing, warmth and light.
+
+ Within our beds awhile we heard
+ The wind that round the gables roared,
+ With now and then a ruder shock,
+ Which made our very bedsteads rock.
+ We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
+ The board-nails snapping in the frost;
+ And on us, through the unplastered wall,
+ Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
+ But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
+ When hearts are light and life is new;
+ Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
+ Till in the summer-land of dreams
+ They softened to the sound of streams,
+ Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
+ And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
+
+ Next morn we wakened with the shout
+ Of merry voices high and clear;
+ And saw the teamsters drawing near
+ To break the drifted highways out.
+ Down the long hillside treading slow
+ We saw the half-buried oxen' go,
+ Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
+ Their straining nostrils white with frost.
+ Before our door the straggling train
+ Drew up, an added team to gain.
+ The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
+ Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes
+ From lip to lip; the younger folks
+ Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled,
+ Then toiled again the cavalcade
+ O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine,
+ And woodland paths that wound between
+ Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed.
+ From every barn a team afoot,
+ At every house a new recruit,
+ Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law
+ Haply the watchful young men saw
+ Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
+ And curious eyes of merry girls,
+ Lifting their hands in mock defence
+ Against the snow-ball's compliments,
+ And reading in each missive tost
+ The charm with Eden never lost.
+
+ We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound;
+ And, following where the teamsters led,
+ The wise old Doctor went his round,
+ Just pausing at our door to say,
+ In the brief autocratic way
+ Of one who, prompt at Duty's call,
+ Was free to urge her claim on all,
+ That some poor neighbor sick abed
+ At night our mother's aid would need.
+ For, one in generous thought and deed,
+ What mattered in the sufferer's sight
+ The Quaker matron's inward light,
+ The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed?
+ All hearts confess the saints elect
+ Who, twain in faith, in love agree,
+ And melt not in an acid sect
+ The Christian pearl of charity!
+
+ So days went on: a week had passed
+ Since the great world was heard from last.
+ The Almanac we studied o'er,
+ Read and reread our little store,
+ Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score;
+ One harmless novel, mostly hid
+ From younger eyes, a book forbid,
+ And poetry, (or good or bad,
+ A single book was all we had,)
+ Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse,
+ A stranger to the heathen Nine,
+ Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,
+ The wars of David and the Jews.
+ At last the floundering carrier bore
+ The village paper to our door.
+ Lo! broadening outward as we read,
+ To warmer zones the horizon spread;
+ In panoramic length unrolled
+ We saw the marvels that it told.
+ Before us passed the painted Creeks,
+ And daft McGregor on his raids
+ In Costa Rica's everglades.
+ And up Taygetos winding slow
+ Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks,
+ A Turk's head at each saddle-bow
+ Welcome to us its week-old news,
+ Its corner for the rustic Muse,
+ Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
+ Its record, mingling in a breath
+ The wedding bell and dirge of death;
+ Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale,
+ The latest culprit sent to jail;
+ Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
+ Its vendue sales and goods at cost,
+ And traffic calling loud for gain.
+ We felt the stir of hall and street,
+ The pulse of life that round us beat;
+ The chill embargo of the snow
+ Was melted in the genial glow;
+ Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
+ And all the world was ours once more!
+
+ Clasp, Angel of the backward look
+ And folded wings of ashen gray
+ And voice of echoes far away,
+ The brazen covers of thy book;
+ The weird palimpsest old and vast,
+ Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past;
+ Where, closely mingling, pale and glow
+ The characters of joy and woe;
+ The monographs of outlived years,
+ Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,
+ Green hills of life that slope to death,
+ And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees
+ Shade off to mournful cypresses
+ With the white amaranths underneath.
+ Even while I look, I can but heed
+ The restless sands' incessant fall,
+ Importunate hours that hours succeed,
+ Each clamorous with its own sharp need,
+ And duty keeping pace with all.
+ Shut down and clasp the heavy lids;
+ I hear again the voice that bids
+ The dreamer leave his dream midway
+ For larger hopes and graver fears
+ Life greatens in these later years,
+ The century's aloe flowers to-day!
+
+ Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
+ Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,
+ The worldling's eyes shall gather dew,
+ Dreaming in throngful city ways
+ Of winter joys his boyhood knew;
+ And dear and early friends--the few
+ Who yet remain--shall pause to view
+ These Flemish pictures of old days;
+ Sit with me by the homestead hearth,
+ And stretch the hands of memory forth
+ To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze!
+ And thanks untraced to lips unknown
+ Shall greet me like the odors blown
+ From unseen meadows newly mown,
+ Or lilies floating in some pond,
+ Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond;
+ The traveller owns the grateful sense
+ Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,
+ And, pausing, takes with forehead bare
+ The benediction of the air.
+
+ 1866.
+
+
+
+
+MY TRIUMPH.
+
+ The autumn-time has come;
+ On woods that dream of bloom,
+ And over purpling vines,
+ The low sun fainter shines.
+
+ The aster-flower is failing,
+ The hazel's gold is paling;
+ Yet overhead more near
+ The eternal stars appear!
+
+ And present gratitude
+ Insures the future's good,
+ And for the things I see
+ I trust the things to be;
+
+ That in the paths untrod,
+ And the long days of God,
+ My feet shall still be led,
+ My heart be comforted.
+
+ O living friends who love me!
+ O dear ones gone above me!
+ Careless of other fame,
+ I leave to you my name.
+
+ Hide it from idle praises,
+ Save it from evil phrases
+ Why, when dear lips that spake it
+ Are dumb, should strangers wake it?
+
+ Let the thick curtain fall;
+ I better know than all
+ How little I have gained,
+ How vast the unattained.
+
+ Not by the page word-painted
+ Let life be banned or sainted
+ Deeper than written scroll
+ The colors of the soul.
+
+ Sweeter than any sung
+ My songs that found no tongue;
+ Nobler than any fact
+ My wish that failed of act.
+
+ Others shall sing the song,
+ Others shall right the wrong,--
+ Finish what I begin,
+ And all I fail of win.
+
+ What matter, I or they?
+ Mine or another's day,
+ So the right word be said
+ And life the sweeter made?
+
+ Hail to the coming singers
+ Hail to the brave light-bringers!
+ Forward I reach and share
+ All that they sing and dare.
+
+ The airs of heaven blow o'er me;
+ A glory shines before me
+ Of what mankind shall be,--
+ Pure, generous, brave, and free.
+
+ A dream of man and woman
+ Diviner but still human,
+ Solving the riddle old,
+ Shaping the Age of Gold.
+
+ The love of God and neighbor;
+ An equal-handed labor;
+ The richer life, where beauty
+ Walks hand in hand with duty.
+
+ Ring, bells in unreared steeples,
+ The joy of unborn peoples!
+ Sound, trumpets far off blown,
+ Your triumph is my own!
+
+ Parcel and part of all,
+ I keep the festival,
+ Fore-reach the good to be,
+ And share the victory.
+
+ I feel the earth move sunward,
+ I join the great march onward,
+ And take, by faith, while living,
+ My freehold of thanksgiving.
+
+ 1870.
+
+
+
+
+IN SCHOOL-DAYS.
+
+ Still sits the school-house by the road,
+ A ragged beggar sleeping;
+ Around it still the sumachs grow,
+ And blackberry-vines are creeping.
+
+ Within, the master's desk is seen,
+ Deep scarred by raps official;
+ The warping floor, the battered seats,
+ The jack-knife's carved initial;
+
+ The charcoal frescos on its wall;
+ Its door's worn sill, betraying
+ The feet that, creeping slow to school,
+ Went storming out to playing!
+
+ Long years ago a winter sun
+ Shone over it at setting;
+ Lit up its western window-panes,
+ And low eaves' icy fretting.
+
+ It touched the tangled golden curls,
+ And brown eyes full of grieving,
+ Of one who still her steps delayed
+ When all the school were leaving.
+
+ For near her stood the little boy
+ Her childish favor singled:
+ His cap pulled low upon a face
+ Where pride and shame were mingled.
+
+ Pushing with restless feet the snow
+ To right and left, he lingered;--
+ As restlessly her tiny hands
+ The blue-checked apron fingered.
+
+ He saw her lift her eyes; he felt
+ The soft hand's light caressing,
+ And heard the tremble of her voice,
+ As if a fault confessing.
+
+ "I 'm sorry that I spelt the word
+ I hate to go above you,
+ Because,"--the brown eyes lower fell,--
+ "Because you see, I love you!"
+
+ Still memory to a gray-haired man
+ That sweet child-face is showing.
+ Dear girl! the grasses on her grave
+ Have forty years been growing!
+
+ He lives to learn, in life's hard school,
+ How few who pass above him
+ Lament their triumph and his loss,
+ Like her,--because they love him.
+
+
+
+
+MY BIRTHDAY.
+
+ Beneath the moonlight and the snow
+ Lies dead my latest year;
+ The winter winds are wailing low
+ Its dirges in my ear.
+
+ I grieve not with the moaning wind
+ As if a loss befell;
+ Before me, even as behind,
+ God is, and all is well!
+
+ His light shines on me from above,
+ His low voice speaks within,--
+ The patience of immortal love
+ Outwearying mortal sin.
+
+ Not mindless of the growing years
+ Of care and loss and pain,
+ My eyes are wet with thankful tears
+ For blessings which remain.
+
+ If dim the gold of life has grown,
+ I will not count it dross,
+ Nor turn from treasures still my own
+ To sigh for lack and loss.
+
+ The years no charm from Nature take;
+ As sweet her voices call,
+ As beautiful her mornings break,
+ As fair her evenings fall.
+
+ Love watches o'er my quiet ways,
+ Kind voices speak my name,
+ And lips that find it hard to praise
+ Are slow, at least, to blame.
+
+ How softly ebb the tides of will!
+ How fields, once lost or won,
+ Now lie behind me green and still
+ Beneath a level sun.
+
+ How hushed the hiss of party hate,
+ The clamor of the throng!
+ How old, harsh voices of debate
+ Flow into rhythmic song!
+
+ Methinks the spirit's temper grows
+ Too soft in this still air;
+ Somewhat the restful heart foregoes
+ Of needed watch and prayer.
+
+ The bark by tempest vainly tossed
+ May founder in the calm,
+ And he who braved the polar frost
+ Faint by the isles of balm.
+
+ Better than self-indulgent years
+ The outflung heart of youth,
+ Than pleasant songs in idle ears
+ The tumult of the truth.
+
+ Rest for the weary hands is good,
+ And love for hearts that pine,
+ But let the manly habitude
+ Of upright souls be mine.
+
+ Let winds that blow from heaven refresh,
+ Dear Lord, the languid air;
+ And let the weakness of the flesh
+ Thy strength of spirit share.
+
+ And, if the eye must fail of light,
+ The ear forget to hear,
+ Make clearer still the spirit's sight,
+ More fine the inward ear!
+
+ Be near me in mine hours of need
+ To soothe, or cheer, or warn,
+ And down these slopes of sunset lead
+ As up the hills of morn!
+
+ 1871.
+
+
+
+
+RED RIDING-HOOD.
+
+ On the wide lawn the snow lay deep,
+ Ridged o'er with many a drifted heap;
+ The wind that through the pine-trees sung
+ The naked elm-boughs tossed and swung;
+ While, through the window, frosty-starred,
+ Against the sunset purple barred,
+ We saw the sombre crow flap by,
+ The hawk's gray fleck along the sky,
+ The crested blue-jay flitting swift,
+ The squirrel poising on the drift,
+ Erect, alert, his broad gray tail
+ Set to the north wind like a sail.
+
+ It came to pass, our little lass,
+ With flattened face against the glass,
+ And eyes in which the tender dew
+ Of pity shone, stood gazing through
+ The narrow space her rosy lips
+ Had melted from the frost's eclipse
+ "Oh, see," she cried, "the poor blue-jays!
+ What is it that the black crow says?
+ The squirrel lifts his little legs
+ Because he has no hands, and begs;
+ He's asking for my nuts, I know
+ May I not feed them on the snow?"
+
+ Half lost within her boots, her head
+ Warm-sheltered in her hood of red,
+ Her plaid skirt close about her drawn,
+ She floundered down the wintry lawn;
+ Now struggling through the misty veil
+ Blown round her by the shrieking gale;
+ Now sinking in a drift so low
+ Her scarlet hood could scarcely show
+ Its dash of color on the snow.
+
+ She dropped for bird and beast forlorn
+ Her little store of nuts and corn,
+ And thus her timid guests bespoke
+ "Come, squirrel, from your hollow oak,--
+ Come, black old crow,--come, poor blue-jay,
+ Before your supper's blown away
+ Don't be afraid, we all are good;
+ And I'm mamma's Red Riding-Hood!"
+
+ O Thou whose care is over all,
+ Who heedest even the sparrow's fall,
+ Keep in the little maiden's breast
+ The pity which is now its guest!
+ Let not her cultured years make less
+ The childhood charm of tenderness,
+ But let her feel as well as know,
+ Nor harder with her polish grow!
+ Unmoved by sentimental grief
+ That wails along some printed leaf,
+ But, prompt with kindly word and deed
+ To own the claims of all who need,
+ Let the grown woman's self make good
+ The promise of Red Riding-Hood.
+
+ 1877.
+
+
+
+
+RESPONSE.
+
+On the occasion of my seventieth birthday in 1877, I was the recipient
+of many tokens of esteem. The publishers of the _Atlantic Monthly_ gave
+a dinner in my name, and the editor of _The Literary World_ gathered in
+his paper many affectionate messages from my associates in literature
+and the cause of human progress. The lines which follow were written in
+acknowledgment.
+
+ Beside that milestone where the level sun,
+ Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, low rays
+ On word and work irrevocably done,
+ Life's blending threads of good and ill outspun,
+ I hear, O friends! your words of cheer and praise,
+ Half doubtful if myself or otherwise.
+ Like him who, in the old Arabian joke,
+ A beggar slept and crowned Caliph woke.
+ Thanks not the less. With not unglad surprise
+ I see my life-work through your partial eyes;
+ Assured, in giving to my home-taught songs
+ A higher value than of right belongs,
+ You do but read between the written lines
+ The finer grace of unfulfilled designs.
+
+
+
+
+AT EVENTIDE.
+
+ Poor and inadequate the shadow-play
+ Of gain and loss, of waking and of dream,
+ Against life's solemn background needs must seem
+ At this late hour. Yet, not unthankfully,
+ I call to mind the fountains by the way,
+ The breath of flowers, the bird-song on the spray,
+ Dear friends, sweet human loves, the joy of giving
+ And of receiving, the great boon of living
+ In grand historic years when Liberty
+ Had need of word and work, quick sympathies
+ For all who fail and suffer, song's relief,
+ Nature's uncloying loveliness; and chief,
+ The kind restraining hand of Providence,
+ The inward witness, the assuring sense
+ Of an Eternal Good which overlies
+ The sorrow of the world, Love which outlives
+ All sin and wrong, Compassion which forgives
+ To the uttermost, and Justice whose clear eyes
+ Through lapse and failure look to the intent,
+ And judge our frailty by the life we meant.
+
+ 1878.
+
+
+
+
+VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE.
+
+The picturesquely situated Wayside Inn at West Ossipee, N. H., is now in
+ashes; and to its former guests these somewhat careless rhymes may be a
+not unwelcome reminder of pleasant summers and autumns on the banks of
+the Bearcamp and Chocorua. To the author himself they have a special
+interest from the fact that they were written, or improvised, under the
+eye and for the amusement of a beloved invalid friend whose last earthly
+sunsets faded from the mountain ranges of Ossipee and Sandwich.
+
+
+ A shallow stream, from fountains
+ Deep in the Sandwich mountains,
+ Ran lake ward Bearcamp River;
+ And, between its flood-torn shores,
+ Sped by sail or urged by oars
+ No keel had vexed it ever.
+
+ Alone the dead trees yielding
+ To the dull axe Time is wielding,
+ The shy mink and the otter,
+ And golden leaves and red,
+ By countless autumns shed,
+ Had floated down its water.
+
+ From the gray rocks of Cape Ann,
+ Came a skilled seafaring man,
+ With his dory, to the right place;
+ Over hill and plain he brought her,
+ Where the boatless Beareamp water
+ Comes winding down from White-Face.
+
+ Quoth the skipper: "Ere she floats forth;
+ I'm sure my pretty boat's worth,
+ At least, a name as pretty."
+ On her painted side he wrote it,
+ And the flag that o'er her floated
+ Bore aloft the name of Jettie.
+
+ On a radiant morn of summer,
+ Elder guest and latest comer
+ Saw her wed the Bearcamp water;
+ Heard the name the skipper gave her,
+ And the answer to the favor
+ From the Bay State's graceful daughter.
+
+ Then, a singer, richly gifted,
+ Her charmed voice uplifted;
+ And the wood-thrush and song-sparrow
+ Listened, dumb with envious pain,
+ To the clear and sweet refrain
+ Whose notes they could not borrow.
+
+ Then the skipper plied his oar,
+ And from off the shelving shore,
+ Glided out the strange explorer;
+ Floating on, she knew not whither,--
+ The tawny sands beneath her,
+ The great hills watching o'er her.
+
+ On, where the stream flows quiet
+ As the meadows' margins by it,
+ Or widens out to borrow a
+ New life from that wild water,
+ The mountain giant's daughter,
+ The pine-besung Chocorua.
+
+ Or, mid the tangling cumber
+ And pack of mountain lumber
+ That spring floods downward force,
+ Over sunken snag, and bar
+ Where the grating shallows are,
+ The good boat held her course.
+
+ Under the pine-dark highlands,
+ Around the vine-hung islands,
+ She ploughed her crooked furrow
+ And her rippling and her lurches
+ Scared the river eels and perches,
+ And the musk-rat in his burrow.
+
+ Every sober clam below her,
+ Every sage and grave pearl-grower,
+ Shut his rusty valves the tighter;
+ Crow called to crow complaining,
+ And old tortoises sat craning
+ Their leathern necks to sight her.
+
+ So, to where the still lake glasses
+ The misty mountain masses
+ Rising dim and distant northward,
+ And, with faint-drawn shadow pictures,
+ Low shores, and dead pine spectres,
+ Blends the skyward and the earthward,
+
+ On she glided, overladen,
+ With merry man and maiden
+ Sending back their song and laughter,--
+ While, perchance, a phantom crew,
+ In a ghostly birch canoe,
+ Paddled dumb and swiftly after!
+
+ And the bear on Ossipee
+ Climbed the topmost crag to see
+ The strange thing drifting under;
+ And, through the haze of August,
+ Passaconaway and Paugus
+ Looked down in sleepy wonder.
+
+ All the pines that o'er her hung
+ In mimic sea-tones sung
+ The song familiar to her;
+ And the maples leaned to screen her,
+ And the meadow-grass seemed greener,
+ And the breeze more soft to woo her.
+
+ The lone stream mystery-haunted,
+ To her the freedom granted
+ To scan its every feature,
+ Till new and old were blended,
+ And round them both extended
+ The loving arms of Nature.
+
+ Of these hills the little vessel
+ Henceforth is part and parcel;
+ And on Bearcamp shall her log
+ Be kept, as if by George's
+ Or Grand Menan, the surges
+ Tossed her skipper through the fog.
+
+ And I, who, half in sadness,
+ Recall the morning gladness
+ Of life, at evening time,
+ By chance, onlooking idly,
+ Apart from all so widely,
+ Have set her voyage to rhyme.
+
+ Dies now the gay persistence
+ Of song and laugh, in distance;
+ Alone with me remaining
+ The stream, the quiet meadow,
+ The hills in shine and shadow,
+ The sombre pines complaining.
+
+ And, musing here, I dream
+ Of voyagers on a stream
+ From whence is no returning,
+ Under sealed orders going,
+ Looking forward little knowing,
+ Looking back with idle yearning.
+
+ And I pray that every venture
+ The port of peace may enter,
+ That, safe from snag and fall
+ And siren-haunted islet,
+ And rock, the Unseen Pilot
+ May guide us one and all.
+
+ 1880.
+
+
+
+
+MY TRUST.
+
+ A picture memory brings to me
+ I look across the years and see
+ Myself beside my mother's knee.
+
+ I feel her gentle hand restrain
+ My selfish moods, and know again
+ A child's blind sense of wrong and pain.
+
+ But wiser now, a man gray grown,
+ My childhood's needs are better known,
+ My mother's chastening love I own.
+
+ Gray grown, but in our Father's sight
+ A child still groping for the light
+ To read His works and ways aright.
+
+ I wait, in His good time to see
+ That as my mother dealt with me
+ So with His children dealeth He.
+
+ I bow myself beneath His hand
+ That pain itself was wisely planned
+ I feel, and partly understand.
+
+ The joy that comes in sorrow's guise,
+ The sweet pains of self-sacrifice,
+ I would not have them otherwise.
+
+ And what were life and death if sin
+ Knew not the dread rebuke within,
+ The pang of merciful discipline?
+
+ Not with thy proud despair of old,
+ Crowned stoic of Rome's noblest mould!
+ Pleasure and pain alike I hold.
+
+ I suffer with no vain pretence
+ Of triumph over flesh and sense,
+ Yet trust the grievous providence,
+
+ How dark soe'er it seems, may tend,
+ By ways I cannot comprehend,
+ To some unguessed benignant end;
+
+ That every loss and lapse may gain
+ The clear-aired heights by steps of pain,
+ And never cross is borne in vain.
+
+ 1880.
+
+
+
+
+A NAME
+
+Addressed to my grand-nephew, Greenleaf Whittier Pickard. Jonathan
+Greenleaf, in A Genealogy of the Greenleaf Family, says briefly: "From
+all that can be gathered, it is believed that the ancestors of the
+Greenleaf family were Huguenots, who left France on account of their
+religious principles some time in the course of the sixteenth century,
+and settled in England. The name was probably translated from the French
+Feuillevert."
+
+
+ The name the Gallic exile bore,
+ St. Malo! from thy ancient mart,
+ Became upon our Western shore
+ Greenleaf for Feuillevert.
+
+ A name to hear in soft accord
+ Of leaves by light winds overrun,
+ Or read, upon the greening sward
+ Of May, in shade and sun.
+
+ The name my infant ear first heard
+ Breathed softly with a mother's kiss;
+ His mother's own, no tenderer word
+ My father spake than this.
+
+ No child have I to bear it on;
+ Be thou its keeper; let it take
+ From gifts well used and duty done
+ New beauty for thy sake.
+
+ The fair ideals that outran
+ My halting footsteps seek and find--
+ The flawless symmetry of man,
+ The poise of heart and mind.
+
+ Stand firmly where I felt the sway
+ Of every wing that fancy flew,
+ See clearly where I groped my way,
+ Nor real from seeming knew.
+
+ And wisely choose, and bravely hold
+ Thy faith unswerved by cross or crown,
+ Like the stout Huguenot of old
+ Whose name to thee comes down.
+
+ As Marot's songs made glad the heart
+ Of that lone exile, haply mine
+ May in life's heavy hours impart
+ Some strength and hope to thine.
+
+ Yet when did Age transfer to Youth
+ The hard-gained lessons of its day?
+ Each lip must learn the taste of truth,
+ Each foot must feel its way.
+
+ We cannot hold the hands of choice
+ That touch or shun life's fateful keys;
+ The whisper of the inward voice
+ Is more than homilies.
+
+ Dear boy! for whom the flowers are born,
+ Stars shine, and happy song-birds sing,
+ What can my evening give to morn,
+ My winter to thy spring!
+
+ A life not void of pure intent,
+ With small desert of praise or blame,
+ The love I felt, the good I meant,
+ I leave thee with my name.
+
+ 1880.
+
+
+
+
+GREETING.
+
+Originally prefixed to the volume, The King's Missive and other Poems.
+
+
+ I spread a scanty board too late;
+ The old-time guests for whom I wait
+ Come few and slow, methinks, to-day.
+ Ah! who could hear my messages
+ Across the dim unsounded seas
+ On which so many have sailed away!
+
+ Come, then, old friends, who linger yet,
+ And let us meet, as we have met,
+ Once more beneath this low sunshine;
+ And grateful for the good we 've known,
+ The riddles solved, the ills outgrown,
+ Shake bands upon the border line.
+
+ The favor, asked too oft before,
+ From your indulgent ears, once more
+ I crave, and, if belated lays
+ To slower, feebler measures move,
+ The silent, sympathy of love
+ To me is dearer now than praise.
+
+ And ye, O younger friends, for whom
+ My hearth and heart keep open room,
+ Come smiling through the shadows long,
+ Be with me while the sun goes down,
+ And with your cheerful voices drown
+ The minor of my even-song.
+
+ For, equal through the day and night,
+ The wise Eternal oversight
+ And love and power and righteous will
+ Remain: the law of destiny
+ The best for each and all must be,
+ And life its promise shall fulfil.
+
+ 1881.
+
+
+
+
+AN AUTOGRAPH.
+
+ I write my name as one,
+ On sands by waves o'errun
+ Or winter's frosted pane,
+ Traces a record vain.
+
+ Oblivion's blankness claims
+ Wiser and better names,
+ And well my own may pass
+ As from the strand or glass.
+
+ Wash on, O waves of time!
+ Melt, noons, the frosty rime!
+ Welcome the shadow vast,
+ The silence that shall last.
+
+ When I and all who know
+ And love me vanish so,
+ What harm to them or me
+ Will the lost memory be?
+
+ If any words of mine,
+ Through right of life divine,
+ Remain, what matters it
+ Whose hand the message writ?
+
+ Why should the "crowner's quest"
+ Sit on my worst or best?
+ Why should the showman claim
+ The poor ghost of my name?
+
+ Yet, as when dies a sound
+ Its spectre lingers round,
+ Haply my spent life will
+ Leave some faint echo still.
+
+ A whisper giving breath
+ Of praise or blame to death,
+ Soothing or saddening such
+ As loved the living much.
+
+ Therefore with yearnings vain
+ And fond I still would fain
+ A kindly judgment seek,
+ A tender thought bespeak.
+
+ And, while my words are read,
+ Let this at least be said
+ "Whate'er his life's defeatures,
+ He loved his fellow-creatures.
+
+ "If, of the Law's stone table,
+ To hold he scarce was able
+ The first great precept fast,
+ He kept for man the last.
+
+ "Through mortal lapse and dulness
+ What lacks the Eternal Fulness,
+ If still our weakness can
+ Love Him in loving man?
+
+ "Age brought him no despairing
+ Of the world's future faring;
+ In human nature still
+ He found more good than ill.
+
+ "To all who dumbly suffered,
+ His tongue and pen he offered;
+ His life was not his own,
+ Nor lived for self alone.
+
+ "Hater of din and riot
+ He lived in days unquiet;
+ And, lover of all beauty,
+ Trod the hard ways of duty.
+
+ "He meant no wrong to any
+ He sought the good of many,
+ Yet knew both sin and folly,--
+ May God forgive him wholly!"
+
+ 1882.
+
+
+
+
+ABRAM MORRISON.
+
+ 'Midst the men and things which will
+ Haunt an old man's memory still,
+ Drollest, quaintest of them all,
+ With a boy's laugh I recall
+ Good old Abram Morrison.
+
+ When the Grist and Rolling Mill
+ Ground and rumbled by Po Hill,
+ And the old red school-house stood
+ Midway in the Powow's flood,
+ Here dwelt Abram Morrison.
+
+ From the Beach to far beyond
+ Bear-Hill, Lion's Mouth and Pond,
+ Marvellous to our tough old stock,
+ Chips o' the Anglo-Saxon block,
+ Seemed the Celtic Morrison.
+
+ Mudknock, Balmawhistle, all
+ Only knew the Yankee drawl,
+ Never brogue was heard till when,
+ Foremost of his countrymen,
+ Hither came Friend Morrison;
+
+ Yankee born, of alien blood,
+ Kin of his had well withstood
+ Pope and King with pike and ball
+ Under Derry's leaguered wall,
+ As became the Morrisons.
+
+ Wandering down from Nutfield woods
+ With his household and his goods,
+ Never was it clearly told
+ How within our quiet fold
+ Came to be a Morrison.
+
+ Once a soldier, blame him not
+ That the Quaker he forgot,
+ When, to think of battles won,
+ And the red-coats on the run,
+ Laughed aloud Friend Morrison.
+
+ From gray Lewis over sea
+ Bore his sires their family tree,
+ On the rugged boughs of it
+ Grafting Irish mirth and wit,
+ And the brogue of Morrison.
+
+ Half a genius, quick to plan,
+ Blundering like an Irishman,
+ But with canny shrewdness lent
+ By his far-off Scotch descent,
+ Such was Abram Morrison.
+
+ Back and forth to daily meals,
+ Rode his cherished pig on wheels,
+ And to all who came to see
+ "Aisier for the pig an' me,
+ Sure it is," said Morrison.
+
+ Simple-hearted, boy o'er-grown,
+ With a humor quite his own,
+ Of our sober-stepping ways,
+ Speech and look and cautious phrase,
+ Slow to learn was Morrison.
+
+ Much we loved his stories told
+ Of a country strange and old,
+ Where the fairies danced till dawn,
+ And the goblin Leprecaun
+ Looked, we thought, like Morrison.
+
+ Or wild tales of feud and fight,
+ Witch and troll and second sight
+ Whispered still where Stornoway
+ Looks across its stormy bay,
+ Once the home of Morrisons.
+
+ First was he to sing the praise
+ Of the Powow's winding ways;
+ And our straggling village took
+ City grandeur to the look
+ Of its poet Morrison.
+
+ All his words have perished. Shame
+ On the saddle-bags of Fame,
+ That they bring not to our time
+ One poor couplet of the rhyme
+ Made by Abram Morrison!
+
+ When, on calm and fair First Days,
+ Rattled down our one-horse chaise,
+ Through the blossomed apple-boughs
+ To the old, brown meeting-house,
+ There was Abram Morrison.
+
+ Underneath his hat's broad brim
+ Peered the queer old face of him;
+ And with Irish jauntiness
+ Swung the coat-tails of the dress
+ Worn by Abram Morrison.
+
+ Still, in memory, on his feet,
+ Leaning o'er the elders' seat,
+ Mingling with a solemn drone,
+ Celtic accents all his own,
+ Rises Abram Morrison.
+
+ "Don't," he's pleading, "don't ye go,
+ Dear young friends, to sight and show,
+ Don't run after elephants,
+ Learned pigs and presidents
+ And the likes!" said Morrison.
+
+ On his well-worn theme intent,
+ Simple, child-like, innocent,
+ Heaven forgive the half-checked smile
+ Of our careless boyhood, while
+ Listening to Friend Morrison!
+
+ We have learned in later days
+ Truth may speak in simplest phrase;
+ That the man is not the less
+ For quaint ways and home-spun dress,
+ Thanks to Abram Morrison!
+
+ Not to pander nor to please
+ Come the needed homilies,
+ With no lofty argument
+ Is the fitting message sent,
+ Through such lips as Morrison's.
+
+ Dead and gone! But while its track
+ Powow keeps to Merrimac,
+ While Po Hill is still on guard,
+ Looking land and ocean ward,
+ They shall tell of Morrison!
+
+ After half a century's lapse,
+ We are wiser now, perhaps,
+ But we miss our streets amid
+ Something which the past has hid,
+ Lost with Abram Morrison.
+
+ Gone forever with the queer
+ Characters of that old year
+ Now the many are as one;
+ Broken is the mould that run
+ Men like Abram Morrison.
+
+ 1884.
+
+
+
+
+A LEGACY
+
+ Friend of my many years
+ When the great silence falls, at last, on me,
+ Let me not leave, to pain and sadden thee,
+ A memory of tears,
+
+ But pleasant thoughts alone
+ Of one who was thy friendship's honored guest
+ And drank the wine of consolation pressed
+ From sorrows of thy own.
+
+ I leave with thee a sense
+ Of hands upheld and trials rendered less--
+ The unselfish joy which is to helpfulness
+ Its own great recompense;
+
+ The knowledge that from thine,
+ As from the garments of the Master, stole
+ Calmness and strength, the virtue which makes whole
+ And heals without a sign;
+
+ Yea more, the assurance strong
+ That love, which fails of perfect utterance here,
+ Lives on to fill the heavenly atmosphere
+ With its immortal song.
+
+ 1887.
+
+
+
+
+
+RELIGIOUS POEMS
+
+
+
+
+THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM
+
+ Where Time the measure of his hours
+ By changeful bud and blossom keeps,
+ And, like a young bride crowned with flowers,
+ Fair Shiraz in her garden sleeps;
+
+ Where, to her poet's turban stone,
+ The Spring her gift of flowers imparts,
+ Less sweet than those his thoughts have sown
+ In the warm soil of Persian hearts:
+
+ There sat the stranger, where the shade
+ Of scattered date-trees thinly lay,
+ While in the hot clear heaven delayed
+ The long and still and weary day.
+
+ Strange trees and fruits above him hung,
+ Strange odors filled the sultry air,
+ Strange birds upon the branches swung,
+ Strange insect voices murmured there.
+
+ And strange bright blossoms shone around,
+ Turned sunward from the shadowy bowers,
+ As if the Gheber's soul had found
+ A fitting home in Iran's flowers.
+
+ Whate'er he saw, whate'er he heard,
+ Awakened feelings new and sad,--
+ No Christian garb, nor Christian word,
+ Nor church with Sabbath-bell chimes glad,
+
+ But Moslem graves, with turban stones,
+ And mosque-spires gleaming white, in view,
+ And graybeard Mollahs in low tones
+ Chanting their Koran service through.
+
+ The flowers which smiled on either hand,
+ Like tempting fiends, were such as they
+ Which once, o'er all that Eastern land,
+ As gifts on demon altars lay.
+
+ As if the burning eye of Baal
+ The servant of his Conqueror knew,
+ From skies which knew no cloudy veil,
+ The Sun's hot glances smote him through.
+
+ "Ah me!" the lonely stranger said,
+ "The hope which led my footsteps on,
+ And light from heaven around them shed,
+ O'er weary wave and waste, is gone!
+
+ "Where are the harvest fields all white,
+ For Truth to thrust her sickle in?
+ Where flock the souls, like doves in flight,
+ From the dark hiding-place of sin?
+
+ "A silent-horror broods o'er all,--
+ The burden of a hateful spell,--
+ The very flowers around recall
+ The hoary magi's rites of hell!
+
+ "And what am I, o'er such a land
+ The banner of the Cross to bear?
+ Dear Lord, uphold me with Thy hand,
+ Thy strength with human weakness share!"
+
+ He ceased; for at his very feet
+ In mild rebuke a floweret smiled;
+ How thrilled his sinking heart to greet
+ The Star-flower of the Virgin's child!
+
+ Sown by some wandering Frank, it drew
+ Its life from alien air and earth,
+ And told to Paynim sun and dew
+ The story of the Saviour's birth.
+
+ From scorching beams, in kindly mood,
+ The Persian plants its beauty screened,
+ And on its pagan sisterhood,
+ In love, the Christian floweret leaned.
+
+ With tears of joy the wanderer felt
+ The darkness of his long despair
+ Before that hallowed symbol melt,
+ Which God's dear love had nurtured there.
+
+ From Nature's face, that simple flower
+ The lines of sin and sadness swept;
+ And Magian pile and Paynim bower
+ In peace like that of Eden slept.
+
+ Each Moslem tomb, and cypress old,
+ Looked holy through the sunset air;
+ And, angel-like, the Muezzin told
+ From tower and mosque the hour of prayer.
+
+ With cheerful steps, the morrow's dawn
+ From Shiraz saw the stranger part;
+ The Star-flower of the Virgin-Born
+ Still blooming in his hopeful heart!
+
+ 1830.
+
+
+
+
+THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN
+
+ "Get ye up from the wrath of God's terrible day!
+ Ungirded, unsandalled, arise and away!
+ 'T is the vintage of blood, 't is the fulness of time,
+ And vengeance shall gather the harvest of crime!"
+
+ The warning was spoken--the righteous had gone,
+ And the proud ones of Sodom were feasting alone;
+ All gay was the banquet--the revel was long,
+ With the pouring of wine and the breathing of song.
+
+ 'T was an evening of beauty; the air was perfume,
+ The earth was all greenness, the trees were all bloom;
+ And softly the delicate viol was heard,
+ Like the murmur of love or the notes of a bird.
+
+ And beautiful maidens moved down in the dance,
+ With the magic of motion and sunshine of glance
+ And white arms wreathed lightly, and tresses fell free
+ As the plumage of birds in some tropical tree.
+
+ Where the shrines of foul idols were lighted on high,
+ And wantonness tempted the lust of the eye;
+ Midst rites of obsceneness, strange, loathsome, abhorred,
+ The blasphemer scoffed at the name of the Lord.
+
+ Hark! the growl of the thunder,--the quaking of earth!
+ Woe, woe to the worship, and woe to the mirth!
+ The black sky has opened; there's flame in the air;
+ The red arm of vengeance is lifted and bare!
+
+ Then the shriek of the dying rose wild where the song
+ And the low tone of love had been whispered along;
+ For the fierce flames went lightly o'er palace and bower,
+ Like the red tongues of demons, to blast and devour!
+
+ Down, down on the fallen the red ruin rained,
+ And the reveller sank with his wine-cup undrained;
+ The foot of the dancer, the music's loved thrill,
+ And the shout and the laughter grew suddenly still.
+
+ The last throb of anguish was fearfully given;
+ The last eye glared forth in its madness on Heaven!
+ The last groan of horror rose wildly and vain,
+ And death brooded over the pride of the Plain!
+
+ 1831.
+
+
+
+
+THE CALL OF THE CHRISTIAN
+
+ Not always as the whirlwind's rush
+ On Horeb's mount of fear,
+ Not always as the burning bush
+ To Midian's shepherd seer,
+ Nor as the awful voice which came
+ To Israel's prophet bards,
+ Nor as the tongues of cloven flame,
+ Nor gift of fearful words,--
+
+ Not always thus, with outward sign
+ Of fire or voice from Heaven,
+ The message of a truth divine,
+ The call of God is given!
+ Awaking in the human heart
+ Love for the true and right,--
+ Zeal for the Christian's better part,
+ Strength for the Christian's fight.
+
+ Nor unto manhood's heart alone
+ The holy influence steals
+ Warm with a rapture not its own,
+ The heart of woman feels!
+ As she who by Samaria's wall
+ The Saviour's errand sought,--
+ As those who with the fervent Paul
+ And meek Aquila wrought:
+
+ Or those meek ones whose martyrdom
+ Rome's gathered grandeur saw
+ Or those who in their Alpine home
+ Braved the Crusader's war,
+ When the green Vaudois, trembling, heard,
+ Through all its vales of death,
+ The martyr's song of triumph poured
+ From woman's failing breath.
+
+ And gently, by a thousand things
+ Which o'er our spirits pass,
+ Like breezes o'er the harp's fine strings,
+ Or vapors o'er a glass,
+ Leaving their token strange and new
+ Of music or of shade,
+ The summons to the right and true
+ And merciful is made.
+
+ Oh, then, if gleams of truth and light
+ Flash o'er thy waiting mind,
+ Unfolding to thy mental sight
+ The wants of human-kind;
+ If, brooding over human grief,
+ The earnest wish is known
+ To soothe and gladden with relief
+ An anguish not thine own;
+
+ Though heralded with naught of fear,
+ Or outward sign or show;
+ Though only to the inward ear
+ It whispers soft and low;
+ Though dropping, as the manna fell,
+ Unseen, yet from above,
+ Noiseless as dew-fall, heed it well,---
+ Thy Father's call of love!
+
+
+
+
+THE CRUCIFIXION.
+
+ Sunlight upon Judha's hills!
+ And on the waves of Galilee;
+ On Jordan's stream, and on the rills
+ That feed the dead and sleeping sea!
+ Most freshly from the green wood springs
+ The light breeze on its scented wings;
+ And gayly quiver in the sun
+ The cedar tops of Lebanon!
+
+ A few more hours,--a change hath come!
+ The sky is dark without a cloud!
+ The shouts of wrath and joy are dumb,
+ And proud knees unto earth are bowed.
+ A change is on the hill of Death,
+ The helmed watchers pant for breath,
+ And turn with wild and maniac eyes
+ From the dark scene of sacrifice!
+
+ That Sacrifice!--the death of Him,--
+ The Christ of God, the holy One!
+ Well may the conscious Heaven grow dim,
+ And blacken the beholding, Sun.
+ The wonted light hath fled away,
+ Night settles on the middle day,
+ And earthquake from his caverned bed
+ Is waking with a thrill of dread!
+
+ The dead are waking underneath!
+ Their prison door is rent away!
+ And, ghastly with the seal of death,
+ They wander in the eye of day!
+ The temple of the Cherubim,
+ The House of God is cold and dim;
+ A curse is on its trembling walls,
+ Its mighty veil asunder falls!
+
+ Well may the cavern-depths of Earth
+ Be shaken, and her mountains nod;
+ Well may the sheeted dead come forth
+ To see the suffering son of God!
+ Well may the temple-shrine grow dim,
+ And shadows veil the Cherubim,
+ When He, the chosen one of Heaven,
+ A sacrifice for guilt is given!
+
+ And shall the sinful heart, alone,
+ Behold unmoved the fearful hour,
+ When Nature trembled on her throne,
+ And Death resigned his iron power?
+ Oh, shall the heart--whose sinfulness
+ Gave keenness to His sore distress,
+ And added to His tears of blood--
+ Refuse its trembling gratitude!
+
+ 1834.
+
+
+
+
+PALESTINE
+
+ Blest land of Judaea! thrice hallowed of song,
+ Where the holiest of memories pilgrim-like throng;
+ In the shade of thy palms, by the shores of thy sea,
+ On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is with thee.
+
+ With the eye of a spirit I look on that shore
+ Where pilgrim and prophet have lingered before;
+ With the glide of a spirit I traverse the sod
+ Made bright by the steps of the angels of God.
+
+ Blue sea of the hills! in my spirit I hear
+ Thy waters, Gennesaret, chime on my ear;
+ Where the Lowly and Just with the people sat down,
+ And thy spray on the dust of His sandals was thrown.
+
+ Beyond are Bethulia's mountains of green,
+ And the desolate hills of the wild Gadarene;
+ And I pause on the goat-crags of Tabor to see
+ The gleam of thy waters, O dark Galilee!
+
+ Hark, a sound in the valley! where, swollen and strong,
+ Thy river, O Kishon, is sweeping along;
+ Where the Canaanite strove with Jehovah in vain,
+ And thy torrent grew dark with the blood of the slain.
+
+ There down from his mountains stern Zebulon came,
+ And Naphthali's stag, with his eyeballs of flame,
+ And the chariots of Jabin rolled harmlessly on,
+ For the arm of the Lord was Abinoam's son!
+
+ There sleep the still rocks and the caverns which rang
+ To the song which the beautiful prophetess sang,
+ When the princes of Issachar stood by her side,
+ And the shout of a host in its triumph replied.
+
+ Lo, Bethlehem's hill-site before me is seen,
+ With the mountains around, and the valleys between;
+ There rested the shepherds of Judah, and there
+ The song of the angels rose sweet on the air.
+
+ And Bethany's palm-trees in beauty still throw
+ Their shadows at noon on the ruins below;
+ But where are the sisters who hastened to greet
+ The lowly Redeemer, and sit at His feet?
+
+ I tread where the twelve in their wayfaring trod;
+ I stand where they stood with the chosen of God--
+ Where His blessing was heard and His lessons were taught,
+ Where the blind were restored and the healing was wrought.
+
+ Oh, here with His flock the sad Wanderer came;
+ These hills He toiled over in grief are the same;
+ The founts where He drank by the wayside still flow,
+ And the same airs are blowing which breathed on His brow!
+
+ And throned on her hills sits Jerusalem yet,
+ But with dust on her forehead, and chains on her feet;
+ For the crown of her pride to the mocker hath gone,
+ And the holy Shechinah is dark where it shone.
+
+ But wherefore this dream of the earthly abode
+ Of Humanity clothed in the brightness of God?
+ Were my spirit but turned from the outward and dim,
+ It could gaze, even now, on the presence of Him!
+
+ Not in clouds and in terrors, but gentle as when,
+ In love and in meekness, He moved among men;
+ And the voice which breathed peace to the waves of the sea
+ In the hush of my spirit would whisper to me!
+
+ And what if my feet may not tread where He stood,
+ Nor my ears hear the dashing of Galilee's flood,
+ Nor my eyes see the cross which he bowed Him to bear,
+ Nor my knees press Gethsemane's garden of prayer.
+
+ Yet, Loved of the Father, Thy Spirit is near
+ To the meek, and the lowly, and penitent here;
+ And the voice of Thy love is the same even now
+ As at Bethany's tomb or on Olivet's brow.
+
+ Oh, the outward hath gone! but in glory and power.
+ The spirit surviveth the things of an hour;
+ Unchanged, undecaying, its Pentecost flame
+ On the heart's secret altar is burning the same
+
+ 1837.
+
+
+
+
+
+HYMNS.
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE FRENCH OF LAMARTINE
+
+ I.
+ "Encore un hymne, O ma lyre
+ Un hymn pour le Seigneur,
+ Un hymne dans mon delire,
+ Un hymne dans mon bonheur."
+
+
+ One hymn more, O my lyre!
+ Praise to the God above,
+ Of joy and life and love,
+ Sweeping its strings of fire!
+
+ Oh, who the speed of bird and wind
+ And sunbeam's glance will lend to me,
+ That, soaring upward, I may find
+ My resting-place and home in Thee?
+ Thou, whom my soul, midst doubt and gloom,
+ Adoreth with a fervent flame,--
+ Mysterious spirit! unto whom
+ Pertain nor sign nor name!
+
+ Swiftly my lyre's soft murmurs go,
+ Up from the cold and joyless earth,
+ Back to the God who bade them flow,
+ Whose moving spirit sent them forth.
+ But as for me, O God! for me,
+ The lowly creature of Thy will,
+ Lingering and sad, I sigh to Thee,
+ An earth-bound pilgrim still!
+
+ Was not my spirit born to shine
+ Where yonder stars and suns are glowing?
+ To breathe with them the light divine
+ From God's own holy altar flowing?
+ To be, indeed, whate'er the soul
+ In dreams hath thirsted for so long,--
+ A portion of heaven's glorious whole
+ Of loveliness and song?
+
+ Oh, watchers of the stars at night,
+ Who breathe their fire, as we the air,--
+ Suns, thunders, stars, and rays of light,
+ Oh, say, is He, the Eternal, there?
+ Bend there around His awful throne
+ The seraph's glance, the angel's knee?
+ Or are thy inmost depths His own,
+ O wild and mighty sea?
+
+ Thoughts of my soul, how swift ye go!
+ Swift as the eagle's glance of fire,
+ Or arrows from the archer's bow,
+ To the far aim of your desire!
+ Thought after thought, ye thronging rise,
+ Like spring-doves from the startled wood,
+ Bearing like them your sacrifice
+ Of music unto God!
+
+ And shall these thoughts of joy and love
+ Come back again no more to me?
+ Returning like the patriarch's dove
+ Wing-weary from the eternal sea,
+ To bear within my longing arms
+ The promise-bough of kindlier skies,
+ Plucked from the green, immortal palms
+ Which shadow Paradise?
+
+ All-moving spirit! freely forth
+ At Thy command the strong wind goes
+ Its errand to the passive earth,
+ Nor art can stay, nor strength oppose,
+ Until it folds its weary wing
+ Once more within the hand divine;
+ So, weary from its wandering,
+ My spirit turns to Thine!
+
+ Child of the sea, the mountain stream,
+ From its dark caverns, hurries on,
+ Ceaseless, by night and morning's beam,
+ By evening's star and noontide's sun,
+ Until at last it sinks to rest,
+ O'erwearied, in the waiting sea,
+ And moans upon its mother's breast,--
+ So turns my soul to Thee!
+
+ O Thou who bidst the torrent flow,
+ Who lendest wings unto the wind,--
+ Mover of all things! where art Thou?
+ Oh, whither shall I go to find
+ The secret of Thy resting-place?
+ Is there no holy wing for me,
+ That, soaring, I may search the space
+ Of highest heaven for Thee?
+
+ Oh, would I were as free to rise
+ As leaves on autumn's whirlwind borne,--
+ The arrowy light of sunset skies,
+ Or sound, or ray, or star of morn,
+ Which melts in heaven at twilight's close,
+ Or aught which soars unchecked and free
+ Through earth and heaven; that I might lose
+ Myself in finding Thee!
+
+
+ II.
+ LE CRI DE L'AME.
+
+ "Quand le souffle divin qui flotte sur le monde."
+
+ When the breath divine is flowing,
+ Zephyr-like o'er all things going,
+ And, as the touch of viewless fingers,
+ Softly on my soul it lingers,
+ Open to a breath the lightest,
+ Conscious of a touch the slightest,--
+ As some calm, still lake, whereon
+ Sinks the snowy-bosomed swan,
+ And the glistening water-rings
+ Circle round her moving wings
+ When my upward gaze is turning
+ Where the stars of heaven are burning
+ Through the deep and dark abyss,
+ Flowers of midnight's wilderness,
+ Blowing with the evening's breath
+ Sweetly in their Maker's path
+ When the breaking day is flushing
+ All the east, and light is gushing
+ Upward through the horizon's haze,
+ Sheaf-like, with its thousand rays,
+ Spreading, until all above
+ Overflows with joy and love,
+ And below, on earth's green bosom,
+ All is changed to light and blossom:
+
+ When my waking fancies over
+ Forms of brightness flit and hover
+ Holy as the seraphs are,
+ Who by Zion's fountains wear
+ On their foreheads, white and broad,
+ "Holiness unto the Lord!"
+ When, inspired with rapture high,
+ It would seem a single sigh
+ Could a world of love create;
+ That my life could know no date,
+ And my eager thoughts could fill
+ Heaven and Earth, o'erflowing still!
+
+ Then, O Father! Thou alone,
+ From the shadow of Thy throne,
+ To the sighing of my breast
+ And its rapture answerest.
+ All my thoughts, which, upward winging,
+ Bathe where Thy own light is springing,--
+ All my yearnings to be free
+ Are at echoes answering Thee!
+
+ Seldom upon lips of mine,
+ Father! rests that name of Thine;
+ Deep within my inmost breast,
+ In the secret place of mind,
+ Like an awful presence shrined,
+ Doth the dread idea rest
+ Hushed and holy dwells it there,
+ Prompter of the silent prayer,
+ Lifting up my spirit's eye
+ And its faint, but earnest cry,
+ From its dark and cold abode,
+ Unto Thee, my Guide and God!
+
+ 1837
+
+
+
+
+THE FAMILIST'S HYMN.
+
+The Puritans of New England, even in their wilderness home, were not
+exempted from the sectarian contentions which agitated the mother
+country after the downfall of Charles the First, and of the established
+Episcopacy. The Quakers, Baptists, and Catholics were banished, on pain
+of death, from the Massachusetts Colony. One Samuel Gorton, a bold and
+eloquent declaimer, after preaching for a time in Boston against the
+doctrines of the Puritans, and declaring that their churches were mere
+human devices, and their sacrament and baptism an abomination, was
+driven out of the jurisdiction of the colony, and compelled to seek a
+residence among the savages. He gathered round him a considerable number
+of converts, who, like the primitive Christians, shared all things in
+common. His opinions, however, were so troublesome to the leading clergy
+of the colony, that they instigated an attack upon his "Family" by an
+armed force, which seized upon the principal men in it, and brought them
+into Massachusetts, where they were sentenced to be kept at hard labor
+in several towns (one only in each town), during the pleasure of the
+General Court, they being forbidden, under severe penalties, to utter
+any of their religious sentiments, except to such ministers as might
+labor for their conversion. They were unquestionably sincere in their
+opinions, and, whatever may have been their errors, deserve to be ranked
+among those who have in all ages suffered for the freedom of conscience.
+
+
+ Father! to Thy suffering poor
+ Strength and grace and faith impart,
+ And with Thy own love restore
+ Comfort to the broken heart!
+ Oh, the failing ones confirm
+ With a holier strength of zeal!
+ Give Thou not the feeble worm
+ Helpless to the spoiler's heel!
+
+ Father! for Thy holy sake
+ We are spoiled and hunted thus;
+ Joyful, for Thy truth we take
+ Bonds and burthens unto us
+ Poor, and weak, and robbed of all,
+ Weary with our daily task,
+ That Thy truth may never fall
+ Through our weakness, Lord, we ask.
+
+ Round our fired and wasted homes
+ Flits the forest-bird unscared,
+ And at noon the wild beast comes
+ Where our frugal meal was shared;
+ For the song of praises there
+ Shrieks the crow the livelong day;
+ For the sound of evening prayer
+ Howls the evil beast of prey!
+
+ Sweet the songs we loved to sing
+ Underneath Thy holy sky;
+ Words and tones that used to bring
+ Tears of joy in every eye;
+ Dear the wrestling hours of prayer,
+ When we gathered knee to knee,
+ Blameless youth and hoary hair,
+ Bowed, O God, alone to Thee.
+
+ As Thine early children, Lord,
+ Shared their wealth and daily bread,
+ Even so, with one accord,
+ We, in love, each other fed.
+ Not with us the miser's hoard,
+ Not with us his grasping hand;
+ Equal round a common board,
+ Drew our meek and brother band!
+
+ Safe our quiet Eden lay
+ When the war-whoop stirred the land
+ And the Indian turned away
+ From our home his bloody hand.
+ Well that forest-ranger saw,
+ That the burthen and the curse
+ Of the white man's cruel law
+ Rested also upon us.
+
+ Torn apart, and driven forth
+ To our toiling hard and long,
+ Father! from the dust of earth
+ Lift we still our grateful song!
+ Grateful, that in bonds we share
+ In Thy love which maketh free;
+ Joyful, that the wrongs we bear,
+ Draw us nearer, Lord, to Thee!
+
+ Grateful! that where'er we toil,--
+ By Wachuset's wooded side,
+ On Nantucket's sea-worn isle,
+ Or by wild Neponset's tide,--
+ Still, in spirit, we are near,
+ And our evening hymns, which rise
+ Separate and discordant here,
+ Meet and mingle in the skies!
+
+ Let the scoffer scorn and mock,
+ Let the proud and evil priest
+ Rob the needy of his flock,
+ For his wine-cup and his feast,--
+ Redden not Thy bolts in store
+ Through the blackness of Thy skies?
+ For the sighing of the poor
+ Wilt Thou not, at length, arise?
+
+ Worn and wasted, oh! how long
+ Shall thy trodden poor complain?
+ In Thy name they bear the wrong,
+ In Thy cause the bonds of pain!
+ Melt oppression's heart of steel,
+ Let the haughty priesthood see,
+ And their blinded followers feel,
+ That in us they mock at Thee!
+
+ In Thy time, O Lord of hosts,
+ Stretch abroad that hand to save
+ Which of old, on Egypt's coasts,
+ Smote apart the Red Sea's wave
+ Lead us from this evil land,
+ From the spoiler set us free,
+ And once more our gathered band,
+ Heart to heart, shall worship Thee!
+
+ 1838.
+
+
+
+
+EZEKIEL
+
+Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people still are talking
+against thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak one
+to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear
+what is the word that cometh forth from the Lord. And they come unto
+thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and
+they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth
+they skew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness.
+And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a
+pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy
+words, but they do them not. And when this cometh to pass, (lo, it will
+come,) then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them.--
+EZEKIEL, xxxiii. 30-33.
+
+
+ They hear Thee not, O God! nor see;
+ Beneath Thy rod they mock at Thee;
+ The princes of our ancient line
+ Lie drunken with Assyrian wine;
+ The priests around Thy altar speak
+ The false words which their hearers seek;
+ And hymns which Chaldea's wanton maids
+ Have sung in Dura's idol-shades
+ Are with the Levites' chant ascending,
+ With Zion's holiest anthems blending!
+
+ On Israel's bleeding bosom set,
+ The heathen heel is crushing yet;
+ The towers upon our holy hill
+ Echo Chaldean footsteps still.
+ Our wasted shrines,--who weeps for them?
+ Who mourneth for Jerusalem?
+ Who turneth from his gains away?
+ Whose knee with mine is bowed to pray?
+ Who, leaving feast and purpling cup,
+ Takes Zion's lamentation up?
+
+ A sad and thoughtful youth, I went
+ With Israel's early banishment;
+ And where the sullen Chebar crept,
+ The ritual of my fathers kept.
+ The water for the trench I drew,
+ The firstling of the flock I slew,
+ And, standing at the altar's side,
+ I shared the Levites' lingering pride,
+ That still, amidst her mocking foes,
+ The smoke of Zion's offering rose.
+
+ In sudden whirlwind, cloud and flame,
+ The Spirit of the Highest came!
+ Before mine eyes a vision passed,
+ A glory terrible and vast;
+ With dreadful eyes of living things,
+ And sounding sweep of angel wings,
+ With circling light and sapphire throne,
+ And flame-like form of One thereon,
+ And voice of that dread Likeness sent
+ Down from the crystal firmament!
+
+ The burden of a prophet's power
+ Fell on me in that fearful hour;
+ From off unutterable woes
+ The curtain of the future rose;
+ I saw far down the coming time
+ The fiery chastisement of crime;
+ With noise of mingling hosts, and jar
+ Of falling towers and shouts of war,
+ I saw the nations rise and fall,
+ Like fire-gleams on my tent's white wall.
+
+ In dream and trance, I--saw the slain
+ Of Egypt heaped like harvest grain.
+ I saw the walls of sea-born Tyre
+ Swept over by the spoiler's fire;
+ And heard the low, expiring moan
+ Of Edom on his rocky throne;
+ And, woe is me! the wild lament
+ From Zion's desolation sent;
+ And felt within my heart each blow
+ Which laid her holy places low.
+
+ In bonds and sorrow, day by day,
+ Before the pictured tile I lay;
+ And there, as in a mirror, saw
+ The coming of Assyria's war;
+ Her swarthy lines of spearmen pass
+ Like locusts through Bethhoron's grass;
+ I saw them draw their stormy hem
+ Of battle round Jerusalem;
+ And, listening, heard the Hebrew wail!
+
+ Blend with the victor-trump of Baal!
+ Who trembled at my warning word?
+ Who owned the prophet of the Lord?
+ How mocked the rude, how scoffed the vile,
+ How stung the Levites' scornful smile,
+ As o'er my spirit, dark and slow,
+ The shadow crept of Israel's woe
+ As if the angel's mournful roll
+ Had left its record on my soul,
+ And traced in lines of darkness there
+ The picture of its great despair!
+
+ Yet ever at the hour I feel
+ My lips in prophecy unseal.
+ Prince, priest, and Levite gather near,
+ And Salem's daughters haste to hear,
+ On Chebar's waste and alien shore,
+ The harp of Judah swept once more.
+ They listen, as in Babel's throng
+ The Chaldeans to the dancer's song,
+ Or wild sabbeka's nightly play,--
+ As careless and as vain as they.
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ And thus, O Prophet-bard of old,
+ Hast thou thy tale of sorrow told
+ The same which earth's unwelcome seers
+ Have felt in all succeeding years.
+ Sport of the changeful multitude,
+ Nor calmly heard nor understood,
+ Their song has seemed a trick of art,
+ Their warnings but, the actor's part.
+ With bonds, and scorn, and evil will,
+ The world requites its prophets still.
+
+ So was it when the Holy One
+ The garments of the flesh put on
+ Men followed where the Highest led
+ For common gifts of daily bread,
+ And gross of ear, of vision dim,
+ Owned not the Godlike power of Him.
+ Vain as a dreamer's words to them
+ His wail above Jerusalem,
+ And meaningless the watch He kept
+ Through which His weak disciples slept.
+
+ Yet shrink not thou, whoe'er thou art,
+ For God's great purpose set apart,
+ Before whose far-discerning eyes,
+ The Future as the Present lies!
+ Beyond a narrow-bounded age
+ Stretches thy prophet-heritage,
+ Through Heaven's vast spaces angel-trod,
+ And through the eternal years of God
+ Thy audience, worlds!--all things to be
+ The witness of the Truth in thee!
+
+ 1844.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT THE VOICE SAID
+
+ MADDENED by Earth's wrong and evil,
+ "Lord!" I cried in sudden ire,
+ "From Thy right hand, clothed with thunder,
+ Shake the bolted fire!
+
+ "Love is lost, and Faith is dying;
+ With the brute the man is sold;
+ And the dropping blood of labor
+ Hardens into gold.
+
+ "Here the dying wail of Famine,
+ There the battle's groan of pain;
+ And, in silence, smooth-faced Mammon
+ Reaping men like grain.
+
+ "'Where is God, that we should fear Him?'
+ Thus the earth-born Titans say
+ 'God! if Thou art living, hear us!'
+ Thus the weak ones pray."
+
+ "Thou, the patient Heaven upbraiding,"
+ Spake a solemn Voice within;
+ "Weary of our Lord's forbearance,
+ Art thou free from sin?
+
+ "Fearless brow to Him uplifting,
+ Canst thou for His thunders call,
+ Knowing that to guilt's attraction
+ Evermore they fall?
+
+ "Know'st thou not all germs of evil
+ In thy heart await their time?
+ Not thyself, but God's restraining,
+ Stays their growth of crime.
+
+ "Couldst thou boast, O child of weakness!
+ O'er the sons of wrong and strife,
+ Were their strong temptations planted
+ In thy path of life?
+
+ "Thou hast seen two streamlets gushing
+ From one fountain, clear and free,
+ But by widely varying channels
+ Searching for the sea.
+
+ "Glideth one through greenest valleys,
+ Kissing them with lips still sweet;
+ One, mad roaring down the mountains,
+ Stagnates at their feet.
+
+ "Is it choice whereby the Parsee
+ Kneels before his mother's fire?
+ In his black tent did the Tartar
+ Choose his wandering sire?
+
+ "He alone, whose hand is bounding
+ Human power and human will,
+ Looking through each soul's surrounding,
+ Knows its good or ill.
+
+ "For thyself, while wrong and sorrow
+ Make to thee their strong appeal,
+ Coward wert thou not to utter
+ What the heart must feel.
+
+ "Earnest words must needs be spoken
+ When the warm heart bleeds or burns
+ With its scorn of wrong, or pity
+ For the wronged, by turns.
+
+ "But, by all thy nature's weakness,
+ Hidden faults and follies known,
+ Be thou, in rebuking evil,
+ Conscious of thine own.
+
+ "Not the less shall stern-eyed Duty
+ To thy lips her trumpet set,
+ But with harsher blasts shall mingle
+ Wailings of regret."
+
+ Cease not, Voice of holy speaking,
+ Teacher sent of God, be near,
+ Whispering through the day's cool silence,
+ Let my spirit hear!
+
+ So, when thoughts of evil-doers
+ Waken scorn, or hatred move,
+ Shall a mournful fellow-feeling
+ Temper all with love.
+
+ 1847.
+
+
+
+
+THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE.
+
+A FREE PARAPHRASE OF THE GERMAN.
+
+ To weary hearts, to mourning homes,
+ God's meekest Angel gently comes
+ No power has he to banish pain,
+ Or give us back our lost again;
+ And yet in tenderest love, our dear
+ And Heavenly Father sends him here.
+
+ There's quiet in that Angel's glance,
+ There 's rest in his still countenance!
+ He mocks no grief with idle cheer,
+ Nor wounds with words the mourner's ear;
+ But ills and woes he may not cure
+ He kindly trains us to endure.
+
+ Angel of Patience! sent to calm
+ Our feverish brows with cooling palm;
+ To lay the storms of hope and fear,
+ And reconcile life's smile and tear;
+ The throbs of wounded pride to still,
+ And make our own our Father's will.
+
+ O thou who mournest on thy way,
+ With longings for the close of day;
+ He walks with thee, that Angel kind,
+ And gently whispers, "Be resigned
+ Bear up, bear on, the end shall tell
+ The dear Lord ordereth all things well!"
+
+ 1847.
+
+
+
+
+THE WIFE OF MANOAH TO HER HUSBAND.
+
+ Against the sunset's glowing wall
+ The city towers rise black and tall,
+ Where Zorah, on its rocky height,
+ Stands like an armed man in the light.
+
+ Down Eshtaol's vales of ripened grain
+ Falls like a cloud the night amain,
+ And up the hillsides climbing slow
+ The barley reapers homeward go.
+
+ Look, dearest! how our fair child's head
+ The sunset light hath hallowed,
+ Where at this olive's foot he lies,
+ Uplooking to the tranquil skies.
+
+ Oh, while beneath the fervent heat
+ Thy sickle swept the bearded wheat,
+ I've watched, with mingled joy and dread,
+ Our child upon his grassy bed.
+
+ Joy, which the mother feels alone
+ Whose morning hope like mine had flown,
+ When to her bosom, over-blessed,
+ A dearer life than hers is pressed.
+
+ Dread, for the future dark and still,
+ Which shapes our dear one to its will;
+ Forever in his large calm eyes,
+ I read a tale of sacrifice.
+
+ The same foreboding awe I felt
+ When at the altar's side we knelt,
+ And he, who as a pilgrim came,
+ Rose, winged and glorious, through the flame.
+
+ I slept not, though the wild bees made
+ A dreamlike murmuring in the shade,
+ And on me the warm-fingered hours
+ Pressed with the drowsy smell of flowers.
+
+ Before me, in a vision, rose
+ The hosts of Israel's scornful foes,--
+ Rank over rank, helm, shield, and spear,
+ Glittered in noon's hot atmosphere.
+
+ I heard their boast, and bitter word,
+ Their mockery of the Hebrew's Lord,
+ I saw their hands His ark assail,
+ Their feet profane His holy veil.
+
+ No angel down the blue space spoke,
+ No thunder from the still sky broke;
+ But in their midst, in power and awe,
+ Like God's waked wrath, our child I saw!
+
+ A child no more!--harsh-browed and strong,
+ He towered a giant in the throng,
+ And down his shoulders, broad and bare,
+ Swept the black terror of his hair.
+
+ He raised his arm--he smote amain;
+ As round the reaper falls the grain,
+ So the dark host around him fell,
+ So sank the foes of Israel!
+
+ Again I looked. In sunlight shone
+ The towers and domes of Askelon;
+ Priest, warrior, slave, a mighty crowd
+ Within her idol temple bowed.
+
+ Yet one knelt not; stark, gaunt, and blind,
+ His arms the massive pillars twined,--
+ An eyeless captive, strong with hate,
+ He stood there like an evil Fate.
+
+ The red shrines smoked,--the trumpets pealed
+ He stooped,--the giant columns reeled;
+ Reeled tower and fane, sank arch and wall,
+ And the thick dust-cloud closed o'er all!
+
+ Above the shriek, the crash, the groan
+ Of the fallen pride of Askelon,
+ I heard, sheer down the echoing sky,
+ A voice as of an angel cry,--
+
+ The voice of him, who at our side
+ Sat through the golden eventide;
+ Of him who, on thy altar's blaze,
+ Rose fire-winged, with his song of praise.
+
+ "Rejoice o'er Israel's broken chain,
+ Gray mother of the mighty slain!
+ Rejoice!" it cried, "he vanquisheth!
+ The strong in life is strong in death!
+
+ "To him shall Zorah's daughters raise
+ Through coming years their hymns of praise,
+ And gray old men at evening tell
+ Of all he wrought for Israel.
+
+ "And they who sing and they who hear
+ Alike shall hold thy memory dear,
+ And pour their blessings on thy head,
+ O mother of the mighty dead!"
+
+ It ceased; and though a sound I heard
+ As if great wings the still air stirred,
+ I only saw the barley sheaves
+ And hills half hid by olive leaves.
+
+ I bowed my face, in awe and fear,
+ On the dear child who slumbered near;
+ "With me, as with my only son,
+ O God," I said, "Thy will be done!"
+
+ 1847.
+
+
+
+
+MY SOUL AND I
+
+ Stand still, my soul, in the silent dark
+ I would question thee,
+ Alone in the shadow drear and stark
+ With God and me!
+
+ What, my soul, was thy errand here?
+ Was it mirth or ease,
+ Or heaping up dust from year to year?
+ "Nay, none of these!"
+
+ Speak, soul, aright in His holy sight
+ Whose eye looks still
+ And steadily on thee through the night
+ "To do His will!"
+
+ What hast thou done, O soul of mine,
+ That thou tremblest so?
+ Hast thou wrought His task, and kept the line
+ He bade thee go?
+
+ Aha! thou tremblest!--well I see
+ Thou 'rt craven grown.
+ Is it so hard with God and me
+ To stand alone?
+
+ Summon thy sunshine bravery back,
+ O wretched sprite!
+ Let me hear thy voice through this deep and black
+ Abysmal night.
+
+ What hast thou wrought for Right and Truth,
+ For God and Man,
+ From the golden hours of bright-eyed youth
+ To life's mid span?
+
+ What, silent all! art sad of cheer?
+ Art fearful now?
+ When God seemed far and men were near,
+ How brave wert thou!
+
+ Ah, soul of mine, thy tones I hear,
+ But weak and low,
+ Like far sad murmurs on my ear
+ They come and go.
+
+ I have wrestled stoutly with the Wrong,
+ And borne the Right
+ From beneath the footfall of the throng
+ To life and light.
+
+ "Wherever Freedom shivered a chain,
+ God speed, quoth I;
+ To Error amidst her shouting train
+ I gave the lie."
+
+ Ah, soul of mine! ah, soul of mine!
+ Thy deeds are well:
+ Were they wrought for Truth's sake or for thine?
+ My soul, pray tell.
+
+ "Of all the work my hand hath wrought
+ Beneath the sky,
+ Save a place in kindly human thought,
+ No gain have I."
+
+ Go to, go to! for thy very self
+ Thy deeds were done
+ Thou for fame, the miser for pelf,
+ Your end is one!
+
+ And where art thou going, soul of mine?
+ Canst see the end?
+ And whither this troubled life of thine
+ Evermore doth tend?
+
+ What daunts thee now? what shakes thee so?
+ My sad soul say.
+ "I see a cloud like a curtain low
+ Hang o'er my way.
+
+ "Whither I go I cannot tell
+ That cloud hangs black,
+ High as the heaven and deep as hell
+ Across my track.
+
+ "I see its shadow coldly enwrap
+ The souls before.
+ Sadly they enter it, step by step,
+ To return no more.
+
+ "They shrink, they shudder, dear God! they kneel
+ To Thee in prayer.
+ They shut their eyes on the cloud, but feel
+ That it still is there.
+
+ "In vain they turn from the dread Before
+ To the Known and Gone;
+ For while gazing behind them evermore
+ Their feet glide on.
+
+ "Yet, at times, I see upon sweet pale faces
+ A light begin
+ To tremble, as if from holy places
+ And shrines within.
+
+ "And at times methinks their cold lips move
+ With hymn and prayer,
+ As if somewhat of awe, but more of love
+ And hope were there.
+
+ "I call on the souls who have left the light
+ To reveal their lot;
+ I bend mine ear to that wall of night,
+ And they answer not.
+
+ "But I hear around me sighs of pain
+ And the cry of fear,
+ And a sound like the slow sad dropping of rain,
+ Each drop a tear!
+
+ "Ah, the cloud is dark, and day by day
+ I am moving thither
+ I must pass beneath it on my way--
+ God pity me!--whither?"
+
+ Ah, soul of mine! so brave and wise
+ In the life-storm loud,
+ Fronting so calmly all human eyes
+ In the sunlit crowd!
+
+ Now standing apart with God and me
+ Thou art weakness all,
+ Gazing vainly after the things to be
+ Through Death's dread wall.
+
+ But never for this, never for this
+ Was thy being lent;
+ For the craven's fear is but selfishness,
+ Like his merriment.
+
+ Folly and Fear are sisters twain
+ One closing her eyes.
+ The other peopling the dark inane
+ With spectral lies.
+
+ Know well, my soul, God's hand controls
+ Whate'er thou fearest;
+ Round Him in calmest music rolls
+ Whate'er thou Nearest.
+
+ What to thee is shadow, to Him is day,
+ And the end He knoweth,
+ And not on a blind and aimless way
+ The spirit goeth.
+
+ Man sees no future,--a phantom show
+ Is alone before him;
+ Past Time is dead, and the grasses grow,
+ And flowers bloom o'er him.
+
+ Nothing before, nothing behind;
+ The steps of Faith
+ Fall on the seeming void, and find
+ The rock beneath.
+
+ The Present, the Present is all thou hast
+ For thy sure possessing;
+ Like the patriarch's angel hold it fast
+ Till it gives its blessing.
+
+ Why fear the night? why shrink from Death;
+ That phantom wan?
+ There is nothing in heaven or earth beneath
+ Save God and man.
+
+ Peopling the shadows we turn from Him
+ And from one another;
+ All is spectral and vague and dim
+ Save God and our brother!
+
+ Like warp and woof all destinies
+ Are woven fast,
+ Linked in sympathy like the keys
+ Of an organ vast.
+
+ Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar;
+ Break but one
+ Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar
+ Through all will run.
+
+ O restless spirit! wherefore strain
+ Beyond thy sphere?
+ Heaven and hell, with their joy and pain,
+ Are now and here.
+
+ Back to thyself is measured well
+ All thou hast given;
+ Thy neighbor's wrong is thy present hell,
+ His bliss, thy heaven.
+
+ And in life, in death, in dark and light,
+ All are in God's care
+ Sound the black abyss, pierce the deep of night,
+ And He is there!
+
+ All which is real now remaineth,
+ And fadeth never
+ The hand which upholds it now sustaineth
+ The soul forever.
+
+ Leaning on Him, make with reverent meekness
+ His own thy will,
+ And with strength from Him shall thy utter weakness
+ Life's task fulfil;
+
+ And that cloud itself, which now before thee
+ Lies dark in view,
+ Shall with beams of light from the inner glory
+ Be stricken through.
+
+ And like meadow mist through autumn's dawn
+ Uprolling thin,
+ Its thickest folds when about thee drawn
+ Let sunlight in.
+
+ Then of what is to be, and of what is done,
+ Why queriest thou?
+ The past and the time to be are one,
+ And both are now!
+
+ 1847.
+
+
+
+
+WORSHIP.
+
+"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this. To visit
+the fatherless and widows in, their affliction, and to keep himself
+unspotted from the world."--JAMES I. 27.
+
+
+ The Pagan's myths through marble lips are spoken,
+ And ghosts of old Beliefs still flit and moan
+ Round fane and altar overthrown and broken,
+ O'er tree-grown barrow and gray ring of stone.
+
+ Blind Faith had martyrs in those old high places,
+ The Syrian hill grove and the Druid's wood,
+ With mother's offering, to the Fiend's embraces,
+ Bone of their bone, and blood of their own blood.
+
+ Red altars, kindling through that night of error,
+ Smoked with warm blood beneath the cruel eye
+ Of lawless Power and sanguinary Terror,
+ Throned on the circle of a pitiless sky;
+
+ Beneath whose baleful shadow, overcasting
+ All heaven above, and blighting earth below,
+ The scourge grew red, the lip grew pale with fasting,
+ And man's oblation was his fear and woe!
+
+ Then through great temples swelled the dismal moaning
+ Of dirge-like music and sepulchral prayer;
+ Pale wizard priests, o'er occult symbols droning,
+ Swung their white censers in the burdened air
+
+ As if the pomp of rituals, and the savor
+ Of gums and spices could the Unseen One please;
+ As if His ear could bend, with childish favor,
+ To the poor flattery of the organ keys!
+
+ Feet red from war-fields trod the church aisles holy,
+ With trembling reverence: and the oppressor there,
+ Kneeling before his priest, abased and lowly,
+ Crushed human hearts beneath his knee of prayer.
+
+ Not such the service the benignant Father
+ Requireth at His earthly children's hands
+ Not the poor offering of vain rites, but rather
+ The simple duty man from man demands.
+
+ For Earth He asks it: the full joy of heaven
+ Knoweth no change of waning or increase;
+ The great heart of the Infinite beats even,
+ Untroubled flows the river of His peace.
+
+ He asks no taper lights, on high surrounding
+ The priestly altar and the saintly grave,
+ No dolorous chant nor organ music sounding,
+ Nor incense clouding tip the twilight nave.
+
+ For he whom Jesus loved hath truly spoken
+ The holier worship which he deigns to bless
+ Restores the lost, and binds the spirit broken,
+ And feeds the widow and the fatherless!
+
+ Types of our human weakness and our sorrow!
+ Who lives unhaunted by his loved ones dead?
+ Who, with vain longing, seeketh not to borrow
+ From stranger eyes the home lights which have fled?
+
+ O brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother;
+ Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there;
+ To worship rightly is to love each other,
+ Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer.
+
+ Follow with reverent steps the great example
+ Of Him whose holy work was "doing good;"
+ So shall the wide earth seem our Father's temple,
+ Each loving life a psalm of gratitude.
+
+ Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangor
+ Of wild war music o'er the earth shall cease;
+ Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger,
+ And in its ashes plant the tree of peace!
+
+ 1848.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOLY LAND
+
+Paraphrased from the lines in Lamartine's _Adieu to Marseilles_,
+beginning
+
+ "Je n'ai pas navigue sur l'ocean de sable."
+
+
+ I have not felt, o'er seas of sand,
+ The rocking of the desert bark;
+ Nor laved at Hebron's fount my hand,
+ By Hebron's palm-trees cool and dark;
+ Nor pitched my tent at even-fall,
+ On dust where Job of old has lain,
+ Nor dreamed beneath its canvas wall,
+ The dream of Jacob o'er again.
+
+ One vast world-page remains unread;
+ How shine the stars in Chaldea's sky,
+ How sounds the reverent pilgrim's tread,
+ How beats the heart with God so nigh
+ How round gray arch and column lone
+ The spirit of the old time broods,
+ And sighs in all the winds that moan
+ Along the sandy solitudes!
+
+ In thy tall cedars, Lebanon,
+ I have not heard the nations' cries,
+ Nor seen thy eagles stooping down
+ Where buried Tyre in ruin lies.
+ The Christian's prayer I have not said
+ In Tadmor's temples of decay,
+ Nor startled, with my dreary tread,
+ The waste where Memnon's empire lay.
+
+ Nor have I, from thy hallowed tide,
+ O Jordan! heard the low lament,
+ Like that sad wail along thy side
+ Which Israel's mournful prophet sent!
+ Nor thrilled within that grotto lone
+ Where, deep in night, the Bard of Kings
+ Felt hands of fire direct his own,
+ And sweep for God the conscious strings.
+
+ I have not climbed to Olivet,
+ Nor laid me where my Saviour lay,
+ And left His trace of tears as yet
+ By angel eyes unwept away;
+ Nor watched, at midnight's solemn time,
+ The garden where His prayer and groan,
+ Wrung by His sorrow and our crime,
+ Rose to One listening ear alone.
+
+ I have not kissed the rock-hewn grot
+ Where in His mother's arms He lay,
+ Nor knelt upon the sacred spot
+ Where last His footsteps pressed the clay;
+ Nor looked on that sad mountain head,
+ Nor smote my sinful breast, where wide
+ His arms to fold the world He spread,
+ And bowed His head to bless--and died!
+
+ 1848.
+
+
+
+
+THE REWARD
+
+ Who, looking backward from his manhood's prime,
+ Sees not the spectre of his misspent time?
+ And, through the shade
+ Of funeral cypress planted thick behind,
+ Hears no reproachful whisper on the wind
+ From his loved dead?
+
+ Who bears no trace of passion's evil force?
+ Who shuns thy sting, O terrible Remorse?
+ Who does not cast
+ On the thronged pages of his memory's book,
+ At times, a sad and half-reluctant look,
+ Regretful of the past?
+
+ Alas! the evil which we fain would shun
+ We do, and leave the wished-for good undone
+ Our strength to-day
+ Is but to-morrow's weakness, prone to fall;
+ Poor, blind, unprofitable servants all
+ Are we alway.
+
+ Yet who, thus looking backward o'er his years,
+ Feels not his eyelids wet with grateful tears,
+ If he hath been
+ Permitted, weak and sinful as he was,
+ To cheer and aid, in some ennobling cause,
+ His fellow-men?
+
+ If he hath hidden the outcast, or let in
+ A ray of sunshine to the cell of sin;
+ If he hath lent
+ Strength to the weak, and, in an hour of need,
+ Over the suffering, mindless of his creed
+ Or home, hath bent;
+
+ He has not lived in vain, and while he gives
+ The praise to Him, in whom he moves and lives,
+ With thankful heart;
+ He gazes backward, and with hope before,
+ Knowing that from his works he nevermore
+ Can henceforth part.
+
+ 1848.
+
+
+
+
+THE WISH OF TO-DAY.
+
+ I ask not now for gold to gild
+ With mocking shine a weary frame;
+ The yearning of the mind is stilled,
+ I ask not now for Fame.
+
+ A rose-cloud, dimly seen above,
+ Melting in heaven's blue depths away;
+ Oh, sweet, fond dream of human Love
+ For thee I may not pray.
+
+ But, bowed in lowliness of mind,
+ I make my humble wishes known;
+ I only ask a will resigned,
+ O Father, to Thine own!
+
+ To-day, beneath Thy chastening eye
+ I crave alone for peace and rest,
+ Submissive in Thy hand to lie,
+ And feel that it is best.
+
+ A marvel seems the Universe,
+ A miracle our Life and Death;
+ A mystery which I cannot pierce,
+ Around, above, beneath.
+
+ In vain I task my aching brain,
+ In vain the sage's thought I scan,
+ I only feel how weak and vain,
+ How poor and blind, is man.
+
+ And now my spirit sighs for home,
+ And longs for light whereby to see,
+ And, like a weary child, would come,
+ O Father, unto Thee!
+
+ Though oft, like letters traced on sand,
+ My weak resolves have passed away,
+ In mercy lend Thy helping hand
+ Unto my prayer to-day!
+
+ 1848.
+
+
+
+
+ALL'S WELL
+
+ The clouds, which rise with thunder, slake
+ Our thirsty souls with rain;
+ The blow most dreaded falls to break
+ From off our limbs a chain;
+ And wrongs of man to man but make
+ The love of God more plain.
+ As through the shadowy lens of even
+ The eye looks farthest into heaven
+ On gleams of star and depths of blue
+ The glaring sunshine never knew!
+
+ 1850.
+
+
+
+
+INVOCATION
+
+ Through Thy clear spaces, Lord, of old,
+ Formless and void the dead earth rolled;
+ Deaf to Thy heaven's sweet music, blind
+ To the great lights which o'er it shined;
+ No sound, no ray, no warmth, no breath,--
+ A dumb despair, a wandering death.
+
+ To that dark, weltering horror came
+ Thy spirit, like a subtle flame,--
+ A breath of life electrical,
+ Awakening and transforming all,
+ Till beat and thrilled in every part
+ The pulses of a living heart.
+
+ Then knew their bounds the land and sea;
+ Then smiled the bloom of mead and tree;
+ From flower to moth, from beast to man,
+ The quick creative impulse ran;
+ And earth, with life from thee renewed,
+ Was in thy holy eyesight good.
+
+ As lost and void, as dark and cold
+ And formless as that earth of old;
+ A wandering waste of storm and night,
+ Midst spheres of song and realms of light;
+ A blot upon thy holy sky,
+ Untouched, unwarned of thee, am I.
+
+ O Thou who movest on the deep
+ Of spirits, wake my own from sleep
+ Its darkness melt, its coldness warm,
+ The lost restore, the ill transform,
+ That flower and fruit henceforth may be
+ Its grateful offering, worthy Thee.
+
+ 1851.
+
+
+
+
+QUESTIONS OF LIFE
+
+And the angel that was sent unto me, whose name was Uriel, gave me an
+answer and said, "Thy heart hath gone too far in this world, and
+thinkest thou to comprehend the way of the Most High?" Then said I,
+"Yea, my Lord." Then said he unto me, "Go thy way, weigh me the weight
+of the fire or measure me the blast of the wind, or call me again the
+day that is past."--2 ESDRAS, chap. iv.
+
+
+ A bending staff I would not break,
+ A feeble faith I would not shake,
+ Nor even rashly pluck away
+ The error which some truth may stay,
+ Whose loss might leave the soul without
+ A shield against the shafts of doubt.
+
+ And yet, at times, when over all
+ A darker mystery seems to fall,
+ (May God forgive the child of dust,
+ Who seeks to know, where Faith should trust!)
+ I raise the questions, old and dark,
+ Of Uzdom's tempted patriarch,
+ And, speech-confounded, build again
+ The baffled tower of Shinar's plain.
+
+ I am: how little more I know!
+ Whence came I? Whither do I go?
+ A centred self, which feels and is;
+ A cry between the silences;
+ A shadow-birth of clouds at strife
+ With sunshine on the hills of life;
+ A shaft from Nature's quiver cast
+ Into the Future from the Past;
+ Between the cradle and the shroud,
+ A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud.
+
+ Thorough the vastness, arching all,
+ I see the great stars rise and fall,
+ The rounding seasons come and go,
+ The tided oceans ebb and flow;
+ The tokens of a central force,
+ Whose circles, in their widening course,
+ O'erlap and move the universe;
+ The workings of the law whence springs
+ The rhythmic harmony of things,
+ Which shapes in earth the darkling spar,
+ And orbs in heaven the morning star.
+ Of all I see, in earth and sky,--
+ Star, flower, beast, bird,--what part have I?
+ This conscious life,--is it the same
+ Which thrills the universal frame,
+ Whereby the caverned crystal shoots,
+ And mounts the sap from forest roots,
+ Whereby the exiled wood-bird tells
+ When Spring makes green her native dells?
+ How feels the stone the pang of birth,
+ Which brings its sparkling prism forth?
+ The forest-tree the throb which gives
+ The life-blood to its new-born leaves?
+ Do bird and blossom feel, like me,
+ Life's many-folded mystery,--
+ The wonder which it is to be?
+ Or stand I severed and distinct,
+ From Nature's "chain of life" unlinked?
+ Allied to all, yet not the less
+ Prisoned in separate consciousness,
+ Alone o'erburdened with a sense
+ Of life, and cause, and consequence?
+
+ In vain to me the Sphinx propounds
+ The riddle of her sights and sounds;
+ Back still the vaulted mystery gives
+ The echoed question it receives.
+ What sings the brook? What oracle
+ Is in the pine-tree's organ swell?
+ What may the wind's low burden be?
+ The meaning of the moaning sea?
+ The hieroglyphics of the stars?
+ Or clouded sunset's crimson bars?
+ I vainly ask, for mocks my skill
+ The trick of Nature's cipher still.
+
+ I turn from Nature unto men,
+ I ask the stylus and the pen;
+ What sang the bards of old? What meant
+ The prophets of the Orient?
+ The rolls of buried Egypt, hid
+ In painted tomb and pyramid?
+ What mean Idumea's arrowy lines,
+ Or dusk Elora's monstrous signs?
+ How speaks the primal thought of man
+ From the grim carvings of Copan?
+
+ Where rests the secret? Where the keys
+ Of the old death-bolted mysteries?
+ Alas! the dead retain their trust;
+ Dust hath no answer from the dust.
+
+ The great enigma still unguessed,
+ Unanswered the eternal quest;
+ I gather up the scattered rays
+ Of wisdom in the early days,
+ Faint gleams and broken, like the light
+ Of meteors in a northern night,
+ Betraying to the darkling earth
+ The unseen sun which gave them birth;
+ I listen to the sibyl's chant,
+ The voice of priest and hierophant;
+ I know what Indian Kreeshna saith,
+ And what of life and what of death
+ The demon taught to Socrates;
+ And what, beneath his garden-trees
+ Slow pacing, with a dream-like tread,--
+ The solemn-thoughted Plato said;
+ Nor lack I tokens, great or small,
+ Of God's clear light in each and all,
+ While holding with more dear regard
+ The scroll of Hebrew seer and bard,
+ The starry pages promise-lit
+ With Christ's Evangel over-writ,
+ Thy miracle of life and death,
+ O Holy One of Nazareth!
+
+ On Aztec ruins, gray and lone,
+ The circling serpent coils in stone,--
+ Type of the endless and unknown;
+ Whereof we seek the clue to find,
+ With groping fingers of the blind!
+ Forever sought, and never found,
+ We trace that serpent-symbol round
+ Our resting-place, our starting bound
+ Oh, thriftlessness of dream and guess!
+ Oh, wisdom which is foolishness!
+ Why idly seek from outward things
+ The answer inward silence brings?
+ Why stretch beyond our proper sphere
+ And age, for that which lies so near?
+ Why climb the far-off hills with pain,
+ A nearer view of heaven to gain?
+ In lowliest depths of bosky dells
+ The hermit Contemplation dwells.
+ A fountain's pine-hung slope his seat,
+ And lotus-twined his silent feet,
+ Whence, piercing heaven, with screened sight,
+ He sees at noon the stars, whose light
+ Shall glorify the coining night.
+
+ Here let me pause, my quest forego;
+ Enough for me to feel and know
+ That He in whom the cause and end,
+ The past and future, meet and blend,--
+ Who, girt with his Immensities,
+ Our vast and star-hung system sees,
+ Small as the clustered Pleiades,--
+ Moves not alone the heavenly quires,
+ But waves the spring-time's grassy spires,
+ Guards not archangel feet alone,
+ But deigns to guide and keep my own;
+ Speaks not alone the words of fate
+ Which worlds destroy, and worlds create,
+ But whispers in my spirit's ear,
+ In tones of love, or warning fear,
+ A language none beside may hear.
+
+ To Him, from wanderings long and wild,
+ I come, an over-wearied child,
+ In cool and shade His peace to find,
+ Lice dew-fall settling on my mind.
+ Assured that all I know is best,
+ And humbly trusting for the rest,
+ I turn from Fancy's cloud-built scheme,
+ Dark creed, and mournful eastern dream
+ Of power, impersonal and cold,
+ Controlling all, itself controlled,
+ Maker and slave of iron laws,
+ Alike the subject and the cause;
+ From vain philosophies, that try
+ The sevenfold gates of mystery,
+ And, baffled ever, babble still,
+ Word-prodigal of fate and will;
+ From Nature, and her mockery, Art;
+ And book and speech of men apart,
+ To the still witness in my heart;
+ With reverence waiting to behold
+ His Avatar of love untold,
+ The Eternal Beauty new and old!
+
+ 1862.
+
+
+
+
+FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS.
+
+ In calm and cool and silence, once again
+ I find my old accustomed place among
+ My brethren, where, perchance, no human tongue
+ Shall utter words; where never hymn is sung,
+ Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor censer swung,
+ Nor dim light falling through the pictured pane!
+ There, syllabled by silence, let me hear
+ The still small voice which reached the prophet's ear;
+ Read in my heart a still diviner law
+ Than Israel's leader on his tables saw!
+ There let me strive with each besetting sin,
+ Recall my wandering fancies, and restrain
+ The sore disquiet of a restless brain;
+ And, as the path of duty is made plain,
+ May grace be given that I may walk therein,
+ Not like the hireling, for his selfish gain,
+ With backward glances and reluctant tread,
+ Making a merit of his coward dread,
+ But, cheerful, in the light around me thrown,
+ Walking as one to pleasant service led;
+ Doing God's will as if it were my own,
+ Yet trusting not in mine, but in His strength alone!
+
+ 1852.
+
+
+
+
+TRUST.
+
+ The same old baffling questions! O my friend,
+ I cannot answer them. In vain I send
+ My soul into the dark, where never burn
+ The lamps of science, nor the natural light
+ Of Reason's sun and stars! I cannot learn
+ Their great and solemn meanings, nor discern
+ The awful secrets of the eyes which turn
+ Evermore on us through the day and night
+ With silent challenge and a dumb demand,
+ Proffering the riddles of the dread unknown,
+ Like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes of stone,
+ Questioning the centuries from their veils of sand!
+ I have no answer for myself or thee,
+ Save that I learned beside my mother's knee;
+ "All is of God that is, and is to be;
+ And God is good." Let this suffice us still,
+ Resting in childlike trust upon His will
+ Who moves to His great ends unthwarted by the ill.
+
+ 1853.
+
+
+
+
+TRINITAS.
+
+ At morn I prayed, "I fain would see
+ How Three are One, and One is Three;
+ Read the dark riddle unto me."
+
+ I wandered forth, the sun and air
+ I saw bestowed with equal care
+ On good and evil, foul and fair.
+
+ No partial favor dropped the rain;
+ Alike the righteous and profane
+ Rejoiced above their heading grain.
+
+ And my heart murmured, "Is it meet
+ That blindfold Nature thus should treat
+ With equal hand the tares and wheat?"
+
+ A presence melted through my mood,--
+ A warmth, a light, a sense of good,
+ Like sunshine through a winter wood.
+
+ I saw that presence, mailed complete
+ In her white innocence, pause to greet
+ A fallen sister of the street.
+
+ Upon her bosom snowy pure
+ The lost one clung, as if secure
+ From inward guilt or outward lure.
+
+ "Beware!" I said; "in this I see
+ No gain to her, but loss to thee
+ Who touches pitch defiled must be."
+
+ 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."
+
+ 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!
+
+ "A bodiless Divinity,
+ The still small Voice that spake to thee
+ Was the Holy Spirit's mystery!
+
+ "O 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 are One!"
+
+ I shut my grave Aquinas fast;
+ The monkish gloss of ages past,
+ The schoolman's creed aside I cast.
+
+ And my heart answered, "Lord, I see
+ How Three are One, and One is Three;
+ Thy riddle hath been read to me!"
+
+ 1858.
+
+
+
+
+THE SISTERS
+
+A PICTURE BY BARRY
+
+ The shade for me, but over thee
+ The lingering sunshine still;
+ As, smiling, to the silent stream
+ Comes down the singing rill.
+
+ So come to me, my little one,--
+ My years with thee I share,
+ And mingle with a sister's love
+ A mother's tender care.
+
+ But keep the smile upon thy lip,
+ The trust upon thy brow;
+ Since for the dear one God hath called
+ We have an angel now.
+
+ Our mother from the fields of heaven
+ Shall still her ear incline;
+ Nor need we fear her human love
+ Is less for love divine.
+
+ The songs are sweet they sing beneath
+ The trees of life so fair,
+ But sweetest of the songs of heaven
+ Shall be her children's prayer.
+
+ Then, darling, rest upon my breast,
+ And teach my heart to lean
+ With thy sweet trust upon the arm
+ Which folds us both unseen!
+
+ 1858
+
+
+
+
+"THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR.
+
+ Dead Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps,
+ Her stones of emptiness remain;
+ Around her sculptured mystery sweeps
+ The lonely waste of Edom's plain.
+
+ From the doomed dwellers in the cleft
+ The bow of vengeance turns not back;
+ Of all her myriads none are left
+ Along the Wady Mousa's track.
+
+ Clear in the hot Arabian day
+ Her arches spring, her statues climb;
+ Unchanged, the graven wonders pay
+ No tribute to the spoiler, Time!
+
+ Unchanged the awful lithograph
+ Of power and glory undertrod;
+ Of nations scattered like the chaff
+ Blown from the threshing-floor of God.
+
+ Yet shall the thoughtful stranger turn
+ From Petra's gates with deeper awe,
+ To mark afar the burial urn
+ Of Aaron on the cliffs of Hor;
+
+ And where upon its ancient guard
+ Thy Rock, El Ghor, is standing yet,--
+ Looks from its turrets desertward,
+ And keeps the watch that God has set.
+
+ The same as when in thunders loud
+ It heard the voice of God to man,
+ As when it saw in fire and cloud
+ The angels walk in Israel's van,
+
+ Or when from Ezion-Geber's way
+ It saw the long procession file,
+ And heard the Hebrew timbrels play
+ The music of the lordly Nile;
+
+ Or saw the tabernacle pause,
+ Cloud-bound, by Kadesh Barnea's wells,
+ While Moses graved the sacred laws,
+ And Aaron swung his golden bells.
+
+ Rock of the desert, prophet-sung!
+ How grew its shadowing pile at length,
+ A symbol, in the Hebrew tongue,
+ Of God's eternal love and strength.
+
+ On lip of bard and scroll of seer,
+ From age to age went down the name,
+ Until the Shiloh's promised year,
+ And Christ, the Rock of Ages, came!
+
+ The path of life we walk to-day
+ Is strange as that the Hebrews trod;
+ We need the shadowing rock, as they,--
+ We need, like them, the guides of God.
+
+ God send His angels, Cloud and Fire,
+ To lead us o'er the desert sand!
+ God give our hearts their long desire,
+ His shadow in a weary land!
+
+ 1859.
+
+
+
+
+THE OVER-HEART.
+
+"For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things, to whom be
+glory forever! "--PAUL.
+
+
+ Above, below, in sky and sod,
+ In leaf and spar, in star and man,
+ Well might the wise Athenian scan
+ 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.
+
+ 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.
+
+ O hearts of love! O souls that turn
+ Like sunflowers to the pure and best!
+ To you the truth is manifest:
+ For they the mind of Christ discern
+ Who lean like John upon His breast!
+
+ In him of whom the sibyl told,
+ For whom the prophet's harp was toned,
+ Whose need the sage and magian owned,
+ The loving heart of God behold,
+ The hope for which the ages groaned!
+
+ Fade, pomp of dreadful imagery
+ Wherewith mankind have deified
+ Their hate, and selfishness, and pride!
+ Let the scared dreamer wake to see
+ The Christ of Nazareth at his side!
+
+ What doth that holy Guide require?
+ No rite of pain, nor gift of blood,
+ But man a kindly brotherhood,
+ 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 to! their hideous wreck above
+ The emblems of the Lamb and Dove!
+ Man turns from God, not God from him;
+ And guilt, in suffering, whispers Love!
+
+ The world sits at the feet of Christ,
+ Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled;
+ It yet shall touch His garment's fold,
+ And feel the heavenly Alchemist
+ Transform its very dust to gold.
+
+ The theme befitting angel tongues
+ Beyond a mortal's scope has grown.
+ O heart of mine! with reverence own
+ The fulness which to it belongs,
+ And trust the unknown for the known.
+
+ 1859.
+
+
+
+
+THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT.
+
+"And I sought, whence is Evil: I set before the eye of my spirit the
+whole creation; whatsoever we see therein,--sea, earth, air, stars,
+trees, moral creatures,--yea, whatsoever there is we do not see,--angels
+and spiritual powers. Where is evil, and whence comes it, since God the
+Good hath created all things? Why made He anything at all of evil, and
+not rather by His Almightiness cause it not to be? These thoughts 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! O--Truth, who art Eternity! Love, who
+art Truth! Eternity, who art Love! And I beheld that Thou madest all
+things good, and to Thee is nothing whatsoever evil. From the angel to
+the worm, from the first motion to the last, Thou settest each in its
+place, and everything is good in its kind. Woe is me!--how high art Thou
+in the highest, how deep in the 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 Afric saint,
+ And at his side we urge, to-day,
+ The immemorial quest and old complaint.
+
+ No outward sign to us is given,--
+ From sea or earth comes no reply;
+ Hushed as the warm Numidian heaven
+ He vainly questioned bends our frozen sky.
+
+ No victory comes of all our strife,--
+ From all we grasp the meaning slips;
+ The Sphinx sits at the gate of life,
+ With the old question on her awful lips.
+
+ In paths unknown we hear the feet
+ Of fear before, and guilt behind;
+ We pluck the wayside fruit, and eat
+ 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 run.
+
+ Oh, why and whither? God knows all;
+ I only know that He is good,
+ And that whatever may befall
+ Or here or there, must be the best 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 Tie 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;
+
+ 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 evil cause,
+ And of the just effect complain
+ We tread upon life's broken laws,
+ And murmur at our self-inflicted pain;
+
+ We turn us from the light, and find
+ Our spectral shapes before us thrown,
+ As they who leave the sun behind
+ Walk in the shadows of themselves alone.
+
+ And scarce by will or strength of ours
+ We set our faces to the day;
+ Weak, wavering, blind, the Eternal Powers
+ Alone can turn us from ourselves away.
+
+ Our weakness is the strength of sin,
+ But love must needs be stronger far,
+ Outreaching all and gathering in
+ The erring spirit and the wandering star.
+
+ A Voice grows with the growing years;
+ Earth, hushing down her bitter cry,
+ Looks upward from her graves, and hears,
+ "The Resurrection and the Life am I."
+
+ O Love Divine!--whose constant beam
+ Shines on the eyes that will not see,
+ And waits to bless us, while we dream
+ Thou leavest us because we turn from thee!
+
+ All souls that struggle and aspire,
+ All hearts of prayer by thee are lit;
+ And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire
+ On dusky tribes and twilight centuries sit.
+
+ Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou know'st,
+ Wide as our need thy favors fall;
+ The white wings of the Holy Ghost
+ Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the heads of all.
+
+ O Beauty, old yet ever new!
+ Eternal Voice, and Inward Word,
+ The Logos of the Greek and Jew,
+ The old sphere-music which the Samian heard!
+
+ Truth, which the sage and prophet saw,
+ Long sought without, but found within,
+ The Law of Love beyond all law,
+ The Life o'erflooding mortal death and sin!
+
+ Shine on us with the light which glowed
+ Upon the trance-bound shepherd's way.
+ Who saw the Darkness overflowed
+ And drowned by tides of everlasting Day.
+
+ 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!
+
+ 1860.
+
+
+
+
+THE CRY OF A LOST SOUL.
+
+Lieutenant Herndon's Report of the Exploration of the Amazon has a
+striking description of the peculiar and melancholy notes of a bird
+heard by night on the shores of the river. The Indian guides called it
+"The Cry of a Lost Soul"! Among the numerous translations of this poem
+is one by the Emperor of Brazil.
+
+
+ In that black forest, where, when day is done,
+ With a snake's stillness glides the Amazon
+ Darkly from sunset to the rising sun,
+
+ A cry, as of the pained heart of the wood,
+ The long, despairing moan of solitude
+ And darkness and the absence of all good,
+
+ Startles the traveller, with a sound so drear,
+ So full of hopeless agony and fear,
+ His heart stands still and listens like his ear.
+
+ The guide, as if he heard a dead-bell toll,
+ Starts, drops his oar against the gunwale's thole,
+ Crosses himself, and whispers, "A lost soul!"
+
+ "No, Senor, not a bird. I know it well,--
+ It is the pained soul of some infidel
+ Or cursed heretic that cries from hell.
+
+ "Poor fool! with hope still mocking his despair,
+ He wanders, shrieking on the midnight air
+ For human pity and for Christian prayer.
+
+ "Saints strike him dumb! Our Holy Mother hath
+ No prayer for him who, sinning unto death,
+ Burns always in the furnace of God's wrath!"
+
+ Thus to the baptized pagan's cruel lie,
+ Lending new horror to that mournful cry,
+ The voyager listens, making no reply.
+
+ Dim burns the boat-lamp: shadows deepen round,
+ From giant trees with snake-like creepers wound,
+ And the black water glides without a sound.
+
+ But in the traveller's heart a secret sense
+ Of nature plastic to benign intents,
+ And an eternal good in Providence,
+
+ Lifts to the starry calm of heaven his eyes;
+ And to! rebuking all earth's ominous cries,
+ The Cross of pardon lights the tropic skies!
+
+ "Father of all!" he urges his strong plea,
+ "Thou lovest all: Thy erring child may be
+ Lost to himself, but never lost to Thee!
+
+ "All souls are Thine; the wings of morning bear
+ None from that Presence which is everywhere,
+ Nor hell itself can hide, for Thou art there.
+
+ "Through sins of sense, perversities of will,
+ Through doubt and pain, through guilt and shame and ill,
+ Thy pitying eye is on Thy creature still.
+
+ "Wilt thou not make, Eternal Source and Goal!
+ In Thy long years, life's broken circle whole,
+ And change to praise the cry of a lost soul?"
+
+ 1862.
+
+
+
+
+ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER
+
+ Andrew Rykman's dead and gone;
+ You can see his leaning slate
+ In the graveyard, and thereon
+ Read his name and date.
+
+ "_Trust is truer than our fears_,"
+ Runs the legend through the moss,
+ "_Gain is not in added years,
+ Nor in death is loss_."
+
+ Still the feet that thither trod,
+ All the friendly eyes are dim;
+ Only Nature, now, and God
+ Have a care for him.
+
+ There the dews of quiet fall,
+ Singing birds and soft winds stray:
+ Shall the tender Heart of all
+ Be less kind than they?
+
+ What he was and what he is
+ They who ask may haply find,
+ If they read this prayer of his
+ Which he left behind.
+
+
+ . . . .
+
+ Pardon, Lord, the lips that dare
+ Shape in words a mortal's prayer!
+ Prayer, that, when my day is done,
+ And I see its setting sun,
+ Shorn and beamless, cold and dim,
+ Sink beneath the horizon's rim,--
+ When this ball of rock and clay
+ Crumbles from my feet away,
+ And the solid shores of sense
+ Melt into the vague immense,
+ Father! I may come to Thee
+ Even with the beggar's plea,
+ As the poorest of Thy poor,
+ With my needs, and nothing more.
+
+ Not as one who seeks his home
+ With a step assured I come;
+ Still behind the tread I hear
+ Of my life-companion, Fear;
+ Still a shadow deep and vast
+ From my westering feet is cast,
+ Wavering, doubtful, undefined,
+ Never shapen nor outlined
+ From myself the fear has grown,
+ And the shadow is my own.
+
+ Yet, O Lord, through all a sense
+ Of Thy tender providence
+ Stays my failing heart on Thee,
+ And confirms the feeble knee;
+ And, at times, my worn feet press
+ Spaces of cool quietness,
+ Lilied whiteness shone upon
+ Not by light of moon or sun.
+ Hours there be of inmost calm,
+ Broken but by grateful psalm,
+ When I love Thee more than fear Thee,
+ And Thy blessed Christ seems near me,
+ With forgiving look, as when
+ He beheld the Magdalen.
+ Well I know that all things move
+ To the spheral rhythm of love,--
+ That to Thee, O Lord of all!
+ Nothing can of chance befall
+ Child and seraph, mote and star,
+ Well Thou knowest what we are
+ Through Thy vast creative plan
+ Looking, from the worm to man,
+ There is pity in Thine eyes,
+ But no hatred nor surprise.
+ Not in blind caprice of will,
+ Not in cunning sleight of skill,
+ Not for show of power, was wrought
+ Nature's marvel in Thy thought.
+ Never careless hand and vain
+ Smites these chords of joy and pain;
+ No immortal selfishness
+ Plays the game of curse and bless
+ Heaven and earth are witnesses
+ That Thy glory goodness is.
+
+ Not for sport of mind and force
+ Hast Thou made Thy universe,
+ But as atmosphere and zone
+ Of Thy loving heart alone.
+ Man, who walketh in a show,
+ Sees before him, to and fro,
+ Shadow and illusion go;
+ All things flow and fluctuate,
+ Now contract and now dilate.
+ In the welter of this sea,
+ Nothing stable is but Thee;
+ In this whirl of swooning trance,
+ Thou alone art permanence;
+ All without Thee only seems,
+ All beside is choice of dreams.
+ Never yet in darkest mood
+ Doubted I that Thou wast good,
+ Nor mistook my will for fate,
+ Pain of sin for heavenly hate,--
+ Never dreamed the gates of pearl
+ Rise from out the burning marl,
+ Or that good can only live
+ Of the bad conservative,
+ And through counterpoise of hell
+ Heaven alone be possible.
+
+ For myself alone I doubt;
+ All is well, I know, without;
+ I alone the beauty mar,
+ I alone the music jar.
+ Yet, with hands by evil stained,
+ And an ear by discord pained,
+ I am groping for the keys
+ Of the heavenly harmonies;
+ Still within my heart I bear
+ Love for all things good and fair.
+ Hands of want or souls in pain
+ Have not sought my door in vain;
+ I have kept my fealty good
+ To the human brotherhood;
+ Scarcely have I asked in prayer
+ That which others might not share.
+ I, who hear with secret shame
+ Praise that paineth more than blame,
+ Rich alone in favors lent,
+ Virtuous by accident,
+ Doubtful where I fain would rest,
+ Frailest where I seem the best,
+ Only strong for lack of test,--
+ What am I, that I should press
+ Special pleas of selfishness,
+ Coolly mounting into heaven
+ On my neighbor unforgiven?
+ Ne'er to me, howe'er disguised,
+ Comes a saint unrecognized;
+ Never fails my heart to greet
+ Noble deed with warmer beat;
+ Halt and maimed, I own not less
+ All the grace of holiness;
+ Nor, through shame or self-distrust,
+ Less I love the pure and just.
+ Lord, forgive these words of mine
+ What have I that is not Thine?
+ Whatsoe'er I fain would boast
+ Needs Thy pitying pardon most.
+ Thou, O Elder Brother! who
+ In Thy flesh our trial knew,
+ Thou, who hast been touched by these
+ Our most sad infirmities,
+ Thou alone the gulf canst span
+ In the dual heart of man,
+ And between the soul and sense
+ Reconcile all difference,
+ Change the dream of me and mine
+ For the truth of Thee and Thine,
+ And, through chaos, doubt, and strife,
+ Interfuse Thy calm of life.
+ Haply, thus by Thee renewed,
+ In Thy borrowed goodness good,
+ Some sweet morning yet in God's
+ Dim, veonian periods,
+ Joyful I shall wake to see
+ Those I love who rest in Thee,
+ And to them in Thee allied
+ Shall my soul be satisfied.
+
+ Scarcely Hope hath shaped for me
+ What the future life may be.
+ Other lips may well be bold;
+ Like the publican of old,
+ I can only urge the plea,
+ "Lord, be merciful to me!"
+ Nothing of desert I claim,
+ Unto me belongeth shame.
+ Not for me the crowns of gold,
+ Palms, and harpings manifold;
+ Not for erring eye and feet
+ Jasper wall and golden street.
+ What thou wilt, O Father, give I
+ All is gain that I receive.
+
+ If my voice I may not raise
+ In the elders' song of praise,
+ If I may not, sin-defiled,
+ Claim my birthright as a child,
+ Suffer it that I to Thee
+ As an hired servant be;
+ Let the lowliest task be mine,
+ Grateful, so the work be Thine;
+ Let me find the humblest place
+ In the shadow of Thy grace
+ Blest to me were any spot
+ Where temptation whispers not.
+ If there be some weaker one,
+ Give me strength to help him on
+ If a blinder soul there be,
+ Let me guide him nearer Thee.
+ Make my mortal dreams come true
+ With the work I fain would do;
+ Clothe with life the weak intent,
+ Let me be the thing I meant;
+ Let me find in Thy employ
+ Peace that dearer is than joy;
+ Out of self to love be led
+ And to heaven acclimated,
+ Until all things sweet and good
+ Seem my natural habitude.
+
+ . . . .
+
+ So we read the prayer of him
+ Who, with John of Labadie,
+ Trod, of old, the oozy rim
+ Of the Zuyder Zee.
+
+ Thus did Andrew Rykman pray.
+ Are we wiser, better grown,
+ That we may not, in our day,
+ Make his prayer our own?
+
+
+
+
+THE ANSWER.
+
+ Spare me, dread angel of reproof,
+ And let the sunshine weave to-day
+ Its gold-threads in the warp and woof
+ Of life so poor and gray.
+
+ Spare me awhile; the flesh is weak.
+ These lingering feet, that fain would stray
+ Among the flowers, shall some day seek
+ The strait and narrow way.
+
+ Take off thy ever-watchful eye,
+ The awe of thy rebuking frown;
+ The dullest slave at times must sigh
+ To fling his burdens down;
+
+ To drop his galley's straining oar,
+ And press, in summer warmth and calm,
+ The lap of some enchanted shore
+ Of blossom and of balm.
+
+ Grudge not my life its hour of bloom,
+ My heart its taste of long desire;
+ This day be mine: be those to come
+ As duty shall require.
+
+ The deep voice answered to my own,
+ Smiting my selfish prayers away;
+ "To-morrow is with God alone,
+ And man hath but to-day.
+
+ "Say not, thy fond, vain heart within,
+ The Father's arm shall still be wide,
+ When from these pleasant ways of sin
+ Thou turn'st at eventide.
+
+ "'Cast thyself down,' the tempter saith,
+ 'And angels shall thy feet upbear.'
+ He bids thee make a lie of faith,
+ And blasphemy of prayer.
+
+ "Though God be good and free be heaven,
+ No force divine can love compel;
+ And, though the song of sins forgiven
+ May sound through lowest hell,
+
+ "The sweet persuasion of His voice
+ Respects thy sanctity of will.
+ He giveth day: thou hast thy choice
+ To walk in darkness still;
+
+ "As one who, turning from the light,
+ Watches his own gray shadow fall,
+ Doubting, upon his path of night,
+ If there be day at all!
+
+ "No word of doom may shut thee out,
+ No wind of wrath may downward whirl,
+ No swords of fire keep watch about
+ The open gates of pearl;
+
+ "A tenderer light than moon or sun,
+ Than song of earth a sweeter hymn,
+ May shine and sound forever on,
+ And thou be deaf and dim.
+
+ "Forever round the Mercy-seat
+ The guiding lights of Love shall burn;
+ But what if, habit-bound, thy feet
+ Shall lack the will to turn?
+
+ "What if thine eye refuse to see,
+ Thine ear of Heaven's free welcome fail,
+ And thou a willing captive be,
+ Thyself thy own dark jail?
+
+ "Oh, doom beyond the saddest guess,
+ As the long years of God unroll,
+ To make thy dreary selfishness
+ The prison of a soul!
+
+ "To doubt the love that fain would break
+ The fetters from thy self-bound limb;
+ And dream that God can thee forsake
+ As thou forsakest Him!"
+
+ 1863.
+
+
+
+
+THE ETERNAL GOODNESS.
+
+ O friends! with whom my feet have trod
+ The quiet aisles of prayer,
+ Glad witness to your zeal for God
+ And love of man I bear.
+
+ I trace your lines of argument;
+ Your logic linked and strong
+ I weigh as one who dreads dissent,
+ And fears a doubt as wrong.
+
+ But still my human hands are weak
+ To hold your iron creeds
+ Against the words ye bid me speak
+ My heart within me pleads.
+
+ Who fathoms the Eternal Thought?
+ Who talks of scheme and plan?
+ The Lord is God! He needeth not
+ The poor device of man.
+
+ I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground
+ Ye tread with boldness shod;
+ I dare not fix with mete and bound
+ The love and power of God.
+
+ Ye praise His justice; even such
+ His pitying love I deem
+ Ye seek a king; I fain would touch
+ The robe that hath no seam.
+
+ Ye see the curse which overbroods
+ A world of pain and loss;
+ I hear our Lord's beatitudes
+ And prayer upon the cross.
+
+ More than your schoolmen teach, within
+ Myself, alas! I know
+ Too dark ye cannot paint the sin,
+ Too small the merit show.
+
+ I bow my forehead to the dust,
+ I veil mine eyes for shame,
+ And urge, in trembling self-distrust,
+ A prayer without a claim.
+
+ I see the wrong that round me lies,
+ I feel the guilt within;
+ I hear, with groan and travail-cries,
+ The world confess its sin.
+
+ Yet, in the maddening maze of things,
+ And tossed by storm and flood,
+ To one fixed trust my spirit clings;
+ I know that God is good!
+
+ Not mine to look where cherubim
+ And seraphs may not see,
+ But nothing can be good in Him
+ Which evil is in me.
+
+ The wrong that pains my soul below
+ I dare not throne above,
+ I know not of His hate,--I know
+ His goodness and His love.
+
+ I dimly guess from blessings known
+ Of greater out of sight,
+ And, with the chastened Psalmist, own
+ His judgments too are right.
+
+ I long for household voices gone,
+ For vanished smiles I long,
+ But God hath led my dear ones on,
+ And He can do no wrong.
+
+ I know not what the future hath
+ Of marvel or surprise,
+ Assured alone that life and death
+ His mercy underlies.
+
+ And if my heart and flesh are weak
+ To bear an untried pain,
+ The bruised reed He will not break,
+ But strengthen and sustain.
+
+ No offering of my own I have,
+ Nor works my faith to prove;
+ I can but give the gifts He gave,
+ And plead His love for love.
+
+ And so beside the Silent Sea
+ I wait the muffled oar;
+ No harm from Him can come to me
+ On ocean or on shore.
+
+ I know not where His islands lift
+ Their fronded palms in air;
+ I only know I cannot drift
+ Beyond His love and care.
+
+ O brothers! if my faith is vain,
+ If hopes like these betray,
+ Pray for me that my feet may gain
+ The sure and safer way.
+
+ And Thou, O Lord! by whom are seen
+ Thy creatures as they be,
+ Forgive me if too close I lean
+ My human heart on Thee!
+
+ 1865.
+
+
+
+
+THE COMMON QUESTION.
+
+ Behind us at our evening meal
+ The gray bird ate his fill,
+ Swung downward by a single claw,
+ And wiped his hooked bill.
+
+ He shook his wings and crimson tail,
+ And set his head aslant,
+ And, in his sharp, impatient way,
+ Asked, "What does Charlie want?"
+
+ "Fie, silly bird!" I answered, "tuck
+ Your head beneath your wing,
+ And go to sleep;"--but o'er and o'er
+ He asked the self-same thing.
+
+ Then, smiling, to myself I said
+ How like are men and birds!
+ We all are saying what he says,
+ In action or in words.
+
+ The boy with whip and top and drum,
+ The girl with hoop and doll,
+ And men with lands and houses, ask
+ The question of Poor Poll.
+
+ However full, with something more
+ We fain the bag would cram;
+ We sigh above our crowded nets
+ For fish that never swam.
+
+ No bounty of indulgent Heaven
+ The vague desire can stay;
+ Self-love is still a Tartar mill
+ For grinding prayers alway.
+
+ The dear God hears and pities all;
+ He knoweth all our wants;
+ And what we blindly ask of Him
+ His love withholds or grants.
+
+ And so I sometimes think our prayers
+ Might well be merged in one;
+ And nest and perch and hearth and church
+ Repeat, "Thy will be done."
+
+
+
+
+OUR MASTER.
+
+ Immortal Love, forever full,
+ Forever flowing free,
+ Forever shared, forever whole,
+ A never-ebbing sea!
+
+ Our outward lips confess the name
+ All other names above;
+ Love only knoweth whence it came
+ And comprehendeth love.
+
+ Blow, winds of God, awake and blow
+ The mists of earth away!
+ Shine out, O Light Divine, and show
+ How wide and far we stray!
+
+ Hush every lip, close every book,
+ The strife of tongues forbear;
+ Why forward reach, or backward look,
+ For love that clasps like air?
+
+ We may not climb the heavenly steeps
+ To bring the Lord Christ down
+ In vain we search the lowest deeps,
+ For Him no depths can drown.
+
+ Nor holy bread, nor blood of grape,
+ The lineaments restore
+ Of Him we know in outward shape
+ And in the flesh no more.
+
+ He cometh not a king to reign;
+ The world's long hope is dim;
+ The weary centuries watch in vain
+ The clouds of heaven for Him.
+
+ Death comes, life goes; the asking eye
+ And ear are answerless;
+ The grave is dumb, the hollow sky
+ Is sad with silentness.
+
+ The letter fails, and systems fall,
+ And every symbol wanes;
+ The Spirit over-brooding all
+ Eternal Love remains.
+
+ And not for signs in heaven above
+ Or earth below they look,
+ Who know with John His smile of love,
+ With Peter His rebuke.
+
+ In joy of inward peace, or sense
+ Of sorrow over sin,
+ He is His own best evidence,
+ His witness is within.
+
+ No fable old, nor mythic lore,
+ Nor dream of bards and seers,
+ No dead fact stranded on the shore
+ Of the oblivious years;--
+
+ But warm, sweet, tender, even yet
+ A present help is He;
+ And faith has still its Olivet,
+ And love its Galilee.
+
+ The healing of His seamless dress
+ Is by our beds of pain;
+ We touch Him in life's throng and press,
+ And we are whole again.
+
+ Through Him the first fond prayers are said
+ Our lips of childhood frame,
+ The last low whispers of our dead
+ Are burdened with His name.
+
+ Our Lord and Master of us all!
+ Whate'er our name or sign,
+ We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call,
+ We test our lives by Thine.
+
+ Thou judgest us; Thy purity
+ Doth all our lusts condemn;
+ The love that draws us nearer Thee
+ Is hot with wrath to them.
+
+ Our thoughts lie open to Thy sight;
+ And, naked to Thy glance,
+ Our secret sins are in the light
+ Of Thy pure countenance.
+
+ Thy healing pains, a keen distress
+ Thy tender light shines in;
+ Thy sweetness is the bitterness,
+ Thy grace the pang of sin.
+
+ Yet, weak and blinded though we be,
+ Thou dost our service own;
+ We bring our varying gifts to Thee,
+ And Thou rejectest none.
+
+ To Thee our full humanity,
+ Its joys and pains, belong;
+ The wrong of man to man on Thee
+ Inflicts a deeper wrong.
+
+ Who hates, hates Thee, who loves becomes
+ Therein to Thee allied;
+ All sweet accords of hearts and homes
+ In Thee are multiplied.
+
+ Deep strike Thy roots, O heavenly Vine,
+ Within our earthly sod,
+ Most human and yet most divine,
+ The flower of man and God!
+
+ O Love! O Life! Our faith and sight
+ Thy presence maketh one
+ As through transfigured clouds of white
+ We trace the noon-day sun.
+
+ So, to our mortal eyes subdued,
+ Flesh-veiled, but not concealed,
+ We know in Thee the fatherhood
+ And heart of God revealed.
+
+ We faintly hear, we dimly see,
+ In differing phrase we pray;
+ But, dim or clear, we own in Thee
+ The Light, the Truth, the Way!
+
+ The homage that we render Thee
+ Is still our Father's own;
+ No jealous claim or rivalry
+ Divides the Cross and Throne.
+
+ To do Thy will is more than praise,
+ As words are less than deeds,
+ And simple trust can find Thy ways
+ We miss with chart of creeds.
+
+ No pride of self Thy service hath,
+ No place for me and mine;
+ Our human strength is weakness, death
+ Our life, apart from Thine.
+
+ Apart from Thee all gain is loss,
+ All labor vainly done;
+ The solemn shadow of Thy Cross
+ Is better than the sun.
+
+ Alone, O Love ineffable!
+ Thy saving name is given;
+ To turn aside from Thee is hell,
+ To walk with Thee is heaven!
+
+ How vain, secure in all Thou art,
+ Our noisy championship
+ The sighing of the contrite heart
+ Is more than flattering lip.
+
+ Not Thine the bigot's partial plea,
+ Nor Thine the zealot's ban;
+ Thou well canst spare a love of Thee
+ Which ends in hate of man.
+
+ Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord,
+ What may Thy service be?--
+ Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word,
+ But simply following Thee.
+
+ We bring no ghastly holocaust,
+ We pile no graven stone;
+ He serves thee best who loveth most
+ His brothers and Thy own.
+
+ Thy litanies, sweet offices
+ Of love and gratitude;
+ Thy sacramental liturgies,
+ The joy of doing good.
+
+ In vain shall waves of incense drift
+ The vaulted nave around,
+ In vain the minster turret lift
+ Its brazen weights of sound.
+
+ The heart must ring Thy Christmas bells,
+ Thy inward altars raise;
+ Its faith and hope Thy canticles,
+ And its obedience praise!
+
+ 1866.
+
+
+
+
+THE MEETING.
+
+The two speakers in the meeting referred to in this poem were Avis
+Keene, whose very presence was a benediction, a woman lovely in spirit
+and person, whose words seemed a message of love and tender concern to
+her hearers; and Sibyl Jones, whose inspired eloquence and rare
+spirituality impressed all who knew her. In obedience to her apprehended
+duty she made visits of Christian love to various parts of Europe, and
+to the West Coast of Africa and Palestine.
+
+
+ The elder folks shook hands at last,
+ Down seat by seat the signal passed.
+ To simple ways like ours unused,
+ Half solemnized and half amused,
+ With long-drawn breath and shrug, my guest
+ His sense of glad relief expressed.
+ Outside, the hills lay warm in sun;
+ The cattle in the meadow-run
+ Stood half-leg deep; a single bird
+ The green repose above us stirred.
+ "What part or lot have you," he said,
+ "In these dull rites of drowsy-head?
+ Is silence worship? Seek it where
+ It soothes with dreams the summer air,
+ Not in this close and rude-benched hall,
+ But where soft lights and shadows fall,
+ And all the slow, sleep-walking hours
+ Glide soundless over grass and flowers!
+ From time and place and form apart,
+ Its holy ground the human heart,
+ Nor ritual-bound nor templeward
+ Walks the free spirit of the Lord!
+ Our common Master did not pen
+ His followers up from other men;
+ His service liberty indeed,
+ He built no church, He framed no creed;
+ But while the saintly Pharisee
+ Made broader his phylactery,
+ As from the synagogue was seen
+ The dusty-sandalled Nazarene
+ Through ripening cornfields lead the way
+ Upon the awful Sabbath day,
+ His sermons were the healthful talk
+ That shorter made the mountain-walk,
+ His wayside texts were flowers and birds,
+ Where mingled with His gracious words
+ The rustle of the tamarisk-tree
+ And ripple-wash of Galilee."
+
+ "Thy words are well, O friend," I said;
+ "Unmeasured and unlimited,
+ With noiseless slide of stone to stone,
+ The mystic Church of God has grown.
+ Invisible and silent stands
+ The temple never made with hands,
+ Unheard the voices still and small
+ Of its unseen confessional.
+ He needs no special place of prayer
+ Whose hearing ear is everywhere;
+ He brings not back the childish days
+ That ringed the earth with stones of praise,
+ Roofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid
+ The plinths of Phil e's colonnade.
+ Still less He owns the selfish good
+ And sickly growth of solitude,--
+ The worthless grace that, out of sight,
+ Flowers in the desert anchorite;
+ Dissevered from the suffering whole,
+ Love hath no power to save a soul.
+ Not out of Self, the origin
+ And native air and soil of sin,
+ The living waters spring and flow,
+ The trees with leaves of healing grow.
+
+ "Dream not, O friend, because I seek
+ This quiet shelter twice a week,
+ I better deem its pine-laid floor
+ Than breezy hill or sea-sung shore;
+ But nature is not solitude
+ She crowds us with her thronging wood;
+ Her many hands reach out to us,
+ Her many tongues are garrulous;
+ Perpetual riddles of surprise
+ She offers to our ears and eyes;
+ She will not leave our senses still,
+ But drags them captive at her will
+ And, making earth too great for heaven,
+ She hides the Giver in the given.
+
+ "And so, I find it well to come
+ For deeper rest to this still room,
+ For here the habit of the soul
+ Feels less the outer world's control;
+ The strength of mutual purpose pleads
+ More earnestly our common needs;
+ And from the silence multiplied
+ By these still forms on either side,
+ The world that time and sense have known
+ Falls off and leaves us God alone.
+
+ "Yet rarely through the charmed repose
+ Unmixed the stream of motive flows,
+ A flavor of its many springs,
+ The tints of earth and sky it brings;
+ In the still waters needs must be
+ Some shade of human sympathy;
+ And here, in its accustomed place,
+ I look on memory's dearest face;
+ The blind by-sitter guesseth not
+ What shadow haunts that vacant spot;
+ No eyes save mine alone can see
+ The love wherewith it welcomes me!
+ And still, with those alone my kin,
+ In doubt and weakness, want and sin,
+ I bow my head, my heart I bare
+ As when that face was living there,
+ And strive (too oft, alas! in vain)
+ The peace of simple trust to gain,
+ Fold fancy's restless wings, and lay
+ The idols of my heart away.
+
+ "Welcome the silence all unbroken,
+ Nor less the words of fitness spoken,--
+ Such golden words as hers for whom
+ Our autumn flowers have just made room;
+ Whose hopeful utterance through and through
+ The freshness of the morning blew;
+ Who loved not less the earth that light
+ Fell on it from the heavens in sight,
+ But saw in all fair forms more fair
+ The Eternal beauty mirrored there.
+ Whose eighty years but added grace
+ And saintlier meaning to her face,--
+ The look of one who bore away
+ Glad tidings from the hills of day,
+ While all our hearts went forth to meet
+ The coming of her beautiful feet!
+ Or haply hers, whose pilgrim tread
+ Is in the paths where Jesus led;
+ Who dreams her childhood's Sabbath dream
+ By Jordan's willow-shaded stream,
+ And, of the hymns of hope and faith,
+ Sung by the monks of Nazareth,
+ Hears pious echoes, in the call
+ To prayer, from Moslem minarets fall,
+ Repeating where His works were wrought
+ The lesson that her Master taught,
+ Of whom an elder Sibyl gave,
+ The prophecies of Cuma 's cave.
+
+ "I ask no organ's soulless breath
+ To drone the themes of life and death,
+ No altar candle-lit by day,
+ No ornate wordsman's rhetoric-play,
+ No cool philosophy to teach
+ Its bland audacities of speech
+ To double-tasked idolaters
+ Themselves their gods and worshippers,
+ No pulpit hammered by the fist
+ Of loud-asserting dogmatist,
+ Who borrows for the Hand of love
+ The smoking thunderbolts of Jove.
+ I know how well the fathers taught,
+ What work the later schoolmen wrought;
+ I reverence old-time faith and men,
+ But God is near us now as then;
+ His force of love is still unspent,
+ His hate of sin as imminent;
+ And still the measure of our needs
+ Outgrows the cramping bounds of creeds;
+ The manna gathered yesterday
+ Already savors of decay;
+ Doubts to the world's child-heart unknown
+ Question us now from star and stone;
+ Too little or too much we know,
+ And sight is swift and faith is slow;
+ The power is lost to self-deceive
+ With shallow forms of make-believe.
+ W e walk at high noon, and the bells
+ Call to a thousand oracles,
+ But the sound deafens, and the light
+ Is stronger than our dazzled sight;
+ The letters of the sacred Book
+ Glimmer and swim beneath our look;
+ Still struggles in the Age's breast
+ With deepening agony of quest
+ The old entreaty: 'Art thou He,
+ Or look we for the Christ to be?'
+
+ "God should be most where man is least
+ So, where is neither church nor priest,
+ And never rag of form or creed
+ To clothe the nakedness of need,--
+ Where farmer-folk in silence meet,--
+ I turn my bell-unsummoned feet;'
+ I lay the critic's glass aside,
+ I tread upon my lettered pride,
+ And, lowest-seated, testify
+ To the oneness of humanity;
+ Confess the universal want,
+ And share whatever Heaven may grant.
+ He findeth not who seeks his own,
+ The soul is lost that's saved alone.
+ Not on one favored forehead fell
+ Of old the fire-tongued miracle,
+ But flamed o'er all the thronging host
+ The baptism of the Holy Ghost;
+ Heart answers heart: in one desire
+ The blending lines of prayer aspire;
+ 'Where, in my name, meet two or three,'
+ Our Lord hath said, 'I there will be!'
+
+ "So sometimes comes to soul and sense
+ The feeling which is evidence
+ That very near about us lies
+ The realm of spiritual mysteries.
+ The sphere of the supernal powers
+ Impinges on this world of ours.
+ The low and dark horizon lifts,
+ To light the scenic terror shifts;
+ The breath of a diviner air
+ Blows down the answer of a prayer
+ That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt
+ A great compassion clasps about,
+ And law and goodness, love and force,
+ Are wedded fast beyond divorce.
+ Then duty leaves to love its task,
+ The beggar Self forgets to ask;
+ With smile of trust and folded hands,
+ The passive soul in waiting stands
+ To feel, as flowers the sun and dew,
+ The One true Life its own renew.
+
+ "So, to the calmly gathered thought
+ The innermost of truth is taught,
+ The mystery dimly understood,
+ That love of God is love of good,
+ And, chiefly, its divinest trace
+ In Him of Nazareth's holy face;
+ That to be saved is only this,--
+ Salvation from our selfishness,
+ From more than elemental fire,
+ The soul's unsanetified desire,
+ From sin itself, and not the pain
+ That warns us of its chafing chain;
+ That worship's deeper meaning lies
+ In mercy, and not sacrifice,
+ Not proud humilities of sense
+ And posturing of penitence,
+ But love's unforced obedience;
+ That Book and Church and Day are given
+ For man, not God,--for earth, not heaven,--
+ The blessed means to holiest ends,
+ Not masters, but benignant friends;
+ That the dear Christ dwells not afar,
+ The king of some remoter star,
+ Listening, at times, with flattered ear
+ To homage wrung from selfish fear,
+ But here, amidst the poor and blind,
+ The bound and suffering of our kind,
+ In works we do, in prayers we pray,
+ Life of our life, He lives to-day."
+
+ 1868.
+
+
+
+
+THE CLEAR VISION.
+
+ I did but dream. I never knew
+ What charms our sternest season wore.
+ Was never yet the sky so blue,
+ Was never earth so white before.
+ Till now I never saw the glow
+ Of sunset on yon hills of snow,
+ And never learned the bough's designs
+ Of beauty in its leafless lines.
+
+ Did ever such a morning break
+ As that my eastern windows see?
+ Did ever such a moonlight take
+ Weird photographs of shrub and tree?
+ Rang ever bells so wild and fleet
+ The music of the winter street?
+ Was ever yet a sound by half
+ So merry as you school-boy's laugh?
+
+ O Earth! with gladness overfraught,
+ No added charm thy face hath found;
+ Within my heart the change is wrought,
+ My footsteps make enchanted ground.
+ From couch of pain and curtained room
+ Forth to thy light and air I come,
+ To find in all that meets my eyes
+ The freshness of a glad surprise.
+
+ Fair seem these winter days, and soon
+ Shall blow the warm west-winds of spring,
+ To set the unbound rills in tune
+ And hither urge the bluebird's wing.
+ The vales shall laugh in flowers, the woods
+ Grow misty green with leafing buds,
+ And violets and wind-flowers sway
+ Against the throbbing heart of May.
+
+ Break forth, my lips, in praise, and own
+ The wiser love severely kind;
+ Since, richer for its chastening grown,
+ I see, whereas I once was blind.
+ The world, O Father! hath not wronged
+ With loss the life by Thee prolonged;
+ But still, with every added year,
+ More beautiful Thy works appear!
+
+ As Thou hast made thy world without,
+ Make Thou more fair my world within;
+ Shine through its lingering clouds of doubt;
+ Rebuke its haunting shapes of sin;
+ Fill, brief or long, my granted span
+ Of life with love to thee and man;
+ Strike when thou wilt the hour of rest,
+ But let my last days be my best!
+
+ 2d mo., 1868.
+
+
+
+
+DIVINE COMPASSION.
+
+ Long since, a dream of heaven I had,
+ And still the vision haunts me oft;
+ I see the saints in white robes clad,
+ The martyrs with their palms aloft;
+ But hearing still, in middle song,
+ The ceaseless dissonance of wrong;
+ And shrinking, with hid faces, from the strain
+ Of sad, beseeching eyes, full of remorse and pain.
+
+ The glad song falters to a wail,
+ The harping sinks to low lament;
+ Before the still unlifted veil
+ I see the crowned foreheads bent,
+ Making more sweet the heavenly air,
+ With breathings of unselfish prayer;
+ And a Voice saith: "O Pity which is pain,
+ O Love that weeps, fill up my sufferings which remain!
+
+ "Shall souls redeemed by me refuse
+ To share my sorrow in their turn?
+ Or, sin-forgiven, my gift abuse
+ Of peace with selfish unconcern?
+ Has saintly ease no pitying care?
+ Has faith no work, and love no prayer?
+ While sin remains, and souls in darkness dwell,
+ Can heaven itself be heaven, and look unmoved on hell?"
+
+ Then through the Gates of Pain, I dream,
+ A wind of heaven blows coolly in;
+ Fainter the awful discords seem,
+ The smoke of torment grows more thin,
+ Tears quench the burning soil, and thence
+ Spring sweet, pale flowers of penitence
+ And through the dreary realm of man's despair,
+ Star-crowned an angel walks, and to! God's hope is there!
+
+ Is it a dream? Is heaven so high
+ That pity cannot breathe its air?
+ Its happy eyes forever dry,
+ Its holy lips without a prayer!
+ My God! my God! if thither led
+ By Thy free grace unmerited,
+ No crown nor palm be mine, but let me keep
+ A heart that still can feel, and eyes that still can weep.
+
+ 1868.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRAYER-SEEKER.
+
+ Along the aisle where prayer was made,
+ A woman, all in black arrayed,
+ Close-veiled, between the kneeling host,
+ With gliding motion of a ghost,
+ Passed to the desk, and laid thereon
+ A scroll which bore these words alone,
+ _Pray for me_!
+
+ Back from the place of worshipping
+ She glided like a guilty thing
+ The rustle of her draperies, stirred
+ By hurrying feet, alone was heard;
+ While, full of awe, the preacher read,
+ As out into the dark she sped:
+ "_Pray for me_!"
+
+ Back to the night from whence she came,
+ To unimagined grief or shame!
+ Across the threshold of that door
+ None knew the burden that she bore;
+ Alone she left the written scroll,
+ The legend of a troubled soul,--
+ _Pray for me_!
+
+ Glide on, poor ghost of woe or sin!
+ Thou leav'st a common need within;
+ Each bears, like thee, some nameless weight,
+ Some misery inarticulate,
+ Some secret sin, some shrouded dread,
+ Some household sorrow all unsaid.
+ _Pray for us_!
+
+ Pass on! The type of all thou art,
+ Sad witness to the common heart!
+ With face in veil and seal on lip,
+ In mute and strange companionship,
+ Like thee we wander to and fro,
+ Dumbly imploring as we go
+ _Pray for us_!
+
+ Ah, who shall pray, since he who pleads
+ Our want perchance hath greater needs?
+ Yet they who make their loss the gain
+ Of others shall not ask in vain,
+ And Heaven bends low to hear the prayer
+ Of love from lips of self-despair
+ _Pray for us_!
+
+ In vain remorse and fear and hate
+ Beat with bruised bands against a fate
+ Whose walls of iron only move
+ And open to the touch of love.
+ He only feels his burdens fall
+ Who, taught by suffering, pities all.
+ _Pray for us_!
+
+ He prayeth best who leaves unguessed
+ The mystery of another's breast.
+ Why cheeks grow pale, why eyes o'erflow,
+ Or heads are white, thou need'st not know.
+ Enough to note by many a sign
+ That every heart hath needs like thine.
+ _Pray for us_!
+
+ 1870
+
+
+
+
+THE BREWING OF SOMA.
+
+"These libations mixed with milk have been prepared for Indra: offer
+Soma to the drinker of Soma." --Vashista, translated by MAX MULLER.
+
+
+ The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke
+ Up through the green wood curled;
+ "Bring honey from the hollow oak,
+ Bring milky sap," the brewers spoke,
+ In the childhood of the world.
+
+ And brewed they well or brewed they ill,
+ The priests thrust in their rods,
+ First tasted, and then drank their fill,
+ And shouted, with one voice and will,
+ "Behold the drink of gods!"
+
+ They drank, and to! in heart and brain
+ A new, glad life began;
+ The gray of hair grew young again,
+ The sick man laughed away his pain,
+ The cripple leaped and ran.
+
+ "Drink, mortals, what the gods have sent,
+ Forget your long annoy."
+ So sang the priests. From tent to tent
+ The Soma's sacred madness went,
+ A storm of drunken joy.
+
+ Then knew each rapt inebriate
+ A winged and glorious birth,
+ Soared upward, with strange joy elate,
+ Beat, with dazed head, Varuna's gate,
+ And, sobered, sank to earth.
+
+ The land with Soma's praises rang;
+ On Gihon's banks of shade
+ Its hymns the dusky maidens sang;
+ In joy of life or mortal pang
+ All men to Soma prayed.
+
+ The morning twilight of the race
+ Sends down these matin psalms;
+ And still with wondering eyes we trace
+ The simple prayers to Soma's grace,
+ That Vedic verse embalms.
+
+ As in that child-world's early year,
+ Each after age has striven
+ By music, incense, vigils drear,
+ And trance, to bring the skies more near,
+ Or lift men up to heaven!
+
+ Some fever of the blood and brain,
+ Some self-exalting spell,
+ The scourger's keen delight of pain,
+ The Dervish dance, the Orphic strain,
+ The wild-haired Bacchant's yell,--
+
+ The desert's hair-grown hermit sunk
+ The saner brute below;
+ The naked Santon, hashish-drunk,
+ The cloister madness of the monk,
+ The fakir's torture-show!
+
+ And yet the past comes round again,
+ And new doth old fulfil;
+ In sensual transports wild as vain
+ We brew in many a Christian fane
+ The heathen Soma still!
+
+ Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
+ Forgive our foolish ways!
+ Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
+ In purer lives Thy service find,
+ In deeper reverence, praise.
+
+ In simple trust like theirs who heard
+ Beside the Syrian sea
+ The gracious calling of the Lord,
+ Let us, like them, without a word,
+ Rise up and follow Thee.
+
+ O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
+ O calm of hills above,
+ Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee
+ The silence of eternity
+ Interpreted by love!
+
+ With that deep hush subduing all
+ Our words and works that drown
+ The tender whisper of Thy call,
+ As noiseless let Thy blessing fall
+ As fell Thy manna down.
+
+ Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
+ Till all our strivings cease;
+ Take from our souls the strain and stress,
+ And let our ordered lives confess
+ The beauty of Thy peace.
+
+ Breathe through the heats of our desire
+ Thy coolness and Thy balm;
+ Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
+ Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
+ O still, small voice of calm!
+
+ 1872.
+
+
+
+
+A WOMAN.
+
+ Oh, dwarfed and wronged, and stained with ill,
+ Behold! thou art a woman still!
+ And, by that sacred name and dear,
+ I bid thy better self appear.
+ Still, through thy foul disguise, I see
+ The rudimental purity,
+ That, spite of change and loss, makes good
+ Thy birthright-claim of womanhood;
+ An inward loathing, deep, intense;
+ A shame that is half innocence.
+ Cast off the grave-clothes of thy sin!
+ Rise from the dust thou liest in,
+ As Mary rose at Jesus' word,
+ Redeemed and white before the Lord!
+ Reclairn thy lost soul! In His name,
+ Rise up, and break thy bonds of shame.
+ Art weak? He 's strong. Art fearful? Hear
+ The world's O'ercomer: "Be of cheer!"
+ What lip shall judge when He approves?
+ Who dare to scorn the child He loves?
+
+
+
+
+THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ.
+
+The island of Penikese in Buzzard's Bay was given by Mr. John Anderson
+to Agassiz for the uses of a summer school of natural history. A large
+barn was cleared and improvised as a lecture-room. Here, on the first
+morning of the school, all the company was gathered. "Agassiz had
+arranged no programme of exercises," says Mrs. Agassiz, in Louis
+Agassiz; his Life and Correspondence, "trusting to the interest of the
+occasion to suggest what might best be said or done. But, as he looked
+upon his pupils gathered there to study nature with him, by an impulse
+as natural as it was unpremeditated, he called upon then to join in
+silently asking God's blessing on their work together. The pause was
+broken by the first words of an address no less fervent than its
+unspoken prelude." This was in the summer of 1873, and Agassiz died the
+December following.
+
+
+ On the isle of Penikese,
+ Ringed about by sapphire seas,
+ Fanned by breezes salt and cool,
+ Stood the Master with his school.
+ Over sails that not in vain
+ Wooed the west-wind's steady strain,
+ Line of coast that low and far
+ Stretched its undulating bar,
+ Wings aslant along the rim
+ Of the waves they stooped to skim,
+ Rock and isle and glistening bay,
+ Fell the beautiful white day.
+
+ Said the Master to the youth
+ "We have come in search of truth,
+ Trying with uncertain key
+ Door by door of mystery;
+ We are reaching, through His laws,
+ To the garment-hem of Cause,
+ Him, the endless, unbegun,
+ The Unnamable, the One
+ Light of all our light the Source,
+ Life of life, and Force of force.
+ As with fingers of the blind,
+ We are groping here to find
+ What the hieroglyphics mean
+ Of the Unseen in the seen,
+ What the Thought which underlies
+ Nature's masking and disguise,
+ What it is that hides beneath
+ Blight and bloom and birth and death.
+ By past efforts unavailing,
+ Doubt and error, loss and failing,
+ Of our weakness made aware,
+ On the threshold of our task
+ Let us light and guidance ask,
+ Let us pause in silent prayer!"
+
+ Then the Master in his place
+ Bowed his head a little space,
+ And the leaves by soft airs stirred,
+ Lapse of wave and cry of bird,
+ Left the solemn hush unbroken
+ Of that wordless prayer unspoken,
+ While its wish, on earth unsaid,
+ Rose to heaven interpreted.
+ As, in life's best hours, we hear
+ By the spirit's finer ear
+ His low voice within us, thus
+ The All-Father heareth us;
+ And His holy ear we pain
+ With our noisy words and vain.
+ Not for Him our violence
+ Storming at the gates of sense,
+ His the primal language, His
+ The eternal silences!
+
+ Even the careless heart was moved,
+ And the doubting gave assent,
+ With a gesture reverent,
+ To the Master well-beloved.
+ As thin mists are glorified
+ By the light they cannot hide,
+ All who gazed upon him saw,
+ Through its veil of tender awe,
+ How his face was still uplit
+ By the old sweet look of it.
+ Hopeful, trustful, full of cheer,
+ And the love that casts out fear.
+ Who the secret may declare
+ Of that brief, unuttered prayer?
+ Did the shade before him come
+ Of th' inevitable doom,
+ Of the end of earth so near,
+ And Eternity's new year?
+
+ In the lap of sheltering seas
+ Rests the isle of Penikese;
+ But the lord of the domain
+ Comes not to his own again
+ Where the eyes that follow fail,
+ On a vaster sea his sail
+ Drifts beyond our beck and hail.
+ Other lips within its bound
+ Shall the laws of life expound;
+ Other eyes from rock and shell
+ Read the world's old riddles well
+ But when breezes light and bland
+ Blow from Summer's blossomed land,
+ When the air is glad with wings,
+ And the blithe song-sparrow sings,
+ Many an eye with his still face
+ Shall the living ones displace,
+ Many an ear the word shall seek
+ He alone could fitly speak.
+ And one name forevermore
+ Shall be uttered o'er and o'er
+ By the waves that kiss the shore,
+ By the curlew's whistle sent
+ Down the cool, sea-scented air;
+ In all voices known to her,
+ Nature owns her worshipper,
+ Half in triumph, half lament.
+ Thither Love shall tearful turn,
+ Friendship pause uncovered there,
+ And the wisest reverence learn
+ From the Master's silent prayer.
+
+ 1873.
+
+
+
+
+IN QUEST
+
+ Have I not voyaged, friend beloved, with thee
+ On the great waters of the unsounded sea,
+ Momently listening with suspended oar
+ For the low rote of waves upon a shore
+ Changeless as heaven, where never fog-cloud drifts
+ Over its windless wood, nor mirage lifts
+ The steadfast hills; where never birds of doubt
+ Sing to mislead, and every dream dies out,
+ And the dark riddles which perplex us here
+ In the sharp solvent of its light are clear?
+ Thou knowest how vain our quest; how, soon or late,
+ The baffling tides and circles of debate
+ Swept back our bark unto its starting-place,
+ Where, looking forth upon the blank, gray space,
+ And round about us seeing, with sad eyes,
+ The same old difficult hills and cloud-cold skies,
+ We said: "This outward search availeth not
+ To find Him. He is farther than we thought,
+ Or, haply, nearer. To this very spot
+ Whereon we wait, this commonplace of home,
+ As to the well of Jacob, He may come
+ And tell us all things." As I listened there,
+ Through the expectant silences of prayer,
+ Somewhat I seemed to hear, which hath to me
+ Been hope, strength, comfort, and I give it thee.
+
+ "The riddle of the world is understood
+ Only by him who feels that God is good,
+ As only he can feel who makes his love
+ The ladder of his faith, and climbs above
+ On th' rounds of his best instincts; draws no line
+ Between mere human goodness and divine,
+ But, judging God by what in him is best,
+ With a child's trust leans on a Father's breast,
+ And hears unmoved the old creeds babble still
+ Of kingly power and dread caprice of will,
+ Chary of blessing, prodigal of curse,
+ The pitiless doomsman of the universe.
+ Can Hatred ask for love? Can Selfishness
+ Invite to self-denial? Is He less
+ Than man in kindly dealing? Can He break
+ His own great law of fatherhood, forsake
+ And curse His children? Not for earth and heaven
+ Can separate tables of the law be given.
+ No rule can bind which He himself denies;
+ The truths of time are not eternal lies."
+
+ So heard I; and the chaos round me spread
+ To light and order grew; and, "Lord," I said,
+ "Our sins are our tormentors, worst of all
+ Felt in distrustful shame that dares not call
+ Upon Thee as our Father. We have set
+ A strange god up, but Thou remainest yet.
+ All that I feel of pity Thou hast known
+ Before I was; my best is all Thy own.
+ From Thy great heart of goodness mine but drew
+ Wishes and prayers; but Thou, O Lord, wilt do,
+ In Thy own time, by ways I cannot see,
+ All that I feel when I am nearest Thee!"
+
+ 1873.
+
+
+
+
+THE FRIEND'S BURIAL.
+
+ My thoughts are all in yonder town,
+ Where, wept by many tears,
+ To-day my mother's friend lays down
+ The burden of her years.
+
+ True as in life, no poor disguise
+ Of death with her is seen,
+ And on her simple casket lies
+ No wreath of bloom and green.
+
+ Oh, not for her the florist's art,
+ The mocking weeds of woe;
+ Dear memories in each mourner's heart
+ Like heaven's white lilies blow.
+
+ And all about the softening air
+ Of new-born sweetness tells,
+ And the ungathered May-flowers wear
+ The tints of ocean shells.
+
+ The old, assuring miracle
+ Is fresh as heretofore;
+ And earth takes up its parable
+ Of life from death once more.
+
+ Here organ-swell and church-bell toll
+ Methinks but discord were;
+ The prayerful silence of the soul
+ Is best befitting her.
+
+ No sound should break the quietude
+ Alike of earth and sky
+ O wandering wind in Seabrook wood,
+ Breathe but a half-heard sigh!
+
+ Sing softly, spring-bird, for her sake;
+ And thou not distant sea,
+ Lapse lightly as if Jesus spake,
+ And thou wert Galilee!
+
+ For all her quiet life flowed on
+ As meadow streamlets flow,
+ Where fresher green reveals alone
+ The noiseless ways they go.
+
+ From her loved place of prayer I see
+ The plain-robed mourners pass,
+ With slow feet treading reverently
+ The graveyard's springing grass.
+
+ Make room, O mourning ones, for me,
+ Where, like the friends of Paul,
+ That you no more her face shall see
+ You sorrow most of all.
+
+ Her path shall brighten more and more
+ Unto the perfect day;
+ She cannot fail of peace who bore
+ Such peace with her away.
+
+ O sweet, calm face that seemed to wear
+ The look of sins forgiven!
+ O voice of prayer that seemed to bear
+ Our own needs up to heaven!
+
+ How reverent in our midst she stood,
+ Or knelt in grateful praise!
+ What grace of Christian womanhood
+ Was in her household ways!
+
+ For still her holy living meant
+ No duty left undone;
+ The heavenly and the human blent
+ Their kindred loves in one.
+
+ And if her life small leisure found
+ For feasting ear and eye,
+ And Pleasure, on her daily round,
+ She passed unpausing by,
+
+ Yet with her went a secret sense
+ Of all things sweet and fair,
+ And Beauty's gracious providence
+ Refreshed her unaware.
+
+ She kept her line of rectitude
+ With love's unconscious ease;
+ Her kindly instincts understood
+ All gentle courtesies.
+
+ An inborn charm of graciousness
+ Made sweet her smile and tone,
+ And glorified her farm-wife dress
+ With beauty not its own.
+
+ The dear Lord's best interpreters
+ Are humble human souls;
+ The Gospel of a life like hers
+ Is more than books or scrolls.
+
+ From scheme and creed the light goes out,
+ The saintly fact survives;
+ The blessed Master none can doubt
+ Revealed in holy lives.
+ 1873.
+
+
+
+
+A CHRISTMAS CARMEN.
+
+ I.
+ Sound over all waters, reach out from all lands,
+ The chorus of voices, the clasping of hands;
+ Sing hymns that were sung by the stars of the morn,
+ Sing songs of the angels when Jesus was born!
+ With glad jubilations
+ Bring hope to the nations
+ The dark night is ending and dawn has begun
+ Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun,
+ All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one!
+
+ II.
+ Sing the bridal of nations! with chorals of love
+ Sing out the war-vulture and sing in the dove,
+ Till the hearts of the peoples keep time in accord,
+ And the voice of the world is the voice of the Lord!
+ Clasp hands of the nations
+ In strong gratulations:
+ The dark night is ending and dawn has begun;
+ Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun,
+ All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one!
+
+ III.
+ Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace;
+ East, west, north, and south let the long quarrel cease
+ Sing the song of great joy that the angels began,
+ Sing of glory to God and of good-will to man!
+ Hark! joining in chorus
+ The heavens bend o'er us'
+ The dark night is ending and dawn has begun;
+ Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun,
+ All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one!
+ 1873.
+
+
+
+
+VESTA.
+
+ O Christ of God! whose life and death
+ Our own have reconciled,
+ Most quietly, most tenderly
+ Take home Thy star-named child!
+
+ Thy grace is in her patient eyes,
+ Thy words are on her tongue;
+ The very silence round her seems
+ As if the angels sung.
+
+ Her smile is as a listening child's
+ Who hears its mother call;
+ The lilies of Thy perfect peace
+ About her pillow fall.
+
+ She leans from out our clinging arms
+ To rest herself in Thine;
+ Alone to Thee, dear Lord, can we
+ Our well-beloved resign!
+
+ Oh, less for her than for ourselves
+ We bow our heads and pray;
+ Her setting star, like Bethlehem's,
+ To Thee shall point the way!
+ 1874.
+
+
+
+
+CHILD-SONGS.
+
+ Still linger in our noon of time
+ And on our Saxon tongue
+ The echoes of the home-born hymns
+ The Aryan mothers sung.
+
+ And childhood had its litanies
+ In every age and clime;
+ The earliest cradles of the race
+ Were rocked to poet's rhyme.
+
+ Nor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor flower,
+ Nor green earth's virgin sod,
+ So moved the singer's heart of old
+ As these small ones of God.
+
+ The mystery of unfolding life
+ Was more than dawning morn,
+ Than opening flower or crescent moon
+ The human soul new-born.
+
+ And still to childhood's sweet appeal
+ The heart of genius turns,
+ And more than all the sages teach
+ From lisping voices learns,--
+
+ The voices loved of him who sang,
+ Where Tweed and Teviot glide,
+ That sound to-day on all the winds
+ That blow from Rydal-side,--
+
+ Heard in the Teuton's household songs,
+ And folk-lore of the Finn,
+ Where'er to holy Christmas hearths
+ The Christ-child enters in!
+
+ Before life's sweetest mystery still
+ The heart in reverence kneels;
+ The wonder of the primal birth
+ The latest mother feels.
+
+ We need love's tender lessons taught
+ As only weakness can;
+ God hath His small interpreters;
+ The child must teach the man.
+
+ We wander wide through evil years,
+ Our eyes of faith grow dim;
+ But he is freshest from His hands
+ And nearest unto Him!
+
+ And haply, pleading long with Him
+ For sin-sick hearts and cold,
+ The angels of our childhood still
+ The Father's face behold.
+
+ Of such the kingdom!--Teach Thou us,
+ O-Master most divine,
+ To feel the deep significance
+ Of these wise words of Thine!
+
+ The haughty eye shall seek in vain
+ What innocence beholds;
+ No cunning finds the key of heaven,
+ No strength its gate unfolds.
+
+ Alone to guilelessness and love
+ That gate shall open fall;
+ The mind of pride is nothingness,
+ The childlike heart is all!
+
+ 1875.
+
+
+
+THE HEALER.
+
+TO A YOUNG PHYSICIAN, WITH DORE'S PICTURE OF CHRIST HEALING THE SICK.
+
+ So stood of old the holy Christ
+ Amidst the suffering throng;
+ With whom His lightest touch sufficed
+ To make the weakest strong.
+
+ That healing gift He lends to them
+ Who use it in His name;
+ The power that filled His garment's hem
+ Is evermore the same.
+
+ For lo! in human hearts unseen
+ The Healer dwelleth still,
+ And they who make His temples clean
+ The best subserve His will.
+
+ The holiest task by Heaven decreed,
+ An errand all divine,
+ The burden of our common need
+ To render less is thine.
+
+ The paths of pain are thine. Go forth
+ With patience, trust, and hope;
+ The sufferings of a sin-sick earth
+ Shall give thee ample scope.
+
+ Beside the unveiled mysteries
+ Of life and death go stand,
+ With guarded lips and reverent eyes
+ And pure of heart and hand.
+
+ So shalt thou be with power endued
+ From Him who went about
+ The Syrian hillsides doing good,
+ And casting demons out.
+
+ That Good Physician liveth yet
+ Thy friend and guide to be;
+ The Healer by Gennesaret
+ Shall walk the rounds with thee.
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO ANGELS.
+
+ God called the nearest angels who dwell with Him above:
+ The tenderest one was Pity, the dearest one was Love.
+
+ "Arise," He said, "my angels! a wail of woe and sin
+ Steals through the gates of heaven, and saddens all within.
+
+ "My harps take up the mournful strain that from a lost world swells,
+ The smoke of torment clouds the light and blights the asphodels.
+
+ "Fly downward to that under world, and on its souls of pain
+ Let Love drop smiles like sunshine, and Pity tears like rain!"
+
+ Two faces bowed before the Throne, veiled in their golden hair;
+ Four white wings lessened swiftly down the dark abyss of air.
+
+ The way was strange, the flight was long; at last the angels came
+ Where swung the lost and nether world, red-wrapped in rayless flame.
+
+ There Pity, shuddering, wept; but Love, with faith too strong for fear,
+ Took heart from God's almightiness and smiled a smile of cheer.
+
+ And lo! that tear of Pity quenched the flame whereon it fell,
+ And, with the sunshine of that smile, hope entered into hell!
+
+ Two unveiled faces full of joy looked upward to the Throne,
+ Four white wings folded at the feet of Him who sat thereon!
+
+ And deeper than the sound of seas, more soft than falling flake,
+ Amidst the hush of wing and song the Voice Eternal spake:
+
+ "Welcome, my angels! ye have brought a holier joy to heaven;
+ Henceforth its sweetest song shall be the song of sin forgiven!"
+
+ 1875.
+
+
+
+
+OVERRULED.
+
+ The threads our hands in blindness spin
+ No self-determined plan weaves in;
+ The shuttle of the unseen powers
+ Works out a pattern not as ours.
+
+ Ah! small the choice of him who sings
+ What sound shall leave the smitten strings;
+ Fate holds and guides the hand of art;
+ The singer's is the servant's part.
+
+ The wind-harp chooses not the tone
+ That through its trembling threads is blown;
+ The patient organ cannot guess
+ What hand its passive keys shall press.
+
+ Through wish, resolve, and act, our will
+ Is moved by undreamed forces still;
+ And no man measures in advance
+ His strength with untried circumstance.
+
+ As streams take hue from shade and sun,
+ As runs the life the song must run;
+ But, glad or sad, to His good end
+ God grant the varying notes may tend!
+ 1877.
+
+
+
+
+HYMN OF THE DUNKERS
+
+KLOSTER KEDAR, EPHRATA, PENNSYLVANIA (1738)
+
+SISTER MARIA CHRISTINA sings
+
+ Wake, sisters, wake! the day-star shines;
+ Above Ephrata's eastern pines
+ The dawn is breaking, cool and calm.
+ Wake, sisters, wake to prayer and psalm!
+
+ Praised be the Lord for shade and light,
+ For toil by day, for rest by night!
+ Praised be His name who deigns to bless
+ Our Kedar of the wilderness!
+
+ Our refuge when the spoiler's hand
+ Was heavy on our native land;
+ And freedom, to her children due,
+ The wolf and vulture only knew.
+
+ We praised Him when to prison led,
+ We owned Him when the stake blazed red;
+ We knew, whatever might befall,
+ His love and power were over all.
+
+ He heard our prayers; with outstretched arm
+ He led us forth from cruel harm;
+ Still, wheresoe'er our steps were bent,
+ His cloud and fire before us went!
+
+ The watch of faith and prayer He set,
+ We kept it then, we keep it yet.
+ At midnight, crow of cock, or noon,
+ He cometh sure, He cometh soon.
+
+ He comes to chasten, not destroy,
+ To purge the earth from sin's alloy.
+ At last, at last shall all confess
+ His mercy as His righteousness.
+
+ The dead shall live, the sick be whole,
+ The scarlet sin be white as wool;
+ No discord mar below, above,
+ The music of eternal love!
+
+ Sound, welcome trump, the last alarm!
+ Lord God of hosts, make bare thine arm,
+ Fulfil this day our long desire,
+ Make sweet and clean the world with fire!
+
+ Sweep, flaming besom, sweep from sight
+ The lies of time; be swift to smite,
+ Sharp sword of God, all idols down,
+ Genevan creed and Roman crown.
+
+ Quake, earth, through all thy zones, till all
+ The fanes of pride and priesteraft fall;
+ And lift thou up in place of them
+ Thy gates of pearl, Jerusalem!
+
+ Lo! rising from baptismal flame,
+ Transfigured, glorious, yet the same,
+ Within the heavenly city's bound
+ Our Kloster Kedar shall be found.
+
+ He cometh soon! at dawn or noon
+ Or set of sun, He cometh soon.
+ Our prayers shall meet Him on His way;
+ Wake, sisters, wake! arise and pray!
+
+ 1877.
+
+
+
+
+GIVING AND TAKING.
+
+I have attempted to put in English verse a prose translation of a poem
+by Tinnevaluva, a Hindoo poet of the third century of our era.
+
+
+ Who gives and hides the giving hand,
+ Nor counts on favor, fame, or praise,
+ Shall find his smallest gift outweighs
+ The burden of the sea and land.
+
+ Who gives to whom hath naught been given,
+ His gift in need, though small indeed
+ As is the grass-blade's wind-blown seed,
+ Is large as earth and rich as heaven.
+
+ Forget it not, O man, to whom
+ A gift shall fall, while yet on earth;
+ Yea, even to thy seven-fold birth
+ Recall it in the lives to come.
+
+ Who broods above a wrong in thought
+ Sins much; but greater sin is his
+ Who, fed and clothed with kindnesses,
+ Shall count the holy alms as nought.
+
+ Who dares to curse the hands that bless
+ Shall know of sin the deadliest cost;
+ The patience of the heavens is lost
+ Beholding man's unthankfulness.
+
+ For he who breaks all laws may still
+ In Sivam's mercy be forgiven;
+ But none can save, in earth or heaven,
+ The wretch who answers good with ill.
+
+ 1877.
+
+
+
+
+THE VISION OF ECHARD.
+
+ The Benedictine Echard
+ Sat by the wayside well,
+ Where Marsberg sees the bridal
+ Of the Sarre and the Moselle.
+
+ Fair with its sloping vineyards
+ And tawny chestnut bloom,
+ The happy vale Ausonius sunk
+ For holy Treves made room.
+
+ On the shrine Helena builded
+ To keep the Christ coat well,
+ On minster tower and kloster cross,
+ The westering sunshine fell.
+
+ There, where the rock-hewn circles
+ O'erlooked the Roman's game,
+ The veil of sleep fell on him,
+ And his thought a dream became.
+
+ He felt the heart of silence
+ Throb with a soundless word,
+ And by the inward ear alone
+ A spirit's voice he heard.
+
+ And the spoken word seemed written
+ On air and wave and sod,
+ And the bending walls of sapphire
+ Blazed with the thought of God.
+
+ "What lack I, O my children?
+ All things are in my band;
+ The vast earth and the awful stars
+ I hold as grains of sand.
+
+ "Need I your alms? The silver
+ And gold are mine alone;
+ The gifts ye bring before me
+ Were evermore my own.
+
+ "Heed I the noise of viols,
+ Your pomp of masque and show?
+ Have I not dawns and sunsets
+ Have I not winds that blow?
+
+ "Do I smell your gums of incense?
+ Is my ear with chantings fed?
+ Taste I your wine of worship,
+ Or eat your holy bread?
+
+ "Of rank and name and honors
+ Am I vain as ye are vain?
+ What can Eternal Fulness
+ From your lip-service gain?
+
+ "Ye make me not your debtor
+ Who serve yourselves alone;
+ Ye boast to me of homage
+ Whose gain is all your own.
+
+ "For you I gave the prophets,
+ For you the Psalmist's lay
+ For you the law's stone tables,
+ And holy book and day.
+
+ "Ye change to weary burdens
+ The helps that should uplift;
+ Ye lose in form the spirit,
+ The Giver in the gift.
+
+ "Who called ye to self-torment,
+ To fast and penance vain?
+ Dream ye Eternal Goodness
+ Has joy in mortal pain?
+
+ "For the death in life of Nitria,
+ For your Chartreuse ever dumb,
+ What better is the neighbor,
+ Or happier the home?
+
+ "Who counts his brother's welfare
+ As sacred as his own,
+ And loves, forgives, and pities,
+ He serveth me alone.
+
+ "I note each gracious purpose,
+ Each kindly word and deed;
+ Are ye not all my children?
+ Shall not the Father heed?
+
+ "No prayer for light and guidance
+ Is lost upon mine ear
+ The child's cry in the darkness
+ Shall not the Father hear?
+
+ "I loathe your wrangling councils,
+ I tread upon your creeds;
+ Who made ye mine avengers,
+ Or told ye of my needs;
+
+ "I bless men and ye curse them,
+ I love them and ye hate;
+ Ye bite and tear each other,
+ I suffer long and wait.
+
+ "Ye bow to ghastly symbols,
+ To cross and scourge and thorn;
+ Ye seek his Syrian manger
+ Who in the heart is born.
+
+ "For the dead Christ, not the living,
+ Ye watch His empty grave,
+ Whose life alone within you
+ Has power to bless and save.
+
+ "O blind ones, outward groping,
+ The idle quest forego;
+ Who listens to His inward voice
+ Alone of Him shall know.
+
+ "His love all love exceeding
+ The heart must needs recall,
+ Its self-surrendering freedom,
+ Its loss that gaineth all.
+
+ "Climb not the holy mountains,
+ Their eagles know not me;
+ Seek not the Blessed Islands,
+ I dwell not in the sea.
+
+ "Gone is the mount of Meru,
+ The triple gods are gone,
+ And, deaf to all the lama's prayers,
+ The Buddha slumbers on.
+
+ "No more from rocky Horeb
+ The smitten waters gush;
+ Fallen is Bethel's ladder,
+ Quenched is the burning bush.
+
+ "The jewels of the Urim
+ And Thurnmim all are dim;
+ The fire has left the altar,
+ The sign the teraphim.
+
+ "No more in ark or hill grove
+ The Holiest abides;
+ Not in the scroll's dead letter
+ The eternal secret hides.
+
+ "The eye shall fail that searches
+ For me the hollow sky;
+ The far is even as the near,
+ The low is as the high.
+
+ "What if the earth is hiding
+ Her old faiths, long outworn?
+ What is it to the changeless truth
+ That yours shall fail in turn?
+
+ "What if the o'erturned altar
+ Lays bare the ancient lie?
+ What if the dreams and legends
+ Of the world's childhood die?
+
+ "Have ye not still my witness
+ Within yourselves alway,
+ My hand that on the keys of life
+ For bliss or bale I lay?
+
+ "Still, in perpetual judgment,
+ I hold assize within,
+ With sure reward of holiness,
+ And dread rebuke of sin.
+
+ "A light, a guide, a warning,
+ A presence ever near,
+ Through the deep silence of the flesh
+ I reach the inward ear.
+
+ "My Gerizim and Ebal
+ Are in each human soul,
+ The still, small voice of blessing,
+ And Sinai's thunder-roll.
+
+ "The stern behest of duty,
+ The doom-book open thrown,
+ The heaven ye seek, the hell ye fear,
+ Are with yourselves alone."
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ A gold and purple sunset
+ Flowed down the broad Moselle;
+ On hills of vine and meadow lands
+ The peace of twilight fell.
+
+ A slow, cool wind of evening
+ Blew over leaf and bloom;
+ And, faint and far, the Angelus
+ Rang from Saint Matthew's tomb.
+
+ Then up rose Master Echard,
+ And marvelled: "Can it be
+ That here, in dream and vision,
+ The Lord hath talked with me?"
+
+ He went his way; behind him
+ The shrines of saintly dead,
+ The holy coat and nail of cross,
+ He left unvisited.
+
+ He sought the vale of Eltzbach
+ His burdened soul to free,
+ Where the foot-hills of the Eifel
+ Are glassed in Laachersee.
+
+ And, in his Order's kloster,
+ He sat, in night-long parle,
+ With Tauler of the Friends of God,
+ And Nicolas of Basle.
+
+ And lo! the twain made answer
+ "Yea, brother, even thus
+ The Voice above all voices
+ Hath spoken unto us.
+
+ "The world will have its idols,
+ And flesh and sense their sign
+ But the blinded eyes shall open,
+ And the gross ear be fine.
+
+ "What if the vision tarry?
+ God's time is always best;
+ The true Light shall be witnessed,
+ The Christ within confessed.
+
+ "In mercy or in judgment
+ He shall turn and overturn,
+ Till the heart shall be His temple
+ Where all of Him shall learn."
+
+
+
+
+INSCRIPTIONS.
+
+ON A SUN-DIAL.
+
+FOR DR. HENRY I. BOWDITCH.
+
+ With warning hand I mark Time's rapid flight
+ From life's glad morning to its solemn night;
+ Yet, through the dear God's love, I also show
+ There's Light above me by the Shade below.
+
+ 1879.
+
+
+
+
+ON A FOUNTAIN.
+
+FOR DOROTHEA L. DIX.
+
+ Stranger and traveller,
+ Drink freely and bestow
+ A kindly thought on her
+ Who bade this fountain flow,
+ Yet hath no other claim
+ Than as the minister
+ Of blessing in God's name.
+ Drink, and in His peace go
+
+ 1879
+
+
+
+
+THE MINISTER'S DAUGHTER.
+
+ In the minister's morning sermon
+ He had told of the primal fall,
+ And how thenceforth the wrath of God
+ Rested on each and all.
+
+ And how of His will and pleasure,
+ All souls, save a chosen few,
+ Were doomed to the quenchless burning,
+ And held in the way thereto.
+
+ Yet never by faith's unreason
+ A saintlier soul was tried,
+ And never the harsh old lesson
+ A tenderer heart belied.
+
+ And, after the painful service
+ On that pleasant Sabbath day,
+ He walked with his little daughter
+ Through the apple-bloom of May.
+
+ Sweet in the fresh green meadows
+ Sparrow and blackbird sung;
+ Above him their tinted petals
+ The blossoming orchards hung.
+
+ Around on the wonderful glory
+ The minister looked and smiled;
+ "How good is the Lord who gives us
+ These gifts from His hand, my child.
+
+ "Behold in the bloom of apples
+ And the violets in the sward
+ A hint of the old, lost beauty
+ Of the Garden of the Lord!"
+
+ Then up spake the little maiden,
+ Treading on snow and pink
+ "O father! these pretty blossoms
+ Are very wicked, I think.
+
+ "Had there been no Garden of Eden
+ There never had been a fall;
+ And if never a tree had blossomed
+ God would have loved us all."
+
+ "Hush, child!" the father answered,
+ "By His decree man fell;
+ His ways are in clouds and darkness,
+ But He doeth all things well.
+
+ "And whether by His ordaining
+ To us cometh good or ill,
+ Joy or pain, or light or shadow,
+ We must fear and love Him still."
+
+ "Oh, I fear Him!" said the daughter,
+ "And I try to love Him, too;
+ But I wish He was good and gentle,
+ Kind and loving as you."
+
+ The minister groaned in spirit
+ As the tremulous lips of pain
+ And wide, wet eyes uplifted
+ Questioned his own in vain.
+
+ Bowing his head he pondered
+ The words of the little one;
+ Had he erred in his life-long teaching?
+ Had he wrong to his Master done?
+
+ To what grim and dreadful idol
+ Had he lent the holiest name?
+ Did his own heart, loving and human,
+ The God of his worship shame?
+
+ And lo! from the bloom and greenness,
+ From the tender skies above,
+ And the face of his little daughter,
+ He read a lesson of love.
+
+ No more as the cloudy terror
+ Of Sinai's mount of law,
+ But as Christ in the Syrian lilies
+ The vision of God he saw.
+
+ And, as when, in the clefts of Horeb,
+ Of old was His presence known,
+ The dread Ineffable Glory
+ Was Infinite Goodness alone.
+
+ Thereafter his hearers noted
+ In his prayers a tenderer strain,
+ And never the gospel of hatred
+ Burned on his lips again.
+
+ And the scoffing tongue was prayerful,
+ And the blinded eyes found sight,
+ And hearts, as flint aforetime,
+ Grew soft in his warmth and light.
+
+ 1880.
+
+
+
+
+BY THEIR WORKS.
+
+ Call him not heretic whose works attest
+ His faith in goodness by no creed confessed.
+ Whatever in love's name is truly done
+ To free the bound and lift the fallen one
+ Is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and word
+ Is not against Him labors for our Lord.
+ When He, who, sad and weary, longing sore
+ For love's sweet service, sought the sisters' door,
+ One saw the heavenly, one the human guest,
+ But who shall say which loved the Master best?
+
+ 1881.
+
+
+
+
+THE WORD.
+
+ Voice of the Holy Spirit, making known
+ Man to himself, a witness swift and sure,
+ Warning, approving, true and wise and pure,
+ Counsel and guidance that misleadeth none!
+ By thee the mystery of life is read;
+ The picture-writing of the world's gray seers,
+ The myths and parables of the primal years,
+ Whose letter kills, by thee interpreted
+ Take healthful meanings fitted to our needs,
+ And in the soul's vernacular express
+ The common law of simple righteousness.
+ Hatred of cant and doubt of human creeds
+ May well be felt: the unpardonable sin
+ Is to deny the Word of God within!
+
+ 1881.
+
+
+
+
+THE BOOK.
+
+ Gallery of sacred pictures manifold,
+ A minster rich in holy effigies,
+ And bearing on entablature and frieze
+ The hieroglyphic oracles of old.
+ Along its transept aureoled martyrs sit;
+ And the low chancel side-lights half acquaint
+ The eye with shrines of prophet, bard, and saint,
+ Their age-dimmed tablets traced in doubtful writ!
+ But only when on form and word obscure
+ Falls from above the white supernal light
+ We read the mystic characters aright,
+ And life informs the silent portraiture,
+ Until we pause at last, awe-held, before
+ The One ineffable Face, love, wonder, and adore.
+
+ 1881
+
+
+
+
+REQUIREMENT.
+
+ We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave
+ Of text and legend. Reason's voice and God's,
+ Nature's and Duty's, never are at odds.
+ What asks our Father of His children, save
+ Justice and mercy and humility,
+ A reasonable service of good deeds,
+ Pure living, tenderness to human needs,
+ Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see
+ The Master's footprints in our daily ways?
+ No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife,
+ But the calm beauty of an ordered life
+ Whose very breathing is unworded praise!--
+ A life that stands as all true lives have stood,
+ Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good.
+
+ 1881.
+
+
+
+
+HELP.
+
+ Dream not, O Soul, that easy is the task
+ Thus set before thee. If it proves at length,
+ As well it may, beyond thy natural strength,
+ Faint not, despair not. As a child may ask
+ A father, pray the Everlasting Good
+ For light and guidance midst the subtle snares
+ Of sin thick planted in life's thoroughfares,
+ For spiritual strength and moral hardihood;
+ Still listening, through the noise of time and sense,
+ To the still whisper of the Inward Word;
+ Bitter in blame, sweet in approval heard,
+ Itself its own confirming evidence
+ To health of soul a voice to cheer and please,
+ To guilt the wrath of the Eumenides.
+
+ 1881.
+
+
+
+
+UTTERANCE.
+
+ But what avail inadequate words to reach
+ The innermost of Truth? Who shall essay,
+ Blinded and weak, to point and lead the way,
+ Or solve the mystery in familiar speech?
+ Yet, if it be that something not thy own,
+ Some shadow of the Thought to which our schemes,
+ Creeds, cult, and ritual are at best but dreams,
+ Is even to thy unworthiness made known,
+ Thou mayst not hide what yet thou shouldst not dare
+ To utter lightly, lest on lips of thine
+ The real seem false, the beauty undivine.
+ So, weighing duty in the scale of prayer,
+ Give what seems given thee. It may prove a seed
+ Of goodness dropped in fallow-grounds of need.
+
+ 1881.
+
+
+
+
+
+ORIENTAL MAXIMS.
+
+PARAPHRASE OF SANSCRIT TRANSLATIONS.
+
+
+
+
+THE INWARD JUDGE.
+
+From Institutes of Manu.
+
+ The soul itself its awful witness is.
+ Say not in evil doing, "No one sees,"
+ And so offend the conscious One within,
+ Whose ear can hear the silences of sin.
+
+ Ere they find voice, whose eyes unsleeping see
+ The secret motions of iniquity.
+ Nor in thy folly say, "I am alone."
+ For, seated in thy heart, as on a throne,
+ The ancient Judge and Witness liveth still,
+ To note thy act and thought; and as thy ill
+ Or good goes from thee, far beyond thy reach,
+ The solemn Doomsman's seal is set on each.
+
+ 1878.
+
+
+
+
+LAYING UP TREASURE
+
+From the Mahabharata.
+
+ Before the Ender comes, whose charioteer
+ Is swift or slow Disease, lay up each year
+ Thy harvests of well-doing, wealth that kings
+ Nor thieves can take away. When all the things
+ Thou tallest thine, goods, pleasures, honors fall,
+ Thou in thy virtue shalt survive them all.
+
+ 1881.
+
+
+
+
+CONDUCT
+
+From the Mahabharata.
+
+ Heed how thou livest. Do no act by day
+ Which from the night shall drive thy peace away.
+ In months of sun so live that months of rain
+ Shall still be happy. Evermore restrain
+ Evil and cherish good, so shall there be
+ Another and a happier life for thee.
+
+ 1881.
+
+
+
+
+AN EASTER FLOWER GIFT.
+
+ O dearest bloom the seasons know,
+ Flowers of the Resurrection blow,
+ Our hope and faith restore;
+ And through the bitterness of death
+ And loss and sorrow, breathe a breath
+ Of life forevermore!
+
+ The thought of Love Immortal blends
+ With fond remembrances of friends;
+ In you, O sacred flowers,
+ By human love made doubly sweet,
+ The heavenly and the earthly meet,
+ The heart of Christ and ours!
+
+ 1882.
+
+
+
+
+THE MYSTIC'S CHRISTMAS.
+
+ "All hail!" the bells of Christmas rang,
+ "All hail!" the monks at Christmas sang,
+ The merry monks who kept with cheer
+ The gladdest day of all their year.
+
+ But still apart, unmoved thereat,
+ A pious elder brother sat
+ Silent, in his accustomed place,
+ With God's sweet peace upon his face.
+
+ "Why sitt'st thou thus?" his brethren cried.
+ "It is the blessed Christmas-tide;
+ The Christmas lights are all aglow,
+ The sacred lilies bud and blow.
+
+ "Above our heads the joy-bells ring,
+ Without the happy children sing,
+ And all God's creatures hail the morn
+ On which the holy Christ was born!
+
+ "Rejoice with us; no more rebuke
+ Our gladness with thy quiet look."
+ The gray monk answered: "Keep, I pray,
+ Even as ye list, the Lord's birthday.
+
+ "Let heathen Yule fires flicker red
+ Where thronged refectory feasts are spread;
+ With mystery-play and masque and mime
+ And wait-songs speed the holy time!
+
+ "The blindest faith may haply save;
+ The Lord accepts the things we have;
+ And reverence, howsoe'er it strays,
+ May find at last the shining ways.
+
+ "They needs must grope who cannot see,
+ The blade before the ear must be;
+ As ye are feeling I have felt,
+ And where ye dwell I too have dwelt.
+
+ "But now, beyond the things of sense,
+ Beyond occasions and events,
+ I know, through God's exceeding grace,
+ Release from form and time and place.
+
+ "I listen, from no mortal tongue,
+ To hear the song the angels sung;
+ And wait within myself to know
+ The Christmas lilies bud and blow.
+
+ "The outward symbols disappear
+ From him whose inward sight is clear;
+ And small must be the choice of clays
+ To him who fills them all with praise!
+
+ "Keep while you need it, brothers mine,
+ With honest zeal your Christmas sign,
+ But judge not him who every morn
+ Feels in his heart the Lord Christ born!"
+
+ 1882.
+
+
+
+
+AT LAST.
+
+ When on my day of life the night is falling,
+ And, in the winds from unsunned spaces blown,
+ I hear far voices out of darkness calling
+ My feet to paths unknown,
+
+ Thou who hast made my home of life so pleasant,
+ Leave not its tenant when its walls decay;
+ O Love Divine, O Helper ever present,
+ Be Thou my strength and stay!
+
+ Be near me when all else is from me drifting
+ Earth, sky, home's pictures, days of shade and shine,
+ And kindly faces to my own uplifting
+ The love which answers mine.
+
+ I have but Thee, my Father! let Thy spirit
+ Be with me then to comfort and uphold;
+ No gate of pearl, no branch of palm I merit,
+ Nor street of shining gold.
+
+ Suffice it if--my good and ill unreckoned,
+ And both forgiven through Thy abounding grace--
+ I find myself by hands familiar beckoned
+ Unto my fitting place.
+
+ Some humble door among Thy many mansions,
+ Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease,
+ And flows forever through heaven's green expansions
+ The river of Thy peace.
+
+ There, from the music round about me stealing,
+ I fain would learn the new and holy song,
+ And find at last, beneath Thy trees of healing,
+ The life for which I long.
+
+ 1882
+
+
+
+
+WHAT THE TRAVELLER SAID AT SUNSET.
+
+ The shadows grow and deepen round me,
+ I feel the deffall in the air;
+ The muezzin of the darkening thicket,
+ I hear the night-thrush call to prayer.
+
+ The evening wind is sad with farewells,
+ And loving hands unclasp from mine;
+ Alone I go to meet the darkness
+ Across an awful boundary-line.
+
+ As from the lighted hearths behind me
+ I pass with slow, reluctant feet,
+ What waits me in the land of strangeness?
+ What face shall smile, what voice shall greet?
+
+ What space shall awe, what brightness blind me?
+ What thunder-roll of music stun?
+ What vast processions sweep before me
+ Of shapes unknown beneath the sun?
+
+ I shrink from unaccustomed glory,
+ I dread the myriad-voiced strain;
+ Give me the unforgotten faces,
+ And let my lost ones speak again.
+
+ He will not chide my mortal yearning
+ Who is our Brother and our Friend;
+ In whose full life, divine and human,
+ The heavenly and the earthly blend.
+
+ Mine be the joy of soul-communion,
+ The sense of spiritual strength renewed,
+ The reverence for the pure and holy,
+ The dear delight of doing good.
+
+ No fitting ear is mine to listen
+ An endless anthem's rise and fall;
+ No curious eye is mine to measure
+ The pearl gate and the jasper wall.
+
+ For love must needs be more than knowledge:
+ What matter if I never know
+ Why Aldebaran's star is ruddy,
+ Or warmer Sirius white as snow!
+
+ Forgive my human words, O Father!
+ I go Thy larger truth to prove;
+ Thy mercy shall transcend my longing
+ I seek but love, and Thou art Love!
+
+ I go to find my lost and mourned for
+ Safe in Thy sheltering goodness still,
+ And all that hope and faith foreshadow
+ Made perfect in Thy holy will!
+
+ 1883.
+
+
+
+
+THE "STORY OF IDA."
+
+Francesca Alexander, whose pen and pencil have so reverently transcribed
+the simple faith and life of the Italian peasantry, wrote the narrative
+published with John Ruskin's introduction under the title, _The Story of
+Ida_.
+
+
+ Weary of jangling noises never stilled,
+ The skeptic's sneer, the bigot's hate, the din
+ Of clashing texts, the webs of creed men spin
+ Round simple truth, the children grown who build
+ With gilded cards their new Jerusalem,
+ Busy, with sacerdotal tailorings
+ And tinsel gauds, bedizening holy things,
+ I turn, with glad and grateful heart, from them
+ To the sweet story of the Florentine
+ Immortal in her blameless maidenhood,
+ Beautiful as God's angels and as good;
+ Feeling that life, even now, may be divine
+ With love no wrong can ever change to hate,
+ No sin make less than all-compassionate!
+
+ 1884.
+
+
+
+
+THE LIGHT THAT IS FELT.
+
+ A tender child of summers three,
+ Seeking her little bed at night,
+ Paused on the dark stair timidly.
+ "Oh, mother! Take my hand," said she,
+ "And then the dark will all be light."
+
+ We older children grope our way
+ From dark behind to dark before;
+ And only when our hands we lay,
+ Dear Lord, in Thine, the night is day,
+ And there is darkness nevermore.
+
+ Reach downward to the sunless days
+ Wherein our guides are blind as we,
+ And faith is small and hope delays;
+ Take Thou the hands of prayer we raise,
+ And let us feel the light of Thee!
+
+ 1884.
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO LOVES
+
+ Smoothing soft the nestling head
+ Of a maiden fancy-led,
+ Thus a grave-eyed woman said:
+
+ "Richest gifts are those we make,
+ Dearer than the love we take
+ That we give for love's own sake.
+
+ "Well I know the heart's unrest;
+ Mine has been the common quest,
+ To be loved and therefore blest.
+
+ "Favors undeserved were mine;
+ At my feet as on a shrine
+ Love has laid its gifts divine.
+
+ "Sweet the offerings seemed, and yet
+ With their sweetness came regret,
+ And a sense of unpaid debt.
+
+ "Heart of mine unsatisfied,
+ Was it vanity or pride
+ That a deeper joy denied?
+
+ "Hands that ope but to receive
+ Empty close; they only live
+ Richly who can richly give.
+
+ "Still," she sighed, with moistening eyes,
+ "Love is sweet in any guise;
+ But its best is sacrifice!
+
+ "He who, giving, does not crave
+ Likest is to Him who gave
+ Life itself the loved to save.
+
+ "Love, that self-forgetful gives,
+ Sows surprise of ripened sheaves,
+ Late or soon its own receives."
+
+ 1884.
+
+
+
+
+ADJUSTMENT.
+
+ The tree of Faith its bare, dry boughs must shed
+ That nearer heaven the living ones may climb;
+ The false must fail, though from our shores of time
+ The old lament be heard, "Great Pan is dead!"
+ That wail is Error's, from his high place hurled;
+ This sharp recoil is Evil undertrod;
+ Our time's unrest, an angel sent of God
+ Troubling with life the waters of the world.
+ Even as they list the winds of the Spirit blow
+ To turn or break our century-rusted vanes;
+ Sands shift and waste; the rock alone remains
+ Where, led of Heaven, the strong tides come and go,
+ And storm-clouds, rent by thunderbolt and wind,
+ Leave, free of mist, the permanent stars behind.
+
+ Therefore I trust, although to outward sense
+ Both true and false seem shaken; I will hold
+ With newer light my reverence for the old,
+ And calmly wait the births of Providence.
+ No gain is lost; the clear-eyed saints look down
+ Untroubled on the wreck of schemes and creeds;
+ Love yet remains, its rosary of good deeds
+ Counting in task-field and o'erpeopled town;
+ Truth has charmed life; the Inward Word survives,
+ And, day by day, its revelation brings;
+ Faith, hope, and charity, whatsoever things
+ Which cannot be shaken, stand. Still holy lives
+ Reveal the Christ of whom the letter told,
+ And the new gospel verifies the old.
+
+ 1885.
+
+
+
+
+HYMNS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ.
+
+I have attempted this paraphrase of the Hymns of the Brahmo Somaj of
+India, as I find them in Mozoomdar's account of the devotional exercises
+of that remarkable religious development which has attracted far less
+attention and sympathy from the Christian world than it deserves, as a
+fresh revelation of the direct action of the Divine Spirit upon the
+human heart.
+
+
+ I.
+ The mercy, O Eternal One!
+ By man unmeasured yet,
+ In joy or grief, in shade or sun,
+ I never will forget.
+ I give the whole, and not a part,
+ Of all Thou gayest me;
+ My goods, my life, my soul and heart,
+ I yield them all to Thee!
+
+ II.
+ We fast and plead, we weep and pray,
+ From morning until even;
+ We feel to find the holy way,
+ We knock at the gate of heaven
+ And when in silent awe we wait,
+ And word and sign forbear,
+ The hinges of the golden gate
+ Move, soundless, to our prayer!
+ Who hears the eternal harmonies
+ Can heed no outward word;
+ Blind to all else is he who sees
+ The vision of the Lord!
+
+ III.
+ O soul, be patient, restrain thy tears,
+ Have hope, and not despair;
+ As a tender mother heareth her child
+ God hears the penitent prayer.
+ And not forever shall grief be thine;
+ On the Heavenly Mother's breast,
+ Washed clean and white in the waters of joy
+ Shall His seeking child find rest.
+ Console thyself with His word of grace,
+ And cease thy wail of woe,
+ For His mercy never an equal hath,
+ And His love no bounds can know.
+ Lean close unto Him in faith and hope;
+ How many like thee have found
+ In Him a shelter and home of peace,
+ By His mercy compassed round!
+ There, safe from sin and the sorrow it brings,
+ They sing their grateful psalms,
+ And rest, at noon, by the wells of God,
+ In the shade of His holy palms!
+
+ 1885.
+
+
+
+
+REVELATION.
+
+"And I went into the Vale of Beavor, and as I went I preached repentance
+to the people. And one morning, sitting by the fire, a great cloud came
+over me, and a temptation beset me. And it was said: All things come by
+Nature; and the Elements and the Stars came over me. And as I sat still
+and let it alone, a living hope arose in me, and a true Voice which
+said: There is a living God who made all things. And immediately the
+cloud and the temptation vanished, and Life rose over all, and my heart
+was glad and I praised the Living God."--Journal of George Fox, 1690.
+
+
+ Still, as of old, in Beavor's Vale,
+ O man of God! our hope and faith
+ The Elements and Stars assail,
+ And the awed spirit holds its breath,
+ Blown over by a wind of death.
+
+ Takes Nature thought for such as we,
+ What place her human atom fills,
+ The weed-drift of her careless sea,
+ The mist on her unheeding hills?
+ What reeks she of our helpless wills?
+
+ Strange god of Force, with fear, not love,
+ Its trembling worshipper! Can prayer
+ Reach the shut ear of Fate, or move
+ Unpitying Energy to spare?
+ What doth the cosmic Vastness care?
+
+ In vain to this dread Unconcern
+ For the All-Father's love we look;
+ In vain, in quest of it, we turn
+ The storied leaves of Nature's book,
+ The prints her rocky tablets took.
+
+ I pray for faith, I long to trust;
+ I listen with my heart, and hear
+ A Voice without a sound: "Be just,
+ Be true, be merciful, revere
+ The Word within thee: God is near!
+
+ "A light to sky and earth unknown
+ Pales all their lights: a mightier force
+ Than theirs the powers of Nature own,
+ And, to its goal as at its source,
+ His Spirit moves the Universe.
+
+ "Believe and trust. Through stars and suns,
+ Through life and death, through soul and sense,
+ His wise, paternal purpose runs;
+ The darkness of His providence
+ Is star-lit with benign intents."
+
+ O joy supreme! I know the Voice,
+ Like none beside on earth or sea;
+ Yea, more, O soul of mine, rejoice,
+ By all that He requires of me,
+ I know what God himself must be.
+
+ No picture to my aid I call,
+ I shape no image in my prayer;
+ I only know in Him is all
+ Of life, light, beauty, everywhere,
+ Eternal Goodness here and there!
+
+ I know He is, and what He is,
+ Whose one great purpose is the good
+ Of all. I rest my soul on His
+ Immortal Love and Fatherhood;
+ And trust Him, as His children should.
+
+ I fear no more. The clouded face
+ Of Nature smiles; through all her things
+ Of time and space and sense I trace
+ The moving of the Spirit's wings,
+ And hear the song of hope she sings.
+
+ 1886
+
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME III. ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS and SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM
+
+
+ CONTENTS:
+
+
+ ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS:
+
+ TO WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON
+ TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE
+ THE SLAVE-SHIPS
+ EXPOSTULATION
+ HYMN: "THOU, WHOSE PRESENCE WENT BEFORE"
+ THE YANKEE GIRL
+ THE HUNTERS OF MEN
+ STANZAS FOR THE TIMES
+ CLERICAL OPPRESSORS
+ A SUMMONS
+ TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS
+ THE MORAL WARFARE
+ RITNER
+ THE PASTORAL LETTER
+ HYMN: "O HOLY FATHER! JUST AND TRUE"
+ THE FAREWELL OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER
+ PENNSYLVANIA HALL
+ THE NEW YEAR
+ THE RELIC
+ THE WORLD'S CONVENTION
+ MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA
+ THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE
+ THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN
+ TEXAS
+ VOICE OF NEW ENGLAND
+ TO FANEUIL HALL
+ TO MASSACHUSETTS
+ NEW HAMPSHIRE
+ THE PINE-TREE
+ TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN
+ AT WASHINGTON
+ THE BRANDED HAND
+ THE FREED ISLANDS
+ A LETTER
+ LINES FROM A LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERICAL FRIEND
+ DANIEL NEALL
+ SONG OF SLAVES IN THE DESERT
+ To DELAWARE
+ YORKTOWN
+ RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE
+ THE LOST STATESMAN
+ THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE
+ THE CURSE OF THE CHARTER-BREAKERS
+ PAEAN
+ THE CRISIS
+ LINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER
+ DERNE
+ A SABBATH SCENE
+ IN THE EVIL DAY
+ MOLOCH IN STATE STREET
+ OFFICIAL PIETY
+ THE RENDITION
+ ARISEN AT LAST
+ THE HASCHISH
+ FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE
+ THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS
+ LETTER FROM A MISSIONARY OF THE METHODIST
+ EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH, IN KANSAS, TO A
+ DISTINGUISHED POLITICIAN
+ BURIAL OF BARBER
+ TO PENNSYLVANIA
+ LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.
+ THE PASS OF THE SIERRA
+ A SONG FOR THE TIME
+ WHAT OF THE DAY?
+ A SONG, INSCRIBED TO THE FREMONT CLUBS
+ THE PANORAMA
+ ON A PRAYER-BOOK
+ THE SUMMONS
+ TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD
+ IN WAR TIME.
+ TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL AND HARRIET W. SEWALL
+ THY WILL BE DONE
+ A WORD FOR THE HOUR
+ "EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT"
+ TO JOHN C. FREMONT
+ THE WATCHERS
+ TO ENGLISHMEN
+ MITHRIDATES AT CHIOS
+ AT PORT ROYAL
+ ASTRAEA AT THE CAPITOL
+ THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862
+ OF ST. HELENA'S ISLAND, S. C.
+ THE PROCLAMATION
+ ANNIVERSARY POEM
+ BARBARA FRIETCHIE
+ HAT THE BIRDS SAID
+ THE MANTLE OF ST. JOHN DE MATRA
+ LADS DEO!
+ HYMN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF EMANCIPATION
+ AT NEWBURYPORT
+
+ AFTER THE WAR.
+ THE PEACE AUTUMN
+ TO THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS
+ THE HIVE AT GETTYSBURG
+ HOWARD AT ATLANTA
+ THE EMANCIPATION GROUP
+ THE JUBILEE SINGERS
+ GARRISON
+
+
+
+ SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM:
+
+ THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN TIME
+ DEMOCRACY
+ THE GALLOWS
+ SEED-TIME AND HARVEST
+ TO THE REFORMERS OF ENGLAND
+ THE HUMAN SACRIFICE
+ SONGS OF LABOR
+ DEDICATION
+ THE SHOEMAKERS
+ THE FISHERMEN
+ THE LUMBERMEN
+ THE SHIP-BUILDERS
+ THE DROVERS
+ THE HUSKERS
+ THE REFORMER
+ THE PEACE CONVENTION AT BRUSSELS
+ THE PRISONER FOR DEBT
+ THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS
+ THE MEN OF OLD
+ TO PIUS IX.
+ CALEF IN BOSTON
+ OUR STATE
+ THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES
+ THE PEACE OF EUROPE
+ ASTRAEA
+ THE DISENTHRALLED
+ THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY
+ THE DREAM OF PIO NONO
+ THE VOICES
+ THE NEW EXODUS
+ THE CONQUEST OF FINLAND
+ THE EVE OF ELECTION
+ FROM PERUGIA
+ ITALY
+ FREEDOM IN BRAZIL
+ AFTER ELECTION
+ DISARMAMENT
+ THE PROBLEM
+ OUR COUNTRY
+ ON THE BIG HORN
+
+ NOTES
+
+
+
+
+ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS
+
+
+
+
+TO WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON
+
+ CHAMPION of those who groan beneath
+ Oppression's iron hand
+ In view of penury, hate, and death,
+ I see thee fearless stand.
+ Still bearing up thy lofty brow,
+ In the steadfast strength of truth,
+ In manhood sealing well the vow
+ And promise of thy youth.
+
+ Go on, for thou hast chosen well;
+ On in the strength of God!
+ Long as one human heart shall swell
+ Beneath the tyrant's rod.
+ Speak in a slumbering nation's ear,
+ As thou hast ever spoken,
+ Until the dead in sin shall hear,
+ The fetter's link be broken!
+
+ I love thee with a brother's love,
+ I feel my pulses thrill,
+ To mark thy spirit soar above
+ The cloud of human ill.
+ My heart hath leaped to answer thine,
+ And echo back thy words,
+ As leaps the warrior's at the shine
+ And flash of kindred swords!
+
+ They tell me thou art rash and vain,
+ A searcher after fame;
+ That thou art striving but to gain
+ A long-enduring name;
+ That thou hast nerved the Afric's hand
+ And steeled the Afric's heart,
+ To shake aloft his vengeful brand,
+ And rend his chain apart.
+
+ Have I not known thee well, and read
+ Thy mighty purpose long?
+ And watched the trials which have made
+ Thy human spirit strong?
+ And shall the slanderer's demon breath
+ Avail with one like me,
+ To dim the sunshine of my faith
+ And earnest trust in thee?
+
+ Go on, the dagger's point may glare
+ Amid thy pathway's gloom;
+ The fate which sternly threatens there
+ Is glorious martyrdom
+ Then onward with a martyr's zeal;
+ And wait thy sure reward
+ When man to man no more shall kneel,
+ And God alone be Lord!
+
+ 1832.
+
+
+
+
+TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.
+
+Toussaint L'Ouverture, the black chieftain of Hayti, was a slave on the
+plantation "de Libertas," belonging to M. Bayou. When the rising of the
+negroes took place, in 1791, Toussaint refused to join them until he had
+aided M. Bayou and his family to escape to Baltimore. The white man had
+discovered in Toussaint many noble qualities, and had instructed him in
+some of the first branches of education; and the preservation of his
+life was owing to the negro's gratitude for this kindness. In 1797,
+Toussaint L'Ouverture was appointed, by the French government,
+General-in-Chief of the armies of St. Domingo, and, as such, signed the
+Convention with General Maitland for the evacuation of the island by the
+British. From this period, until 1801, the island, under the government
+of Toussaint, was happy, tranquil, and prosperous. The miserable
+attempt of Napoleon to re-establish slavery in St. Domingo, although it
+failed of its intended object, proved fatal to the negro chieftain.
+Treacherously seized by Leclerc, he was hurried on board a vessel by
+night, and conveyed to France, where he was confined in a cold
+subterranean dungeon, at Besancon, where, in April, 1803, he died. The
+treatment of Toussaint finds a parallel only in the murder of the Duke
+D'Enghien. It was the remark of Godwin, in his Lectures, that the West
+India Islands, since their first discovery by Columbus, could not boast
+of a single name which deserves comparison with that of Toussaint
+L'Ouverture.
+
+ 'T WAS night. The tranquil moonlight smile
+ With which Heaven dreams of Earth, shed down
+ Its beauty on the Indian isle,--
+ On broad green field and white-walled town;
+ And inland waste of rock and wood,
+ In searching sunshine, wild and rude,
+ Rose, mellowed through the silver gleam,
+ Soft as the landscape of a dream.
+ All motionless and dewy wet,
+ Tree, vine, and flower in shadow met
+ The myrtle with its snowy bloom,
+ Crossing the nightshade's solemn gloom,--
+ The white cecropia's silver rind
+ Relieved by deeper green behind,
+ The orange with its fruit of gold,
+ The lithe paullinia's verdant fold,
+ The passion-flower, with symbol holy,
+ Twining its tendrils long and lowly,
+ The rhexias dark, and cassia tall,
+ And proudly rising over all,
+ The kingly palm's imperial stem,
+ Crowned with its leafy diadem,
+ Star-like, beneath whose sombre shade,
+ The fiery-winged cucullo played!
+
+ How lovely was thine aspect, then,
+ Fair island of the Western Sea
+ Lavish of beauty, even when
+ Thy brutes were happier than thy men,
+ For they, at least, were free!
+ Regardless of thy glorious clime,
+ Unmindful of thy soil of flowers,
+ The toiling negro sighed, that Time
+ No faster sped his hours.
+ For, by the dewy moonlight still,
+ He fed the weary-turning mill,
+ Or bent him in the chill morass,
+ To pluck the long and tangled grass,
+ And hear above his scar-worn back
+ The heavy slave-whip's frequent crack
+ While in his heart one evil thought
+ In solitary madness wrought,
+ One baleful fire surviving still
+ The quenching of the immortal mind,
+ One sterner passion of his kind,
+ Which even fetters could not kill,
+ The savage hope, to deal, erelong,
+ A vengeance bitterer than his wrong!
+
+ Hark to that cry! long, loud, and shrill,
+ From field and forest, rock and hill,
+ Thrilling and horrible it rang,
+ Around, beneath, above;
+ The wild beast from his cavern sprang,
+ The wild bird from her grove!
+ Nor fear, nor joy, nor agony
+ Were mingled in that midnight cry;
+ But like the lion's growl of wrath,
+ When falls that hunter in his path
+ Whose barbed arrow, deeply set,
+ Is rankling in his bosom yet,
+ It told of hate, full, deep, and strong,
+ Of vengeance kindling out of wrong;
+ It was as if the crimes of years--
+ The unrequited toil, the tears,
+ The shame and hate, which liken well
+ Earth's garden to the nether hell--
+ Had found in nature's self a tongue,
+ On which the gathered horror hung;
+ As if from cliff, and stream, and glen
+ Burst on the' startled ears of men
+ That voice which rises unto God,
+ Solemn and stern,--the cry of blood!
+ It ceased, and all was still once more,
+ Save ocean chafing on his shore,
+ The sighing of the wind between
+ The broad banana's leaves of green,
+ Or bough by restless plumage shook,
+ Or murmuring voice of mountain brook.
+ Brief was the silence. Once again
+ Pealed to the skies that frantic yell,
+ Glowed on the heavens a fiery stain,
+ And flashes rose and fell;
+ And painted on the blood-red sky,
+ Dark, naked arms were tossed on high;
+ And, round the white man's lordly hall,
+ Trod, fierce and free, the brute he made;
+ And those who crept along the wall,
+ And answered to his lightest call
+ With more than spaniel dread,
+ The creatures of his lawless beck,
+ Were trampling on his very neck
+ And on the night-air, wild and clear,
+ Rose woman's shriek of more than fear;
+ For bloodied arms were round her thrown,
+ And dark cheeks pressed against her own!
+ Where then was he whose fiery zeal
+ Had taught the trampled heart to feel,
+ Until despair itself grew strong,
+ And vengeance fed its torch from wrong?
+ Now, when the thunderbolt is speeding;
+ Now, when oppression's heart is bleeding;
+ Now, when the latent curse of Time
+ Is raining down in fire and blood,
+ That curse which, through long years of crime,
+ Has gathered, drop by drop, its flood,--
+ Why strikes he not, the foremost one,
+ Where murder's sternest deeds are done?
+
+ He stood the aged palms beneath,
+ That shadowed o'er his humble door,
+ Listening, with half-suspended breath,
+ To the wild sounds of fear and death,
+ Toussaint L'Ouverture!
+ What marvel that his heart beat high!
+ The blow for freedom had been given,
+ And blood had answered to the cry
+ Which Earth sent up to Heaven!
+ What marvel that a fierce delight
+ Smiled grimly o'er his brow of night,
+ As groan and shout and bursting flame
+ Told where the midnight tempest came,
+ With blood and fire along its van,
+ And death behind! he was a Man!
+
+ Yes, dark-souled chieftain! if the light
+ Of mild Religion's heavenly ray
+ Unveiled not to thy mental sight
+ The lowlier and the purer way,
+ In which the Holy Sufferer trod,
+ Meekly amidst the sons of crime;
+ That calm reliance upon God
+ For justice in His own good time;
+ That gentleness to which belongs
+ Forgiveness for its many wrongs,
+ Even as the primal martyr, kneeling
+ For mercy on the evil-dealing;
+ Let not the favored white man name
+ Thy stern appeal, with words of blame.
+ Then, injured Afric! for the shame
+ Of thy own daughters, vengeance came
+ Full on the scornful hearts of those,
+ Who mocked thee in thy nameless woes,
+ And to thy hapless children gave
+ One choice,--pollution or the grave!
+
+ Has he not, with the light of heaven
+ Broadly around him, made the same?
+ Yea, on his thousand war-fields striven,
+ And gloried in his ghastly shame?
+ Kneeling amidst his brother's blood,
+ To offer mockery unto God,
+ As if the High and Holy One
+ Could smile on deeds of murder done!
+ As if a human sacrifice
+ Were purer in His holy eyes,
+ Though offered up by Christian hands,
+ Than the foul rites of Pagan lands!
+
+ . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+ Sternly, amidst his household band,
+ His carbine grasped within his hand,
+ The white man stood, prepared and still,
+ Waiting the shock of maddened men,
+ Unchained, and fierce as tigers, when
+ The horn winds through their caverned hill.
+ And one was weeping in his sight,
+ The sweetest flower of all the isle,
+ The bride who seemed but yesternight
+ Love's fair embodied smile.
+ And, clinging to her trembling knee,
+ Looked up the form of infancy,
+ With tearful glance in either face
+ The secret of its fear to trace.
+
+ "Ha! stand or die!" The white man's eye
+ His steady musket gleamed along,
+ As a tall Negro hastened nigh,
+ With fearless step and strong.
+ "What, ho, Toussaint!" A moment more,
+ His shadow crossed the lighted floor.
+ "Away!" he shouted; "fly with me,
+ The white man's bark is on the sea;
+ Her sails must catch the seaward wind,
+ For sudden vengeance sweeps behind.
+ Our brethren from their graves have spoken,
+ The yoke is spurned, the chain is broken;
+ On all the bills our fires are glowing,
+ Through all the vales red blood is flowing
+ No more the mocking White shall rest
+ His foot upon the Negro's breast;
+ No more, at morn or eve, shall drip
+ The warm blood from the driver's whip
+ Yet, though Toussaint has vengeance sworn
+ For all the wrongs his race have borne,
+ Though for each drop of Negro blood
+ The white man's veins shall pour a flood;
+ Not all alone the sense of ill
+ Around his heart is lingering still,
+ Nor deeper can the white man feel
+ The generous warmth of grateful zeal.
+ Friends of the Negro! fly with me,
+ The path is open to the sea:
+ Away, for life!" He spoke, and pressed
+ The young child to his manly breast,
+ As, headlong, through the cracking cane,
+ Down swept the dark insurgent train,
+ Drunken and grim, with shout and yell
+ Howled through the dark, like sounds from hell.
+
+ Far out, in peace, the white man's sail
+ Swayed free before the sunrise gale.
+ Cloud-like that island hung afar,
+ Along the bright horizon's verge,
+ O'er which the curse of servile war
+ Rolled its red torrent, surge on surge;
+ And he, the Negro champion, where
+ In the fierce tumult struggled he?
+ Go trace him by the fiery glare
+ Of dwellings in the midnight air,
+ The yells of triumph and despair,
+ The streams that crimson to the sea!
+
+ Sleep calmly in thy dungeon-tomb,
+ Beneath Besancon's alien sky,
+ Dark Haytien! for the time shall come,
+ Yea, even now is nigh,
+ When, everywhere, thy name shall be
+ Redeemed from color's infamy;
+ And men shall learn to speak of thee
+ As one of earth's great spirits, born
+ In servitude, and nursed in scorn,
+ Casting aside the weary weight
+ And fetters of its low estate,
+ In that strong majesty of soul
+ Which knows no color, tongue, or clime,
+ Which still hath spurned the base control
+ Of tyrants through all time!
+ Far other hands than mine may wreathe
+ The laurel round thy brow of death,
+ And speak thy praise, as one whose word
+ A thousand fiery spirits stirred,
+ Who crushed his foeman as a worm,
+ Whose step on human hearts fell firm:
+
+ Be mine the better task to find
+ A tribute for thy lofty mind,
+ Amidst whose gloomy vengeance shone
+ Some milder virtues all thine own,
+ Some gleams of feeling pure and warm,
+ Like sunshine on a sky of storm,
+ Proofs that the Negro's heart retains
+ Some nobleness amid its chains,--
+ That kindness to the wronged is never
+ Without its excellent reward,
+ Holy to human-kind and ever
+ Acceptable to God.
+
+ 1833.
+
+
+
+
+THE SLAVE-SHIPS.
+
+ "That fatal, that perfidious bark,
+ Built I' the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark."
+ MILTON'S Lycidas.
+
+"The French ship Le Rodeur, with a crew of twenty-two men, and with one
+hundred and sixty negro slaves, sailed from Bonny, in Africa, April,
+1819. On approaching the line, a terrible malady broke out,--an
+obstinate disease of the eyes,--contagious, and altogether beyond the
+resources of medicine. It was aggravated by the scarcity of water among
+the slaves (only half a wine-glass per day being allowed to an
+individual), and by the extreme impurity of the air in which they
+breathed. By the advice of the physician, they were brought upon deck
+occasionally; but some of the poor wretches, locking themselves in each
+other's arms, leaped overboard, in the hope, which so universally
+prevails among them, of being swiftly transported to their own homes in
+Africa. To check this, the captain ordered several who were stopped in
+the attempt to be shot, or hanged, before their companions. The disease
+extended to the crew; and one after another were smitten with it, until
+only one remained unaffected. Yet even this dreadful condition did not
+preclude calculation: to save the expense of supporting slaves rendered
+unsalable, and to obtain grounds for a claim against the underwriters,
+thirty-six of the negroes, having become blind, were thrown into the sea
+and drowned!" Speech of M. Benjamin Constant, in the French Chamber of
+Deputies, June 17, 1820.
+
+In the midst of their dreadful fears lest the solitary individual, whose
+sight remained unaffected, should also be seized with the malady, a sail
+was discovered. It was the Spanish slaver, Leon. The same disease had
+been there; and, horrible to tell, all the crew had become blind! Unable
+to assist each other, the vessels parted. The Spanish ship has never
+since been heard of. The Rodeur reached Guadaloupe on the 21st of June;
+the only man who had escaped the disease, and had thus been enabled to
+steer the slaver into port, caught it in three days after its arrival.--
+Bibliotheque Ophthalmologique for November, 1819.
+
+ "ALL ready?" cried the captain;
+ "Ay, ay!" the seamen said;
+ "Heave up the worthless lubbers,--
+ The dying and the dead."
+ Up from the slave-ship's prison
+ Fierce, bearded heads were thrust:
+ "Now let the sharks look to it,--
+ Toss up the dead ones first!"
+
+ Corpse after corpse came up,
+ Death had been busy there;
+ Where every blow is mercy,
+ Why should the spoiler spare?
+ Corpse after corpse they cast
+ Sullenly from the ship,
+ Yet bloody with the traces
+ Of fetter-link and whip.
+
+ Gloomily stood the captain,
+ With his arms upon his breast,
+ With his cold brow sternly knotted,
+ And his iron lip compressed.
+
+ "Are all the dead dogs over?"
+ Growled through that matted lip;
+ "The blind ones are no better,
+ Let's lighten the good ship."
+
+ Hark! from the ship's dark bosom,
+ The very sounds of hell!
+ The ringing clank of iron,
+ The maniac's short, sharp yell!
+ The hoarse, low curse, throat-stifled;
+ The starving infant's moan,
+ The horror of a breaking heart
+ Poured through a mother's groan.
+
+ Up from that loathsome prison
+ The stricken blind ones cane
+ Below, had all been darkness,
+ Above, was still the same.
+ Yet the holy breath of heaven
+ Was sweetly breathing there,
+ And the heated brow of fever
+ Cooled in the soft sea air.
+
+ "Overboard with them, shipmates!"
+ Cutlass and dirk were plied;
+ Fettered and blind, one after one,
+ Plunged down the vessel's side.
+ The sabre smote above,
+ Beneath, the lean shark lay,
+ Waiting with wide and bloody jaw
+ His quick and human prey.
+
+ God of the earth! what cries
+ Rang upward unto thee?
+ Voices of agony and blood,
+ From ship-deck and from sea.
+ The last dull plunge was heard,
+ The last wave caught its stain,
+ And the unsated shark looked up
+ For human hearts in vain.
+
+ . . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+ Red glowed the western waters,
+ The setting sun was there,
+ Scattering alike on wave and cloud
+ His fiery mesh of hair.
+ Amidst a group in blindness,
+ A solitary eye
+ Gazed, from the burdened slaver's deck,
+ Into that burning sky.
+
+ "A storm," spoke out the gazer,
+ "Is gathering and at hand;
+ Curse on 't, I'd give my other eye
+ For one firm rood of land."
+ And then he laughed, but only
+ His echoed laugh replied,
+ For the blinded and the suffering
+ Alone were at his side.
+
+ Night settled on the waters,
+ And on a stormy heaven,
+ While fiercely on that lone ship's track
+ The thunder-gust was driven.
+ "A sail!--thank God, a sail!"
+ And as the helmsman spoke,
+ Up through the stormy murmur
+ A shout of gladness broke.
+
+
+ Down came the stranger vessel,
+ Unheeding on her way,
+ So near that on the slaver's deck
+ Fell off her driven spray.
+ "Ho! for the love of mercy,
+ We're perishing and blind!"
+ A wail of utter agony
+ Came back upon the wind.
+
+ "Help us! for we are stricken
+ With blindness every one;
+ Ten days we've floated fearfully,
+ Unnoting star or sun.
+ Our ship 's the slaver Leon,--
+ We've but a score on board;
+ Our slaves are all gone over,--
+ Help, for the love of God!"
+
+ On livid brows of agony
+ The broad red lightning shone;
+ But the roar of wind and thunder
+ Stifled the answering groan;
+ Wailed from the broken waters
+ A last despairing cry,
+ As, kindling in the stormy' light,
+ The stranger ship went by.
+
+ . . . . . . . . .
+
+ In the sunny Guadaloupe
+ A dark-hulled vessel lay,
+ With a crew who noted never
+ The nightfall or the day.
+ The blossom of the orange
+ Was white by every stream,
+ And tropic leaf, and flower, and bird
+ Were in the warns sunbeam.
+
+ And the sky was bright as ever,
+ And the moonlight slept as well,
+ On the palm-trees by the hillside,
+ And the streamlet of the dell:
+ And the glances of the Creole
+ Were still as archly deep,
+ And her smiles as full as ever
+ Of passion and of sleep.
+
+ But vain were bird and blossom,
+ The green earth and the sky,
+ And the smile of human faces,
+ To the slaver's darkened eye;
+ At the breaking of the morning,
+ At the star-lit evening time,
+ O'er a world of light and beauty
+ Fell the blackness of his crime.
+
+ 1834.
+
+
+
+
+EXPOSTULATION.
+
+Dr. Charles Follen, a German patriot, who had come to America for the
+freedom which was denied him in his native land, allied himself with the
+abolitionists, and at a convention of delegates from all the anti-
+slavery organizations in New England, held at Boston in May, 1834, was
+chairman of a committee to prepare an address to the people of New
+England. Toward the close of the address occurred the passage which
+suggested these lines. "The despotism which our fathers could not bear
+in their native country is expiring, and the sword of justice in her
+reformed hands has applied its exterminating edge to slavery. Shall the
+United States--the free United States, which could not bear the bonds of
+a king--cradle the bondage which a king is abolishing? Shall a Republic
+be less free than a Monarchy? Shall we, in the vigor and buoyancy of our
+manhood, be less energetic in righteousness than a kingdom in its age?"
+--Dr. Follen's Address.
+
+"Genius of America!--Spirit of our free institutions!--where art thou?
+How art thou fallen, O Lucifer! son of the morning,--how art thou fallen
+from Heaven! Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy
+coming! The kings of the earth cry out to thee, Aha! Aha! Art thou
+become like unto us?"--Speech of Samuel J. May.
+
+ OUR fellow-countrymen in chains!
+ Slaves, in a land of light and law!
+ Slaves, crouching on the very plains
+ Where rolled the storm of Freedom's war!
+ A groan from Eutaw's haunted wood,
+ A. wail where Camden's martyrs fell,
+ By every shrine of patriot blood,
+ From Moultrie's wall and Jasper's well!
+
+ By storied hill and hallowed grot,
+ By mossy wood and marshy glen,
+ Whence rang of old the rifle-shot,
+ And hurrying shout of Marion's men!
+ The groan of breaking hearts is there,
+ The falling lash, the fetter's clank!
+ Slaves, slaves are breathing in that air
+ Which old De Kalb and Sumter drank!
+
+ What, ho! our countrymen in chains!
+ The whip on woman's shrinking flesh!
+ Our soil yet reddening with the stains
+ Caught from her scourging, warm and fresh!
+ What! mothers from their children riven!
+ What! God's own image bought and sold!
+ Americans to market driven,
+ And bartered as the brute for gold!
+
+ Speak! shall their agony of prayer
+ Come thrilling to our hearts in vain?
+ To us whose fathers scorned to bear
+ The paltry menace of a chain;
+ To us, whose boast is loud and long
+ Of holy Liberty and Light;
+ Say, shall these writhing slaves of Wrong
+ Plead vainly for their plundered Right?
+
+ What! shall we send, with lavish breath,
+ Our sympathies across the wave,
+ Where Manhood, on the field of death,
+ Strikes for his freedom or a grave?
+ Shall prayers go up, and hymns be sung
+ For Greece, the Moslem fetter spurning,
+ And millions hail with pen and tongue
+ Our light on all her altars burning?
+
+ Shall Belgium feel, and gallant France,
+ By Vendome's pile and Schoenbrun's wall,
+ And Poland, gasping on her lance,
+ The impulse of our cheering call?
+ And shall the slave, beneath our eye,
+ Clank o'er our fields his hateful chain?
+ And toss his fettered arms on high,
+ And groan for Freedom's gift, in vain?
+
+ Oh, say, shall Prussia's banner be
+ A refuge for the stricken slave?
+ And shall the Russian serf go free
+ By Baikal's lake and Neva's wave?
+ And shall the wintry-bosomed Dane
+ Relax the iron hand of pride,
+ And bid his bondmen cast the chain
+ From fettered soul and limb aside?
+
+ Shall every flap of England's flag
+ Proclaim that all around are free,
+ From farthest Ind to each blue crag
+ That beetles o'er the Western Sea?
+ And shall we scoff at Europe's kings,
+ When Freedom's fire is dim with us,
+ And round our country's altar clings
+ The damning shade of Slavery's curse?
+
+ Go, let us ask of Constantine
+ To loose his grasp on Poland's throat;
+ And beg the lord of Mahmoud's line
+ To spare the struggling Suliote;
+ Will not the scorching answer come
+ From turbaned Turk, and scornful Russ
+ "Go, loose your fettered slaves at home,
+ Then turn, and ask the like of us!"
+
+ Just God! and shall we calmly rest,
+ The Christian's scorn, the heathen's mirth,
+ Content to live the lingering jest
+ And by-word of a mocking Earth?
+ Shall our own glorious land retain
+ That curse which Europe scorns to bear?
+ Shall our own brethren drag the chain
+ Which not even Russia's menials wear?
+
+ Up, then, in Freedom's manly part,
+ From graybeard eld to fiery youth,
+ And on the nation's naked heart
+ Scatter the living coals of Truth!
+ Up! while ye slumber, deeper yet
+ The shadow of our fame is growing!
+ Up! while ye pause, our sun may set
+ In blood, around our altars flowing!
+
+ Oh! rouse ye, ere the storm comes forth,
+ The gathered wrath of God and man,
+ Like that which wasted Egypt's earth,
+ When hail and fire above it ran.
+ Hear ye no warnings in the air?
+ Feel ye no earthquake underneath?
+ Up, up! why will ye slumber where
+ The sleeper only wakes in death?
+
+ Rise now for Freedom! not in strife
+ Like that your sterner fathers saw,
+ The awful waste of human life,
+ The glory and the guilt of war:'
+ But break the chain, the yoke remove,
+ And smite to earth Oppression's rod,
+ With those mild arms of Truth and Love,
+ Made mighty through the living God!
+
+ Down let the shrine of Moloch sink,
+ And leave no traces where it stood;
+ Nor longer let its idol drink
+ His daily cup of human blood;
+ But rear another altar there,
+ To Truth and Love and Mercy given,
+ And Freedom's gift, and Freedom's prayer,
+ Shall call an answer down from Heaven!
+
+ 1834
+
+
+
+
+HYMN.
+
+Written for the meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, at Chatham Street
+Chapel, New York, held on the 4th of the seventh month, 1834.
+
+
+ O THOU, whose presence went before
+ Our fathers in their weary way,
+ As with Thy chosen moved of yore
+ The fire by night, the cloud by day!
+
+ When from each temple of the free,
+ A nation's song ascends to Heaven,
+ Most Holy Father! unto Thee
+ May not our humble prayer be given?
+
+ Thy children all, though hue and form
+ Are varied in Thine own good will,
+ With Thy own holy breathings warm,
+ And fashioned in Thine image still.
+
+ We thank Thee, Father! hill and plain
+ Around us wave their fruits once more,
+ And clustered vine, and blossomed grain,
+ Are bending round each cottage door.
+
+ And peace is here; and hope and love
+ Are round us as a mantle thrown,
+ And unto Thee, supreme above,
+ The knee of prayer is bowed alone.
+
+ But oh, for those this day can bring,
+ As unto us, no joyful thrill;
+ For those who, under Freedom's wing,
+ Are bound in Slavery's fetters still:
+
+ For those to whom Thy written word
+ Of light and love is never given;
+ For those whose ears have never heard
+ The promise and the hope of heaven!
+
+ For broken heart, and clouded mind,
+ Whereon no human mercies fall;
+ Oh, be Thy gracious love inclined,
+ Who, as a Father, pitiest all!
+
+ And grant, O Father! that the time
+ Of Earth's deliverance may be near,
+ When every land and tongue and clime
+ The message of Thy love shall hear;
+
+ When, smitten as with fire from heaven,
+ The captive's chain shall sink in dust,
+ And to his fettered soul be given
+ The glorious freedom of the just,
+
+
+
+
+THE YANKEE GIRL.
+
+ SHE sings by her wheel at that low cottage-door,
+ Which the long evening shadow is stretching before,
+ With a music as sweet as the music which seems
+ Breathed softly and faint in the ear of our dreams!
+
+ How brilliant and mirthful the light of her eye,
+ Like a star glancing out from the blue of the sky!
+ And lightly and freely her dark tresses play
+ O'er a brow and a bosom as lovely as they!
+
+ Who comes in his pride to that low cottage-door,
+ The haughty and rich to the humble and poor?
+ 'T is the great Southern planter, the master who waves
+ His whip of dominion o'er hundreds of slaves.
+
+ "Nay, Ellen, for shame! Let those Yankee fools spin,
+ Who would pass for our slaves with a change of their skin;
+ Let them toil as they will at the loom or the wheel,
+ Too stupid for shame, and too vulgar to feel!
+
+ "But thou art too lovely and precious a gem
+ To be bound to their burdens and sullied by them;
+ For shame, Ellen, shame, cast thy bondage aside,
+ And away to the South, as my blessing and pride.
+
+ "Oh, come where no winter thy footsteps can wrong,
+ But where flowers are blossoming all the year long,
+ Where the shade of the palm-tree is over my home,
+ And the lemon and orange are white in their bloom!
+
+ "Oh, come to my home, where my servants shall all
+ Depart at thy bidding and come at thy call;
+ They shall heed thee as mistress with trembling and awe,
+ And each wish of thy heart shall be felt as a law."
+
+ "Oh, could ye have seen her--that pride of our girls--
+ Arise and cast back the dark wealth of her curls,
+ With a scorn in her eye which the gazer could feel,
+ And a glance like the sunshine that flashes on steel!
+
+ "Go back, haughty Southron! thy treasures of gold
+ Are dim with the blood of the hearts thou halt sold;
+ Thy home may be lovely, but round it I hear
+ The crack of the whip and the footsteps of fear!
+
+ "And the sky of thy South may be brighter than ours,
+ And greener thy landscapes, and fairer thy' flowers;
+ But dearer the blast round our mountains which raves,
+ Than the sweet summer zephyr which breathes over slaves!
+
+ "Full low at thy bidding thy negroes may kneel,
+ With the iron of bondage on spirit and heel;
+ Yet know that the Yankee girl sooner would be
+ In fetters with them, than in freedom with thee!"
+
+ 1835.
+
+
+
+
+THE HUNTERS OF MEN.
+
+These lines were written when the orators of the American Colonization
+Society were demanding that the free blacks should be sent to Africa,
+and opposing Emancipation unless expatriation followed. See the report
+of the proceedings of the society at its annual meeting in 1834.
+
+
+ HAVE ye heard of our hunting, o'er mountain and glen,
+ Through cane-brake and forest,--the hunting of men?
+ The lords of our land to this hunting have gone,
+ As the fox-hunter follows the sound of the horn;
+ Hark! the cheer and the hallo! the crack of the whip,
+ And the yell of the hound as he fastens his grip!
+ All blithe are our hunters, and noble their match,
+ Though hundreds are caught, there are millions to catch.
+ So speed to their hunting, o'er mountain and glen,
+ Through cane-brake and forest,--the hunting of men!
+
+ Gay luck to our hunters! how nobly they ride
+ In the glow of their zeal, and the strength of their pride!
+ The priest with his cassock flung back on the wind,
+ Just screening the politic statesman behind;
+ The saint and the sinner, with cursing and prayer,
+ The drunk and the sober, ride merrily there.
+ And woman, kind woman, wife, widow, and maid,
+ For the good of the hunted, is lending her aid
+ Her foot's in the stirrup, her hand on the rein,
+ How blithely she rides to the hunting of men!
+
+ Oh, goodly and grand is our hunting to see,
+ In this "land of the brave and this home of the free."
+ Priest, warrior, and statesman, from Georgia to Maine,
+ All mounting the saddle, all grasping the rein;
+ Right merrily hunting the black man, whose sin
+ Is the curl of his hair and the hue of his skin!
+ Woe, now, to the hunted who turns him at bay
+ Will our hunters be turned from their purpose and prey?
+ Will their hearts fail within them? their nerves tremble, when
+ All roughly they ride to the hunting of men?
+
+ Ho! alms for our hunters! all weary and faint,
+ Wax the curse of the sinner and prayer of the saint.
+ The horn is wound faintly, the echoes are still,
+ Over cane-brake and river, and forest and hill.
+ Haste, alms for our hunters! the hunted once more
+ Have turned from their flight with their backs to the shore
+ What right have they here in the home of the white,
+ Shadowed o'er by our banner of Freedom and Right?
+ Ho! alms for the hunters! or never again
+ Will they ride in their pomp to the hunting of men!
+
+ Alms, alms for our hunters! why will ye delay,
+ When their pride and their glory are melting away?
+ The parson has turned; for, on charge of his own,
+ Who goeth a warfare, or hunting, alone?
+ The politic statesman looks back with a sigh,
+ There is doubt in his heart, there is fear in his eye.
+ Oh, haste, lest that doubting and fear shall prevail,
+ And the head of his steed take the place of the tail.
+ Oh, haste, ere he leave us! for who will ride then,
+ For pleasure or gain, to the hunting of men?
+
+ 1835.
+
+
+
+
+STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.
+
+The "Times" referred to were those evil times of the pro-slavery meeting
+in Faneuil Hall, August 21, 1835, in which a demand was made for the
+suppression of free speech, lest it should endanger the foundation of
+commercial society.
+
+ Is this the land our fathers loved,
+ The freedom which they toiled to win?
+ Is this the soil whereon they moved?
+ Are these the graves they slumber in?
+ Are we the sons by whom are borne
+ The mantles which the dead have worn?
+
+ And shall we crouch above these graves,
+ With craven soul and fettered lip?
+ Yoke in with marked and branded slaves,
+ And tremble at the driver's whip?
+ Bend to the earth our pliant knees,
+ And speak but as our masters please.
+
+ Shall outraged Nature cease to feel?
+ Shall Mercy's tears no longer flow?
+ Shall ruffian threats of cord and steel,
+ The dungeon's gloom, the assassin's blow,
+ Turn back the spirit roused to save
+ The Truth, our Country, and the Slave?
+
+ Of human skulls that shrine was made,
+ Round which the priests of Mexico
+ Before their loathsome idol prayed;
+ Is Freedom's altar fashioned so?
+ And must we yield to Freedom's God,
+ As offering meet, the negro's blood?
+
+ Shall tongues be mute, when deeds are wrought
+ Which well might shame extremest hell?
+ Shall freemen lock the indignant thought?
+ Shall Pity's bosom cease to swell?
+ Shall Honor bleed?--shall Truth succumb?
+ Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb?
+
+ No; by each spot of haunted ground,
+ Where Freedom weeps her children's fall;
+ By Plymouth's rock, and Bunker's mound;
+ By Griswold's stained and shattered wall;
+ By Warren's ghost, by Langdon's shade;
+ By all the memories of our dead.
+
+ By their enlarging souls, which burst
+ The bands and fetters round them set;
+ By the free Pilgrim spirit nursed
+ Within our inmost bosoms, yet,
+ By all above, around, below,
+ Be ours the indignant answer,--No!
+
+ No; guided by our country's laws,
+ For truth, and right, and suffering man,
+ Be ours to strive in Freedom's cause,
+ As Christians may, as freemen can!
+ Still pouring on unwilling ears
+ That truth oppression only fears.
+
+ What! shall we guard our neighbor still,
+ While woman shrieks beneath his rod,
+ And while he tramples down at will
+ The image of a common God?
+ Shall watch and ward be round him set,
+ Of Northern nerve and bayonet?
+
+ And shall we know and share with him
+ The danger and the growing shame?
+ And see our Freedom's light grow dim,
+ Which should have filled the world with flame?
+ And, writhing, feel, where'er we turn,
+ A world's reproach around us burn?
+
+ Is 't not enough that this is borne?
+ And asks our haughty neighbor more?
+ Must fetters which his slaves have worn
+ Clank round the Yankee farmer's door?
+ Must he be told, beside his plough,
+ What he must speak, and when, and how?
+
+ Must he be told his freedom stands
+ On Slavery's dark foundations strong;
+ On breaking hearts and fettered hands,
+ On robbery, and crime, and wrong?
+ That all his fathers taught is vain,--
+ That Freedom's emblem is the chain?
+
+ Its life, its soul, from slavery drawn!
+ False, foul, profane! Go, teach as well
+ Of holy Truth from Falsehood born!
+ Of Heaven refreshed by airs from Hell!
+ Of Virtue in the arms of Vice!
+ Of Demons planting Paradise!
+
+ Rail on, then, brethren of the South,
+ Ye shall not hear the truth the less;
+ No seal is on the Yankee's mouth,
+ No fetter on the Yankee's press!
+ From our Green Mountains to the sea,
+ One voice shall thunder, We are free!
+
+
+
+
+CLERICAL OPPRESSORS.
+
+In the report of the celebrated pro-slavery meeting in Charleston, S.C.,
+on the 4th of the ninth month, 1835, published in the Courier of that
+city, it is stated: "The clergy of all denominations attended in a body,
+lending their sanction to the proceedings, and adding by their presence
+to the impressive character of the scene!"
+
+
+ JUST God! and these are they
+ Who minister at thine altar, God of Right!
+ Men who their hands with prayer and blessing lay
+ On Israel's Ark of light!
+
+ What! preach, and kidnap men?
+ Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted poor?
+ Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then
+ Bolt hard the captive's door?
+
+ What! servants of thy own
+ Merciful Son, who came to seek and save
+ The homeless and the outcast, fettering down
+ The tasked and plundered slave!
+
+ Pilate and Herod, friends!
+ Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine!
+ Just God and holy! is that church, which lends
+ Strength to the spoiler, thine?
+
+ Paid hypocrites, who turn
+ Judgment aside, and rob the Holy Book
+ Of those high words of truth which search and burn
+ In warning and rebuke;
+
+ Feed fat, ye locusts, feed!
+ And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank the Lord
+ That, from the toiling bondman's utter need,
+ Ye pile your own full board.
+
+ How long, O Lord! how long
+ Shall such a priesthood barter truth away,
+ And in Thy name, for robbery and wrong
+ At Thy own altars pray?
+
+ Is not Thy hand stretched forth
+ Visibly in the heavens, to awe and smite?
+ Shall not the living God of all the earth,
+ And heaven above, do right?
+
+ Woe, then, to all who grind
+ Their brethren of a common Father down!
+ To all who plunder from the immortal mind
+ Its bright and glorious crown!
+
+ Woe to the priesthood! woe
+ To those whose hire is with the price of blood;
+ Perverting, darkening, changing, as they go,
+ The searching truths of God!
+
+ Their glory and their might
+ Shall perish; and their very names shall be
+ Vile before all the people, in the light
+ Of a world's liberty.
+
+ Oh, speed the moment on
+ When Wrong shall cease, and Liberty and Love
+ And Truth and Right throughout the earth be known
+ As in their home above.
+
+ 1836.
+
+
+
+
+A SUMMONS
+
+Written on the adoption of Pinckney's Resolutions in the House of
+Representatives, and the passage of Calhoun's "Bill for excluding Papers
+written or printed, touching the subject of Slavery, from the U. S.
+Post-office," in the Senate of the United States. Mr. Pinckney's
+resolutions were in brief that Congress had no authority to interfere in
+any way with slavery in the States; that it ought not to interfere with
+it in the District of Columbia, and that all resolutions to that end
+should be laid on the table without printing. Mr. Calhoun's bill made it
+a penal offence for post-masters in any State, District, or Territory
+"knowingly to deliver, to any person whatever, any pamphlet, newspaper,
+handbill, or other printed paper or pictorial representation, touching
+the subject of slavery, where, by the laws of the said State, District,
+or Territory, their circulation was prohibited."
+
+ MEN of the North-land! where's the manly spirit
+ Of the true-hearted and the unshackled gone?
+ Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit
+ Their names alone?
+
+ Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched within us,
+ Stoops the strong manhood of our souls so low,
+ That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can win us
+ To silence now?
+
+ Now, when our land to ruin's brink is verging,
+ In God's name, let us speak while there is time!
+ Now, when the padlocks for our lips are forging,
+ Silence is crime!
+
+ What! shall we henceforth humbly ask as favors
+ Rights all our own? In madness shall we barter,
+ For treacherous peace, the freedom Nature gave us,
+ God and our charter?
+
+ Here shall the statesman forge his human fetters,
+ Here the false jurist human rights deny,
+ And in the church, their proud and skilled abettors
+ Make truth a lie?
+
+ Torture the pages of the hallowed Bible,
+ To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood?
+ And, in Oppression's hateful service, libel
+ Both man and God?
+
+ Shall our New England stand erect no longer,
+ But stoop in chains upon her downward way,
+ Thicker to gather on her limbs and stronger
+ Day after day?
+
+ Oh no; methinks from all her wild, green mountains;
+ From valleys where her slumbering fathers lie;
+ From her blue rivers and her welling fountains,
+ And clear, cold sky;
+
+ From her rough coast, and isles, which hungry Ocean
+ Gnaws with his surges; from the fisher's skiff,
+ With white sail swaying to the billows' motion
+ Round rock and cliff;
+
+ From the free fireside of her untought farmer;
+ From her free laborer at his loom and wheel;
+ From the brown smith-shop, where, beneath the hammer,
+ Rings the red steel;
+
+ From each and all, if God hath not forsaken
+ Our land, and left us to an evil choice,
+ Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall waken
+ A People's voice.
+
+ Startling and stern! the Northern winds shall bear it
+ Over Potomac's to St. Mary's wave;
+ And buried Freedom shall awake to hear it
+ Within her grave.
+
+ Oh, let that voice go forth! The bondman sighing
+ By Santee's wave, in Mississippi's cane,
+ Shall feel the hope, within his bosom dying,
+ Revive again.
+
+ Let it go forth! The millions who are gazing
+ Sadly upon us from afar shall smile,
+ And unto God devout thanksgiving raising
+ Bless us the while.
+
+ Oh for your ancient freedom, pure and holy,
+ For the deliverance of a groaning earth,
+ For the wronged captive, bleeding, crushed, and lowly,
+ Let it go forth!
+
+ Sons of the best of fathers! will ye falter
+ With all they left ye perilled and at stake?
+ Ho! once again on Freedom's holy altar
+ The fire awake.
+
+ Prayer-strenthened for the trial, come together,
+ Put on the harness for the moral fight,
+ And, with the blessing of your Heavenly Father,
+ Maintain the right
+
+ 1836.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS SHIPLEY.
+
+Thomas Shipley of Philadelphia was a lifelong Christian philanthropist,
+and advocate of emancipation. At his funeral thousands of colored people
+came to take their last look at their friend and protector. He died
+September 17, 1836.
+
+ GONE to thy Heavenly Father's rest!
+ The flowers of Eden round thee blowing,
+ And on thine ear the murmurs blest
+ Of Siloa's waters softly flowing!
+
+ Beneath that Tree of Life which gives
+ To all the earth its healing leaves
+ In the white robe of angels clad,
+ And wandering by that sacred river,
+ Whose streams of holiness make glad
+ The city of our God forever!
+
+ Gentlest of spirits! not for thee
+ Our tears are shed, our sighs are given;
+ Why mourn to know thou art a free
+ Partaker of the joys of heaven?
+ Finished thy work, and kept thy faith
+ In Christian firmness unto death;
+ And beautiful as sky and earth,
+ When autumn's sun is downward going,
+ The blessed memory of thy worth
+ Around thy place of slumber glowing!
+
+ But woe for us! who linger still
+ With feebler strength and hearts less lowly,
+ And minds less steadfast to the will
+ Of Him whose every work is holy.
+ For not like thine, is crucified
+ The spirit of our human pride
+ And at the bondman's tale of woe,
+ And for the outcast and forsaken,
+ Not warm like thine, but cold and slow,
+ Our weaker sympathies awaken.
+
+ Darkly upon our struggling way
+ The storm of human hate is sweeping;
+ Hunted and branded, and a prey,
+ Our watch amidst the darkness keeping,
+ Oh, for that hidden strength which can
+ Nerve unto death the inner man
+ Oh, for thy spirit, tried and true,
+ And constant in the hour of trial,
+ Prepared to suffer, or to do,
+ In meekness and in self-denial.
+
+ Oh, for that spirit, meek and mild,
+ Derided, spurned, yet uncomplaining;
+ By man deserted and reviled,
+ Yet faithful to its trust remaining.
+ Still prompt and resolute to save
+ From scourge and chain the hunted slave;
+ Unwavering in the Truth's defence,
+ Even where the fires of Hate were burning,
+ The unquailing eye of innocence
+ Alone upon the oppressor turning!
+
+ O loved of thousands! to thy grave,
+ Sorrowing of heart, thy brethren bore thee.
+ The poor man and the rescued slave
+ Wept as the broken earth closed o'er thee;
+ And grateful tears, like summer rain,
+ Quickened its dying grass again!
+ And there, as to some pilgrim-shrine,
+ Shall cone the outcast and the lowly,
+ Of gentle deeds and words of thine
+ Recalling memories sweet and holy!
+
+ Oh, for the death the righteous die!
+ An end, like autumn's day declining,
+ On human hearts, as on the sky,
+ With holier, tenderer beauty shining;
+ As to the parting soul were given
+ The radiance of an opening heaven!
+ As if that pure and blessed light,
+ From off the Eternal altar flowing,
+ Were bathing, in its upward flight,
+ The spirit to its worship going!
+
+ 1836.
+
+
+
+
+THE MORAL WARFARE.
+
+ WHEN Freedom, on her natal day,
+ Within her war-rocked cradle lay,
+ An iron race around her stood,
+ Baptized her infant brow in blood;
+ And, through the storm which round her swept,
+ Their constant ward and watching kept.
+
+ Then, where our quiet herds repose,
+ The roar of baleful battle rose,
+ And brethren of a common tongue
+ To mortal strife as tigers sprung,
+ And every gift on Freedom's shrine
+ Was man for beast, and blood for wine!
+
+ Our fathers to their graves have gone;
+ Their strife is past, their triumph won;
+ But sterner trials wait the race
+ Which rises in their honored place;
+ A moral warfare with the crime
+ And folly of an evil time.
+
+ So let it be. In God's own might
+ We gird us for the coming fight,
+ And, strong in Him whose cause is ours
+ In conflict with unholy powers,
+ We grasp the weapons He has given,--
+ The Light, and Truth, and Love of Heaven.
+
+ 1836.
+
+
+
+
+RITNER.
+
+Written on reading the Message of Governor Ritner, of Pennsylvania,
+1836. The fact redounds to the credit and serves to perpetuate the
+memory of the independent farmer and high-souled statesman, that he
+alone of all the Governors of the Union in 1836 met the insulting
+demands and menaces of the South in a manner becoming a freeman and
+hater of Slavery, in his message to the Legislature of Pennsylvania.
+
+ THANK God for the token! one lip is still free,
+ One spirit untrammelled, unbending one knee!
+ Like the oak of the mountain, deep-rooted and firm,
+ Erect, when the multitude bends to the storm;
+ When traitors to Freedom, and Honor, and God,
+ Are bowed at an Idol polluted with blood;
+ When the recreant North has forgotten her trust,
+ And the lip of her honor is low in the dust,--
+ Thank God, that one arm from the shackle has broken!
+ Thank God, that one man as a freeman has spoken!
+
+ O'er thy crags, Alleghany, a blast has been blown!
+ Down thy tide, Susquehanna, the murmur has gone!
+ To the land of the South, of the charter and chain,
+ Of Liberty sweetened with Slavery's pain;
+ Where the cant of Democracy dwells on the lips
+ Of the forgers of fetters, and wielders of whips!
+ Where "chivalric" honor means really no more
+ Than scourging of women, and robbing the poor!
+ Where the Moloch of Slavery sitteth on high,
+ And the words which he utters, are--Worship, or die!
+
+ Right onward, oh, speed it! Wherever the blood
+ Of the wronged and the guiltless is crying to God;
+ Wherever a slave in his fetters is pining;
+ Wherever the lash of the driver is twining;
+ Wherever from kindred, torn rudely apart,
+ Comes the sorrowful wail of the broken of heart;
+ Wherever the shackles of tyranny bind,
+ In silence and darkness, the God-given mind;
+ There, God speed it onward! its truth will be felt,
+ The bonds shall be loosened, the iron shall melt.
+
+ And oh, will the land where the free soul of Penn
+ Still lingers and breathes over mountain and glen;
+ Will the land where a Benezet's spirit went forth
+ To the peeled and the meted, and outcast of Earth;
+ Where the words of the Charter of Liberty first
+ From the soul of the sage and the patriot burst;
+ Where first for the wronged and the weak of their kind,
+ The Christian and statesman their efforts combined;
+ Will that land of the free and the good wear a chain?
+ Will the call to the rescue of Freedom be vain?
+
+ No, Ritner! her "Friends" at thy warning shall stand
+ Erect for the truth, like their ancestral band;
+ Forgetting the feuds and the strife of past time,
+ Counting coldness injustice, and silence a crime;
+ Turning back front the cavil of creeds, to unite
+ Once again for the poor in defence of the Right;
+ Breasting calmly, but firmly, the full tide of Wrong,
+ Overwhelmed, but not borne on its surges along;
+ Unappalled by the danger, the shame, and the pain,
+ And counting each trial for Truth as their gain!
+
+ And that bold-hearted yeomanry, honest and true,
+ Who, haters of fraud, give to labor its due;
+ Whose fathers, of old, sang in concert with thine,
+ On the banks of Swetara, the songs of the Rhine,--
+ The German-born pilgrims, who first dared to brave
+ The scorn of the proud in the cause of the slave;
+ Will the sons of such men yield the lords of the South
+ One brow for the brand, for the padlock one mouth?
+ They cater to tyrants? They rivet the chain,
+ Which their fathers smote off, on the negro again?
+
+ No, never! one voice, like the sound in the cloud,
+ When the roar of the storm waxes loud and more loud,
+ Wherever the foot of the freeman hath pressed
+ From the Delaware's marge to the Lake of the West,
+ On the South-going breezes shall deepen and grow
+ Till the land it sweeps over shall tremble below!
+ The voice of a people, uprisen, awake,
+ Pennsylvania's watchword, with Freedom at stake,
+ Thrilling up from each valley, flung down from each height,
+ "Our Country and Liberty! God for the Right!"
+
+
+
+
+THE PASTORAL LETTER
+
+The General Association of Congregational ministers in Massachusetts met
+at Brookfield, June 27, 1837, and issued a Pastoral Letter to the
+churches under its care. The immediate occasion of it was the profound
+sensation produced by the recent public lecture in Massachusetts by
+Angelina and Sarah Grimke, two noble women from South Carolina, who bore
+their testimony against slavery. The Letter demanded that "the perplexed
+and agitating subjects which are now common amongst us... should not be
+forced upon any church as matters for debate, at the hazard of
+alienation and division," and called attention to the dangers now
+seeming "to threaten the female character with widespread and permanent
+injury."
+
+ So, this is all,--the utmost reach
+ Of priestly power the mind to fetter!
+ When laymen think, when women preach,
+ A war of words, a "Pastoral Letter!"
+ Now, shame upon ye, parish Popes!
+ Was it thus with those, your predecessors,
+ Who sealed with racks, and fire, and ropes
+ Their loving-kindness to transgressors?
+
+ A "Pastoral Letter," grave and dull;
+ Alas! in hoof and horns and features,
+ How different is your Brookfield bull
+ From him who bellows from St. Peter's
+ Your pastoral rights and powers from harm,
+ Think ye, can words alone preserve them?
+ Your wiser fathers taught the arm
+ And sword of temporal power to serve them.
+
+ Oh, glorious days, when Church and State
+ Were wedded by your spiritual fathers!
+ And on submissive shoulders sat
+ Your Wilsons and your Cotton Mathers.
+ No vile "itinerant" then could mar
+ The beauty of your tranquil Zion,
+ But at his peril of the scar
+ Of hangman's whip and branding-iron.
+
+ Then, wholesome laws relieved the Church
+ Of heretic and mischief-maker,
+ And priest and bailiff joined in search,
+ By turns, of Papist, witch, and Quaker
+ The stocks were at each church's door,
+ The gallows stood on Boston Common,
+ A Papist's ears the pillory bore,--
+ The gallows-rope, a Quaker woman!
+
+ Your fathers dealt not as ye deal
+ With "non-professing" frantic teachers;
+ They bored the tongue with red-hot steel,
+ And flayed the backs of "female preachers."
+ Old Hampton, had her fields a tongue,
+ And Salem's streets could tell their story,
+ Of fainting woman dragged along,
+ Gashed by the whip accursed and gory!
+
+ And will ye ask me, why this taunt
+ Of memories sacred from the scorner?
+ And why with reckless hand I plant
+ A nettle on the graves ye honor?
+ Not to reproach New England's dead
+ This record from the past I summon,
+ Of manhood to the scaffold led,
+ And suffering and heroic woman.
+
+ No, for yourselves alone, I turn
+ The pages of intolerance over,
+ That, in their spirit, dark and stern,
+ Ye haply may your own discover!
+ For, if ye claim the "pastoral right"
+ To silence Freedom's voice of warning,
+ And from your precincts shut the light
+ Of Freedom's day around ye dawning;
+
+ If when an earthquake voice of power
+ And signs in earth and heaven are showing
+ That forth, in its appointed hour,
+ The Spirit of the Lord is going
+ And, with that Spirit, Freedom's light
+ On kindred, tongue, and people breaking,
+ Whose slumbering millions, at the sight,
+ In glory and in strength are waking!
+
+ When for the sighing of the poor,
+ And for the needy, God bath risen,
+ And chains are breaking, and a door
+ Is opening for the souls in prison!
+ If then ye would, with puny hands,
+ Arrest the very work of Heaven,
+ And bind anew the evil bands
+ Which God's right arm of power hath riven;
+
+ What marvel that, in many a mind,
+ Those darker deeds of bigot madness
+ Are closely with your own combined,
+ Yet "less in anger than in sadness"?
+ What marvel, if the people learn
+ To claim the right of free opinion?
+ What marvel, if at times they spurn
+ The ancient yoke of your dominion?
+
+ A glorious remnant linger yet,
+ Whose lips are wet at Freedom's fountains,
+ The coming of whose welcome feet
+ Is beautiful upon our mountains!
+ Men, who the gospel tidings bring
+ Of Liberty and Love forever,
+ Whose joy is an abiding spring,
+ Whose peace is as a gentle river!
+
+ But ye, who scorn the thrilling tale
+ Of Carolina's high-souled daughters,
+ Which echoes here the mournful wail
+ Of sorrow from Edisto's waters,
+ Close while ye may the public ear,
+ With malice vex, with slander wound them,
+ The pure and good shall throng to hear,
+ And tried and manly hearts surround them.
+
+ Oh, ever may the power which led
+ Their way to such a fiery trial,
+ And strengthened womanhood to tread
+ The wine-press of such self-denial,
+ Be round them in an evil land,
+ With wisdom and with strength from Heaven,
+ With Miriam's voice, and Judith's hand,
+ And Deborah's song, for triumph given!
+
+ And what are ye who strive with God
+ Against the ark of His salvation,
+ Moved by the breath of prayer abroad,
+ With blessings for a dying nation?
+ What, but the stubble and the hay
+ To perish, even as flax consuming,
+ With all that bars His glorious way,
+ Before the brightness of His coming?
+
+ And thou, sad Angel, who so long
+ Hast waited for the glorious token,
+ That Earth from all her bonds of wrong
+ To liberty and light has broken,--
+
+ Angel of Freedom! soon to thee
+ The sounding trumpet shall be given,
+ And over Earth's full jubilee
+ Shall deeper joy be felt in Heaven!
+
+ 1837.
+
+
+
+
+HYMN
+
+ As children of Thy gracious care,
+ We veil the eye, we bend the knee,
+ With broken words of praise and prayer,
+ Father and God, we come to Thee.
+
+ For Thou hast heard, O God of Right,
+ The sighing of the island slave;
+ And stretched for him the arm of might,
+ Not shortened that it could not save.
+ The laborer sits beneath his vine,
+ The shackled soul and hand are free;
+ Thanksgiving! for the work is Thine!
+ Praise! for the blessing is of Thee!
+
+ And oh, we feel Thy presence here,
+ Thy awful arm in judgment bare!
+ Thine eye bath seen the bondman's tear;
+ Thine ear hath heard the bondman's prayer.
+ Praise! for the pride of man is low,
+ The counsels of the wise are naught,
+ The fountains of repentance flow;
+ What hath our God in mercy wrought?
+
+
+
+
+HYMN
+
+Written for the celebration of the third anniversary of British
+emancipation at the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, first of August,
+1837.
+
+
+ O HOLY FATHER! just and true
+ Are all Thy works and words and ways,
+ And unto Thee alone are due
+ Thanksgiving and eternal praise!
+
+ As children of Thy gracious care,
+ We veil the eye, we bend the knee,
+ With broken words of praise and prayer,
+ Father and God, we come to Thee.
+
+ For Thou hast heard, O God of Right,
+ The sighing of the island slave;
+ And stretched for him the arm of might,
+ Not shortened that it could not save.
+ The laborer sits beneath his vine,
+ The shackled soul and hand are free;
+ Thanksgiving! for the work is Thine!
+ Praise! for the blessing is of Thee!
+
+ And oh, we feel Thy presence here,
+ Thy awful arm in judgment bare!
+ Thine eye hath seen the bondman's tear;
+ Thine ear hath heard the bondman's prayer.
+ Praise! for the pride of man is low,
+ The counsels of the wise are naught,
+ The fountains of repentance flow;
+ What hath our God in mercy wrought?
+
+ Speed on Thy work, Lord God of Hosts
+ And when the bondman's chain is riven,
+ And swells from all our guilty coasts
+ The anthem of the free to Heaven,
+ Oh, not to those whom Thou hast led,
+ As with Thy cloud and fire before,
+ But unto Thee, in fear and dread,
+ Be praise and glory evermore.
+
+
+
+
+THE FAREWELL OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTERS SOLD
+
+INTO SOUTHERN BONDAGE.
+
+ GONE, gone,--sold and gone,
+ To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
+ Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
+ Where the noisome insect stings,
+ Where the fever demon strews
+ Poison with the falling dews,
+ Where the sickly sunbeams glare
+ Through the hot and misty air;
+ Gone, gone,--sold and gone,
+ To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
+ From Virginia's hills and waters;
+ Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
+
+ Gone, gone,--sold and gone,
+ To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
+ There no mother's eye is near them,
+ There no mother's ear can hear them;
+ Never, when the torturing lash
+ Seams their back with many a gash,
+ Shall a mother's kindness bless them,
+ Or a mother's arms caress them.
+ Gone, gone,--sold and gone,
+ To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
+ From Virginia's hills and waters;
+ Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
+
+ Gone, gone,--sold and gone,
+ To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
+ Oh, when weary, sad, and slow,
+ From the fields at night they go,
+ Faint with toil, and racked with pain,
+ To their cheerless homes again,
+ There no brother's voice shall greet them;
+ There no father's welcome meet them.
+ Gone, gone,--sold and gone,
+ To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
+ From Virginia's hills and waters;
+ Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
+
+ Gone, gone,--sold and gone,
+ To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
+ From the tree whose shadow lay
+ On their childhood's place of play;
+ From the cool spring where they drank;
+ Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank;
+ From the solemn house of prayer,
+ And the holy counsels there;
+ Gone, gone,--sold and gone,
+ To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
+ From Virginia's hills and waters;
+ Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
+
+ Gone, gone,--sold and gone,
+ To the rice-swamp dank and lone;
+ Toiling through the weary day,
+ And at night the spoiler's prey.
+ Oh, that they had earlier died,
+ Sleeping calmly, side by side,
+ Where the tyrant's power is o'er,
+ And the fetter galls no more
+ Gone, gone,--sold and gone,
+ To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
+ From Virginia's hills and waters;
+ Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
+
+ Gone, gone,--sold and gone,
+ To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
+ By the holy love He beareth;
+ By the bruised reed He spareth;
+ Oh, may He, to whom alone
+ All their cruel wrongs are known,
+ Still their hope and refuge prove,
+ With a more than mother's love.
+ Gone, gone,--sold and gone,
+ To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
+ From Virginia's hills and waters;
+ Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
+
+ 1838.
+
+
+
+
+PENNSYLVANIA HALL.
+
+Read at the dedication of Pennsylvania Hall, Philadelphia, May 15, 1838.
+The building was erected by an association of gentlemen, irrespective of
+sect or party, "that the citizens of Philadelphia should possess a room
+wherein the principles of Liberty, and Equality of Civil Rights, could
+be freely discussed, and the evils of slavery fearlessly portrayed." On
+the evening of the 17th it was burned by a mob, destroying the office of
+the Pennsylvania Freeman, of which I was editor, and with it my books
+and papers.
+
+
+ NOT with the splendors of the days of old,
+ The spoil of nations, and barbaric gold;
+ No weapons wrested from the fields of blood,
+ Where dark and stern the unyielding Roman stood,
+ And the proud eagles of his cohorts saw
+ A world, war-wasted, crouching to his law;
+
+ Nor blazoned car, nor banners floating gay,
+ Like those which swept along the Appian Way,
+ When, to the welcome of imperial Rome,
+ The victor warrior came in triumph home,
+ And trumpet peal, and shoutings wild and high,
+ Stirred the blue quiet of the Italian sky;
+ But calm and grateful, prayerful and sincere,
+ As Christian freemen only, gathering here,
+ We dedicate our fair and lofty Hall,
+ Pillar and arch, entablature and wall,
+ As Virtue's shrine, as Liberty's abode,
+ Sacred to Freedom, and to Freedom's God
+ Far statelier Halls, 'neath brighter skies than these,
+ Stood darkly mirrored in the AEgean seas,
+ Pillar and shrine, and life-like statues seen,
+ Graceful and pure, the marble shafts between;
+ Where glorious Athens from her rocky hill
+ Saw Art and Beauty subject to her will;
+ And the chaste temple, and the classic grove,
+ The hall of sages, and the bowers of love,
+ Arch, fane, and column, graced the shores, and gave
+ Their shadows to the blue Saronic wave;
+ And statelier rose, on Tiber's winding side,
+ The Pantheon's dome, the Coliseum's pride,
+ The Capitol, whose arches backward flung
+ The deep, clear cadence of the Roman tongue,
+ Whence stern decrees, like words of fate, went forth
+ To the awed nations of a conquered earth,
+ Where the proud Caesars in their glory came,
+ And Brutus lightened from his lips of flame!
+ Yet in the porches of Athena's halls,
+ And in the shadow of her stately walls,
+ Lurked the sad bondman, and his tears of woe
+ Wet the cold marble with unheeded flow;
+ And fetters clanked beneath the silver dome
+ Of the proud Pantheon of imperious Rome.
+ Oh, not for hint, the chained and stricken slave,
+ By Tiber's shore, or blue AEgina's wave,
+ In the thronged forum, or the sages' seat,
+ The bold lip pleaded, and the warm heart beat;
+ No soul of sorrow melted at his pain,
+ No tear of pity rusted on his chain!
+
+ But this fair Hall to Truth and Freedom given,
+ Pledged to the Right before all Earth and Heaven,
+ A free arena for the strife of mind,
+ To caste, or sect, or color unconfined,
+ Shall thrill with echoes such as ne'er of old
+ From Roman hall or Grecian temple rolled;
+ Thoughts shall find utterance such as never yet
+ The Propylea or the Forum met.
+ Beneath its roof no gladiator's strife
+ Shall win applauses with the waste of life;
+ No lordly lictor urge the barbarous game,
+ No wanton Lais glory in her shame.
+ But here the tear of sympathy shall flow,
+ As the ear listens to the tale of woe;
+ Here in stern judgment of the oppressor's wrong
+ Shall strong rebukings thrill on Freedom's tongue,
+ No partial justice hold th' unequal scale,
+ No pride of caste a brother's rights assail,
+ No tyrant's mandates echo from this wall,
+ Holy to Freedom and the Rights of All!
+ But a fair field, where mind may close with mind,
+ Free as the sunshine and the chainless wind;
+ Where the high trust is fixed on Truth alone,
+ And bonds and fetters from the soul are thrown;
+ Where wealth, and rank, and worldly pomp, and might,
+ Yield to the presence of the True and Right.
+
+ And fitting is it that this Hall should stand
+ Where Pennsylvania's Founder led his band,
+ From thy blue waters, Delaware!--to press
+ The virgin verdure of the wilderness.
+ Here, where all Europe with amazement saw
+ The soul's high freedom trammelled by no law;
+ Here, where the fierce and warlike forest-men
+ Gathered, in peace, around the home of Penn,
+ Awed by the weapons Love alone had given
+ Drawn from the holy armory of Heaven;
+ Where Nature's voice against the bondman's wrong
+ First found an earnest and indignant tongue;
+ Where Lay's bold message to the proud was borne;
+ And Keith's rebuke, and Franklin's manly scorn!
+ Fitting it is that here, where Freedom first
+ From her fair feet shook off the Old World's dust,
+ Spread her white pinions to our Western blast,
+ And her free tresses to our sunshine cast,
+ One Hall should rise redeemed from Slavery's ban,
+ One Temple sacred to the Rights of Man!
+
+ Oh! if the spirits of the parted come,
+ Visiting angels, to their olden home
+ If the dead fathers of the land look forth
+ From their fair dwellings, to the things of earth,
+ Is it a dream, that with their eyes of love,
+ They gaze now on us from the bowers above?
+ Lay's ardent soul, and Benezet the mild,
+ Steadfast in faith, yet gentle as a child,
+ Meek-hearted Woolman, and that brother-band,
+ The sorrowing exiles from their "Father land,"
+ Leaving their homes in Krieshiem's bowers of vine,
+ And the blue beauty of their glorious Rhine,
+ To seek amidst our solemn depths of wood
+ Freedom from man, and holy peace with God;
+ Who first of all their testimonial gave
+ Against the oppressor, for the outcast slave,
+ Is it a dream that such as these look down,
+ And with their blessing our rejoicings crown?
+ Let us rejoice, that while the pulpit's door
+ Is barred against the pleaders for the poor;
+ While the Church, wrangling upon points of faith,
+ Forgets her bondmen suffering unto death;
+ While crafty Traffic and the lust of Gain
+ Unite to forge Oppression's triple chain,
+ One door is open, and one Temple free,
+ As a resting-place for hunted Liberty!
+ Where men may speak, unshackled and unawed,
+ High words of Truth, for Freedom and for God.
+ And when that truth its perfect work hath done,
+ And rich with blessings o'er our land hath gone;
+ When not a slave beneath his yoke shall pine,
+ From broad Potomac to the far Sabine
+ When unto angel lips at last is given
+ The silver trump of Jubilee in Heaven;
+ And from Virginia's plains, Kentucky's shades,
+ And through the dim Floridian everglades,
+ Rises, to meet that angel-trumpet's sound,
+ The voice of millions from their chains unbound;
+ Then, though this Hall be crumbling in decay,
+ Its strong walls blending with the common clay,
+ Yet, round the ruins of its strength shall stand
+ The best and noblest of a ransomed land--
+ Pilgrims, like these who throng around the shrine
+ Of Mecca, or of holy Palestine!
+ A prouder glory shall that ruin own
+ Than that which lingers round the Parthenon.
+ Here shall the child of after years be taught
+ The works of Freedom which his fathers wrought;
+ Told of the trials of the present hour,
+ Our weary strife with prejudice and power;
+ How the high errand quickened woman's soul,
+ And touched her lip as with a living coal;
+ How Freedom's martyrs kept their lofty faith
+ True and unwavering, unto bonds and death;
+ The pencil's art shall sketch the ruined Hall,
+ The Muses' garland crown its aged wall,
+ And History's pen for after times record
+ Its consecration unto Freedom's God!
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW YEAR.
+
+Addressed to the Patrons of the Pennsylvania Freeman.
+
+ THE wave is breaking on the shore,
+ The echo fading from the chime
+ Again the shadow moveth o'er
+ The dial-plate of time!
+
+ O seer-seen Angel! waiting now
+ With weary feet on sea and shore,
+ Impatient for the last dread vow
+ That time shall be no more!
+
+ Once more across thy sleepless eye
+ The semblance of a smile has passed:
+ The year departing leaves more nigh
+ Time's fearfullest and last.
+
+ Oh, in that dying year hath been
+ The sum of all since time began;
+ The birth and death, the joy and pain,
+ Of Nature and of Man.
+
+ Spring, with her change of sun and shower,
+ And streams released from Winter's chain,
+ And bursting bud, and opening flower,
+ And greenly growing grain;
+
+ And Summer's shade, and sunshine warm,
+ And rainbows o'er her hill-tops bowed,
+ And voices in her rising storm;
+ God speaking from His cloud!
+
+ And Autumn's fruits and clustering sheaves,
+ And soft, warm days of golden light,
+ The glory of her forest leaves,
+ And harvest-moon at night;
+
+ And Winter with her leafless grove,
+ And prisoned stream, and drifting snow,
+ The brilliance of her heaven above
+ And of her earth below;
+
+ And man, in whom an angel's mind
+ With earth's low instincts finds abode,
+ The highest of the links which bind
+ Brute nature to her God;
+
+ His infant eye bath seen the light,
+ His childhood's merriest laughter rung,
+ And active sports to manlier might
+ The nerves of boyhood strung!
+
+ And quiet love, and passion's fires,
+ Have soothed or burned in manhood's breast,
+ And lofty aims and low desires
+ By turns disturbed his rest.
+
+ The wailing of the newly-born
+ Has mingled with the funeral knell;
+ And o'er the dying's ear has gone
+ The merry marriage-bell.
+
+ And Wealth has filled his halls with mirth,
+ While Want, in many a humble shed,
+ Toiled, shivering by her cheerless hearth,
+ The live-long night for bread.
+
+ And worse than all, the human slave,
+ The sport of lust, and pride, and scorn!
+ Plucked off the crown his Maker gave,
+ His regal manhood gone!
+
+ Oh, still, my country! o'er thy plains,
+ Blackened with slavery's blight and ban,
+ That human chattel drags his chains,
+ An uncreated man!
+
+ And still, where'er to sun and breeze,
+ My country, is thy flag unrolled,
+ With scorn, the gazing stranger sees
+ A stain on every fold.
+
+ Oh, tear the gorgeous emblem down!
+ It gathers scorn from every eye,
+ And despots smile and good men frown
+ Whene'er it passes by.
+
+ Shame! shame! its starry splendors glow
+ Above the slaver's loathsome jail;
+ Its folds are ruffling even now
+ His crimson flag of sale.
+
+ Still round our country's proudest hall
+ The trade in human flesh is driven,
+ And at each careless hammer-fall
+ A human heart is riven.
+
+ And this, too, sanctioned by the men
+ Vested with power to shield the right,
+ And throw each vile and robber den
+ Wide open to the light.
+
+ Yet, shame upon them! there they sit,
+ Men of the North, subdued and still;
+ Meek, pliant poltroons, only fit
+ To work a master's will.
+
+ Sold, bargained off for Southern votes,
+ A passive herd of Northern mules,
+ Just braying through their purchased throats
+ Whate'er their owner rules.
+
+ And he, (2) the basest of the base,
+ The vilest of the vile, whose name,
+ Embalmed in infinite disgrace,
+ Is deathless in its shame!
+
+ A tool, to bolt the people's door
+ Against the people clamoring there,
+ An ass, to trample on their floor
+ A people's right of prayer!
+
+ Nailed to his self-made gibbet fast,
+ Self-pilloried to the public view,
+ A mark for every passing blast
+ Of scorn to whistle through;
+
+ There let him hang, and hear the boast
+ Of Southrons o'er their pliant tool,--
+ A new Stylites on his post,
+ "Sacred to ridicule!"
+
+ Look we at home! our noble hall,
+ To Freedom's holy purpose given,
+ Now rears its black and ruined wall,
+ Beneath the wintry heaven,
+
+ Telling the story of its doom,
+ The fiendish mob, the prostrate law,
+ The fiery jet through midnight's gloom,
+ Our gazing thousands saw.
+
+ Look to our State! the poor man's right
+ Torn from him: and the sons of those
+ Whose blood in Freedom's sternest fight
+ Sprinkled the Jersey snows,
+
+ Outlawed within the land of Penn,
+ That Slavery's guilty fears might cease,
+ And those whom God created men
+ Toil on as brutes in peace.
+
+ Yet o'er the blackness of the storm
+ A bow of promise bends on high,
+ And gleams of sunshine, soft and warm,
+ Break through our clouded sky.
+
+ East, West, and North, the shout is heard,
+ Of freemen rising for the right
+ Each valley hath its rallying word,
+ Each hill its signal light.
+
+ O'er Massachusetts' rocks of gray,
+ The strengthening light of freedom shines,
+ Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay,
+ And Vermont's snow-hung pines!
+
+ From Hudson's frowning palisades
+ To Alleghany's laurelled crest,
+ O'er lakes and prairies, streams and glades,
+ It shines upon the West.
+
+ Speed on the light to those who dwell
+ In Slavery's land of woe and sin,
+ And through the blackness of that bell,
+ Let Heaven's own light break in.
+
+ So shall the Southern conscience quake
+ Before that light poured full and strong,
+ So shall the Southern heart awake
+ To all the bondman's wrong.
+
+ And from that rich and sunny land
+ The song of grateful millions rise,
+ Like that of Israel's ransomed band
+ Beneath Arabia's skies:
+
+ And all who now are bound beneath
+ Our banner's shade, our eagle's wing,
+ From Slavery's night of moral death
+ To light and life shall spring.
+
+ Broken the bondman's chain, and gone
+ The master's guilt, and hate, and fear,
+ And unto both alike shall dawn
+ A New and Happy Year.
+
+ 1839.
+
+
+
+
+THE RELIC.
+
+Written on receiving a cane wrought from a fragment of the wood-work
+of Pennsylvania Hall which the fire had spared.
+
+ TOKEN of friendship true and tried,
+ From one whose fiery heart of youth
+ With mine has beaten, side by side,
+ For Liberty and Truth;
+ With honest pride the gift I take,
+ And prize it for the giver's sake.
+
+ But not alone because it tells
+ Of generous hand and heart sincere;
+ Around that gift of friendship dwells
+ A memory doubly dear;
+ Earth's noblest aim, man's holiest thought,
+ With that memorial frail in wrought!
+
+ Pure thoughts and sweet like flowers unfold,
+ And precious memories round it cling,
+ Even as the Prophet's rod of old
+ In beauty blossoming:
+ And buds of feeling, pure and good,
+ Spring from its cold unconscious wood.
+
+ Relic of Freedom's shrine! a brand
+ Plucked from its burning! let it be
+ Dear as a jewel from the hand
+ Of a lost friend to me!
+ Flower of a perished garland left,
+ Of life and beauty unbereft!
+
+ Oh, if the young enthusiast bears,
+ O'er weary waste and sea, the stone
+ Which crumbled from the Forum's stairs,
+ Or round the Parthenon;
+ Or olive-bough from some wild tree
+ Hung over old Thermopylae:
+
+ If leaflets from some hero's tomb,
+ Or moss-wreath torn from ruins hoary;
+ Or faded flowers whose sisters bloom
+ On fields renowned in story;
+ Or fragment from the Alhambra's crest,
+ Or the gray rock by Druids blessed;
+
+ Sad Erin's shamrock greenly growing
+ Where Freedom led her stalwart kern,
+ Or Scotia's "rough bur thistle" blowing
+ On Bruce's Bannockburn;
+ Or Runnymede's wild English rose,
+ Or lichen plucked from Sempach's snows!
+
+ If it be true that things like these
+ To heart and eye bright visions bring,
+ Shall not far holier memories
+ To this memorial cling
+ Which needs no mellowing mist of time
+ To hide the crimson stains of crime!
+
+ Wreck of a temple, unprofaned;
+ Of courts where Peace with Freedom trod,
+ Lifting on high, with hands unstained,
+ Thanksgiving unto God;
+ Where Mercy's voice of love was pleading
+ For human hearts in bondage bleeding;
+
+ Where, midst the sound of rushing feet
+ And curses on the night-air flung,
+ That pleading voice rose calm and sweet
+ From woman's earnest tongue;
+ And Riot turned his scowling glance,
+ Awed, from her tranquil countenance!
+
+ That temple now in ruin lies!
+ The fire-stain on its shattered wall,
+ And open to the changing skies
+ Its black and roofless hall,
+ It stands before a nation's sight,
+ A gravestone over buried Right!
+
+ But from that ruin, as of old,
+ The fire-scorched stones themselves are crying,
+ And from their ashes white and cold
+ Its timbers are replying!
+ A voice which slavery cannot kill
+ Speaks from the crumbling arches still!
+
+ And even this relic from thy shrine,
+ O holy Freedom! Hath to me
+ A potent power, a voice and sign
+ To testify of thee;
+ And, grasping it, methinks I feel
+ A deeper faith, a stronger zeal.
+
+ And not unlike that mystic rod,
+ Of old stretched o'er the Egyptian wave,
+ Which opened, in the strength of God,
+ A pathway for the slave,
+ It yet may point the bondman's way,
+ And turn the spoiler from his prey.
+
+ 1839.
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD'S CONVENTION OF THE FRIENDS OF EMANCIPATION,
+
+HELD IN LONDON IN 1840.
+
+Joseph Sturge, the founder of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery
+Society, proposed the calling of a world's anti-slavery convention, and
+the proposal was promptly seconded by the American Anti-Slavery Society.
+The call was addressed to "friends of the slave of every nation and of
+every clime."
+
+ YES, let them gather! Summon forth
+ The pledged philanthropy of Earth.
+ From every land, whose hills have heard
+ The bugle blast of Freedom waking;
+ Or shrieking of her symbol-bird
+ From out his cloudy eyrie breaking
+ Where Justice hath one worshipper,
+ Or truth one altar built to her;
+
+ Where'er a human eye is weeping
+ O'er wrongs which Earth's sad children know;
+ Where'er a single heart is keeping
+ Its prayerful watch with human woe
+ Thence let them come, and greet each other,
+ And know in each a friend and brother!
+
+ Yes, let them come! from each green vale
+ Where England's old baronial halls
+ Still bear upon their storied walls
+ The grim crusader's rusted mail,
+ Battered by Paynim spear and brand
+ On Malta's rock or Syria's sand!
+ And mouldering pennon-staves once set
+ Within the soil of Palestine,
+ By Jordan and Gennesaret;
+ Or, borne with England's battle line,
+ O'er Acre's shattered turrets stooping,
+ Or, midst the camp their banners drooping,
+ With dews from hallowed Hermon wet,
+ A holier summons now is given
+ Than that gray hermit's voice of old,
+ Which unto all the winds of heaven
+ The banners of the Cross unrolled!
+ Not for the long-deserted shrine;
+ Not for the dull unconscious sod,
+ Which tells not by one lingering sign
+ That there the hope of Israel trod;
+ But for that truth, for which alone
+ In pilgrim eyes are sanctified
+ The garden moss, the mountain stone,
+ Whereon His holy sandals pressed,--
+ The fountain which His lip hath blessed,--
+
+ Whate'er hath touched His garment's hem
+ At Bethany or Bethlehem,
+ Or Jordan's river-side.
+ For Freedom in the name of Him
+ Who came to raise Earth's drooping poor,
+ To break the chain from every limb,
+ The bolt from every prison door!
+ For these, o'er all the earth hath passed
+ An ever-deepening trumpet blast,
+ As if an angel's breath had lent
+ Its vigor to the instrument.
+
+ And Wales, from Snowden's mountain wall,
+ Shall startle at that thrilling call,
+ As if she heard her bards again;
+ And Erin's "harp on Tara's wall"
+ Give out its ancient strain,
+ Mirthful and sweet, yet sad withal,--
+ The melody which Erin loves,
+ When o'er that harp, 'mid bursts of gladness
+ And slogan cries and lyke-wake sadness,
+ The hand of her O'Connell moves!
+ Scotland, from lake and tarn and rill,
+ And mountain hold, and heathery bill,
+ Shall catch and echo back the note,
+ As if she heard upon the air
+ Once more her Cameronian's prayer
+ And song of Freedom float.
+ And cheering echoes shall reply
+ From each remote dependency,
+ Where Britain's mighty sway is known,
+ In tropic sea or frozen zone;
+ Where'er her sunset flag is furling,
+ Or morning gun-fire's smoke is curling;
+ From Indian Bengal's groves of palm
+ And rosy fields and gales of balm,
+ Where Eastern pomp and power are rolled
+ Through regal Ava's gates of gold;
+ And from the lakes and ancient woods
+ And dim Canadian solitudes,
+ Whence, sternly from her rocky throne,
+ Queen of the North, Quebec looks down;
+ And from those bright and ransomed Isles
+ Where all unwonted Freedom smiles,
+ And the dark laborer still retains
+ The scar of slavery's broken chains!
+
+ From the hoar Alps, which sentinel
+ The gateways of the land of Tell,
+ Where morning's keen and earliest glance
+ On Jura's rocky wall is thrown,
+ And from the olive bowers of France
+ And vine groves garlanding the Rhone,--
+ "Friends of the Blacks," as true and tried
+ As those who stood by Oge's side,
+ And heard the Haytien's tale of wrong,
+ Shall gather at that summons strong;
+ Broglie, Passy, and he whose song
+ Breathed over Syria's holy sod,
+ And, in the paths which Jesus trod,
+ And murmured midst the hills which hem
+ Crownless and sad Jerusalem,
+ Hath echoes whereso'er the tone
+ Of Israel's prophet-lyre is known.
+
+ Still let them come; from Quito's walls,
+ And from the Orinoco's tide,
+ From Lima's Inca-haunted halls,
+ From Santa Fe and Yucatan,--
+ Men who by swart Guerrero's side
+ Proclaimed the deathless rights of man,
+ Broke every bond and fetter off,
+ And hailed in every sable serf
+ A free and brother Mexican!
+ Chiefs who across the Andes' chain
+ Have followed Freedom's flowing pennon,
+ And seen on Junin's fearful plain,
+ Glare o'er the broken ranks of Spain
+ The fire-burst of Bolivar's cannon!
+ And Hayti, from her mountain land,
+ Shall send the sons of those who hurled
+ Defiance from her blazing strand,
+ The war-gage from her Petion's hand,
+ Alone against a hostile world.
+
+ Nor all unmindful, thou, the while,
+ Land of the dark and mystic Nile!
+ Thy Moslem mercy yet may shame
+ All tyrants of a Christian name,
+ When in the shade of Gizeh's pile,
+ Or, where, from Abyssinian hills
+ El Gerek's upper fountain fills,
+ Or where from Mountains of the Moon
+ El Abiad bears his watery boon,
+ Where'er thy lotus blossoms swim
+ Within their ancient hallowed waters;
+ Where'er is beard the Coptic hymn,
+ Or song of Nubia's sable daughters;
+ The curse of slavery and the crime,
+ Thy bequest from remotest time,
+ At thy dark Mehemet's decree
+ Forevermore shall pass from thee;
+ And chains forsake each captive's limb
+ Of all those tribes, whose hills around
+ Have echoed back the cymbal sound
+ And victor horn of Ibrahim.
+
+ And thou whose glory and whose crime
+ To earth's remotest bound and clime,
+ In mingled tones of awe and scorn,
+ The echoes of a world have borne,
+ My country! glorious at thy birth,
+ A day-star flashing brightly forth,
+ The herald-sign of Freedom's dawn!
+ Oh, who could dream that saw thee then,
+ And watched thy rising from afar,
+ That vapors from oppression's fen
+ Would cloud the upward tending star?
+ Or, that earth's tyrant powers, which heard,
+ Awe-struck, the shout which hailed thy dawning,
+ Would rise so soon, prince, peer, and king,
+ To mock thee with their welcoming,
+ Like Hades when her thrones were stirred
+ To greet the down-cast Star of Morning!
+ "Aha! and art thou fallen thus?
+ Art thou become as one of us?"
+
+ Land of my fathers! there will stand,
+ Amidst that world-assembled band,
+ Those owning thy maternal claim
+ Unweakened by thy, crime and shame;
+ The sad reprovers of thy wrong;
+ The children thou hast spurned so long.
+
+ Still with affection's fondest yearning
+ To their unnatural mother turning.
+ No traitors they! but tried and leal,
+ Whose own is but thy general weal,
+ Still blending with the patriot's zeal
+ The Christian's love for human kind,
+ To caste and climate unconfined.
+
+ A holy gathering! peaceful all
+ No threat of war, no savage call
+ For vengeance on an erring brother!
+ But in their stead the godlike plan
+ To teach the brotherhood of man
+ To love and reverence one another,
+ As sharers of a common blood,
+ The children of a common God
+ Yet, even at its lightest word,
+ Shall Slavery's darkest depths be stirred:
+ Spain, watching from her Moro's keep
+ Her slave-ships traversing the deep,
+ And Rio, in her strength and pride,
+ Lifting, along her mountain-side,
+ Her snowy battlements and towers,
+ Her lemon-groves and tropic bowers,
+ With bitter hate and sullen fear
+ Its freedom-giving voice shall hear;
+ And where my country's flag is flowing,
+ On breezes from Mount Vernon blowing,
+ Above the Nation's council halls,
+ Where Freedom's praise is loud and long,
+ While close beneath the outward walls
+ The driver plies his reeking thong;
+ The hammer of the man-thief falls,
+ O'er hypocritic cheek and brow
+ The crimson flush of shame shall glow
+ And all who for their native land
+ Are pledging life and heart and hand,
+ Worn watchers o'er her changing weal,
+ Who fog her tarnished honor feel,
+ Through cottage door and council-hall
+ Shall thunder an awakening call.
+ The pen along its page shall burn
+ With all intolerable scorn;
+ An eloquent rebuke shall go
+ On all the winds that Southward blow;
+ From priestly lips, now sealed and dumb,
+ Warning and dread appeal shall come,
+ Like those which Israel heard from him,
+ The Prophet of the Cherubim;
+ Or those which sad Esaias hurled
+ Against a sin-accursed world!
+ Its wizard leaves the Press shall fling
+ Unceasing from its iron wing,
+ With characters inscribed thereon,
+ As fearful in the despot's ball
+ As to the pomp of Babylon
+ The fire-sign on the palace wall!
+
+ And, from her dark iniquities,
+ Methinks I see my country rise
+ Not challenging the nations round
+ To note her tardy justice done;
+ Her captives from their chains unbound;
+ Her prisons opening to the sun
+ But tearfully her arms extending
+ Over the poor and unoffending;
+ Her regal emblem now no longer
+
+ A bird of prey, with talons reeking,
+ Above the dying captive shrieking,
+ But, spreading out her ample wing,
+ A broad, impartial covering,
+ The weaker sheltered by the stronger
+ Oh, then to Faith's anointed eyes
+ The promised token shall be given;
+ And on a nation's sacrifice,
+ Atoning for the sin of years,
+ And wet with penitential tears,
+ The fire shall fall from Heaven!
+
+ 1839.
+
+
+
+
+MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA.
+
+Written on reading an account of the proceedings of the citizens of
+Norfolk, Va., in reference to George Latimer, the alleged fugitive
+slave, who was seized in Boston without warrant at the request of James
+B. Grey, of Norfolk, claiming to be his master. The case caused great
+excitement North and South, and led to the presentation of a petition to
+Congress, signed by more than fifty thousand citizens of Massachusetts,
+calling for such laws and proposed amendments to the Constitution as
+should relieve the Commonwealth from all further participation in the
+crime of oppression. George Latimer himself was finally given free
+papers for the sum of four hundred dollars.
+
+ THE blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon its Southern way,
+ Bears greeting to Virginia from Massachusetts Bay.
+ No word of haughty challenging, nor battle bugle's peal,
+ Nor steady tread of marching files, nor clang of horsemen's steel.
+
+ No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along our highways go;
+ Around our silent arsenals untrodden lies the snow;
+ And to the land-breeze of our ports, upon their errands far,
+ A thousand sails of commerce swell, but none are spread for war.
+
+ We hear thy threats, Virginia! thy stormy words and high,
+ Swell harshly on the Southern winds which melt along our sky;
+ Yet, not one brown, hard hand foregoes its honest labor here,
+ No hewer of our mountain oaks suspends his axe in fear.
+
+ Wild are the waves which lash the reefs along St. George's bank;
+ Cold on the shore of Labrador the fog lies white and dank;
+ Through storm, and wave, and blinding mist, stout
+ are the hearts which man
+ The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the sea-boats of Cape Ann.
+
+ The cold north light and wintry sun glare on their icy forms,
+ Bent grimly o'er their straining lines or wrestling with the storms;
+ Free as the winds they drive before, rough as the waves they roam,
+ They laugh to scorn the slaver's threat against their rocky home.
+
+ What means the Old Dominion? Hath she forgot the day
+ When o'er her conquered valleys swept the Briton's steel array?
+ How side by side, with sons of hers, the Massachusetts men
+ Encountered Tarleton's charge of fire, and stout Cornwallis, then?
+
+ Forgets she how the Bay State, in answer to the call
+ Of her old House of Burgesses, spoke out from Faneuil Hall?
+ When, echoing back her Henry's cry, came pulsing on each breath
+ Of Northern winds, the thrilling sounds of "Liberty or Death!"
+
+ What asks the Old Dominion? If now her sons have proved
+ False to their fathers' memory, false to the faith they loved;
+ If she can scoff at Freedom, and its great charter spurn,
+ Must we of Massachusetts from truth and duty turn?
+
+ We hunt your bondmen, flying from Slavery's hateful hell;
+ Our voices, at your bidding, take up the bloodhound's yell;
+ We gather, at your summons, above our fathers' graves,
+ From Freedom's holy altar-horns to tear your wretched slaves!
+
+ Thank God! not yet so vilely can Massachusetts bow;
+ The spirit of her early time is with her even now;
+ Dream not because her Pilgrim blood moves slow and calm and cool,
+ She thus can stoop her chainless neck, a sister's slave and tool!
+
+ All that a sister State should do, all that a free State may,
+ Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as in our early day;
+ But that one dark loathsome burden ye must stagger with alone,
+ And reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have sown!
+
+ Hold, while ye may, your struggling slaves, and burden God's free air
+ With woman's shriek beneath the lash, and manhood's wild despair;
+ Cling closer to the "cleaving curse" that writes upon your plains
+ The blasting of Almighty wrath against a land of chains.
+
+ Still shame your gallant ancestry, the cavaliers of old,
+ By watching round the shambles where human flesh is sold;
+ Gloat o'er the new-born child, and count his market value, when
+ The maddened mother's cry of woe shall pierce the slaver's den!
+
+ Lower than plummet soundeth, sink the Virginia name;
+ Plant, if ye will, your fathers' graves with rankest weeds of shame;
+ Be, if ye will, the scandal of God's fair universe;
+ We wash our hands forever of your sin and shame and curse.
+
+ A voice from lips whereon the coal from Freedom's shrine hath been,
+ Thrilled, as but yesterday, the hearts of Berkshire's mountain men:
+ The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly lingering still
+ In all our sunny valleys, on every wind-swept hill.
+
+ And when the prowling man-thief came hunting for his prey
+ Beneath the very shadow of Bunker's shaft of gray,
+ How, through the free lips of the son, the father's warning spoke;
+ How, from its bonds of trade and sect, the Pilgrim city broke!
+
+ A hundred thousand right arms were lifted up on high,
+ A hundred thousand voices sent back their loud reply;
+ Through the thronged towns of Essex the startling summons rang,
+ And up from bench and loom and wheel her young mechanics sprang!
+
+ The voice of free, broad Middlesex, of thousands as of one,
+ The shaft of Bunker calling to that of Lexington;
+ From Norfolk's ancient villages, from Plymouth's rocky bound
+ To where Nantucket feels the arms of ocean close her round;
+
+ From rich and rural Worcester, where through the calm repose
+ Of cultured vales and fringing woods the gentle Nashua flows,
+ To where Wachuset's wintry blasts the mountain larches stir,
+ Swelled up to Heaven the thrilling cry of "God save Latimer!"
+
+ And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt sea spray;
+ And Bristol sent her answering shout down Narragansett Bay
+ Along the broad Connecticut old Hampden felt the thrill,
+ And the cheer of Hampshire's woodmen swept down from Holyoke Hill.
+
+ The voice of Massachusetts! Of her free sons and daughters,
+ Deep calling unto deep aloud, the sound of many waters!
+ Against the burden of that voice what tyrant power shall stand?
+ No fetters in the Bay State! No slave upon her land!
+
+ Look to it well, Virginians! In calmness we have borne,
+ In answer to our faith and trust, your insult and your scorn;
+ You've spurned our kindest counsels; you've hunted for our lives;
+ And shaken round our hearths and homes your manacles and gyves!
+
+ We wage no war, we lift no arm, we fling no torch within
+ The fire-clamps of the quaking mine beneath your soil of sin;
+ We leave ye with your bondmen, to wrestle, while ye can,
+ With the strong upward tendencies and godlike soul of man!
+
+ But for us and for our children, the vow which we have given
+ For freedom and humanity is registered in heaven;
+ No slave-hunt in our borders,--no pirate on our strand!
+ No fetters in the Bay State,--no slave upon our land!
+
+ 1843.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE.
+
+In a publication of L. F. Tasistro--Random Shots and Southern Breezes--
+is a description of a slave auction at New Orleans, at which the
+auctioneer recommended the woman on the stand as "A GOOD CHRISTIAN!" It
+was not uncommon to see advertisements of slaves for sale, in which they
+were described as pious or as members of the church. In one
+advertisement a slave was noted as "a Baptist preacher."
+
+
+ A CHRISTIAN! going, gone!
+ Who bids for God's own image? for his grace,
+ Which that poor victim of the market-place
+ Hath in her suffering won?
+
+ My God! can such things be?
+ Hast Thou not said that whatsoe'er is done
+ Unto Thy weakest and Thy humblest one
+ Is even done to Thee?
+
+ In that sad victim, then,
+ Child of Thy pitying love, I see Thee stand;
+ Once more the jest-word of a mocking band,
+ Bound, sold, and scourged again!
+
+ A Christian up for sale!
+ Wet with her blood your whips, o'ertask her frame,
+ Make her life loathsome with your wrong and shame,
+ Her patience shall not fail!
+
+ A heathen hand might deal
+ Back on your heads the gathered wrong of years:
+ But her low, broken prayer and nightly tears,
+ Ye neither heed nor feel.
+
+ Con well thy lesson o'er,
+ Thou prudent teacher, tell the toiling slave
+ No dangerous tale of Him who came to save
+ The outcast and the poor.
+
+ But wisely shut the ray
+ Of God's free Gospel from her simple heart,
+ And to her darkened mind alone impart
+ One stern command, Obey! (3)
+
+ So shalt thou deftly raise
+ The market price of human flesh; and while
+ On thee, their pampered guest, the planters smile,
+ Thy church shall praise.
+
+ Grave, reverend men shall tell
+ From Northern pulpits how thy work was blest,
+ While in that vile South Sodom first and best,
+ Thy poor disciples sell.
+
+ Oh, shame! the Moslem thrall,
+ Who, with his master, to the Prophet kneels,
+ While turning to the sacred Kebla feels
+ His fetters break and fall.
+
+ Cheers for the turbaned Bey
+ Of robber-peopled Tunis! he hath torn
+ The dark slave-dungeons open, and hath borne
+ Their inmates into day:
+
+ But our poor slave in vain
+ Turns to the Christian shrine his aching eyes;
+ Its rites will only swell his market price,
+ And rivet on his chain.
+
+ God of all right! how long
+ Shall priestly robbers at Thine altar stand,
+ Lifting in prayer to Thee, the bloody hand
+ And haughty brow of wrong?
+
+ 1843
+
+
+
+
+THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN
+
+ Oh, from the fields of cane,
+ From the low rice-swamp, from the trader's cell;
+ From the black slave-ship's foul and loathsome hell,
+ And coffle's weary chain;
+ Hoarse, horrible, and strong,
+ Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry,
+ Filling the arches of the hollow sky,
+ How long, O God, how long?
+
+
+
+
+THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN.
+
+John L. Brown, a young white man of South Carolina, was in 1844
+sentenced to death for aiding a young slave woman, whom he loved and had
+married, to escape from slavery. In pronouncing the sentence Judge
+O'Neale addressed to the prisoner these words of appalling blasphemy:
+
+You are to die! To die an ignominious death--the death on the gallows!
+This announcement is, to you, I know, most appalling. Little did you
+dream of it when you stepped into the bar with an air as if you thought
+it was a fine frolic. But the consequences of crime are just such as you
+are realizing. Punishment often comes when it is least expected. Let me
+entreat you to take the present opportunity to commence the work of
+reformation. Time will be furnished you to prepare for the great change
+just before you. Of your past life I know nothing, except what your
+trial furnished. That told me that the crime for which you are to suffer
+was the consequence of a want of attention on your part to the duties of
+life. The strange woman snared you. She flattered you with her word;
+and you became her victim. The consequence was, that, led on by a desire
+to serve her, you committed the offence of aid in a slave to run away
+and depart from her master's service; and now, for it you are to die!
+You are a young man, and I fear you have been dissolute; and if so,
+these kindred vices have contributed a full measure to your ruin.
+Reflect on your past life, and make the only useful devotion of the
+remnant of your days in preparing for death. Remember now thy Creator in
+the days of thy youth is the language of inspired wisdom. This comes
+home appropriately to you in this trying moment. You are young; quite
+too young to be where you are. If you had remembered your Creator in
+your past days, you would not now be in a felon's place, to receive a
+felon's judgment. Still, it is not too late to remember your Creator. He
+calls early, and He calls late. He stretches out the arms of a Father's
+love to you--to the vilest sinner--and says: "Come unto me and be
+saved." You can perhaps read. If so, read the Scriptures; read them
+without note, and without comment; and pray to God for His assistance;
+and you will be able to say when you pass from prison to execution, as a
+poor slave said under similar circumstances: "I am glad my Friday has
+come." If you cannot read the Scriptures, the ministers of our holy
+religion will be ready to aid you. They will read and explain to you
+until you will be able to understand; and understanding, to call upon
+the only One who can help you and save you--Jesus Christ, the Lamb of
+God, who taketh away the sin of the world. To Him I commend you. And
+through Him may you have that opening of the Day-Spring of mercy from
+on high, which shall bless you here, and crown you as a saint in an
+everlasting world, forever and ever. The sentence of the law is that you
+be taken hence to the place from whence you came last; thence to the
+jail of Fairfield District; and that there you be closely and securely
+confined until Friday, the 26th day of April next; on which day, between
+the hours of ten in the forenoon and two in the afternoon, you will be
+taken to the place of public execution, and there be hanged by the neck
+till your body be dead. And may God have mercy on your soul!
+
+No event in the history of the anti-slavery struggle so stirred the two
+hemispheres as did this dreadful sentence. A cry of horror was heard
+from Europe. In the British House of Lords, Brougham and Denman spoke of
+it with mingled pathos and indignation. Thirteen hundred clergymen and
+church officers in Great Britain addressed a memorial to the churches of
+South Carolina against the atrocity. Indeed, so strong was the pressure
+of the sentiment of abhorrence and disgust that South Carolina yielded
+to it, and the sentence was commuted to scourging and banishment.
+
+ Ho! thou who seekest late and long
+ A License from the Holy Book
+ For brutal lust and fiendish wrong,
+ Man of the Pulpit, look!
+ Lift up those cold and atheist eyes,
+ This ripe fruit of thy teaching see;
+ And tell us how to heaven will rise
+ The incense of this sacrifice--
+ This blossom of the gallows tree!
+
+ Search out for slavery's hour of need
+ Some fitting text of sacred writ;
+ Give heaven the credit of a deed
+ Which shames the nether pit.
+ Kneel, smooth blasphemer, unto Him
+ Whose truth is on thy lips a lie;
+ Ask that His bright winged cherubim
+ May bend around that scaffold grim
+ To guard and bless and sanctify.
+
+ O champion of the people's cause
+ Suspend thy loud and vain rebuke
+ Of foreign wrong and Old World's laws,
+ Man of the Senate, look!
+ Was this the promise of the free,
+ The great hope of our early time,
+ That slavery's poison vine should be
+ Upborne by Freedom's prayer-nursed tree
+ O'erclustered with such fruits of crime?
+
+ Send out the summons East and West,
+ And South and North, let all be there
+ Where he who pitied the oppressed
+ Swings out in sun and air.
+ Let not a Democratic hand
+ The grisly hangman's task refuse;
+ There let each loyal patriot stand,
+ Awaiting slavery's command,
+ To twist the rope and draw the noose!
+
+ But vain is irony--unmeet
+ Its cold rebuke for deeds which start
+ In fiery and indignant beat
+ The pulses of the heart.
+ Leave studied wit and guarded phrase
+ For those who think but do not feel;
+ Let men speak out in words which raise
+ Where'er they fall, an answering blaze
+ Like flints which strike the fire from steel.
+
+ Still let a mousing priesthood ply
+ Their garbled text and gloss of sin,
+ And make the lettered scroll deny
+ Its living soul within:
+ Still let the place-fed, titled knave
+ Plead robbery's right with purchased lips,
+ And tell us that our fathers gave
+ For Freedom's pedestal, a slave,
+ The frieze and moulding, chains and whips!
+
+ But ye who own that Higher Law
+ Whose tablets in the heart are set,
+ Speak out in words of power and awe
+ That God is living yet!
+ Breathe forth once more those tones sublime
+ Which thrilled the burdened prophet's lyre,
+ And in a dark and evil time
+ Smote down on Israel's fast of crime
+ And gift of blood, a rain of fire!
+
+ Oh, not for us the graceful lay
+ To whose soft measures lightly move
+ The footsteps of the faun and fay,
+ O'er-locked by mirth and love!
+ But such a stern and startling strain
+ As Britain's hunted bards flung down
+ From Snowden to the conquered plain,
+ Where harshly clanked the Saxon chain,
+ On trampled field and smoking town.
+
+ By Liberty's dishonored name,
+ By man's lost hope and failing trust,
+ By words and deeds which bow with shame
+ Our foreheads to the dust,
+ By the exulting strangers' sneer,
+ Borne to us from the Old World's thrones,
+ And by their victims' grief who hear,
+ In sunless mines and dungeons drear,
+ How Freedom's land her faith disowns!
+
+ Speak out in acts. The time for words
+ Has passed, and deeds suffice alone;
+ In vain against the clang of swords
+ The wailing pipe is blown!
+ Act, act in God's name, while ye may!
+ Smite from the church her leprous limb!
+ Throw open to the light of day
+ The bondman's cell, and break away
+ The chains the state has bound on him!
+
+ Ho! every true and living soul,
+ To Freedom's perilled altar bear
+ The Freeman's and the Christian's whole
+ Tongue, pen, and vote, and prayer!
+ One last, great battle for the right--
+ One short, sharp struggle to be free!
+ To do is to succeed--our fight
+ Is waged in Heaven's approving sight;
+ The smile of God is Victory.
+
+ 1844.
+
+
+
+
+TEXAS
+
+VOICE OF NEW ENGLAND.
+
+The five poems immediately following indicate the intense feeling of the
+friends of freedom in view of the annexation of Texas, with its vast
+territory sufficient, as was boasted, for six new slave States.
+
+ Up the hillside, down the glen,
+ Rouse the sleeping citizen;
+ Summon out the might of men!
+
+ Like a lion growling low,
+ Like a night-storm rising slow,
+ Like the tread of unseen foe;
+
+ It is coming, it is nigh!
+ Stand your homes and altars by;
+ On your own free thresholds die.
+
+ Clang the bells in all your spires;
+ On the gray hills of your sires
+ Fling to heaven your signal-fires.
+
+ From Wachuset, lone and bleak,
+ Unto Berkshire's tallest peak,
+ Let the flame-tongued heralds speak.
+
+ Oh, for God and duty stand,
+ Heart to heart and hand to hand,
+ Round the old graves of the land.
+
+ Whoso shrinks or falters now,
+ Whoso to the yoke would bow,
+ Brand the craven on his brow!
+
+ Freedom's soil hath only place
+ For a free and fearless race,
+ None for traitors false and base.
+
+ Perish party, perish clan;
+ Strike together while ye can,
+ Like the arm of one strong man.
+
+ Like that angel's voice sublime,
+ Heard above a world of crime,
+ Crying of the end of time;
+
+ With one heart and with one mouth,
+ Let the North unto the South
+ Speak the word befitting both.
+
+ "What though Issachar be strong
+ Ye may load his back with wrong
+ Overmuch and over long:
+
+ "Patience with her cup o'errun,
+ With her weary thread outspun,
+ Murmurs that her work is done.
+
+ "Make our Union-bond a chain,
+ Weak as tow in Freedom's strain
+ Link by link shall snap in twain.
+
+ "Vainly shall your sand-wrought rope
+ Bind the starry cluster up,
+ Shattered over heaven's blue cope!
+
+ "Give us bright though broken rays,
+ Rather than eternal haze,
+ Clouding o'er the full-orbed blaze.
+
+ "Take your land of sun and bloom;
+ Only leave to Freedom room
+ For her plough, and forge, and loom;
+
+ "Take your slavery-blackened vales;
+ Leave us but our own free gales,
+ Blowing on our thousand sails.
+
+ "Boldly, or with treacherous art,
+ Strike the blood-wrought chain apart;
+ Break the Union's mighty heart;
+
+ "Work the ruin, if ye will;
+ Pluck upon your heads an ill
+ Which shall grow and deepen still.
+
+ "With your bondman's right arm bare,
+ With his heart of black despair,
+ Stand alone, if stand ye dare!
+
+ "Onward with your fell design;
+ Dig the gulf and draw the line
+ Fire beneath your feet the mine!
+
+ "Deeply, when the wide abyss
+ Yawns between your land and this,
+ Shall ye feel your helplessness.
+
+ "By the hearth, and in the bed,
+ Shaken by a look or tread,
+ Ye shall own a guilty dread.
+
+ "And the curse of unpaid toil,
+ Downward through your generous soil
+ Like a fire shall burn and spoil.
+
+ "Our bleak hills shall bud and blow,
+ Vines our rocks shall overgrow,
+ Plenty in our valleys flow;--
+
+ "And when vengeance clouds your skies,
+ Hither shall ye turn your eyes,
+ As the lost on Paradise!
+
+ "We but ask our rocky strand,
+ Freedom's true and brother band,
+ Freedom's strong and honest hand;
+
+ "Valleys by the slave untrod,
+ And the Pilgrim's mountain sod,
+ Blessed of our fathers' God!"
+
+ 1844.
+
+
+
+
+TO FANEUIL HALL.
+
+Written in 1844, on reading a call by "a Massachusetts Freeman" for a
+meeting in Faneuil Hall of the citizens of Massachusetts, without
+distinction of party, opposed to the annexation of Texas, and the
+aggressions of South Carolina, and in favor of decisive action against
+slavery.
+
+ MEN! if manhood still ye claim,
+ If the Northern pulse can thrill,
+ Roused by wrong or stung by shame,
+ Freely, strongly still;
+ Let the sounds of traffic die
+ Shut the mill-gate, leave the stall,
+ Fling the axe and hammer by;
+ Throng to Faneuil Hall!
+
+ Wrongs which freemen never brooked,
+ Dangers grim and fierce as they,
+ Which, like couching lions, looked
+ On your fathers' way;
+ These your instant zeal demand,
+ Shaking with their earthquake-call
+ Every rood of Pilgrim land,
+ Ho, to Faneuil Hall!
+
+ From your capes and sandy bars,
+ From your mountain-ridges cold,
+ Through whose pines the westering stars
+ Stoop their crowns of gold;
+ Come, and with your footsteps wake
+ Echoes from that holy wall;
+ Once again, for Freedom's sake,
+ Rock your fathers' hall!
+
+ Up, and tread beneath your feet
+ Every cord by party spun:
+ Let your hearts together beat
+ As the heart of one.
+ Banks and tariffs, stocks and trade,
+ Let them rise or let them fall:
+ Freedom asks your common aid,--
+ Up, to Faneuil Hall!
+
+ Up, and let each voice that speaks
+ Ring from thence to Southern plains,
+ Sharply as the blow which breaks
+ Prison-bolts and chains!
+ Speak as well becomes the free
+ Dreaded more than steel or ball,
+ Shall your calmest utterance be,
+ Heard from Faneuil Hall!
+
+ Have they wronged us? Let us then
+ Render back nor threats nor prayers;
+ Have they chained our free-born men?
+ Let us unchain theirs!
+ Up, your banner leads the van,
+ Blazoned, "Liberty for all!"
+
+ Finish what your sires began!
+ Up, to Faneuil Hall!
+
+
+
+
+TO MASSACHUSETTS.
+
+ WHAT though around thee blazes
+ No fiery rallying sign?
+ From all thy own high places,
+ Give heaven the light of thine!
+ What though unthrilled, unmoving,
+ The statesman stand apart,
+ And comes no warm approving
+ From Mammon's crowded mart?
+
+ Still, let the land be shaken
+ By a summons of thine own!
+ By all save truth forsaken,
+ Stand fast with that alone!
+ Shrink not from strife unequal!
+ With the best is always hope;
+ And ever in the sequel
+ God holds the right side up!
+
+ But when, with thine uniting,
+ Come voices long and loud,
+ And far-off hills are writing
+ Thy fire-words on the cloud;
+ When from Penobscot's fountains
+ A deep response is heard,
+ And across the Western mountains
+ Rolls back thy rallying word;
+
+ Shall thy line of battle falter,
+ With its allies just in view?
+ Oh, by hearth and holy altar,
+ My fatherland, be true!
+ Fling abroad thy scrolls of Freedom
+ Speed them onward far and fast
+ Over hill and valley speed them,
+ Like the sibyl's on the blast!
+
+ Lo! the Empire State is shaking
+ The shackles from her hand;
+ With the rugged North is waking
+ The level sunset land!
+ On they come, the free battalions
+ East and West and North they come,
+ And the heart-beat of the millions
+ Is the beat of Freedom's drum.
+
+ "To the tyrant's plot no favor
+ No heed to place-fed knaves!
+ Bar and bolt the door forever
+ Against the land of slaves!"
+ Hear it, mother Earth, and hear it,
+ The heavens above us spread!
+ The land is roused,--its spirit
+ Was sleeping, but not dead!
+
+ 1844.
+
+
+
+
+NEW HAMPSHIRE.
+
+ GOD bless New Hampshire! from her granite peaks
+ Once more the voice of Stark and Langdon speaks.
+ The long-bound vassal of the exulting South
+ For very shame her self-forged chain has broken;
+ Torn the black seal of slavery from her mouth,
+ And in the clear tones of her old time spoken!
+ Oh, all undreamed-of, all unhoped-for changes
+ The tyrant's ally proves his sternest foe;
+ To all his biddings, from her mountain ranges,
+ New Hampshire thunders an indignant No!
+ Who is it now despairs? Oh, faint of heart,
+ Look upward to those Northern mountains cold,
+ Flouted by Freedom's victor-flag unrolled,
+ And gather strength to bear a manlier part
+ All is not lost. The angel of God's blessing
+ Encamps with Freedom on the field of fight;
+ Still to her banner, day by day, are pressing,
+ Unlooked-for allies, striking for the right
+ Courage, then, Northern hearts! Be firm, be true:
+ What one brave State hath done, can ye not also do?
+
+ 1845.
+
+
+
+
+THE PINE-TREE.
+
+Written on hearing that the Anti-Slavery Resolves of Stephen C. Phillips
+had been rejected by the Whig Convention in Faneuil Hall, in 1846.
+
+ LIFT again the stately emblem on the Bay State's
+ rusted shield,
+ Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree on our banner's
+ tattered field.
+ Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles
+ round the board,
+ Answering England's royal missive with a firm,
+ "Thus saith the Lord!"
+ Rise again for home and freedom! set the battle
+ in array!
+ What the fathers did of old time we their sons
+ must do to-day.
+
+ Tell us not of banks and tariffs, cease your paltry
+ pedler cries;
+ Shall the good State sink her honor that your
+ gambling stocks may rise?
+ Would ye barter man for cotton? That your
+ gains may sum up higher,
+ Must we kiss the feet of Moloch, pass our children
+ through the fire?
+ Is the dollar only real? God and truth and right
+ a dream?
+ Weighed against your lying ledgers must our manhood
+ kick the beam?
+
+ O my God! for that free spirit, which of old in
+ Boston town
+ Smote the Province House with terror, struck the
+ crest of Andros down!
+ For another strong-voiced Adams in the city's
+ streets to cry,
+ "Up for God and Massachusetts! Set your feet
+ on Mammon's lie!
+ Perish banks and perish traffic, spin your cotton's
+ latest pound,
+ But in Heaven's name keep your honor, keep the
+ heart o' the Bay State sound!"
+ Where's the man for Massachusetts! Where's
+ the voice to speak her free?
+ Where's the hand to light up bonfires from her
+ mountains to the sea?
+ Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer? Sits she dumb
+ in her despair?
+ Has she none to break the silence? Has she none
+ to do and dare?
+ O my God! for one right worthy to lift up her
+ rusted shield,
+ And to plant again the Pine-Tree in her banner's
+ tattered field
+
+ 1840.
+
+
+
+
+TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN.
+
+John C. Calhoun, who had strongly urged the extension of slave territory
+by the annexation of Texas, even if it should involve a war with
+England, was unwilling to promote the acquisition of Oregon, which would
+enlarge the Northern domain of freedom, and pleaded as an excuse the
+peril of foreign complications which he had defied when the interests
+of slavery were involved.
+
+ Is this thy voice whose treble notes of fear
+ Wail in the wind? And dost thou shake to hear,
+ Actieon-like, the bay of thine own hounds,
+ Spurning the leash, and leaping o'er their bounds?
+ Sore-baffled statesman! when thy eager hand,
+ With game afoot, unslipped the hungry pack,
+ To hunt down Freedom in her chosen land,
+ Hadst thou no fear, that, erelong, doubling back,
+ These dogs of thine might snuff on Slavery's track?
+ Where's now the boast, which even thy guarded tongue,
+ Cold, calm, and proud, in the teeth o' the Senate flung,
+
+ O'er the fulfilment of thy baleful plan,
+ Like Satan's triumph at the fall of man?
+ How stood'st thou then, thy feet on Freedom planting,
+ And pointing to the lurid heaven afar,
+ Whence all could see, through the south windows slanting,
+ Crimson as blood, the beams of that Lone Star!
+ The Fates are just; they give us but our own;
+ Nemesis ripens what our hands have sown.
+ There is an Eastern story, not unknown,
+ Doubtless, to thee, of one whose magic skill
+ Called demons up his water-jars to fill;
+ Deftly and silently, they did his will,
+ But, when the task was done, kept pouring still.
+ In vain with spell and charm the wizard wrought,
+ Faster and faster were the buckets brought,
+ Higher and higher rose the flood around,
+ Till the fiends clapped their hands above their master drowned
+ So, Carolinian, it may prove with thee,
+ For God still overrules man's schemes, and takes
+ Craftiness in its self-set snare, and makes
+ The wrath of man to praise Him. It may be,
+ That the roused spirits of Democracy
+ May leave to freer States the same wide door
+ Through which thy slave-cursed Texas entered in,
+ From out the blood and fire, the wrong and sin,
+ Of the stormed-city and the ghastly plain,
+ Beat by hot hail, and wet with bloody rain,
+ The myriad-handed pioneer may pour,
+ And the wild West with the roused North combine
+ And heave the engineer of evil with his mine.
+
+ 1846.
+
+
+
+
+AT WASHINGTON.
+
+Suggested by a visit to the city of Washington, in the 12th month of
+1845.
+
+ WITH a cold and wintry noon-light
+ On its roofs and steeples shed,
+ Shadows weaving with the sunlight
+ From the gray sky overhead,
+ Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the half-built
+ town outspread.
+
+ Through this broad street, restless ever,
+ Ebbs and flows a human tide,
+ Wave on wave a living river;
+ Wealth and fashion side by side;
+ Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick
+ current glide.
+
+ Underneath yon dome, whose coping
+ Springs above them, vast and tall,
+ Grave men in the dust are groping
+ For the largess, base and small,
+ Which the hand of Power is scattering, crumbs
+ which from its table fall.
+
+ Base of heart! They vilely barter
+ Honor's wealth for party's place;
+ Step by step on Freedom's charter
+ Leaving footprints of disgrace;
+ For to-day's poor pittance turning from the great
+ hope of their race.
+
+ Yet, where festal lamps are throwing
+ Glory round the dancer's hair,
+ Gold-tressed, like an angel's, flowing
+ Backward on the sunset air;
+ And the low quick pulse of music beats its measure
+ sweet and rare.
+
+ There to-night shall woman's glances,
+ Star-like, welcome give to them;
+ Fawning fools with shy advances
+ Seek to touch their garments' hem,
+ With the tongue of flattery glozing deeds which
+ God and Truth condemn.
+
+ From this glittering lie my vision
+ Takes a broader, sadder range,
+ Full before me have arisen
+ Other pictures dark and strange;
+ From the parlor to the prison must the scene and
+ witness change.
+
+ Hark! the heavy gate is swinging
+ On its hinges, harsh and slow;
+ One pale prison lamp is flinging
+ On a fearful group below
+ Such a light as leaves to terror whatsoe'er it does
+ not show.
+
+ Pitying God! Is that a woman
+ On whose wrist the shackles clash?
+ Is that shriek she utters human,
+ Underneath the stinging lash?
+ Are they men whose eyes of madness from that sad
+ procession flash?
+
+ Still the dance goes gayly onward
+ What is it to Wealth and Pride
+ That without the stars are looking
+ On a scene which earth should hide?
+ That the slave-ship lies in waiting, rocking
+ on Potomac's tide!
+
+ Vainly to that mean Ambition
+ Which, upon a rival's fall,
+ Winds above its old condition,
+ With a reptile's slimy crawl,
+ Shall the pleading voice of sorrow, shall the slave
+ in anguish call.
+
+ Vainly to the child of Fashion,
+ Giving to ideal woe
+ Graceful luxury of compassion,
+ Shall the stricken mourner go;
+ Hateful seems the earnest sorrow, beautiful the
+ hollow show!
+
+ Nay, my words are all too sweeping:
+ In this crowded human mart,
+ Feeling is not dead, but sleeping;
+ Man's strong will and woman's heart,
+ In the coming strife for Freedom, yet shall bear
+ their generous part.
+
+ And from yonder sunny valleys,
+ Southward in the distance lost,
+ Freedom yet shall summon allies
+ Worthier than the North can boast,
+ With the Evil by their hearth-stones grappling at
+ severer cost.
+
+ Now, the soul alone is willing
+ Faint the heart and weak the knee;
+ And as yet no lip is thrilling
+ With the mighty words, "Be Free!"
+ Tarrieth long the land's Good Angel, but his
+ advent is to be!
+
+ Meanwhile, turning from the revel
+ To the prison-cell my sight,
+ For intenser hate of evil,
+ For a keener sense of right,
+ Shaking off thy dust, I thank thee, City of the
+ Slaves, to-night!
+
+ "To thy duty now and ever!
+ Dream no more of rest or stay
+ Give to Freedom's great endeavor
+ All thou art and hast to-day:"
+ Thus, above the city's murmur, saith a Voice, or
+ seems to say.
+
+ Ye with heart and vision gifted
+ To discern and love the right,
+
+ Whose worn faces have been lifted
+ To the slowly-growing light,
+ Where from Freedom's sunrise drifted slowly
+ back the murk of night
+
+ Ye who through long years of trial
+ Still have held your purpose fast,
+ While a lengthening shade the dial
+ from the westering sunshine cast,
+ And of hope each hour's denial seemed an echo of
+ the last!
+
+ O my brothers! O my sisters
+ Would to God that ye were near,
+ Gazing with me down the vistas
+ Of a sorrow strange and drear;
+ Would to God that ye were listeners to the Voice
+ I seem to hear!
+
+ With the storm above us driving,
+ With the false earth mined below,
+ Who shall marvel if thus striving
+ We have counted friend as foe;
+ Unto one another giving in the darkness blow for
+ blow.
+
+ Well it may be that our natures
+ Have grown sterner and more hard,
+ And the freshness of their features
+ Somewhat harsh and battle-scarred,
+ And their harmonies of feeling overtasked and
+ rudely jarred.
+
+ Be it so. It should not swerve us
+ From a purpose true and brave;
+ Dearer Freedom's rugged service
+ Than the pastime of the slave;
+ Better is the storm above it than the quiet of
+ the grave.
+
+ Let us then, uniting, bury
+ All our idle feuds in dust,
+ And to future conflicts carry
+ Mutual faith and common trust;
+ Always he who most forgiveth in his brother is
+ most just.
+
+ From the eternal shadow rounding
+ All our sun and starlight here,
+ Voices of our lost ones sounding
+ Bid us be of heart and cheer,
+ Through the silence, down the spaces, falling on
+ the inward ear.
+
+ Know we not our dead are looking
+ Downward with a sad surprise,
+ All our strife of words rebuking
+ With their mild and loving eyes?
+ Shall we grieve the holy angels? Shall we cloud
+ their blessed skies?
+
+ Let us draw their mantles o'er us
+ Which have fallen in our way;
+ Let us do the work before us,
+ Cheerly, bravely, while we may,
+ Ere the long night-silence cometh, and with us it is
+ not day!
+
+
+
+
+THE BRANDED HAND.
+
+Captain Jonathan Walker, of Harwich, Mass., was solicited by several
+fugitive slaves at Pensacola, Florida, to carry them in his vessel to
+the British West Indies. Although well aware of the great hazard of the
+enterprise he attempted to comply with the request, but was seized at
+sea by an American vessel, consigned to the authorities at Key West, and
+thence sent back to Pensacola, where, after a long and rigorous
+confinement in prison, he was tried and sentenced to be branded on his
+right hand with the letters "S.S." (slave-stealer) and amerced in a
+heavy fine.
+
+ WELCOME home again, brave seaman! with thy
+ thoughtful brow and gray,
+ And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day;
+ With that front of calm endurance, on whose
+ steady nerve in vain
+ Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery
+ shafts of pain.
+
+ Is the tyrant's brand upon thee? Did the brutal
+ cravens aim
+ To make God's truth thy falsehood, His holiest
+ work thy shame?
+ When, all blood-quenched, from the torture the
+ iron was withdrawn,
+ How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools to
+ scorn!
+
+ They change to wrong the duty which God hath
+ written out
+ On the great heart of humanity, too legible for
+ doubt!
+ They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched from
+ footsole up to crown,
+ Give to shame what God hath given unto honor
+ and renown!
+
+ Why, that brand is highest honor! than its traces
+ never yet
+ Upon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazon
+ set;
+ And thy unborn generations, as they tread our
+ rocky strand,
+ Shall tell with pride the story of their father's
+ branded hand!
+
+ As the Templar home was welcome, bearing back-
+ from Syrian wars
+ The scars of Arab lances and of Paynim scimitars,
+ The pallor of the prison, and the shackle's crimson span,
+ So we meet thee, so we greet thee, truest friend of
+ God and man.
+
+ He suffered for the ransom of the dear Redeemer's grave,
+ Thou for His living presence in the bound and
+ bleeding slave;
+ He for a soil no longer by the feet of angels trod,
+ Thou for the true Shechinah, the present home of God.
+
+ For, while the jurist, sitting with the slave-whip
+ o'er him swung,
+ From the tortured truths of freedom the lie of
+ slavery wrung,
+ And the solemn priest to Moloch, on each God-
+ deserted shrine,
+ Broke the bondman's heart for bread, poured the
+ bondman's blood for wine;
+
+ While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Saviour
+ knelt,
+ And spurned, the while, the temple where a present
+ Saviour dwelt;
+ Thou beheld'st Him in the task-field, in the prison
+ shadows dim,
+ And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy unto Him!
+
+ In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above and
+ wave below,
+ Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babbling
+ schoolmen know;
+ God's stars and silence taught thee, as His angels
+ only can,
+ That the one sole sacred thing beneath the cope of
+ heaven is Man!
+
+ That he who treads profanely on the scrolls of law
+ and creed,
+ In the depth of God's great goodness may find
+ mercy in his need;
+ But woe to him who crushes the soul with chain
+ and rod,
+ And herds with lower natures the awful form of God!
+
+ Then lift that manly right-hand, bold ploughman
+ of the wave!
+ Its branded palm shall prophesy, "Salvation to
+ the Slave!"
+ Hold up its fire-wrought language, that whoso
+ reads may feel
+ His heart swell strong within him, his sinews
+ change to steel.
+
+ Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our
+ Northern air;
+ Ho! men of Massachusetts, for the love of God,
+ look there!
+ Take it henceforth for your standard, like the
+ Bruce's heart of yore,
+ In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand
+ be seen before!
+
+ And the masters of the slave-land shall tremble at
+ that sign,
+ When it points its finger Southward along the
+ Puritan line
+ Can the craft of State avail them? Can a Christless
+ church withstand,
+ In the van of Freedom's onset, the coming of that
+ band?
+
+ 1846.
+
+
+
+
+THE FREED ISLANDS.
+
+Written for the anniversary celebration of the first of August,
+at Milton, 7846.
+
+ A FEW brief years have passed away
+ Since Britain drove her million slaves
+ Beneath the tropic's fiery ray
+ God willed their freedom; and to-day
+ Life blooms above those island graves!
+
+ He spoke! across the Carib Sea,
+ We heard the clash of breaking chains,
+ And felt the heart-throb of the free,
+ The first, strong pulse of liberty
+ Which thrilled along the bondman's veins.
+
+ Though long delayed, and far, and slow,
+ The Briton's triumph shall be ours
+ Wears slavery here a prouder brow
+ Than that which twelve short years ago
+ Scowled darkly from her island bowers?
+
+ Mighty alike for good or ill
+ With mother-land, we fully share
+ The Saxon strength, the nerve of steel,
+ The tireless energy of will,
+ The power to do, the pride to dare.
+
+ What she has done can we not do?
+ Our hour and men are both at hand;
+ The blast which Freedom's angel blew
+ O'er her green islands, echoes through
+ Each valley of our forest land.
+
+ Hear it, old Europe! we have sworn
+ The death of slavery. When it falls,
+ Look to your vassals in their turn,
+ Your poor dumb millions, crushed and worn,
+ Your prisons and your palace walls!
+
+ O kingly mockers! scoffing show
+ What deeds in Freedom's name we do;
+ Yet know that every taunt ye throw
+ Across the waters, goads our slow
+ Progression towards the right and true.
+
+ Not always shall your outraged poor,
+ Appalled by democratic crime,
+ Grind as their fathers ground before;
+ The hour which sees our prison door
+ Swing wide shall be their triumph time.
+
+ On then, my brothers! every blow
+ Ye deal is felt the wide earth through;
+ Whatever here uplifts the low
+ Or humbles Freedom's hateful foe,
+ Blesses the Old World through the New.
+
+ Take heart! The promised hour draws near;
+ I hear the downward beat of wings,
+ And Freedom's trumpet sounding clear
+ "Joy to the people! woe and fear
+ To new-world tyrants, old-world kings!"
+
+
+
+
+A LETTER.
+
+Supposed to be written by the chairman of the "Central Clique" at
+Concord, N. H., to the Hon. M. N., Jr., at Washington, giving the result
+of the election. The following verses were published in the Boston
+Chronotype in 1846. They refer to the contest in New Hampshire, which
+resulted in the defeat of the pro-slavery Democracy, and in the election
+of John P. Hale to the United States Senate. Although their authorship
+was not acknowledged, it was strongly suspected. They furnish a specimen
+of the way, on the whole rather good-natured, in which the
+liberty-lovers of half a century ago answered the social and political
+outlawry and mob violence to which they were subjected.
+
+ 'T is over, Moses! All is lost
+ I hear the bells a-ringing;
+ Of Pharaoh and his Red Sea host
+ I hear the Free-Wills singing (4)
+ We're routed, Moses, horse and foot,
+ If there be truth in figures,
+ With Federal Whigs in hot pursuit,
+ And Hale, and all the "niggers."
+
+ Alack! alas! this month or more
+ We've felt a sad foreboding;
+ Our very dreams the burden bore
+ Of central cliques exploding;
+ Before our eyes a furnace shone,
+ Where heads of dough were roasting,
+ And one we took to be your own
+ The traitor Hale was toasting!
+
+ Our Belknap brother (5) heard with awe
+ The Congo minstrels playing;
+ At Pittsfield Reuben Leavitt (6) saw
+ The ghost of Storrs a-praying;
+ And Calroll's woods were sad to see,
+ With black-winged crows a-darting;
+ And Black Snout looked on Ossipee,
+ New-glossed with Day and Martin.
+
+ We thought the "Old Man of the Notch"
+ His face seemed changing wholly--
+ His lips seemed thick; his nose seemed flat;
+ His misty hair looked woolly;
+ And Coos teamsters, shrieking, fled
+ From the metamorphosed figure.
+ "Look there!" they said, "the Old Stone Head
+ Himself is turning nigger!"
+
+ The schoolhouse, out of Canaan hauled
+ Seemed turning on its track again,
+ And like a great swamp-turtle crawled
+ To Canaan village back again,
+ Shook off the mud and settled flat
+ Upon its underpinning;
+ A nigger on its ridge-pole sat,
+ From ear to ear a-grinning.
+
+ Gray H----d heard o' nights the sound
+ Of rail-cars onward faring;
+ Right over Democratic ground
+ The iron horse came tearing.
+ A flag waved o'er that spectral train,
+ As high as Pittsfield steeple;
+ Its emblem was a broken chain;
+ Its motto: "To the people!"
+
+ I dreamed that Charley took his bed,
+ With Hale for his physician;
+ His daily dose an old "unread
+ And unreferred" petition. (8)
+ There Hayes and Tuck as nurses sat,
+ As near as near could be, man;
+ They leeched him with the "Democrat;"
+ They blistered with the "Freeman."
+
+ Ah! grisly portents! What avail
+ Your terrors of forewarning?
+ We wake to find the nightmare Hale
+ Astride our breasts at morning!
+ From Portsmouth lights to Indian stream
+ Our foes their throats are trying;
+ The very factory-spindles seem
+ To mock us while they're flying.
+
+ The hills have bonfires; in our streets
+ Flags flout us in our faces;
+ The newsboys, peddling off their sheets,
+ Are hoarse with our disgraces.
+ In vain we turn, for gibing wit
+ And shoutings follow after,
+ As if old Kearsarge had split
+ His granite sides with laughter.
+
+ What boots it that we pelted out
+ The anti-slavery women, (9)
+ And bravely strewed their hall about
+ With tattered lace and trimming?
+ Was it for such a sad reverse
+ Our mobs became peacemakers,
+ And kept their tar and wooden horse
+ For Englishmen and Quakers?
+
+ For this did shifty Atherton
+ Make gag rules for the Great House?
+ Wiped we for this our feet upon
+ Petitions in our State House?
+ Plied we for this our axe of doom,
+ No stubborn traitor sparing,
+ Who scoffed at our opinion loom,
+ And took to homespun wearing?
+
+ Ah, Moses! hard it is to scan
+ These crooked providences,
+ Deducing from the wisest plan
+ The saddest consequences!
+ Strange that, in trampling as was meet
+ The nigger-men's petition,
+ We sprang a mine beneath our feet
+ Which opened up perdition.
+
+ How goodly, Moses, was the game
+ In which we've long been actors,
+ Supplying freedom with the name
+ And slavery with the practice
+ Our smooth words fed the people's mouth,
+ Their ears our party rattle;
+ We kept them headed to the South,
+ As drovers do their cattle.
+
+ But now our game of politics
+ The world at large is learning;
+ And men grown gray in all our tricks
+ State's evidence are turning.
+ Votes and preambles subtly spun
+ They cram with meanings louder,
+ And load the Democratic gun
+ With abolition powder.
+
+ The ides of June! Woe worth the day
+ When, turning all things over,
+ The traitor Hale shall make his hay
+ From Democratic clover!
+ Who then shall take him in the law,
+ Who punish crime so flagrant?
+ Whose hand shall serve, whose pen shall draw,
+ A writ against that "vagrant"?
+
+ Alas! no hope is left us here,
+ And one can only pine for
+ The envied place of overseer
+ Of slaves in Carolina!
+ Pray, Moses, give Calhoun the wink,
+ And see what pay he's giving!
+ We've practised long enough, we think,
+ To know the art of driving.
+
+ And for the faithful rank and file,
+ Who know their proper stations,
+ Perhaps it may be worth their while
+ To try the rice plantations.
+ Let Hale exult, let Wilson scoff,
+ To see us southward scamper;
+ The slaves, we know, are "better off
+ Than laborers in New Hampshire!"
+
+
+
+
+LINES FROM A LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERICAL FRIEND.
+
+ A STRENGTH Thy service cannot tire,
+ A faith which doubt can never dim,
+ A heart of love, a lip of fire,
+ O Freedom's God! be Thou to him!
+
+ Speak through him words of power and fear,
+ As through Thy prophet bards of old,
+ And let a scornful people hear
+ Once more Thy Sinai-thunders rolled.
+
+ For lying lips Thy blessing seek,
+ And hands of blood are raised to Thee,
+ And On Thy children, crushed and weak,
+ The oppressor plants his kneeling knee.
+
+ Let then, O God! Thy servant dare
+ Thy truth in all its power to tell,
+ Unmask the priestly thieves, and tear
+ The Bible from the grasp of hell!
+
+ From hollow rite and narrow span
+ Of law and sect by Thee released,
+ Oh, teach him that the Christian man
+ Is holier than the Jewish priest.
+
+ Chase back the shadows, gray and old,
+ Of the dead ages, from his way,
+ And let his hopeful eyes behold
+ The dawn of Thy millennial day;
+
+ That day when fettered limb and mind
+ Shall know the truth which maketh free,
+ And he alone who loves his kind
+ Shall, childlike, claim the love of Thee!
+
+
+
+
+DANIEL NEALL.
+
+Dr. Neall, a worthy disciple of that venerated philanthropist, Warner
+Mifflin, whom the Girondist statesman, Jean Pierre Brissot, pronounced
+"an angel of mercy, the best man he ever knew," was one of the noble
+band of Pennsylvania abolitionists, whose bravery was equalled only by
+their gentleness and tenderness. He presided at the great anti-slavery
+meeting in Pennsylvania Hall, May 17, 1838, when the Hall was surrounded
+by a furious mob. I was standing near him while the glass of the windows
+broken by missiles showered over him, and a deputation from the rioters
+forced its way to the platform, and demanded that the meeting should be
+closed at once. Dr. Neall drew up his tall form to its utmost height. "I
+am here," he said, "the president of this meeting, and I will be torn in
+pieces before I leave my place at your dictation. Go back to those who
+sent you. I shall do my duty." Some years after, while visiting his
+relatives in his native State of Delaware, he was dragged from the house
+of his friends by a mob of slave-holders and brutally maltreated. He
+bore it like a martyr of the old times; and when released, told his
+persecutors that he forgave them, for it was not they but Slavery which
+had done the wrong. If they should ever be in Philadelphia and needed
+hospitality or aid, let them call on him.
+
+ I.
+ FRIEND of the Slave, and yet the friend of all;
+ Lover of peace, yet ever foremost when
+ The need of battling Freedom called for men
+ To plant the banner on the outer wall;
+ Gentle and kindly, ever at distress
+ Melted to more than woman's tenderness,
+ Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty's post
+ Fronting the violence of a maddened host,
+ Like some gray rock from which the waves are
+ tossed!
+ Knowing his deeds of love, men questioned not
+ The faith of one whose walk and word were
+ right;
+ Who tranquilly in Life's great task-field wrought,
+ And, side by side with evil, scarcely caught
+ A stain upon his pilgrim garb of white
+ Prompt to redress another's wrong, his own
+ Leaving to Time and Truth and Penitence alone.
+
+ II.
+ Such was our friend. Formed on the good old plan,
+ A true and brave and downright honest man
+ He blew no trumpet in the market-place,
+ Nor in the church with hypocritic face
+ Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace;
+ Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will
+ What others talked of while their hands were still;
+ And, while "Lord, Lord!" the pious tyrants cried,
+ Who, in the poor, their Master crucified,
+ His daily prayer, far better understood
+ In acts than words, was simply doing good.
+ So calm, so constant was his rectitude,
+ That by his loss alone we know its worth,
+ And feel how true a man has walked with us on earth.
+
+ 6th, 6th month, 1846.
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF SLAVES IN THE DESERT.
+
+"Sebah, Oasis of Fezzan, 10th March, 1846.--This evening the female
+slaves were unusually excited in singing, and I had the curiosity to ask
+my negro servant, Said, what they were singing about. As many of them
+were natives of his own country, he had no difficulty in translating the
+Mandara or Bornou language. I had often asked the Moors to translate
+their songs for me, but got no satisfactory account from them. Said at
+first said, 'Oh, they sing of Rubee' (God). 'What do you mean?' I
+replied, impatiently. 'Oh, don't you know?' he continued, 'they asked
+God to give them their Atka?' (certificate of freedom). I inquired, 'Is
+that all?' Said: 'No; they say, "Where are we going? The world is large.
+O God! Where are we going? O God!"' I inquired, 'What else?' Said: 'They
+remember their country, Bornou, and say, "Bornou was a pleasant country,
+full of all good things; but this is a bad country, and we are
+miserable!"' 'Do they say anything else?' Said: 'No; they repeat these
+words over and over again, and add, "O God! give us our Atka, and let us
+return again to our dear home."'
+
+"I am not surprised I got little satisfaction when I asked the Moors
+about the songs of their slaves. Who will say that the above words are
+not a very appropriate song? What could have been more congenially
+adapted to their then woful condition? It is not to be wondered at that
+these poor bondwomen cheer up their hearts, in their long, lonely, and
+painful wanderings over the desert, with words and sentiments like
+these; but I have often observed that their fatigue and sufferings were
+too great for them to strike up this melancholy dirge, and many days
+their plaintive strains never broke over the silence of the desert."--
+Richardson's Journal in Africa.
+
+ WHERE are we going? where are we going,
+ Where are we going, Rubee?
+ Lord of peoples, lord of lands,
+ Look across these shining sands,
+ Through the furnace of the noon,
+ Through the white light of the moon.
+ Strong the Ghiblee wind is blowing,
+ Strange and large the world is growing!
+ Speak and tell us where we are going,
+ Where are we going, Rubee?
+
+ Bornou land was rich and good,
+ Wells of water, fields of food,
+ Dourra fields, and bloom of bean,
+ And the palm-tree cool and green
+ Bornou land we see no longer,
+ Here we thirst and here we hunger,
+ Here the Moor-man smites in anger
+ Where are we going, Rubee?
+
+ When we went from Bornou land,
+ We were like the leaves and sand,
+ We were many, we are few;
+ Life has one, and death has two
+ Whitened bones our path are showing,
+ Thou All-seeing, thou All-knowing
+ Hear us, tell us, where are we going,
+ Where are we going, Rubee?
+
+ Moons of marches from our eyes
+ Bornou land behind us lies;
+ Stranger round us day by day
+ Bends the desert circle gray;
+ Wild the waves of sand are flowing,
+ Hot the winds above them blowing,--
+ Lord of all things! where are we going?
+ Where are we going, Rubee?
+
+ We are weak, but Thou art strong;
+ Short our lives, but Thine is long;
+ We are blind, but Thou hast eyes;
+ We are fools, but Thou art wise!
+ Thou, our morrow's pathway knowing
+ Through the strange world round us growing,
+ Hear us, tell us where are we going,
+ Where are we going, Rubee?
+
+ 1847.
+
+
+
+
+TO DELAWARE.
+
+Written during the discussion in the Legislature of that State, in the
+winter of 1846-47, of a bill for the abolition of slavery.
+
+ THRICE welcome to thy sisters of the East,
+ To the strong tillers of a rugged home,
+ With spray-wet locks to Northern winds released,
+ And hardy feet o'erswept by ocean's foam;
+ And to the young nymphs of the golden West,
+ Whose harvest mantles, fringed with prairie bloom,
+ Trail in the sunset,--O redeemed and blest,
+ To the warm welcome of thy sisters come!
+ Broad Pennsylvania, down her sail-white bay
+ Shall give thee joy, and Jersey from her plains,
+ And the great lakes, where echo, free alway,
+ Moaned never shoreward with the clank of chains,
+ Shall weave new sun-bows in their tossing spray,
+ And all their waves keep grateful holiday.
+ And, smiling on thee through her mountain rains,
+ Vermont shall bless thee; and the granite peaks,
+ And vast Katahdin o'er his woods, shall wear
+ Their snow-crowns brighter in the cold, keen air;
+ And Massachusetts, with her rugged cheeks
+ O'errun with grateful tears, shall turn to thee,
+ When, at thy bidding, the electric wire
+ Shall tremble northward with its words of fire;
+ Glory and praise to God! another State is free!
+
+ 1847.
+
+
+
+
+YORKTOWN.
+
+Dr. Thacher, surgeon in Scammel's regiment, in his description of the
+siege of Yorktown, says: "The labor on the Virginia plantations is
+performed altogether by a species of the human race cruelly wrested from
+their native country, and doomed to perpetual bondage, while their
+masters are manfully contending for freedom and the natural rights of
+man. Such is the inconsistency of human nature." Eighteen hundred slaves
+were found at Yorktown, after its surrender, and restored to their
+masters. Well was it said by Dr. Barnes, in his late work on Slavery:
+"No slave was any nearer his freedom after the surrender of Yorktown
+than when Patrick Henry first taught the notes of liberty to echo among
+the hills and vales of Virginia."
+
+ FROM Yorktown's ruins, ranked and still,
+ Two lines stretch far o'er vale and hill
+ Who curbs his steed at head of one?
+ Hark! the low murmur: Washington!
+ Who bends his keen, approving glance,
+ Where down the gorgeous line of France
+ Shine knightly star and plume of snow?
+ Thou too art victor, Rochambeau!
+ The earth which bears this calm array
+ Shook with the war-charge yesterday,
+
+ Ploughed deep with hurrying hoof and wheel,
+ Shot-sown and bladed thick with steel;
+ October's clear and noonday sun
+ Paled in the breath-smoke of the gun,
+ And down night's double blackness fell,
+ Like a dropped star, the blazing shell.
+
+ Now all is hushed: the gleaming lines
+ Stand moveless as the neighboring pines;
+ While through them, sullen, grim, and slow,
+ The conquered hosts of England go
+ O'Hara's brow belies his dress,
+ Gay Tarleton's troop rides bannerless:
+ Shout, from thy fired and wasted homes,
+ Thy scourge, Virginia, captive comes!
+
+ Nor thou alone; with one glad voice
+ Let all thy sister States rejoice;
+ Let Freedom, in whatever clime
+ She waits with sleepless eye her time,
+ Shouting from cave and mountain wood
+ Make glad her desert solitude,
+ While they who hunt her quail with fear;
+ The New World's chain lies broken here!
+
+ But who are they, who, cowering, wait
+ Within the shattered fortress gate?
+ Dark tillers of Virginia's soil,
+ Classed with the battle's common spoil,
+ With household stuffs, and fowl, and swine,
+ With Indian weed and planters' wine,
+ With stolen beeves, and foraged corn,--
+ Are they not men, Virginian born?
+
+ Oh, veil your faces, young and brave!
+ Sleep, Scammel, in thy soldier grave
+ Sons of the Northland, ye who set
+ Stout hearts against the bayonet,
+ And pressed with steady footfall near
+ The moated battery's blazing tier,
+ Turn your scarred faces from the sight,
+ Let shame do homage to the right!
+
+ Lo! fourscore years have passed; and where
+ The Gallic bugles stirred the air,
+ And, through breached batteries, side by side,
+ To victory stormed the hosts allied,
+ And brave foes grounded, pale with pain,
+ The arms they might not lift again,
+ As abject as in that old day
+ The slave still toils his life away.
+
+ Oh, fields still green and fresh in story,
+ Old days of pride, old names of glory,
+ Old marvels of the tongue and pen,
+ Old thoughts which stirred the hearts of men,
+ Ye spared the wrong; and over all
+ Behold the avenging shadow fall!
+ Your world-wide honor stained with shame,--
+ Your freedom's self a hollow name!
+
+ Where's now the flag of that old war?
+ Where flows its stripe? Where burns its star?
+ Bear witness, Palo Alto's day,
+ Dark Vale of Palms, red Monterey,
+ Where Mexic Freedom, young and weak,
+ Fleshes the Northern eagle's beak;
+ Symbol of terror and despair,
+ Of chains and slaves, go seek it there!
+
+ Laugh, Prussia, midst thy iron ranks
+ Laugh, Russia, from thy Neva's banks!
+ Brave sport to see the fledgling born
+ Of Freedom by its parent torn!
+ Safe now is Speilberg's dungeon cell,
+ Safe drear Siberia's frozen hell
+ With Slavery's flag o'er both unrolled,
+ What of the New World fears the Old?
+
+ 1847.
+
+
+
+
+RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE.
+
+ O MOTHER EARTH! upon thy lap
+ Thy weary ones receiving,
+ And o'er them, silent as a dream,
+ Thy grassy mantle weaving,
+ Fold softly in thy long embrace
+ That heart so worn and broken,
+ And cool its pulse of fire beneath
+ Thy shadows old and oaken.
+
+ Shut out from him the bitter word
+ And serpent hiss of scorning;
+ Nor let the storms of yesterday
+ Disturb his quiet morning.
+ Breathe over him forgetfulness
+ Of all save deeds of kindness,
+ And, save to smiles of grateful eyes,
+ Press down his lids in blindness.
+
+ There, where with living ear and eye
+ He heard Potomac's flowing,
+ And, through his tall ancestral trees,
+ Saw autumn's sunset glowing,
+ He sleeps, still looking to the west,
+ Beneath the dark wood shadow,
+ As if he still would see the sun
+ Sink down on wave and meadow.
+
+ Bard, Sage, and Tribune! in himself
+ All moods of mind contrasting,--
+ The tenderest wail of human woe,
+ The scorn like lightning blasting;
+ The pathos which from rival eyes
+ Unwilling tears could summon,
+ The stinging taunt, the fiery burst
+ Of hatred scarcely human!
+
+ Mirth, sparkling like a diamond shower,
+ From lips of life-long sadness;
+ Clear picturings of majestic thought
+ Upon a ground of madness;
+ And over all Romance and Song
+ A classic beauty throwing,
+ And laurelled Clio at his side
+ Her storied pages showing.
+
+ All parties feared him: each in turn
+ Beheld its schemes disjointed,
+ As right or left his fatal glance
+ And spectral finger pointed.
+ Sworn foe of Cant, he smote it down
+ With trenchant wit unsparing,
+ And, mocking, rent with ruthless hand
+ The robe Pretence was wearing.
+
+ Too honest or too proud to feign
+ A love he never cherished,
+ Beyond Virginia's border line
+ His patriotism perished.
+ While others hailed in distant skies
+ Our eagle's dusky pinion,
+ He only saw the mountain bird
+ Stoop o'er his Old Dominion!
+
+ Still through each change of fortune strange,
+ Racked nerve, and brain all burning,
+ His loving faith in Mother-land
+ Knew never shade of turning;
+ By Britain's lakes, by Neva's tide,
+ Whatever sky was o'er him,
+ He heard her rivers' rushing sound,
+ Her blue peaks rose before him.
+
+ He held his slaves, yet made withal
+ No false and vain pretences,
+ Nor paid a lying priest to seek
+ For Scriptural defences.
+ His harshest words of proud rebuke,
+ His bitterest taunt and scorning,
+ Fell fire-like on the Northern brow
+ That bent to him in fawning.
+
+ He held his slaves; yet kept the while
+ His reverence for the Human;
+ In the dark vassals of his will
+ He saw but Man and Woman!
+ No hunter of God's outraged poor
+ His Roanoke valley entered;
+ No trader in the souls of men
+ Across his threshold ventured.
+
+ And when the old and wearied man
+ Lay down for his last sleeping,
+ And at his side, a slave no more,
+ His brother-man stood weeping,
+ His latest thought, his latest breath,
+ To Freedom's duty giving,
+ With failing tengue and trembling hand
+ The dying blest the living.
+
+ Oh, never bore his ancient State
+ A truer son or braver
+ None trampling with a calmer scorn
+ On foreign hate or favor.
+ He knew her faults, yet never stooped
+ His proud and manly feeling
+ To poor excuses of the wrong
+ Or meanness of concealing.
+
+ But none beheld with clearer eye
+ The plague-spot o'er her spreading,
+ None heard more sure the steps of Doom
+ Along her future treading.
+ For her as for himself he spake,
+ When, his gaunt frame upbracing,
+ He traced with dying hand "Remorse!"
+ And perished in the tracing.
+
+ As from the grave where Henry sleeps,
+ From Vernon's weeping willow,
+ And from the grassy pall which hides
+ The Sage of Monticello,
+ So from the leaf-strewn burial-stone
+ Of Randolph's lowly dwelling,
+ Virginia! o'er thy land of slaves
+ A warning voice is swelling!
+
+ And hark! from thy deserted fields
+ Are sadder warnings spoken,
+ From quenched hearths, where thy exiled sons
+ Their household gods have broken.
+ The curse is on thee,--wolves for men,
+ And briers for corn-sheaves giving
+ Oh, more than all thy dead renown
+ Were now one hero living
+
+ 1847.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOST STATESMAN.
+
+Written on hearing of the death of Silas Wright of New York.
+
+
+ As they who, tossing midst the storm at night,
+ While turning shoreward, where a beacon shone,
+ Meet the walled blackness of the heaven alone,
+ So, on the turbulent waves of party tossed,
+ In gloom and tempest, men have seen thy light
+ Quenched in the darkness. At thy hour of noon,
+ While life was pleasant to thy undimmed sight,
+ And, day by day, within thy spirit grew
+ A holier hope than young Ambition knew,
+ As through thy rural quiet, not in vain,
+ Pierced the sharp thrill of Freedom's cry of pain,
+ Man of the millions, thou art lost too soon
+ Portents at which the bravest stand aghast,--
+ The birth-throes of a Future, strange and vast,
+ Alarm the land; yet thou, so wise and strong,
+ Suddenly summoned to the burial bed,
+ Lapped in its slumbers deep and ever long,
+ Hear'st not the tumult surging overhead.
+ Who now shall rally Freedom's scattering host?
+ Who wear the mantle of the leader lost?
+ Who stay the march of slavery? He whose voice
+ Hath called thee from thy task-field shall not lack
+ Yet bolder champions, to beat bravely back
+ The wrong which, through his poor ones, reaches Him:
+ Yet firmer hands shall Freedom's torchlights trim,
+ And wave them high across the abysmal black,
+ Till bound, dumb millions there shall see them and rejoice.
+
+ 10th mo., 1847.
+
+
+
+
+THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE.
+
+Suggested by a daguerreotype taken from a small French engraving of two
+negro figures, sent to the writer by Oliver Johnson.
+
+ BEAMS of noon, like burning lances, through the
+ tree-tops flash and glisten,
+ As she stands before her lover, with raised face to
+ look and listen.
+
+ Dark, but comely, like the maiden in the ancient
+ Jewish song
+ Scarcely has the toil of task-fields done her graceful
+ beauty wrong.
+
+ He, the strong one and the manly, with the vassal's
+ garb and hue,
+ Holding still his spirit's birthright, to his higher
+ nature true;
+
+ Hiding deep the strengthening purpose of a freeman
+ in his heart,
+ As the gregree holds his Fetich from the white
+ man's gaze apart.
+
+ Ever foremost of his comrades, when the driver's
+ morning horn
+ Calls away to stifling mill-house, to the fields of
+ cane and corn.
+
+ Fall the keen and burning lashes never on his back
+ or limb;
+ Scarce with look or word of censure, turns the
+ driver unto him.
+
+ Yet, his brow is always thoughtful, and his eye is
+ hard and stern;
+ Slavery's last and humblest lesson he has never
+ deigned to learn.
+
+ And, at evening, when his comrades dance before
+ their master's door,
+ Folding arms and knitting forehead, stands he
+ silent evermore.
+
+ God be praised for every instinct which rebels
+ against a lot
+ Where the brute survives the human, and man's
+ upright form is not!
+
+ As the serpent-like bejuco winds his spiral fold
+ on fold
+ Round the tall and stately ceiba, till it withers in
+ his hold;
+
+ Slow decays the forest monarch, closer girds the
+ fell embrace,
+ Till the tree is seen no longer, and the vine is in
+ its place;
+
+ So a base and bestial nature round the vassal's
+ manhood twines,
+ And the spirit wastes beneath it, like the ceiba
+ choked with vines.
+
+ God is Love, saith the Evangel; and our world of
+ woe and sin
+ Is made light and happy only when a Love is
+ shining in.
+
+ Ye whose lives are free as sunshine, finding, where-
+ soe'er ye roam,
+ Smiles of welcome, looks of kindness, making all
+ the world like home;
+
+ In the veins of whose affections kindred blood is
+ but a part.,
+ Of one kindly current throbbing from the universal
+ heart;
+
+ Can ye know the deeper meaning of a love in Slavery
+ nursed,
+ Last flower of a lost Eden, blooming in that Soil
+ accursed?
+
+ Love of Home, and Love of Woman!--dear to all,
+ but doubly dear
+ To the heart whose pulses elsewhere measure only
+ hate and fear.
+
+ All around the desert circles, underneath a brazen
+ sky,
+ Only one green spot remaining where the dew is
+ never dry!
+
+ From the horror of that desert, from its atmosphere
+ of hell,
+ Turns the fainting spirit thither, as the diver seeks
+ his bell.
+
+ 'T is the fervid tropic noontime; faint and low the
+ sea-waves beat;
+ Hazy rise the inland mountains through the glimmer
+ of the heat,--
+
+ Where, through mingled leaves and blossoms,
+ arrowy sunbeams flash and glisten,
+ Speaks her lover to the slave-girl, and she lifts her
+ head to listen:--
+
+ "We shall live as slaves no longer! Freedom's
+ hour is close at hand!
+ Rocks her bark upon the waters, rests the boat
+ upon the strand!
+
+ "I have seen the Haytien Captain; I have seen
+ his swarthy crew,
+ Haters of the pallid faces, to their race and color
+ true.
+
+ "They have sworn to wait our coming till the night
+ has passed its noon,
+ And the gray and darkening waters roll above the
+ sunken moon!"
+
+ Oh, the blessed hope of freedom! how with joy
+ and glad surprise,
+ For an instant throbs her bosom, for an instant
+ beam her eyes!
+
+ But she looks across the valley, where her mother's
+ hut is seen,
+ Through the snowy bloom of coffee, and the lemon-
+ leaves so green.
+
+ And she answers, sad and earnest: "It were wrong
+ for thee to stay;
+ God hath heard thy prayer for freedom, and his
+ finger points the way.
+
+ "Well I know with what endurance, for the sake
+ of me and mine,
+ Thou hast borne too long a burden never meant
+ for souls like thine.
+
+ "Go; and at the hour of midnight, when our last
+ farewell is o'er,
+ Kneeling on our place of parting, I will bless thee
+ from the shore.
+
+ "But for me, my mother, lying on her sick-bed
+ all the day,
+ Lifts her weary head to watch me, coming through
+ the twilight gray.
+
+ "Should I leave her sick and helpless, even freedom,
+ shared with thee,
+ Would be sadder far than bondage, lonely toil, and
+ stripes to me.
+
+ "For my heart would die within me, and my brain
+ would soon be wild;
+ I should hear my mother calling through the twilight
+ for her child!"
+
+ Blazing upward from the ocean, shines the sun of
+ morning-time,
+ Through the coffee-trees in blossom, and green
+ hedges of the lime.
+
+ Side by side, amidst the slave-gang, toil the lover
+ and the maid;
+ Wherefore looks he o'er the waters, leaning forward
+ on his spade?
+
+ Sadly looks he, deeply sighs he: 't is the Haytien's
+ sail he sees,
+ Like a white cloud of the mountains, driven seaward
+ by the breeze.
+
+ But his arm a light hand presses, and he hears a
+ low voice call
+ Hate of Slavery, hope of Freedom, Love is mightier
+ than all.
+
+ 1848.
+
+
+
+
+THE CURSE OF THE CHARTER-BREAKERS.
+
+The rights and liberties affirmed by Magna Charta were deemed of such
+importance, in the thirteenth century, that the Bishops, twice a year,
+with tapers burning, and in their pontifical robes, pronounced, in the
+presence of the king and the representatives of the estates of England,
+the greater excommunication against the infringer of that instrument.
+The imposing ceremony took place in the great Hall of Westminster. A
+copy of the curse, as pronounced in 1253, declares that, "by the
+authority of Almighty God, and the blessed Apostles and Martyrs, and all
+the saints in heaven, all those who violate the English liberties, and
+secretly or openly, by deed, word, or counsel, do make statutes, or
+observe then being made, against said liberties, are accursed and
+sequestered from the company of heaven and the sacraments of the Holy
+Church."
+
+William Penn, in his admirable political pamphlet, England's
+Present Interest Considered, alluding to the curse of the Charter-
+breakers, says: "I am no Roman Catholic, and little value their
+other curses; yet I declare I would not for the world incur this
+curse, as every man deservedly doth, who offers violence to the
+fundamental freedom thereby repeated and confirmed."
+
+ IN Westminster's royal halls,
+ Robed in their pontificals,
+ England's ancient prelates stood
+ For the people's right and good.
+ Closed around the waiting crowd,
+ Dark and still, like winter's cloud;
+ King and council, lord and knight,
+ Squire and yeoman, stood in sight;
+ Stood to hear the priest rehearse,
+ In God's name, the Church's curse,
+ By the tapers round them lit,
+ Slowly, sternly uttering it.
+
+ "Right of voice in framing laws,
+ Right of peers to try each cause;
+ Peasant homestead, mean and small,
+ Sacred as the monarch's hall,--
+
+ "Whoso lays his hand on these,
+ England's ancient liberties;
+ Whoso breaks, by word or deed,
+ England's vow at Runnymede;
+
+ "Be he Prince or belted knight,
+ Whatsoe'er his rank or might,
+ If the highest, then the worst,
+ Let him live and die accursed.
+
+ "Thou, who to Thy Church hast given
+ Keys alike, of hell and heaven,
+ Make our word and witness sure,
+ Let the curse we speak endure!"
+
+ Silent, while that curse was said,
+ Every bare and listening head
+ Bowed in reverent awe, and then
+ All the people said, Amen!
+
+ Seven times the bells have tolled,
+ For the centuries gray and old,
+ Since that stoled and mitred band
+ Cursed the tyrants of their land.
+
+ Since the priesthood, like a tower,
+ Stood between the poor and power;
+ And the wronged and trodden down
+ Blessed the abbot's shaven crown.
+
+ Gone, thank God, their wizard spell,
+ Lost, their keys of heaven and hell;
+ Yet I sigh for men as bold
+ As those bearded priests of old.
+
+ Now, too oft the priesthood wait
+ At the threshold of the state;
+ Waiting for the beck and nod
+ Of its power as law and God.
+
+ Fraud exults, while solemn words
+ Sanctify his stolen hoards;
+ Slavery laughs, while ghostly lips
+ Bless his manacles and whips.
+
+ Not on them the poor rely,
+ Not to them looks liberty,
+ Who with fawning falsehood cower
+ To the wrong, when clothed with power.
+
+ Oh, to see them meanly cling,
+ Round the master, round the king,
+ Sported with, and sold and bought,--
+ Pitifuller sight is not!
+
+ Tell me not that this must be
+ God's true priest is always free;
+ Free, the needed truth to speak,
+ Right the wronged, and raise the weak.
+
+ Not to fawn on wealth and state,
+ Leaving Lazarus at the gate;
+ Not to peddle creeds like wares;
+ Not to mutter hireling prayers;
+
+ Nor to paint the new life's bliss
+ On the sable ground of this;
+ Golden streets for idle knave,
+ Sabbath rest for weary slave!
+
+ Not for words and works like these,
+ Priest of God, thy mission is;
+ But to make earth's desert glad,
+ In its Eden greenness clad;
+
+ And to level manhood bring
+ Lord and peasant, serf and king;
+ And the Christ of God to find
+ In the humblest of thy kind!
+
+ Thine to work as well as pray,
+ Clearing thorny wrongs away;
+ Plucking up the weeds of sin,
+ Letting heaven's warm sunshine in;
+
+ Watching on the hills of Faith;
+ Listening what the spirit saith,
+ Of the dim-seen light afar,
+ Growing like a nearing star.
+
+ God's interpreter art thou,
+ To the waiting ones below;
+ 'Twixt them and its light midway
+ Heralding the better day;
+
+ Catching gleams of temple spires,
+ Hearing notes of angel choirs,
+ Where, as yet unseen of them,
+ Comes the New Jerusalem!
+
+ Like the seer of Patmos gazing,
+ On the glory downward blazing;
+ Till upon Earth's grateful sod
+ Rests the City of our God!
+
+ 1848.
+
+
+
+
+PAEAN.
+
+This poem indicates the exultation of the anti-slavery party in view of
+the revolt of the friends of Martin Van Buren in New York, from the
+Democratic Presidential nomination in 1848.
+
+
+ Now, joy and thanks forevermore!
+ The dreary night has wellnigh passed,
+ The slumbers of the North are o'er,
+ The Giant stands erect at last!
+
+ More than we hoped in that dark time
+ When, faint with watching, few and worn,
+ We saw no welcome day-star climb
+ The cold gray pathway of the morn!
+
+ O weary hours! O night of years!
+ What storms our darkling pathway swept,
+ Where, beating back our thronging fears,
+ By Faith alone our march we kept.
+
+ How jeered the scoffing crowd behind,
+ How mocked before the tyrant train,
+ As, one by one, the true and kind
+ Fell fainting in our path of pain!
+
+ They died, their brave hearts breaking slow,
+ But, self-forgetful to the last,
+ In words of cheer and bugle blow
+ Their breath upon the darkness passed.
+
+ A mighty host, on either hand,
+ Stood waiting for the dawn of day
+ To crush like reeds our feeble band;
+ The morn has come, and where are they?
+
+ Troop after troop their line forsakes;
+ With peace-white banners waving free,
+ And from our own the glad shout breaks,
+ Of Freedom and Fraternity!
+
+ Like mist before the growing light,
+ The hostile cohorts melt away;
+ Our frowning foemen of the night
+ Are brothers at the dawn of day.
+
+ As unto these repentant ones
+ We open wide our toil-worn ranks,
+ Along our line a murmur runs
+ Of song, and praise, and grateful thanks.
+
+ Sound for the onset! Blast on blast!
+ Till Slavery's minions cower and quail;
+ One charge of fire shall drive them fast
+ Like chaff before our Northern gale!
+
+ O prisoners in your house of pain,
+ Dumb, toiling millions, bound and sold,
+ Look! stretched o'er Southern vale and plain,
+ The Lord's delivering hand behold!
+
+ Above the tyrant's pride of power,
+ His iron gates and guarded wall,
+ The bolts which shattered Shinar's tower
+ Hang, smoking, for a fiercer fall.
+
+ Awake! awake! my Fatherland!
+ It is thy Northern light that shines;
+ This stirring march of Freedom's band
+ The storm-song of thy mountain pines.
+
+ Wake, dwellers where the day expires!
+ And hear, in winds that sweep your lakes
+ And fan your prairies' roaring fires,
+ The signal-call that Freedom makes!
+
+ 1848.
+
+
+
+
+THE CRISIS.
+
+Written on learning the terms of the treaty with Mexico.
+
+
+ ACROSS the Stony Mountains, o'er the desert's
+ drouth and sand,
+ The circles of our empire touch the western ocean's
+ strand;
+ From slumberous Timpanogos, to Gila, wild and
+ free,
+ Flowing down from Nuevo-Leon to California's sea;
+ And from the mountains of the east, to Santa
+ Rosa's shore,
+ The eagles of Mexitli shall beat the air no more.
+
+ O Vale of Rio Bravo! Let thy simple children
+ weep;
+ Close watch about their holy fire let maids of
+ Pecos keep;
+ Let Taos send her cry across Sierra Madre's pines,
+ And Santa Barbara toll her bells amidst her corn
+ and vines;
+ For lo! the pale land-seekers come, with eager eyes
+ of gain,
+ Wide scattering, like the bison herds on broad
+ Salada's plain.
+
+ Let Sacramento's herdsmen heed what sound the
+ winds bring down
+ Of footsteps on the crisping snow, from cold
+ Nevada's crown!
+ Full hot and fast the Saxon rides, with rein of
+ travel slack,
+ And, bending o'er his saddle, leaves the sunrise at
+ his back;
+ By many a lonely river, and gorge of fir and
+ pine,
+ On many a wintry hill-top, his nightly camp-fires
+ shine.
+
+ O countrymen and brothers! that land of lake and
+ plain,
+ Of salt wastes alternating with valleys fat with
+ grain;
+ Of mountains white with winter, looking downward,
+ cold, serene,
+ On their feet with spring-vines tangled and lapped
+ in softest green;
+ Swift through whose black volcanic gates, o'er
+ many a sunny vale,
+ Wind-like the Arapahoe sweeps the bison's dusty
+ trail!
+
+ Great spaces yet untravelled, great lakes whose
+ mystic shores
+ The Saxon rifle never heard, nor dip of Saxon oars;
+ Great herds that wander all unwatched, wild steeds
+ that none have tamed,
+ Strange fish in unknown streams, and birds the
+ Saxon never named;
+ Deep mines, dark mountain crucibles, where Nature's
+ chemic powers
+ Work out the Great Designer's will; all these ye
+ say are ours!
+
+ Forever ours! for good or ill, on us the burden
+ lies;
+ God's balance, watched by angels, is hung across
+ the skies.
+ Shall Justice, Truth, and Freedom turn the poised
+ and trembling scale?
+ Or shall the Evil triumph, and robber Wrong prevail?
+ Shall the broad land o'er which our flag in starry
+ splendor waves,
+ Forego through us its freedom, and bear the tread
+ of slaves?
+
+ The day is breaking in the East of which the
+ prophets told,
+ And brightens up the sky of Time the Christian
+ Age of Gold;
+ Old Might to Right is yielding, battle blade to
+ clerkly pen,
+ Earth's monarchs are her peoples, and her serfs
+ stand up as men;
+
+ The isles rejoice together, in a day are nations
+ born,
+ And the slave walks free in Tunis, and by Stamboul's
+ Golden Horn!
+
+ Is this, O countrymen of mine! a day for us to sow
+ The soil of new-gained empire with slavery's seeds
+ of woe?
+ To feed with our fresh life-blood the Old World's
+ cast-off crime,
+ Dropped, like some monstrous early birth, from
+ the tired lap of Time?
+ To run anew the evil race the old lost nations ran,
+ And die like them of unbelief of God, and wrong
+ of man?
+
+ Great Heaven! Is this our mission? End in this
+ the prayers and tears,
+ The toil, the strife, the watchings of our younger,
+ better years?
+ Still as the Old World rolls in light, shall ours in
+ shadow turn,
+ A beamless Chaos, cursed of God, through outer
+ darkness borne?
+ Where the far nations looked for light, a black-
+ ness in the air?
+ Where for words of hope they listened, the long
+ wail of despair?
+
+ The Crisis presses on us; face to face with us it
+ stands,
+ With solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in
+ Egypt's sands!
+ This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we
+ spin;
+ This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or
+ sin;
+ Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy
+ crown,
+ We call the dews of blessing or the bolts of cursing
+ down!
+
+ By all for which the martyrs bore their agony and
+ shame;
+ By all the warning words of truth with which the
+ prophets came;
+ By the Future which awaits us; by all the hopes
+ which cast
+ Their faint and trembling beams across the black-
+ ness of the Past;
+ And by the blessed thought of Him who for Earth's
+ freedom died,
+ O my people! O my brothers! let us choose the
+ righteous side.
+
+ So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on his
+ way;
+ To wed Penobseot's waters to San Francisco's bay;
+ To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the
+ vales with grain;
+ And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his
+ train
+ The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall
+ answer sea,
+ And mountain unto mountain call, Praise God, for
+ we are free
+
+ 1845.
+
+
+
+
+LINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER.
+
+ A pleasant print to peddle out
+ In lands of rice and cotton;
+ The model of that face in dough
+ Would make the artist's fortune.
+ For Fame to thee has come unsought,
+ While others vainly woo her,
+ In proof how mean a thing can make
+ A great man of its doer.
+
+
+ To whom shall men thyself compare,
+ Since common models fail 'em,
+ Save classic goose of ancient Rome,
+ Or sacred ass of Balaam?
+ The gabble of that wakeful goose
+ Saved Rome from sack of Brennus;
+ The braying of the prophet's ass
+ Betrayed the angel's menace!
+
+ So when Guy Fawkes, in petticoats,
+ And azure-tinted hose oil,
+ Was twisting from thy love-lorn sheets
+ The slow-match of explosion--
+ An earthquake blast that would have tossed
+ The Union as a feather,
+ Thy instinct saved a perilled land
+ And perilled purse together.
+
+ Just think of Carolina's sage
+ Sent whirling like a Dervis,
+ Of Quattlebum in middle air
+ Performing strange drill-service!
+ Doomed like Assyria's lord of old,
+ Who fell before the Jewess,
+ Or sad Abimelech, to sigh,
+ "Alas! a woman slew us!"
+
+ Thou saw'st beneath a fair disguise
+ The danger darkly lurking,
+ And maiden bodice dreaded more
+ Than warrior's steel-wrought jerkin.
+ How keen to scent the hidden plot!
+ How prompt wert thou to balk it,
+ With patriot zeal and pedler thrift,
+ For country and for pocket!
+
+ Thy likeness here is doubtless well,
+ But higher honor's due it;
+ On auction-block and negro-jail
+ Admiring eyes should view it.
+ Or, hung aloft, it well might grace
+ The nation's senate-chamber--
+ A greedy Northern bottle-fly
+ Preserved in Slavery's amber!
+
+ 1850.
+
+
+
+
+DERNE.
+
+The storming of the city of Derne, in 1805, by General Eaton, at the
+head of nine Americans, forty Greeks, and a motley array of Turks and
+Arabs, was one of those feats of hardihood and daring which have in all
+ages attracted the admiration of the multitude. The higher and holier
+heroism of Christian self-denial and sacrifice, in the humble walks of
+private duty, is seldom so well appreciated.
+
+ NIGHT on the city of the Moor!
+ On mosque and tomb, and white-walled shore,
+ On sea-waves, to whose ceaseless knock
+ The narrow harbor-gates unlock,
+ On corsair's galley, carack tall,
+ And plundered Christian caraval!
+ The sounds of Moslem life are still;
+ No mule-bell tinkles down the hill;
+ Stretched in the broad court of the khan,
+ The dusty Bornou caravan
+ Lies heaped in slumber, beast and man;
+ The Sheik is dreaming in his tent,
+ His noisy Arab tongue o'erspent;
+ The kiosk's glimmering lights are gone,
+ The merchant with his wares withdrawn;
+ Rough pillowed on some pirate breast,
+ The dancing-girl has sunk to rest;
+ And, save where measured footsteps fall
+ Along the Bashaw's guarded wall,
+ Or where, like some bad dream, the Jew
+ Creeps stealthily his quarter through,
+ Or counts with fear his golden heaps,
+ The City of the Corsair sleeps.
+
+ But where yon prison long and low
+ Stands black against the pale star-glow,
+ Chafed by the ceaseless wash of waves,
+ There watch and pine the Christian slaves;
+ Rough-bearded men, whose far-off wives
+ Wear out with grief their lonely lives;
+ And youth, still flashing from his eyes
+ The clear blue of New England skies,
+ A treasured lock of whose soft hair
+ Now wakes some sorrowing mother's prayer;
+ Or, worn upon some maiden breast,
+ Stirs with the loving heart's unrest.
+
+ A bitter cup each life must drain,
+ The groaning earth is cursed with pain,
+ And, like the scroll the angel bore
+ The shuddering Hebrew seer before,
+ O'erwrit alike, without, within,
+ With all the woes which follow sin;
+ But, bitterest of the ills beneath
+ Whose load man totters down to death,
+ Is that which plucks the regal crown
+ Of Freedom from his forehead down,
+ And snatches from his powerless hand
+ The sceptred sign of self-command,
+ Effacing with the chain and rod
+ The image and the seal of God;
+ Till from his nature, day by day,
+ The manly virtues fall away,
+ And leave him naked, blind and mute,
+ The godlike merging in the brute!
+
+ Why mourn the quiet ones who die
+ Beneath affection's tender eye,
+ Unto their household and their kin
+ Like ripened corn-sheaves gathered in?
+ O weeper, from that tranquil sod,
+ That holy harvest-home of God,
+ Turn to the quick and suffering, shed
+ Thy tears upon the living dead
+ Thank God above thy dear ones' graves,
+ They sleep with Him, they are not slaves.
+
+ What dark mass, down the mountain-sides
+ Swift-pouring, like a stream divides?
+ A long, loose, straggling caravan,
+ Camel and horse and armed man.
+ The moon's low crescent, glimmering o'er
+ Its grave of waters to the shore,
+ Lights tip that mountain cavalcade,
+ And gleams from gun and spear and blade
+ Near and more near! now o'er them falls
+ The shadow of the city walls.
+ Hark to the sentry's challenge, drowned
+ In the fierce trumpet's charging sound!
+ The rush of men, the musket's peal,
+ The short, sharp clang of meeting steel!
+
+ Vain, Moslem, vain thy lifeblood poured
+ So freely on thy foeman's sword!
+ Not to the swift nor to the strong
+ The battles of the right belong;
+ For he who strikes for Freedom wears
+ The armor of the captive's prayers,
+ And Nature proffers to his cause
+ The strength of her eternal laws;
+ While he whose arm essays to bind
+ And herd with common brutes his kind
+ Strives evermore at fearful odds
+ With Nature and the jealous gods,
+ And dares the dread recoil which late
+ Or soon their right shall vindicate.
+
+ 'T is done, the horned crescent falls
+ The star-flag flouts the broken walls
+ Joy to the captive husband! joy
+ To thy sick heart, O brown-locked boy!
+ In sullen wrath the conquered Moor
+ Wide open flings your dungeon-door,
+ And leaves ye free from cell and chain,
+ The owners of yourselves again.
+ Dark as his allies desert-born,
+ Soiled with the battle's stain, and worn
+ With the long marches of his band
+ Through hottest wastes of rock and sand,
+ Scorched by the sun and furnace-breath
+ Of the red desert's wind of death,
+ With welcome words and grasping hands,
+ The victor and deliverer stands!
+
+ The tale is one of distant skies;
+ The dust of half a century lies
+ Upon it; yet its hero's name
+ Still lingers on the lips of Fame.
+ Men speak the praise of him who gave
+ Deliverance to the Moorman's slave,
+ Yet dare to brand with shame and crime
+ The heroes of our land and time,--
+ The self-forgetful ones, who stake
+ Home, name, and life for Freedom's sake.
+ God mend his heart who cannot feel
+ The impulse of a holy zeal,
+ And sees not, with his sordid eyes,
+ The beauty of self-sacrifice
+ Though in the sacred place he stands,
+ Uplifting consecrated hands,
+ Unworthy are his lips to tell
+ Of Jesus' martyr-miracle,
+ Or name aright that dread embrace
+ Of suffering for a fallen race!
+
+ 1850.
+
+
+
+
+A SABBATH SCENE.
+
+This poem finds its justification in the readiness with which, even in
+the North, clergymen urged the prompt execution of the Fugitive Slave
+Law as a Christian duty, and defended the system of slavery as a Bible
+institution.
+
+
+ SCARCE had the solemn Sabbath-bell
+ Ceased quivering in the steeple,
+ Scarce had the parson to his desk
+ Walked stately through his people,
+ When down the summer-shaded street
+ A wasted female figure,
+ With dusky brow and naked feet,
+
+ Came rushing wild and eager.
+ She saw the white spire through the trees,
+ She heard the sweet hymn swelling
+ O pitying Christ! a refuge give
+ That poor one in Thy dwelling!
+
+ Like a scared fawn before the hounds,
+ Right up the aisle she glided,
+ While close behind her, whip in hand,
+ A lank-haired hunter strided.
+
+ She raised a keen and bitter cry,
+ To Heaven and Earth appealing;
+ Were manhood's generous pulses dead?
+ Had woman's heart no feeling?
+
+ A score of stout hands rose between
+ The hunter and the flying:
+ Age clenched his staff, and maiden eyes
+ Flashed tearful, yet defying.
+
+ "Who dares profane this house and day?"
+ Cried out the angry pastor.
+ "Why, bless your soul, the wench's a slave,
+ And I'm her lord and master!
+
+ "I've law and gospel on my side,
+ And who shall dare refuse me?"
+ Down came the parson, bowing low,
+ "My good sir, pray excuse me!
+
+ "Of course I know your right divine
+ To own and work and whip her;
+ Quick, deacon, throw that Polyglott
+ Before the wench, and trip her!"
+
+ Plump dropped the holy tome, and o'er
+ Its sacred pages stumbling,
+ Bound hand and foot, a slave once more,
+ The hapless wretch lay trembling.
+
+ I saw the parson tie the knots,
+ The while his flock addressing,
+ The Scriptural claims of slavery
+ With text on text impressing.
+
+ "Although," said he, "on Sabbath day
+ All secular occupations
+ Are deadly sins, we must fulfil
+ Our moral obligations:
+
+ "And this commends itself as one
+ To every conscience tender;
+ As Paul sent back Onesimus,
+ My Christian friends, we send her!"
+
+ Shriek rose on shriek,--the Sabbath air
+ Her wild cries tore asunder;
+ I listened, with hushed breath, to hear
+ God answering with his thunder!
+
+ All still! the very altar's cloth
+ Had smothered down her shrieking,
+ And, dumb, she turned from face to face,
+ For human pity seeking!
+
+ I saw her dragged along the aisle,
+ Her shackles harshly clanking;
+ I heard the parson, over all,
+ The Lord devoutly thanking!
+
+ My brain took fire: "Is this," I cried,
+ "The end of prayer and preaching?
+ Then down with pulpit, down with priest,
+ And give us Nature's teaching!
+
+ "Foul shame and scorn be on ye all
+ Who turn the good to evil,
+ And steal the Bible, from the Lord,
+ To give it to the Devil!
+
+ "Than garbled text or parchment law
+ I own a statute higher;
+ And God is true, though every book
+ And every man's a liar!"
+
+ Just then I felt the deacon's hand
+ In wrath my coattail seize on;
+ I heard the priest cry, "Infidel!"
+ The lawyer mutter, "Treason!"
+
+ I started up,--where now were church,
+ Slave, master, priest, and people?
+ I only heard the supper-bell,
+ Instead of clanging steeple.
+
+ But, on the open window's sill,
+ O'er which the white blooms drifted,
+ The pages of a good old Book
+ The wind of summer lifted,
+
+ And flower and vine, like angel wings
+ Around the Holy Mother,
+ Waved softly there, as if God's truth
+ And Mercy kissed each other.
+
+ And freely from the cherry-bough
+ Above the casement swinging,
+ With golden bosom to the sun,
+ The oriole was singing.
+
+ As bird and flower made plain of old
+ The lesson of the Teacher,
+ So now I heard the written Word
+ Interpreted by Nature.
+
+ For to my ear methought the breeze
+ Bore Freedom's blessed word on;
+ Thus saith the Lord: Break every yoke,
+ Undo the heavy burden
+
+ 1850.
+
+
+
+
+IN THE EVIL DAYS.
+
+This and the four following poems have special reference to that darkest
+hour in the aggression of slavery which preceded the dawn of a better
+day, when the conscience of the people was roused to action.
+
+
+ THE evil days have come, the poor
+ Are made a prey;
+ Bar up the hospitable door,
+ Put out the fire-lights, point no more
+ The wanderer's way.
+
+ For Pity now is crime; the chain
+ Which binds our States
+ Is melted at her hearth in twain,
+ Is rusted by her tears' soft rain
+ Close up her gates.
+
+ Our Union, like a glacier stirred
+ By voice below,
+ Or bell of kine, or wing of bird,
+ A beggar's crust, a kindly word
+ May overthrow!
+
+ Poor, whispering tremblers! yet we boast
+ Our blood and name;
+ Bursting its century-bolted frost,
+ Each gray cairn on the Northman's coast
+ Cries out for shame!
+
+ Oh for the open firmament,
+ The prairie free,
+ The desert hillside, cavern-rent,
+ The Pawnee's lodge, the Arab's tent,
+ The Bushman's tree!
+
+ Than web of Persian loom most rare,
+ Or soft divan,
+ Better the rough rock, bleak and bare,
+ Or hollow tree, which man may share
+ With suffering man.
+
+ I hear a voice: "Thus saith the Law,
+ Let Love be dumb;
+ Clasping her liberal hands in awe,
+ Let sweet-lipped Charity withdraw
+ From hearth and home."
+
+ I hear another voice: "The poor
+ Are thine to feed;
+ Turn not the outcast from thy door,
+ Nor give to bonds and wrong once more
+ Whom God hath freed."
+
+ Dear Lord! between that law and Thee
+ No choice remains;
+ Yet not untrue to man's decree,
+ Though spurning its rewards, is he
+ Who bears its pains.
+
+ Not mine Sedition's trumpet-blast
+ And threatening word;
+ I read the lesson of the Past,
+ That firm endurance wins at last
+ More than the sword.
+
+ O clear-eyed Faith, and Patience thou
+ So calm and strong!
+ Lend strength to weakness, teach us how
+ The sleepless eyes of God look through
+ This night of wrong.
+
+ 1850.
+
+
+
+
+MOLOCH IN STATE STREET.
+
+In a foot-note of the Report of the Senate of Massachusetts on the case
+of the arrest and return to bondage of the fugitive slave Thomas Sims it
+is stated that--"It would have been impossible for the U. S. marshal
+thus successfully to have resisted the law of the State, without the
+assistance of the municipal authorities of Boston, and the countenance
+and support of a numerous, wealthy, and powerful body of citizens. It
+was in evidence that 1500 of the most wealthy and respectable
+citizens-merchants, bankers, and others--volunteered their services to
+aid the marshal on this occasion. . . . No watch was kept upon the
+doings of the marshal, and while the State officers slept, after the
+moon had gone down, in the darkest hour before daybreak, the accused was
+taken out of our jurisdiction by the armed police of the city of
+Boston."
+
+ THE moon has set: while yet the dawn
+ Breaks cold and gray,
+ Between the midnight and the morn
+ Bear off your prey!
+
+ On, swift and still! the conscious street
+ Is panged and stirred;
+ Tread light! that fall of serried feet
+ The dead have heard!
+
+ The first drawn blood of Freedom's veins
+ Gushed where ye tread;
+ Lo! through the dusk the martyr-stains
+ Blush darkly red!
+
+ Beneath the slowly waning stars
+ And whitening day,
+ What stern and awful presence bars
+ That sacred way?
+
+ What faces frown upon ye, dark
+ With shame and pain?
+ Come these from Plymouth's Pilgrim bark?
+ Is that young Vane?
+
+ Who, dimly beckoning, speed ye on
+ With mocking cheer?
+ Lo! spectral Andros, Hutchinson,
+ And Gage are here!
+
+ For ready mart or favoring blast
+ Through Moloch's fire,
+ Flesh of his flesh, unsparing, passed
+ The Tyrian sire.
+
+ Ye make that ancient sacrifice
+ Of Mail to Gain,
+ Your traffic thrives, where Freedom dies,
+ Beneath the chain.
+
+ Ye sow to-day; your harvest, scorn
+ And hate, is near;
+ How think ye freemen, mountain-born,
+ The tale will hear?
+
+ Thank God! our mother State can yet
+ Her fame retrieve;
+ To you and to your children let
+ The scandal cleave.
+
+ Chain Hall and Pulpit, Court and Press,
+ Make gods of gold;
+ Let honor, truth, and manliness
+ Like wares be sold.
+
+ Your hoards are great, your walls are strong,
+ But God is just;
+ The gilded chambers built by wrong
+ Invite the rust.
+
+ What! know ye not the gains of Crime
+ Are dust and dross;
+ Its ventures on the waves of time
+ Foredoomed to loss!
+
+ And still the Pilgrim State remains
+ What she hath been;
+ Her inland hills, her seaward plains,
+ Still nurture men!
+
+ Nor wholly lost the fallen mart;
+ Her olden blood
+ Through many a free and generous heart
+ Still pours its flood.
+
+ That brave old blood, quick-flowing yet,
+ Shall know no check,
+ Till a free people's foot is set
+ On Slavery's neck.
+
+ Even now, the peal of bell and gun,
+ And hills aflame,
+ Tell of the first great triumph won
+ In Freedom's name. (10)
+
+ The long night dies: the welcome gray
+ Of dawn we see;
+ Speed up the heavens thy perfect day,
+ God of the free!
+
+ 1851.
+
+
+
+
+OFFICIAL PIETY.
+
+Suggested by reading a state paper, wherein the higher law is invoked to
+sustain the lower one.
+
+
+ A Pious magistrate! sound his praise throughout
+ The wondering churches. Who shall henceforth doubt
+ That the long-wished millennium draweth nigh?
+ Sin in high places has become devout,
+ Tithes mint, goes painful-faced, and prays its lie
+ Straight up to Heaven, and calls it piety!
+ The pirate, watching from his bloody deck
+ The weltering galleon, heavy with the gold
+ Of Acapulco, holding death in check
+ While prayers are said, brows crossed, and beads are told;
+ The robber, kneeling where the wayside cross
+ On dark Abruzzo tells of life's dread loss
+ From his own carbine, glancing still abroad
+ For some new victim, offering thanks to God!
+ Rome, listening at her altars to the cry
+ Of midnight Murder, while her hounds of hell
+ Scour France, from baptized cannon and holy bell
+ And thousand-throated priesthood, loud and high,
+ Pealing Te Deums to the shuddering sky,
+ "Thanks to the Lord, who giveth victory!"
+ What prove these, but that crime was ne'er so black
+ As ghostly cheer and pious thanks to lack?
+ Satan is modest. At Heaven's door he lays
+ His evil offspring, and, in Scriptural phrase
+ And saintly posture, gives to God the praise
+ And honor of the monstrous progeny.
+ What marvel, then, in our own time to see
+ His old devices, smoothly acted o'er,--
+ Official piety, locking fast the door
+ Of Hope against three million soups of men,--
+ Brothers, God's children, Christ's redeemed,--and then,
+ With uprolled eyeballs and on bended knee,
+ Whining a prayer for help to hide the key!
+
+ 1853.
+
+
+
+
+THE RENDITION.
+
+On the 2d of June, 1854, Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave from Virginia,
+after being under arrest for ten days in the Boston Court House, was
+remanded to slavery under the Fugitive Slave Act, and taken down State
+Street to a steamer chartered by the United States Government, under
+guard of United States troops and artillery, Massachusetts militia and
+Boston police. Public excitement ran high, a futile attempt to rescue
+Burns having been made during his confinement, and the streets were
+crowded with tens of thousands of people, of whom many came from other
+towns and cities of the State to witness the humiliating spectacle.
+
+
+ I HEARD the train's shrill whistle call,
+ I saw an earnest look beseech,
+ And rather by that look than speech
+ My neighbor told me all.
+
+ And, as I thought of Liberty
+ Marched handcuffed down that sworded street,
+ The solid earth beneath my feet
+ Reeled fluid as the sea.
+
+ I felt a sense of bitter loss,--
+ Shame, tearless grief, and stifling wrath,
+ And loathing fear, as if my path
+ A serpent stretched across.
+
+ All love of home, all pride of place,
+ All generous confidence and trust,
+ Sank smothering in that deep disgust
+ And anguish of disgrace.
+
+ Down on my native hills of June,
+ And home's green quiet, hiding all,
+ Fell sudden darkness like the fall
+ Of midnight upon noon.
+
+ And Law, an unloosed maniac, strong,
+ Blood-drunken, through the blackness trod,
+ Hoarse-shouting in the ear of God
+ The blasphemy of wrong.
+
+ "O Mother, from thy memories proud,
+ Thy old renown, dear Commonwealth,
+ Lend this dead air a breeze of health,
+ And smite with stars this cloud.
+
+ "Mother of Freedom, wise and brave,
+ Rise awful in thy strength," I said;
+ Ah me! I spake but to the dead;
+ I stood upon her grave!
+
+ 6th mo., 1854.
+
+
+
+
+ARISEN AT LAST.
+
+On the passage of the bill to protect the rights and liberties of the
+people of the State against the Fugitive Slave Act.
+
+
+ I SAID I stood upon thy grave,
+ My Mother State, when last the moon
+ Of blossoms clomb the skies of June.
+
+ And, scattering ashes on my head,
+ I wore, undreaming of relief,
+ The sackcloth of thy shame and grief.
+
+ Again that moon of blossoms shines
+ On leaf and flower and folded wing,
+ And thou hast risen with the spring!
+
+ Once more thy strong maternal arms
+ Are round about thy children flung,--
+ A lioness that guards her young!
+
+ No threat is on thy closed lips,
+ But in thine eye a power to smite
+ The mad wolf backward from its light.
+
+ Southward the baffled robber's track
+ Henceforth runs only; hereaway,
+ The fell lycanthrope finds no prey.
+
+ Henceforth, within thy sacred gates,
+ His first low howl shall downward draw
+ The thunder of thy righteous law.
+
+ Not mindless of thy trade and gain,
+ But, acting on the wiser plan,
+ Thou'rt grown conservative of man.
+
+ So shalt thou clothe with life the hope,
+ Dream-painted on the sightless eyes
+ Of him who sang of Paradise,--
+
+ The vision of a Christian man,
+ In virtue, as in stature great
+ Embodied in a Christian State.
+
+ And thou, amidst thy sisterhood
+ Forbearing long, yet standing fast,
+ Shalt win their grateful thanks at last;
+
+ When North and South shall strive no more,
+ And all their feuds and fears be lost
+ In Freedom's holy Pentecost.
+
+ 6th mo., 1855.
+
+
+
+
+THE HASCHISH.
+
+ OF all that Orient lands can vaunt
+ Of marvels with our own competing,
+ The strangest is the Haschish plant,
+ And what will follow on its eating.
+
+ What pictures to the taster rise,
+ Of Dervish or of Almeh dances!
+ Of Eblis, or of Paradise,
+ Set all aglow with Houri glances!
+
+ The poppy visions of Cathay,
+ The heavy beer-trance of the Suabian;
+ The wizard lights and demon play
+ Of nights Walpurgis and Arabian!
+
+ The Mollah and the Christian dog
+ Change place in mad metempsychosis;
+ The Muezzin climbs the synagogue,
+ The Rabbi shakes his beard at Moses!
+
+ The Arab by his desert well
+ Sits choosing from some Caliph's daughters,
+ And hears his single camel's bell
+ Sound welcome to his regal quarters.
+
+ The Koran's reader makes complaint
+ Of Shitan dancing on and off it;
+ The robber offers alms, the saint
+ Drinks Tokay and blasphemes the Prophet.
+
+ Such scenes that Eastern plant awakes;
+ But we have one ordained to beat it,
+ The Haschish of the West, which makes
+ Or fools or knaves of all who eat it.
+
+ The preacher eats, and straight appears
+ His Bible in a new translation;
+ Its angels negro overseers,
+ And Heaven itself a snug plantation!
+
+ The man of peace, about whose dreams
+ The sweet millennial angels cluster,
+ Tastes the mad weed, and plots and schemes,
+ A raving Cuban filibuster!
+
+ The noisiest Democrat, with ease,
+ It turns to Slavery's parish beadle;
+ The shrewdest statesman eats and sees
+ Due southward point the polar needle.
+
+ The Judge partakes, and sits erelong
+ Upon his bench a railing blackguard;
+ Decides off-hand that right is wrong,
+ And reads the ten commandments backward.
+
+ O potent plant! so rare a taste
+ Has never Turk or Gentoo gotten;
+ The hempen Haschish of the East
+ Is powerless to our Western Cotton!
+
+ 1854.
+
+
+
+
+FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE.
+
+Inscribed to friends under arrest for treason against the slave power.
+
+
+ THE age is dull and mean. Men creep,
+ Not walk; with blood too pale and tame
+ To pay the debt they owe to shame;
+ Buy cheap, sell dear; eat, drink, and sleep
+ Down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want;
+ Pay tithes for soul-insurance; keep
+ Six days to Mammon, one to Cant.
+
+ In such a time, give thanks to God,
+ That somewhat of the holy rage
+ With which the prophets in their age
+ On all its decent seemings trod,
+ Has set your feet upon the lie,
+ That man and ox and soul and clod
+ Are market stock to sell and buy!
+
+ The hot words from your lips, my own,
+ To caution trained, might not repeat;
+ But if some tares among the wheat
+ Of generous thought and deed were sown,
+ No common wrong provoked your zeal;
+ The silken gauntlet that is thrown
+ In such a quarrel rings like steel.
+
+ The brave old strife the fathers saw
+ For Freedom calls for men again
+ Like those who battled not in vain
+ For England's Charter, Alfred's law;
+ And right of speech and trial just
+ Wage in your name their ancient war
+ With venal courts and perjured trust.
+
+ God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late,
+ They touch the shining hills of day;
+ The evil cannot brook delay,
+ The good can well afford to wait.
+ Give ermined knaves their hour of crime;
+ Ye have the future grand and great,
+ The safe appeal of Truth to Time!
+
+ 1855.
+
+
+
+
+THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS.
+
+This poem and the three following were called out by the popular
+movement of Free State men to occupy the territory of Kansas, and by the
+use of the great democratic weapon--an over-powering majority--to settle
+the conflict on that ground between Freedom and Slavery. The opponents
+of the movement used another kind of weapon.
+
+
+ WE cross the prairie as of old
+ The pilgrims crossed the sea,
+ To make the West, as they the East,
+ The homestead of the free!
+
+ We go to rear a wall of men
+ On Freedom's southern line,
+ And plant beside the cotton-tree
+ The rugged Northern pine!
+
+ We're flowing from our native hills
+ As our free rivers flow;
+ The blessing of our Mother-land
+ Is on us as we go.
+
+ We go to plant her common schools,
+ On distant prairie swells,
+ And give the Sabbaths of the wild
+ The music of her bells.
+
+ Upbearing, like the Ark of old,
+ The Bible in our van,
+ We go to test the truth of God
+ Against the fraud of man.
+
+ No pause, nor rest, save where the streams
+ That feed the Kansas run,
+ Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon
+ Shall flout the setting sun.
+
+ We'll tread the prairie as of old
+ Our fathers sailed the sea,
+ And make the West, as they the East,
+ The homestead of the free!
+
+ 1854.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER FROM A MISSIONARY OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH,
+
+IN KANSAS, TO A DISTINGUISHED POLITICIAN.
+
+DOUGLAS MISSION, August, 1854,
+
+ LAST week--the Lord be praised for all His mercies
+ To His unworthy servant!--I arrived
+ Safe at the Mission, via Westport; where
+ I tarried over night, to aid in forming
+ A Vigilance Committee, to send back,
+ In shirts of tar, and feather-doublets quilted
+ With forty stripes save one, all Yankee comers,
+ Uncircumcised and Gentile, aliens from
+ The Commonwealth of Israel, who despise
+ The prize of the high calling of the saints,
+ Who plant amidst this heathen wilderness
+ Pure gospel institutions, sanctified
+ By patriarchal use. The meeting opened
+ With prayer, as was most fitting. Half an hour,
+ Or thereaway, I groaned, and strove, and wrestled,
+ As Jacob did at Penuel, till the power
+ Fell on the people, and they cried 'Amen!'
+ "Glory to God!" and stamped and clapped their hands;
+ And the rough river boatmen wiped their eyes;
+ "Go it, old hoss!" they cried, and cursed the niggers--
+ Fulfilling thus the word of prophecy,
+ "Cursed be Cannan." After prayer, the meeting
+ Chose a committee--good and pious men--
+ A Presbyterian Elder, Baptist deacon,
+ A local preacher, three or four class-leaders,
+ Anxious inquirers, and renewed backsliders,
+ A score in all--to watch the river ferry,
+ (As they of old did watch the fords of Jordan,)
+ And cut off all whose Yankee tongues refuse
+ The Shibboleth of the Nebraska bill.
+ And then, in answer to repeated calls,
+ I gave a brief account of what I saw
+ In Washington; and truly many hearts
+ Rejoiced to know the President, and you
+ And all the Cabinet regularly hear
+ The gospel message of a Sunday morning,
+ Drinking with thirsty souls of the sincere
+ Milk of the Word. Glory! Amen, and Selah!
+
+ Here, at the Mission, all things have gone well
+ The brother who, throughout my absence, acted
+ As overseer, assures me that the crops
+ Never were better. I have lost one negro,
+ A first-rate hand, but obstinate and sullen.
+ He ran away some time last spring, and hid
+ In the river timber. There my Indian converts
+ Found him, and treed and shot him. For the rest,
+ The heathens round about begin to feel
+ The influence of our pious ministrations
+ And works of love; and some of them already
+ Have purchased negroes, and are settling down
+ As sober Christians! Bless the Lord for this!
+ I know it will rejoice you. You, I hear,
+ Are on the eve of visiting Chicago,
+ To fight with the wild beasts of Ephesus,
+ Long John, and Dutch Free-Soilers. May your arm
+ Be clothed with strength, and on your tongue be found
+ The sweet oil of persuasion. So desires
+ Your brother and co-laborer. Amen!
+
+ P.S. All's lost. Even while I write these lines,
+ The Yankee abolitionists are coming
+ Upon us like a flood--grim, stalwart men,
+ Each face set like a flint of Plymouth Rock
+ Against our institutions--staking out
+ Their farm lots on the wooded Wakarusa,
+ Or squatting by the mellow-bottomed Kansas;
+ The pioneers of mightier multitudes,
+ The small rain-patter, ere the thunder shower
+ Drowns the dry prairies. Hope from man is not.
+ Oh, for a quiet berth at Washington,
+ Snug naval chaplaincy, or clerkship, where
+ These rumors of free labor and free soil
+ Might never meet me more. Better to be
+ Door-keeper in the White House, than to dwell
+ Amidst these Yankee tents, that, whitening, show
+ On the green prairie like a fleet becalmed.
+ Methinks I hear a voice come up the river
+ From those far bayous, where the alligators
+ Mount guard around the camping filibusters
+ "Shake off the dust of Kansas. Turn to Cuba--
+ (That golden orange just about to fall,
+ O'er-ripe, into the Democratic lap;)
+ Keep pace with Providence, or, as we say,
+ Manifest destiny. Go forth and follow
+ The message of our gospel, thither borne
+ Upon the point of Quitman's bowie-knife,
+ And the persuasive lips of Colt's revolvers.
+ There may'st thou, underneath thy vine and figtree,
+ Watch thy increase of sugar cane and negroes,
+ Calm as a patriarch in his eastern tent!"
+ Amen: So mote it be. So prays your friend.
+
+
+
+
+BURIAL OF BARBER.
+
+Thomas Barber was shot December 6, 1855, near Lawrence, Kansas.
+
+
+ BEAR him, comrades, to his grave;
+ Never over one more brave
+ Shall the prairie grasses weep,
+ In the ages yet to come,
+ When the millions in our room,
+ What we sow in tears, shall reap.
+
+ Bear him up the icy hill,
+ With the Kansas, frozen still
+ As his noble heart, below,
+ And the land he came to till
+ With a freeman's thews and will,
+ And his poor hut roofed with snow.
+
+ One more look of that dead face,
+ Of his murder's ghastly trace!
+ One more kiss, O widowed one
+ Lay your left hands on his brow,
+ Lift your right hands up, and vow
+ That his work shall yet be done.
+
+ Patience, friends! The eye of God
+ Every path by Murder trod
+ Watches, lidless, day and night;
+ And the dead man in his shroud,
+ And his widow weeping loud,
+ And our hearts, are in His sight.
+
+ Every deadly threat that swells
+ With the roar of gambling hells,
+ Every brutal jest and jeer,
+ Every wicked thought and plan
+ Of the cruel heart of man,
+ Though but whispered, He can hear!
+
+ We in suffering, they in crime,
+ Wait the just award of time,
+ Wait the vengeance that is due;
+ Not in vain a heart shall break,
+ Not a tear for Freedom's sake
+ Fall unheeded: God is true.
+
+ While the flag with stars bedecked
+ Threatens where it should protect,
+ And the Law shakes Hands with Crime,
+ What is left us but to wait,
+ Match our patience to our fate,
+ And abide the better time?
+
+ Patience, friends! The human heart
+ Everywhere shall take our part,
+ Everywhere for us shall pray;
+ On our side are nature's laws,
+ And God's life is in the cause
+ That we suffer for to-day.
+
+ Well to suffer is divine;
+ Pass the watchword down the line,
+ Pass the countersign: "Endure."
+ Not to him who rashly dares,
+ But to him who nobly bears,
+ Is the victor's garland sure.
+
+ Frozen earth to frozen breast,
+ Lay our slain one down to rest;
+ Lay him down in hope and faith,
+ And above the broken sod,
+ Once again, to Freedom's God,
+ Pledge ourselves for life or death,
+
+ That the State whose walls we lay,
+ In our blood and tears, to-day,
+ Shall be free from bonds of shame,
+ And our goodly land untrod
+ By the feet of Slavery, shod
+ With cursing as with flame!
+
+ Plant the Buckeye on his grave,
+ For the hunter of the slave
+ In its shadow cannot rest; I
+ And let martyr mound and tree
+ Be our pledge and guaranty
+ Of the freedom of the West!
+
+ 1856.
+
+
+
+
+TO PENNSYLVANIA.
+
+ O STATE prayer-founded! never hung
+ Such choice upon a people's tongue,
+ Such power to bless or ban,
+ As that which makes thy whisper Fate,
+ For which on thee the centuries wait,
+ And destinies of man!
+
+ Across thy Alleghanian chain,
+ With groanings from a land in pain,
+ The west-wind finds its way:
+ Wild-wailing from Missouri's flood
+ The crying of thy children's blood
+ Is in thy ears to-day!
+
+ And unto thee in Freedom's hour
+ Of sorest need God gives the power
+ To ruin or to save;
+ To wound or heal, to blight or bless
+ With fertile field or wilderness,
+ A free home or a grave!
+
+ Then let thy virtue match the crime,
+ Rise to a level with the time;
+ And, if a son of thine
+ Betray or tempt thee, Brutus-like
+ For Fatherland and Freedom strike
+ As Justice gives the sign.
+
+ Wake, sleeper, from thy dream of ease,
+ The great occasion's forelock seize;
+ And let the north-wind strong,
+ And golden leaves of autumn, be
+ Thy coronal of Victory
+ And thy triumphal song.
+
+ 10th me., 1856.
+
+
+
+
+LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.
+
+The massacre of unarmed and unoffending men, in Southern Kansas, in May,
+1858, took place near the Marais du Cygne of the French voyageurs.
+
+
+ A BLUSH as of roses
+ Where rose never grew!
+ Great drops on the bunch-grass,
+ But not of the dew!
+ A taint in the sweet air
+ For wild bees to shun!
+ A stain that shall never
+ Bleach out in the sun.
+
+ Back, steed of the prairies
+ Sweet song-bird, fly back!
+ Wheel hither, bald vulture!
+ Gray wolf, call thy pack!
+ The foul human vultures
+ Have feasted and fled;
+ The wolves of the Border
+ Have crept from the dead.
+
+ From the hearths of their cabins,
+ The fields of their corn,
+ Unwarned and unweaponed,
+ The victims were torn,--
+ By the whirlwind of murder
+ Swooped up and swept on
+ To the low, reedy fen-lands,
+ The Marsh of the Swan.
+
+ With a vain plea for mercy
+ No stout knee was crooked;
+ In the mouths of the rifles
+ Right manly they looked.
+ How paled the May sunshine,
+ O Marais du Cygne!
+ On death for the strong life,
+ On red grass for green!
+
+ In the homes of their rearing,
+ Yet warm with their lives,
+ Ye wait the dead only,
+ Poor children and wives!
+ Put out the red forge-fire,
+ The smith shall not come;
+ Unyoke the brown oxen,
+ The ploughman lies dumb.
+
+ Wind slow from the Swan's Marsh,
+ O dreary death-train,
+ With pressed lips as bloodless
+ As lips of the slain!
+ Kiss down the young eyelids,
+ Smooth down the gray hairs;
+ Let tears quench the curses
+ That burn through your prayers.
+
+ Strong man of the prairies,
+ Mourn bitter and wild!
+ Wail, desolate woman!
+ Weep, fatherless child!
+ But the grain of God springs up
+ From ashes beneath,
+ And the crown of his harvest
+ Is life out of death.
+
+ Not in vain on the dial
+ The shade moves along,
+ To point the great contrasts
+ Of right and of wrong:
+ Free homes and free altars,
+ Free prairie and flood,--
+ The reeds of the Swan's Marsh,
+ Whose bloom is of blood!
+
+ On the lintels of Kansas
+ That blood shall not dry;
+ Henceforth the Bad Angel
+ Shall harmless go by;
+ Henceforth to the sunset,
+ Unchecked on her way,
+ Shall Liberty follow
+ The march of the day.
+
+
+
+
+THE PASS OF THE SIERRA.
+
+ ALL night above their rocky bed
+ They saw the stars march slow;
+ The wild Sierra overhead,
+ The desert's death below.
+
+ The Indian from his lodge of bark,
+ The gray bear from his den,
+ Beyond their camp-fire's wall of dark,
+ Glared on the mountain men.
+
+ Still upward turned, with anxious strain,
+ Their leader's sleepless eye,
+ Where splinters of the mountain chain
+ Stood black against the sky.
+
+ The night waned slow: at last, a glow,
+ A gleam of sudden fire,
+ Shot up behind the walls of snow,
+ And tipped each icy spire.
+
+ "Up, men!" he cried, "yon rocky cone,
+ To-day, please God, we'll pass,
+ And look from Winter's frozen throne
+ On Summer's flowers and grass!"
+
+ They set their faces to the blast,
+ They trod the eternal snow,
+ And faint, worn, bleeding, hailed at last
+ The promised land below.
+
+ Behind, they saw the snow-cloud tossed
+ By many an icy horn;
+ Before, warm valleys, wood-embossed,
+ And green with vines and corn.
+
+ They left the Winter at their backs
+ To flap his baffled wing,
+ And downward, with the cataracts,
+ Leaped to the lap of Spring.
+
+ Strong leader of that mountain band,
+ Another task remains,
+ To break from Slavery's desert land
+ A path to Freedom's plains.
+
+ The winds are wild, the way is drear,
+ Yet, flashing through the night,
+ Lo! icy ridge and rocky spear
+ Blaze out in morning light!
+
+ Rise up, Fremont! and go before;
+ The hour must have its Man;
+ Put on the hunting-shirt once more,
+ And lead in Freedom's van!
+ 8th mo., 1856.
+
+
+
+
+A SONG FOR THE TIME.
+
+Written in the summer of 1856, during the political campaign of the Free
+Soil party under the candidacy of John C. Fremont.
+
+
+ Up, laggards of Freedom!--our free flag is cast
+ To the blaze of the sun and the wings of the blast;
+ Will ye turn from a struggle so bravely begun,
+ From a foe that is breaking, a field that's half won?
+
+ Whoso loves not his kind, and who fears not the Lord,
+ Let him join that foe's service, accursed and abhorred
+ Let him do his base will, as the slave only can,--
+ Let him put on the bloodhound, and put off the Man!
+
+ Let him go where the cold blood that creeps in his veins
+ Shall stiffen the slave-whip, and rust on his chains;
+ Where the black slave shall laugh in his bonds, to behold
+ The White Slave beside him, self-fettered and sold!
+
+ But ye, who still boast of hearts beating and warm,
+ Rise, from lake shore and ocean's, like waves in a storm,
+ Come, throng round our banner in Liberty's name,
+ Like winds from your mountains, like prairies aflame!
+
+ Our foe, hidden long in his ambush of night,
+ Now, forced from his covert, stands black in the light.
+ Oh, the cruel to Man, and the hateful to God,
+ Smite him down to the earth, that is cursed where he trod!
+
+ For deeper than thunder of summer's loud shower,
+ On the dome of the sky God is striking the hour!
+ Shall we falter before what we've prayed for so long,
+ When the Wrong is so weak, and the Right is so strong?
+
+ Come forth all together! come old and come young,
+ Freedom's vote in each hand, and her song on each tongue;
+ Truth naked is stronger than Falsehood in mail;
+ The Wrong cannot prosper, the Right cannot fail.
+
+ Like leaves of the summer once numbered the foe,
+ But the hoar-frost is falling, the northern winds blow;
+ Like leaves of November erelong shall they fall,
+ For earth wearies of them, and God's over all!
+
+
+
+
+WHAT OF THE DAY?
+
+Written during the stirring weeks when the great political battle for
+Freedom under Fremont's leadership was permitting strong hope of
+success,--a hope overshadowed and solemnized by a sense of the magnitude
+of the barbaric evil, and a forecast of the unscrupulous and desperate
+use of all its powers in the last and decisive struggle.
+
+
+ A SOUND of tumult troubles all the air,
+ Like the low thunders of a sultry sky
+ Far-rolling ere the downright lightnings glare;
+ The hills blaze red with warnings; foes draw nigh,
+ Treading the dark with challenge and reply.
+ Behold the burden of the prophet's vision;
+ The gathering hosts,--the Valley of Decision,
+ Dusk with the wings of eagles wheeling o'er.
+ Day of the Lord, of darkness and not light!
+ It breaks in thunder and the whirlwind's roar
+ Even so, Father! Let Thy will be done;
+ Turn and o'erturn, end what Thou bast begun
+ In judgment or in mercy: as for me,
+ If but the least and frailest, let me be
+ Evermore numbered with the truly free
+ Who find Thy service perfect liberty!
+ I fain would thank Thee that my mortal life
+ Has reached the hour (albeit through care and pain)
+ When Good and Evil, as for final strife,
+ Close dim and vast on Armageddon's plain;
+ And Michael and his angels once again
+ Drive howling back the Spirits of the Night.
+ Oh for the faith to read the signs aright
+ And, from the angle of Thy perfect sight,
+ See Truth's white banner floating on before;
+ And the Good Cause, despite of venal friends,
+ And base expedients, move to noble ends;
+ See Peace with Freedom make to Time amends,
+ And, through its cloud of dust, the threshing-floor,
+ Flailed by the thunder, heaped with chaffless grain.
+
+ 1856.
+
+
+
+
+A SONG, INSCRIBED TO THE FREMONT CLUBS.
+
+Written after the election in 1586, which showed the immense gains of
+the Free Soil party, and insured its success in 1860.
+
+ BENEATH thy skies, November!
+ Thy skies of cloud and rain,
+ Around our blazing camp-fires
+ We close our ranks again.
+ Then sound again the bugles,
+ Call the muster-roll anew;
+ If months have well-nigh won the field,
+ What may not four years do?
+
+ For God be praised! New England
+ Takes once more her ancient place;
+ Again the Pilgrim's banner
+ Leads the vanguard of the race.
+ Then sound again the bugles, etc.
+
+ Along the lordly Hudson,
+ A shout of triumph breaks;
+ The Empire State is speaking,
+ From the ocean to the lakes.
+ Then sound again the bugles, etc.
+
+ The Northern hills are blazing,
+ The Northern skies are bright;
+ And the fair young West is turning
+ Her forehead to the light!
+ Then sound again the bugles, etc.
+
+ Push every outpost nearer,
+ Press hard the hostile towers!
+ Another Balaklava,
+ And the Malakoff is ours!
+ Then sound again the bugles,
+ Call the muster-roll anew;
+ If months have well-nigh won the field,
+ What may not four years do?
+
+
+
+
+THE PANORAMA.
+
+ "A! fredome is a nobill thing!
+ Fredome mayse man to haif liking.
+ Fredome all solace to man giffis;
+ He levys at ese that frely levys
+ A nobil hart may haif nane ese
+ Na ellvs nocht that may him plese
+ Gyff Fredome failythe."
+ ARCHDEACON BARBOUR.
+
+
+ THROUGH the long hall the shuttered windows shed
+ A dubious light on every upturned head;
+ On locks like those of Absalom the fair,
+ On the bald apex ringed with scanty hair,
+ On blank indifference and on curious stare;
+ On the pale Showman reading from his stage
+ The hieroglyphics of that facial page;
+ Half sad, half scornful, listening to the bruit
+ Of restless cane-tap and impatient foot,
+ And the shrill call, across the general din,
+ "Roll up your curtain! Let the show begin!"
+
+ At length a murmur like the winds that break
+ Into green waves the prairie's grassy lake,
+ Deepened and swelled to music clear and loud,
+ And, as the west-wind lifts a summer cloud,
+ The curtain rose, disclosing wide and far
+ A green land stretching to the evening star,
+ Fair rivers, skirted by primeval trees
+ And flowers hummed over by the desert bees,
+ Marked by tall bluffs whose slopes of greenness show
+ Fantastic outcrops of the rock below;
+ The slow result of patient Nature's pains,
+ And plastic fingering of her sun and rains;
+ Arch, tower, and gate, grotesquely windowed hall,
+ And long escarpment of half-crumbled wall,
+ Huger than those which, from steep hills of vine,
+ Stare through their loopholes on the travelled Rhine;
+ Suggesting vaguely to the gazer's mind
+ A fancy, idle as the prairie wind,
+ Of the land's dwellers in an age unguessed;
+ The unsung Jotuns of the mystic West.
+
+ Beyond, the prairie's sea-like swells surpass
+ The Tartar's marvels of his Land of Grass,
+ Vast as the sky against whose sunset shores
+ Wave after wave the billowy greenness pours;
+ And, onward still, like islands in that main
+ Loom the rough peaks of many a mountain chain,
+ Whence east and west a thousand waters run
+ From winter lingering under summer's sun.
+ And, still beyond, long lines of foam and sand
+ Tell where Pacific rolls his waves a-land,
+ From many a wide-lapped port and land-locked bay,
+ Opening with thunderous pomp the world's highway
+ To Indian isles of spice, and marts of far Cathay.
+
+ "Such," said the Showman, as the curtain fell,
+ "Is the new Canaan of our Israel;
+ The land of promise to the swarming North,
+ Which, hive-like, sends its annual surplus forth,
+ To the poor Southron on his worn-out soil,
+ Scathed by the curses of unnatural toil;
+ To Europe's exiles seeking home and rest,
+ And the lank nomads of the wandering West,
+ Who, asking neither, in their love of change
+ And the free bison's amplitude of range,
+ Rear the log-hut, for present shelter meant,
+ Not future comfort, like an Arab's tent."
+
+ Then spake a shrewd on-looker, "Sir," said he,
+ "I like your picture, but I fain would see
+ A sketch of what your promised land will be
+ When, with electric nerve, and fiery-brained,
+ With Nature's forces to its chariot chained,
+ The future grasping, by the past obeyed,
+ The twentieth century rounds a new decade."
+
+ Then said the Showman, sadly: "He who grieves
+ Over the scattering of the sibyl's leaves
+ Unwisely mourns. Suffice it, that we know
+ What needs must ripen from the seed we sow;
+ That present time is but the mould wherein
+ We cast the shapes of holiness and sin.
+ A painful watcher of the passing hour,
+ Its lust of gold, its strife for place and power;
+ Its lack of manhood, honor, reverence, truth,
+ Wise-thoughted age, and generous-hearted youth;
+ Nor yet unmindful of each better sign,
+ The low, far lights, which on th' horizon shine,
+ Like those which sometimes tremble on the rim
+ Of clouded skies when day is closing dim,
+ Flashing athwart the purple spears of rain
+ The hope of sunshine on the hills again
+ I need no prophet's word, nor shapes that pass
+ Like clouding shadows o'er a magic glass;
+ For now, as ever, passionless and cold,
+ Doth the dread angel of the future hold
+ Evil and good before us, with no voice
+ Or warning look to guide us in our choice;
+ With spectral hands outreaching through the gloom
+ The shadowy contrasts of the coming doom.
+ Transferred from these, it now remains to give
+ The sun and shade of Fate's alternative."
+
+ Then, with a burst of music, touching all
+ The keys of thrifty life,--the mill-stream's fall,
+ The engine's pant along its quivering rails,
+ The anvil's ring, the measured beat of flails,
+ The sweep of scythes, the reaper's whistled tune,
+ Answering the summons of the bells of noon,
+ The woodman's hail along the river shores,
+ The steamboat's signal, and the dip of oars
+ Slowly the curtain rose from off a land
+ Fair as God's garden. Broad on either hand
+ The golden wheat-fields glimmered in the sun,
+ And the tall maize its yellow tassels spun.
+ Smooth highways set with hedge-rows living green,
+ With steepled towns through shaded vistas seen,
+ The school-house murmuring with its hive-like swarm,
+ The brook-bank whitening in the grist-mill's storm,
+ The painted farm-house shining through the leaves
+ Of fruited orchards bending at its eaves,
+ Where live again, around the Western hearth,
+ The homely old-time virtues of the North;
+ Where the blithe housewife rises with the day,
+ And well-paid labor counts his task a play.
+ And, grateful tokens of a Bible free,
+ And the free Gospel of Humanity,
+ Of diverse-sects and differing names the shrines,
+ One in their faith, whate'er their outward signs,
+ Like varying strophes of the same sweet hymn
+ From many a prairie's swell and river's brim,
+ A thousand church-spires sanctify the air
+ Of the calm Sabbath, with their sign of prayer.
+
+ Like sudden nightfall over bloom and green
+ The curtain dropped: and, momently, between
+ The clank of fetter and the crack of thong,
+ Half sob, half laughter, music swept along;
+ A strange refrain, whose idle words and low,
+ Like drunken mourners, kept the time of woe;
+ As if the revellers at a masquerade
+ Heard in the distance funeral marches played.
+ Such music, dashing all his smiles with tears,
+ The thoughtful voyager on Ponchartrain hears,
+ Where, through the noonday dusk of wooded shores
+ The negro boatman, singing to his oars,
+ With a wild pathos borrowed of his wrong
+ Redeems the jargon of his senseless song.
+ "Look," said the Showman, sternly, as he rolled
+ His curtain upward. "Fate's reverse behold!"
+
+ A village straggling in loose disarray
+ Of vulgar newness, premature decay;
+ A tavern, crazy with its whiskey brawls,
+ With "Slaves at Auction!" garnishing its walls;
+ Without, surrounded by a motley crowd,
+ The shrewd-eyed salesman, garrulous and loud,
+ A squire or colonel in his pride of place,
+ Known at free fights, the caucus, and the race,
+ Prompt to proclaim his honor without blot,
+ And silence doubters with a ten-pace shot,
+ Mingling the negro-driving bully's rant
+ With pious phrase and democratic cant,
+ Yet never scrupling, with a filthy jest,
+ To sell the infant from its mother's breast,
+ Break through all ties of wedlock, home, and kin,
+ Yield shrinking girlhood up to graybeard sin;
+ Sell all the virtues with his human stock,
+ The Christian graces on his auction-block,
+ And coolly count on shrewdest bargains driven
+ In hearts regenerate, and in souls forgiven!
+
+ Look once again! The moving canvas shows
+ A slave plantation's slovenly repose,
+ Where, in rude cabins rotting midst their weeds,
+ The human chattel eats, and sleeps, and breeds;
+ And, held a brute, in practice, as in law,
+ Becomes in fact the thing he's taken for.
+ There, early summoned to the hemp and corn,
+ The nursing mother leaves her child new-born;
+ There haggard sickness, weak and deathly faint,
+ Crawls to his task, and fears to make complaint;
+ And sad-eyed Rachels, childless in decay,
+ Weep for their lost ones sold and torn away!
+ Of ampler size the master's dwelling stands,
+ In shabby keeping with his half-tilled lands;
+ The gates unhinged, the yard with weeds unclean,
+ The cracked veranda with a tipsy lean.
+ Without, loose-scattered like a wreck adrift,
+ Signs of misrule and tokens of unthrift;
+ Within, profusion to discomfort joined,
+ The listless body and the vacant mind;
+ The fear, the hate, the theft and falsehood, born
+ In menial hearts of toil, and stripes, and scorn
+ There, all the vices, which, like birds obscene,
+ Batten on slavery loathsome and unclean,
+ From the foul kitchen to the parlor rise,
+ Pollute the nursery where the child-heir lies,
+ Taint infant lips beyond all after cure,
+ With the fell poison of a breast impure;
+ Touch boyhood's passions with the breath of flame,
+ From girlhood's instincts steal the blush of shame.
+ So swells, from low to high, from weak to strong,
+ The tragic chorus of the baleful wrong;
+ Guilty or guiltless, all within its range
+ Feel the blind justice of its sure revenge.
+
+ Still scenes like these the moving chart reveals.
+ Up the long western steppes the blighting steals;
+ Down the Pacific slope the evil Fate
+ Glides like a shadow to the Golden Gate
+ From sea to sea the drear eclipse is thrown,
+ From sea to sea the Mauvaises Terres have grown,
+ A belt of curses on the New World's zone!
+
+ The curtain fell. All drew a freer breath,
+ As men are wont to do when mournful death
+ Is covered from their sight. The Showman stood
+ With drooping brow in sorrow's attitude
+ One moment, then with sudden gesture shook
+ His loose hair back, and with the air and look
+ Of one who felt, beyond the narrow stage
+ And listening group, the presence of the age,
+ And heard the footsteps of the things to be,
+ Poured out his soul in earnest words and free.
+
+ "O friends!" he said, "in this poor trick of paint
+ You see the semblance, incomplete and faint,
+ Of the two-fronted Future, which, to-day,
+ Stands dim and silent, waiting in your way.
+ To-day, your servant, subject to your will;
+ To-morrow, master, or for good or ill.
+ If the dark face of Slavery on you turns,
+ If the mad curse its paper barrier spurns,
+ If the world granary of the West is made
+ The last foul market of the slaver's trade,
+ Why rail at fate? The mischief is your own.
+ Why hate your neighbor? Blame yourselves
+ alone!
+
+ "Men of the North! The South you charge with wrong
+ Is weak and poor, while you are rich and strong.
+ If questions,--idle and absurd as those
+ The old-time monks and Paduan doctors chose,--
+ Mere ghosts of questions, tariffs, and dead banks,
+ And scarecrow pontiffs, never broke your ranks,
+ Your thews united could, at once, roll back
+ The jostled nation to its primal track.
+ Nay, were you simply steadfast, manly, just,
+ True to the faith your fathers left in trust,
+ If stainless honor outweighed in your scale
+ A codfish quintal or a factory bale,
+ Full many a noble heart, (and such remain
+ In all the South, like Lot in Siddim's plain,
+ Who watch and wait, and from the wrong's control
+ Keep white and pure their chastity of soul,)
+ Now sick to loathing of your weak complaints,
+ Your tricks as sinners, and your prayers as saints,
+ Would half-way meet the frankness of your tone,
+ And feel their pulses beating with your own.
+
+ "The North! the South! no geographic line
+ Can fix the boundary or the point define,
+ Since each with each so closely interblends,
+ Where Slavery rises, and where Freedom ends.
+ Beneath your rocks the roots, far-reaching, hide
+ Of the fell Upas on the Southern side;
+ The tree whose branches in your northwinds wave
+ Dropped its young blossoms on Mount Vernon's grave;
+ The nursling growth of Monticello's crest
+ Is now the glory of the free Northwest;
+ To the wise maxims of her olden school
+ Virginia listened from thy lips, Rantoul;
+ Seward's words of power, and Sumner's fresh renown,
+ Flow from the pen that Jefferson laid down!
+ And when, at length, her years of madness o'er,
+ Like the crowned grazer on Euphrates' shore,
+ From her long lapse to savagery, her mouth
+ Bitter with baneful herbage, turns the South,
+ Resumes her old attire, and seeks to smooth
+ Her unkempt tresses at the glass of truth,
+ Her early faith shall find a tongue again,
+ New Wythes and Pinckneys swell that old refrain,
+ Her sons with yours renew the ancient pact,
+ The myth of Union prove at last a fact!
+ Then, if one murmur mars the wide content,
+ Some Northern lip will drawl the last dissent,
+ Some Union-saving patriot of your own
+ Lament to find his occupation gone.
+
+ "Grant that the North 's insulted, scorned, betrayed,
+ O'erreached in bargains with her neighbor made,
+ When selfish thrift and party held the scales
+ For peddling dicker, not for honest sales,--
+ Whom shall we strike? Who most deserves our blame?
+ The braggart Southron, open in his aim,
+ And bold as wicked, crashing straight through all
+ That bars his purpose, like a cannon-ball?
+ Or the mean traitor, breathing northern air,
+ With nasal speech and puritanic hair,
+ Whose cant the loss of principle survives,
+ As the mud-turtle e'en its head outlives;
+ Who, caught, chin-buried in some foul offence,
+ Puts on a look of injured innocence,
+ And consecrates his baseness to the cause
+ Of constitution, union, and the laws?
+
+ "Praise to the place-man who can hold aloof
+ His still unpurchased manhood, office-proof;
+ Who on his round of duty walks erect,
+ And leaves it only rich in self-respect;
+ As More maintained his virtue's lofty port
+ In the Eighth Henry's base and bloody court.
+ But, if exceptions here and there are found,
+ Who tread thus safely on enchanted ground,
+ The normal type, the fitting symbol still
+ Of those who fatten at the public mill,
+ Is the chained dog beside his master's door,
+ Or Circe's victim, feeding on all four!
+
+ "Give me the heroes who, at tuck of drum,
+ Salute thy staff, immortal Quattlebum!
+ Or they who, doubly armed with vote and gun,
+ Following thy lead, illustrious Atchison,
+ Their drunken franchise shift from scene to scene,
+ As tile-beard Jourdan did his guillotine!
+ Rather than him who, born beneath our skies,
+ To Slavery's hand its supplest tool supplies;
+ The party felon whose unblushing face
+ Looks from the pillory of his bribe of place,
+ And coolly makes a merit of disgrace,
+ Points to the footmarks of indignant scorn,
+ Shows the deep scars of satire's tossing horn;
+ And passes to his credit side the sum
+ Of all that makes a scoundrel's martyrdom!
+
+ "Bane of the North, its canker and its moth!
+ These modern Esaus, bartering rights for broth!
+ Taxing our justice, with their double claim,
+ As fools for pity, and as knaves for blame;
+ Who, urged by party, sect, or trade, within
+ The fell embrace of Slavery's sphere of sin,
+ Part at the outset with their moral sense,
+ The watchful angel set for Truth's defence;
+ Confound all contrasts, good and ill; reverse
+ The poles of life, its blessing and its curse;
+ And lose thenceforth from their perverted sight
+ The eternal difference 'twixt the wrong and right;
+ To them the Law is but the iron span
+ That girds the ankles of imbruted man;
+ To them the Gospel has no higher aim
+ Than simple sanction of the master's claim,
+ Dragged in the slime of Slavery's loathsome trail,
+ Like Chalier's Bible at his ass's tail!
+
+ "Such are the men who, with instinctive dread,
+ Whenever Freedom lifts her drooping head,
+ Make prophet-tripods of their office-stools,
+ And scare the nurseries and the village schools
+ With dire presage of ruin grim and great,
+ A broken Union and a foundered State!
+ Such are the patriots, self-bound to the stake
+ Of office, martyrs for their country's sake
+ Who fill themselves the hungry jaws of Fate;
+ And by their loss of manhood save the State.
+ In the wide gulf themselves like Cortius throw,
+ And test the virtues of cohesive dough;
+ As tropic monkeys, linking heads and tails,
+ Bridge o'er some torrent of Ecuador's vales!
+
+ "Such are the men who in your churches rave
+ To swearing-point, at mention of the slave!
+ When some poor parson, haply unawares,
+ Stammers of freedom in his timid prayers;
+ Who, if some foot-sore negro through the town
+ Steals northward, volunteer to hunt him down.
+ Or, if some neighbor, flying from disease,
+ Courts the mild balsam of the Southern breeze,
+ With hue and cry pursue him on his track,
+ And write Free-soiler on the poor man's back.
+ Such are the men who leave the pedler's cart,
+ While faring South, to learn the driver's art,
+ Or, in white neckcloth, soothe with pious aim
+ The graceful sorrows of some languid dame,
+ Who, from the wreck of her bereavement, saves
+ The double charm of widowhood and slaves
+ Pliant and apt, they lose no chance to show
+ To what base depths apostasy can go;
+ Outdo the natives in their readiness
+ To roast a negro, or to mob a press;
+ Poise a tarred schoolmate on the lyncher's rail,
+ Or make a bonfire of their birthplace mail!
+
+ "So some poor wretch, whose lips no longer bear
+ The sacred burden of his mother's prayer,
+ By fear impelled, or lust of gold enticed,
+ Turns to the Crescent from the Cross of Christ,
+ And, over-acting in superfluous zeal,
+ Crawls prostrate where the faithful only kneel,
+ Out-howls the Dervish, hugs his rags to court
+ The squalid Santon's sanctity of dirt;
+ And, when beneath the city gateway's span
+ Files slow and long the Meccan caravan,
+ And through its midst, pursued by Islam's prayers,
+ The prophet's Word some favored camel bears,
+ The marked apostate has his place assigned
+ The Koran-bearer's sacred rump behind,
+ With brush and pitcher following, grave and mute,
+ In meek attendance on the holy brute!
+
+ "Men of the North! beneath your very eyes,
+ By hearth and home, your real danger lies.
+ Still day by day some hold of freedom falls
+ Through home-bred traitors fed within its walls.
+ Men whom yourselves with vote and purse sustain,
+ At posts of honor, influence, and gain;
+ The right of Slavery to your sons to teach,
+ And 'South-side' Gospels in your pulpits preach,
+ Transfix the Law to ancient freedom dear
+ On the sharp point of her subverted spear,
+ And imitate upon her cushion plump
+ The mad Missourian lynching from his stump;
+ Or, in your name, upon the Senate's floor
+ Yield up to Slavery all it asks, and more;
+ And, ere your dull eyes open to the cheat,
+ Sell your old homestead underneath your feet
+ While such as these your loftiest outlooks hold,
+ While truth and conscience with your wares are sold,
+ While grave-browed merchants band themselves to aid
+ An annual man-hunt for their Southern trade,
+ What moral power within your grasp remains
+ To stay the mischief on Nebraska's plains?
+ High as the tides of generous impulse flow,
+ As far rolls back the selfish undertow;
+ And all your brave resolves, though aimed as true
+ As the horse-pistol Balmawhapple drew,
+ To Slavery's bastions lend as slight a shock
+ As the poor trooper's shot to Stirling rock!
+
+ "Yet, while the need of Freedom's cause demands
+ The earnest efforts of your hearts and hands,
+ Urged by all motives that can prompt the heart
+ To prayer and toil and manhood's manliest part;
+ Though to the soul's deep tocsin Nature joins
+ The warning whisper of her Orphic pines,
+ The north-wind's anger, and the south-wind's sigh,
+ The midnight sword-dance of the northern sky,
+ And, to the ear that bends above the sod
+ Of the green grave-mounds in the Fields of God,
+ In low, deep murmurs of rebuke or cheer,
+ The land's dead fathers speak their hope or fear,
+ Yet let not Passion wrest from Reason's hand
+ The guiding rein and symbol of command.
+ Blame not the caution proffering to your zeal
+ A well-meant drag upon its hurrying wheel;
+ Nor chide the man whose honest doubt extends
+ To the means only, not the righteous ends;
+ Nor fail to weigh the scruples and the fears
+ Of milder natures and serener years.
+ In the long strife with evil which began
+ With the first lapse of new-created man,
+ Wisely and well has Providence assigned
+ To each his part,--some forward, some behind;
+ And they, too, serve who temper and restrain
+ The o'erwarm heart that sets on fire the brain.
+ True to yourselves, feed Freedom's altar-flame
+ With what you have; let others do the same.
+
+ "Spare timid doubters; set like flint your face
+ Against the self-sold knaves of gain and place
+ Pity the weak; but with unsparing hand
+ Cast out the traitors who infest the land;
+ From bar, press, pulpit, cast them everywhere,
+ By dint of fasting, if you fail by prayer.
+ And in their place bring men of antique mould,
+ Like the grave fathers of your Age of Gold;
+ Statesmen like those who sought the primal fount
+ Of righteous law, the Sermon on the Mount;
+ Lawyers who prize, like Quincy, (to our day
+ Still spared, Heaven bless him!) honor more than pay,
+ And Christian jurists, starry-pure, like Jay;
+ Preachers like Woolman, or like them who bore
+ The faith of Wesley to our Western shore,
+ And held no convert genuine till he broke
+ Alike his servants' and the Devil's yoke;
+ And priests like him who Newport's market trod,
+ And o'er its slave-ships shook the bolts of God!
+ So shall your power, with a wise prudence used,
+ Strong but forbearing, firm but not abused,
+ In kindly keeping with the good of all,
+ The nobler maxims of the past recall,
+ Her natural home-born right to Freedom give,
+ And leave her foe his robber-right,--to live.
+ Live, as the snake does in his noisome fen!
+ Live, as the wolf does in his bone-strewn den!
+ Live, clothed with cursing like a robe of flame,
+ The focal point of million-fingered shame!
+ Live, till the Southron, who, with all his faults,
+ Has manly instincts, in his pride revolts,
+ Dashes from off him, midst the glad world's cheers,
+ The hideous nightmare of his dream of years,
+ And lifts, self-prompted, with his own right hand,
+ The vile encumbrance from his glorious land!
+
+ "So, wheresoe'er our destiny sends forth
+ Its widening circles to the South or North,
+ Where'er our banner flaunts beneath the stars
+ Its mimic splendors and its cloudlike bars,
+ There shall Free Labor's hardy children stand
+ The equal sovereigns of a slaveless land.
+ And when at last the hunted bison tires,
+ And dies o'ertaken by the squatter's fires;
+ And westward, wave on wave, the living flood
+ Breaks on the snow-line of majestic Hood;
+ And lonely Shasta listening hears the tread
+ Of Europe's fair-haired children, Hesper-led;
+ And, gazing downward through his boar-locks, sees
+ The tawny Asian climb his giant knees,
+ The Eastern sea shall hush his waves to hear
+ Pacific's surf-beat answer Freedom's cheer,
+ And one long rolling fire of triumph run
+ Between the sunrise and the sunset gun!"
+
+ . . . . . . . . . .
+
+ My task is done. The Showman and his show,
+ Themselves but shadows, into shadows go;
+ And, if no song of idlesse I have sung.
+ Nor tints of beauty on the canvas flung;
+ If the harsh numbers grate on tender ears,
+ And the rough picture overwrought appears,
+ With deeper coloring, with a sterner blast,
+ Before my soul a voice and vision passed,
+ Such as might Milton's jarring trump require,
+ Or glooms of Dante fringed with lurid fire.
+ Oh, not of choice, for themes of public wrong
+ I leave the green and pleasant paths of song,
+ The mild, sweet words which soften and adorn,
+ For sharp rebuke and bitter laugh of scorn.
+ More dear to me some song of private worth,
+ Some homely idyl of my native North,
+ Some summer pastoral of her inland vales,
+ Or, grim and weird, her winter fireside tales
+ Haunted by ghosts of unreturning sails,
+ Lost barks at parting hung from stem to helm
+ With prayers of love like dreams on Virgil's elm.
+ Nor private grief nor malice holds my pen;
+ I owe but kindness to my fellow-men;
+ And, South or North, wherever hearts of prayer
+ Their woes and weakness to our Father bear,
+ Wherever fruits of Christian love are found
+ In holy lives, to me is holy ground.
+ But the time passes. It were vain to crave
+ A late indulgence. What I had I gave.
+ Forget the poet, but his warning heed,
+ And shame his poor word with your nobler deed.
+
+ 1856.
+
+
+
+
+ON A PRAYER-BOOK,
+
+WITH ITS FRONTISPIECE, ARY SCHEFFER'S "CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR,"
+AMERICANIZED BY THE OMISSION OF THE BLACK MAN.
+
+It is hardly to be credited, yet is true, that in the anxiety of the
+Northern merchant to conciliate his Southern customer, a publisher was
+found ready thus to mutilate Scheffer's picture. He intended his edition
+for use in the Southern States undoubtedly, but copies fell into the
+hands of those who believed literally in a gospel which was to preach
+liberty to the captive.
+
+
+ O ARY SCHEFFER! when beneath thine eye,
+ Touched with the light that cometh from above,
+ Grew the sweet picture of the dear Lord's love,
+ No dream hadst thou that Christian hands would tear
+ Therefrom the token of His equal care,
+ And make thy symbol of His truth a lie
+ The poor, dumb slave whose shackles fall away
+ In His compassionate gaze, grubbed smoothly out,
+ To mar no more the exercise devout
+ Of sleek oppression kneeling down to pray
+ Where the great oriel stains the Sabbath day!
+ Let whoso can before such praying-books
+ Kneel on his velvet cushion; I, for one,
+ Would sooner bow, a Parsee, to the sun,
+ Or tend a prayer-wheel in Thibetar brooks,
+ Or beat a drum on Yedo's temple-floor.
+ No falser idol man has bowed before,
+ In Indian groves or islands of the sea,
+ Than that which through the quaint-carved Gothic door
+ Looks forth,--a Church without humanity!
+ Patron of pride, and prejudice, and wrong,--
+ The rich man's charm and fetich of the strong,
+ The Eternal Fulness meted, clipped, and shorn,
+ The seamless robe of equal mercy torn,
+ The dear Christ hidden from His kindred flesh,
+ And, in His poor ones, crucified afresh!
+ Better the simple Lama scattering wide,
+ Where sweeps the storm Alechan's steppes along,
+ His paper horses for the lost to ride,
+ And wearying Buddha with his prayers to make
+ The figures living for the traveller's sake,
+ Than he who hopes with cheap praise to beguile
+ The ear of God, dishonoring man the while;
+ Who dreams the pearl gate's hinges, rusty grown,
+ Are moved by flattery's oil of tongue alone;
+ That in the scale Eternal Justice bears
+ The generous deed weighs less than selfish prayers,
+ And words intoned with graceful unction move
+ The Eternal Goodness more than lives of truth and love.
+ Alas, the Church! The reverend head of Jay,
+ Enhaloed with its saintly silvered hair,
+ Adorns no more the places of her prayer;
+ And brave young Tyng, too early called away,
+ Troubles the Haman of her courts no more
+ Like the just Hebrew at the Assyrian's door;
+ And her sweet ritual, beautiful but dead
+ As the dry husk from which the grain is shed,
+ And holy hymns from which the life devout
+ Of saints and martyrs has wellnigh gone out,
+ Like candles dying in exhausted air,
+ For Sabbath use in measured grists are ground;
+ And, ever while the spiritual mill goes round,
+ Between the upper and the nether stones,
+ Unseen, unheard, the wretched bondman groans,
+ And urges his vain plea, prayer-smothered, anthem-drowned!
+
+ O heart of mine, keep patience! Looking forth,
+ As from the Mount of Vision, I behold,
+ Pure, just, and free, the Church of Christ on earth;
+ The martyr's dream, the golden age foretold!
+ And found, at last, the mystic Graal I see,
+ Brimmed with His blessing, pass from lip to lip
+ In sacred pledge of human fellowship;
+ And over all the songs of angels hear;
+ Songs of the love that casteth out all fear;
+ Songs of the Gospel of Humanity!
+ Lo! in the midst, with the same look He wore,
+ Healing and blessing on Genesaret's shore,
+ Folding together, with the all-tender might
+ Of His great love, the dark bands and the white,
+ Stands the Consoler, soothing every pain,
+ Making all burdens light, and breaking every chain.
+
+ 1859.
+
+
+
+
+THE SUMMONS.
+
+ MY ear is full of summer sounds,
+ Of summer sights my languid eye;
+ Beyond the dusty village bounds
+ I loiter in my daily rounds,
+ And in the noon-time shadows lie.
+
+ I hear the wild bee wind his horn,
+ The bird swings on the ripened wheat,
+ The long green lances of the corn
+ Are tilting in the winds of morn,
+ The locust shrills his song of heat.
+
+ Another sound my spirit hears,
+ A deeper sound that drowns them all;
+ A voice of pleading choked with tears,
+ The call of human hopes and fears,
+ The Macedonian cry to Paul!
+
+ The storm-bell rings, the trumpet blows;
+ I know the word and countersign;
+ Wherever Freedom's vanguard goes,
+ Where stand or fall her friends or foes,
+ I know the place that should be mine.
+
+ Shamed be the hands that idly fold,
+ And lips that woo the reed's accord,
+ When laggard Time the hour has tolled
+ For true with false and new with old
+ To fight the battles of the Lord!
+
+ O brothers! blest by partial Fate
+ With power to match the will and deed,
+ To him your summons comes too late
+ Who sinks beneath his armor's weight,
+ And has no answer but God-speed!
+ 1860.
+
+
+
+
+TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD.
+
+On the 12th of January, 1861, Mr. Seward delivered in the Senate chamber
+a speech on The State of the Union, in which he urged the paramount duty
+of preserving the Union, and went as far as it was possible to go,
+without surrender of principles, in concessions to the Southern party,
+concluding his argument with these words: "Having submitted my own
+opinions on this great crisis, it remains only to say, that I shall
+cheerfully lend to the government my best support in whatever prudent
+yet energetic efforts it shall make to preserve the public peace, and to
+maintain and preserve the Union; advising, only, that it practise, as
+far as possible, the utmost moderation, forbearance, and conciliation.
+
+"This Union has not yet accomplished what good for mankind was manifestly
+designed by Him who appoints the seasons and prescribes the duties of
+states and empires. No; if it were cast down by faction to-day, it would
+rise again and re-appear in all its majestic proportions to-morrow. It
+is the only government that can stand here. Woe! woe! to the man that
+madly lifts his hand against it. It shall continue and endure; and men,
+in after times, shall declare that this generation, which saved the
+Union from such sudden and unlooked-for dangers, surpassed in
+magnanimity even that one which laid its foundations in the eternal
+principles of liberty, justice, and humanity."
+
+
+ STATESMAN, I thank thee! and, if yet dissent
+ Mingles, reluctant, with my large content,
+ I cannot censure what was nobly meant.
+ But, while constrained to hold even Union less
+ Than Liberty and Truth and Righteousness,
+ I thank thee in the sweet and holy name
+ Of peace, for wise calm words that put to shame
+ Passion and party. Courage may be shown
+ Not in defiance of the wrong alone;
+ He may be bravest who, unweaponed, bears
+ The olive branch, and, strong in justice, spares
+ The rash wrong-doer, giving widest scope,
+ To Christian charity and generous hope.
+ If, without damage to the sacred cause
+ Of Freedom and the safeguard of its laws--
+ If, without yielding that for which alone
+ We prize the Union, thou canst save it now
+ From a baptism of blood, upon thy brow
+ A wreath whose flowers no earthly soil have known;
+ Woven of the beatitudes, shall rest,
+ And the peacemaker be forever blest!
+
+ 1861.
+
+
+
+
+
+IN WAR TIME.
+
+TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL AND HARRIET W. SEWAll, OF MELROSE.
+
+These lines to my old friends stood as dedication in the volume which
+contained a collection of pieces under the general title of In War Time.
+The group belonging distinctly under that title I have retained here;
+the other pieces in the volume are distributed among the appropriate
+divisions.
+
+ OLOR ISCANUS queries: "Why should we
+ Vex at the land's ridiculous miserie?"
+ So on his Usk banks, in the blood-red dawn
+ Of England's civil strife, did careless Vaughan
+ Bemock his times. O friends of many years!
+ Though faith and trust are stronger than our fears,
+ And the signs promise peace with liberty,
+ Not thus we trifle with our country's tears
+ And sweat of agony. The future's gain
+ Is certain as God's truth; but, meanwhile, pain
+ Is bitter and tears are salt: our voices take
+ A sober tone; our very household songs
+ Are heavy with a nation's griefs and wrongs;
+ And innocent mirth is chastened for the sake
+ Of the brave hearts that nevermore shall beat,
+ The eyes that smile no more, the unreturning
+ feet!
+
+ 1863
+
+
+
+
+THY WILL BE DONE.
+
+ WE see not, know not; all our way
+ Is night,--with Thee alone is day
+ From out the torrent's troubled drift,
+ Above the storm our prayers we lift,
+ Thy will be done!
+
+ The flesh may fail, the heart may faint,
+ But who are we to make complaint,
+ Or dare to plead, in times like these,
+ The weakness of our love of ease?
+ Thy will be done!
+
+ We take with solemn thankfulness
+ Our burden up, nor ask it less,
+ And count it joy that even we
+ May suffer, serve, or wait for Thee,
+ Whose will be done!
+
+ Though dim as yet in tint and line,
+ We trace Thy picture's wise design,
+ And thank Thee that our age supplies
+ Its dark relief of sacrifice.
+ Thy will be done!
+
+ And if, in our unworthiness,
+ Thy sacrificial wine we press;
+ If from Thy ordeal's heated bars
+ Our feet are seamed with crimson scars,
+ Thy will be done!
+
+ If, for the age to come, this hour
+ Of trial hath vicarious power,
+ And, blest by Thee, our present pain,
+ Be Liberty's eternal gain,
+ Thy will be done!
+
+ Strike, Thou the Master, we Thy keys,
+ The anthem of the destinies!
+ The minor of Thy loftier strain,
+ Our hearts shall breathe the old refrain,
+ Thy will be done!
+ 1861.
+
+
+
+
+A WORD FOR THE HOUR.
+
+ THE firmament breaks up. In black eclipse
+ Light after light goes out. One evil star,
+ Luridly glaring through the smoke of war,
+ As in the dream of the Apocalypse,
+ Drags others down. Let us not weakly weep
+ Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to keep
+ Our faith and patience; wherefore should we leap
+ On one hand into fratricidal fight,
+ Or, on the other, yield eternal right,
+ Frame lies of law, and good and ill confound?
+ What fear we? Safe on freedom's vantage-ground
+ Our feet are planted: let us there remain
+ In unrevengeful calm, no means untried
+ Which truth can sanction, no just claim denied,
+ The sad spectators of a suicide!
+ They break the links of Union: shall we light
+ The fires of hell to weld anew the chain
+ On that red anvil where each blow is pain?
+ Draw we not even now a freer breath,
+ As from our shoulders falls a load of death
+ Loathsome as that the Tuscan's victim bore
+ When keen with life to a dead horror bound?
+ Why take we up the accursed thing again?
+ Pity, forgive, but urge them back no more
+ Who, drunk with passion, flaunt disunion's rag
+ With its vile reptile-blazon. Let us press
+ The golden cluster on our brave old flag
+ In closer union, and, if numbering less,
+ Brighter shall shine the stars which still remain.
+
+ 16th First mo., 1861.
+
+
+
+
+"EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT."
+
+LUTHER'S HYMN.
+
+ WE wait beneath the furnace-blast
+ The pangs of transformation;
+ Not painlessly doth God recast
+ And mould anew the nation.
+ Hot burns the fire
+ Where wrongs expire;
+ Nor spares the hand
+ That from the land
+ Uproots the ancient evil.
+
+ The hand-breadth cloud the sages feared
+ Its bloody rain is dropping;
+ The poison plant the fathers spared
+ All else is overtopping.
+ East, West, South, North,
+ It curses the earth;
+ All justice dies,
+ And fraud and lies
+ Live only in its shadow.
+
+ What gives the wheat-field blades of steel?
+ What points the rebel cannon?
+ What sets the roaring rabble's heel
+ On the old star-spangled pennon?
+ What breaks the oath
+ Of the men o' the South?
+ What whets the knife
+ For the Union's life?--
+ Hark to the answer: Slavery!
+
+ Then waste no blows on lesser foes
+ In strife unworthy freemen.
+ God lifts to-day the veil, and shows
+ The features of the demon
+ O North and South,
+ Its victims both,
+ Can ye not cry,
+ "Let slavery die!"
+ And union find in freedom?
+
+ What though the cast-out spirit tear
+ The nation in his going?
+ We who have shared the guilt must share
+ The pang of his o'erthrowing!
+ Whate'er the loss,
+ Whate'er the cross,
+ Shall they complain
+ Of present pain
+ Who trust in God's hereafter?
+
+ For who that leans on His right arm
+ Was ever yet forsaken?
+ What righteous cause can suffer harm
+ If He its part has taken?
+ Though wild and loud,
+ And dark the cloud,
+ Behind its folds
+ His hand upholds
+ The calm sky of to-morrow!
+
+ Above the maddening cry for blood,
+ Above the wild war-drumming,
+ Let Freedom's voice be heard, with good
+ The evil overcoming.
+ Give prayer and purse
+ To stay the Curse
+ Whose wrong we share,
+ Whose shame we bear,
+ Whose end shall gladden Heaven!
+
+ In vain the bells of war shall ring
+ Of triumphs and revenges,
+ While still is spared the evil thing
+ That severs and estranges.
+ But blest the ear
+ That yet shall hear
+ The jubilant bell
+ That rings the knell
+ Of Slavery forever!
+
+ Then let the selfish lip be dumb,
+ And hushed the breath of sighing;
+ Before the joy of peace must come
+ The pains of purifying.
+ God give us grace
+ Each in his place
+ To bear his lot,
+ And, murmuring not,
+ Endure and wait and labor!
+
+ 1861.
+
+
+
+
+TO JOHN C. FREMONT.
+
+On the 31st of August, 1861, General Fremont, then in charge of the
+Western Department, issued a proclamation which contained a clause,
+famous as the first announcement of emancipation: "The property," it
+declared, "real and personal, of all persons in the State of Missouri,
+who shall take up arms against the United States, or who shall be
+directly proven to have taken active part with their enemies in the
+field, is declared to be confiscated to the public use; and their
+slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free men." Mr. Lincoln
+regarded the proclamation as premature and countermanded it, after
+vainly endeavoring to persuade Fremont of his own motion to revoke it.
+
+
+ THY error, Fremont, simply was to act
+ A brave man's part, without the statesman's tact,
+ And, taking counsel but of common sense,
+ To strike at cause as well as consequence.
+ Oh, never yet since Roland wound his horn
+ At Roncesvalles, has a blast been blown
+ Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as thine own,
+ Heard from the van of freedom's hope forlorn
+ It had been safer, doubtless, for the time,
+ To flatter treason, and avoid offence
+ To that Dark Power whose underlying crime
+ Heaves upward its perpetual turbulence.
+ But if thine be the fate of all who break
+ The ground for truth's seed, or forerun their years
+ Till lost in distance, or with stout hearts make
+ A lane for freedom through the level spears,
+ Still take thou courage! God has spoken through thee,
+ Irrevocable, the mighty words, Be free!
+ The land shakes with them, and the slave's dull ear
+ Turns from the rice-swamp stealthily to hear.
+ Who would recall them now must first arrest
+ The winds that blow down from the free Northwest,
+ Ruffling the Gulf; or like a scroll roll back
+ The Mississippi to its upper springs.
+ Such words fulfil their prophecy, and lack
+ But the full time to harden into things.
+
+ 1861.
+
+
+
+
+THE WATCHERS.
+
+ BESIDE a stricken field I stood;
+ On the torn turf, on grass and wood,
+ Hung heavily the dew of blood.
+
+ Still in their fresh mounds lay the slain,
+ But all the air was quick with pain
+ And gusty sighs and tearful rain.
+
+ Two angels, each with drooping head
+ And folded wings and noiseless tread,
+ Watched by that valley of the dead.
+
+ The one, with forehead saintly bland
+ And lips of blessing, not command,
+ Leaned, weeping, on her olive wand.
+
+ The other's brows were scarred and knit,
+ His restless eyes were watch-fires lit,
+ His hands for battle-gauntlets fit.
+
+ "How long!"--I knew the voice of Peace,--
+ "Is there no respite? no release?
+ When shall the hopeless quarrel cease?
+
+ "O Lord, how long!! One human soul
+ Is more than any parchment scroll,
+ Or any flag thy winds unroll.
+
+ "What price was Ellsworth's, young and brave?
+ How weigh the gift that Lyon gave,
+ Or count the cost of Winthrop's grave?
+
+ "O brother! if thine eye can see,
+ Tell how and when the end shall be,
+ What hope remains for thee and me."
+
+ Then Freedom sternly said: "I shun
+ No strife nor pang beneath the sun,
+ When human rights are staked and won.
+
+ "I knelt with Ziska's hunted flock,
+ I watched in Toussaint's cell of rock,
+ I walked with Sidney to the block.
+
+ "The moor of Marston felt my tread,
+ Through Jersey snows the march I led,
+ My voice Magenta's charges sped.
+
+ "But now, through weary day and night,
+ I watch a vague and aimless fight
+ For leave to strike one blow aright.
+
+ "On either side my foe they own
+ One guards through love his ghastly throne,
+ And one through fear to reverence grown.
+
+ "Why wait we longer, mocked, betrayed,
+ By open foes, or those afraid
+ To speed thy coming through my aid?
+
+ "Why watch to see who win or fall?
+ I shake the dust against them all,
+ I leave them to their senseless brawl."
+
+ "Nay," Peace implored: "yet longer wait;
+ The doom is near, the stake is great
+ God knoweth if it be too late.
+
+ "Still wait and watch; the way prepare
+ Where I with folded wings of prayer
+ May follow, weaponless and bare."
+
+ "Too late!" the stern, sad voice replied,
+ "Too late!" its mournful echo sighed,
+ In low lament the answer died.
+
+ A rustling as of wings in flight,
+ An upward gleam of lessening white,
+ So passed the vision, sound and sight.
+
+ But round me, like a silver bell
+ Rung down the listening sky to tell
+ Of holy help, a sweet voice fell.
+
+ "Still hope and trust," it sang; "the rod
+ Must fall, the wine-press must be trod,
+ But all is possible with God!"
+
+ 1862.
+
+
+
+
+TO ENGLISHMEN.
+
+Written when, in the stress of our terrible war, the English ruling
+class, with few exceptions, were either coldly indifferent or hostile to
+the party of freedom. Their attitude was illustrated by caricatures of
+America, among which was one of a slaveholder and cowhide, with the
+motto, "Haven't I a right to wallop my nigger?"
+
+ You flung your taunt across the wave
+ We bore it as became us,
+ Well knowing that the fettered slave
+ Left friendly lips no option save
+ To pity or to blame us.
+
+ You scoffed our plea. "Mere lack of will,
+ Not lack of power," you told us
+ We showed our free-state records; still
+ You mocked, confounding good and ill,
+ Slave-haters and slaveholders.
+
+ We struck at Slavery; to the verge
+ Of power and means we checked it;
+ Lo!--presto, change! its claims you urge,
+ Send greetings to it o'er the surge,
+ And comfort and protect it.
+
+ But yesterday you scarce could shake,
+ In slave-abhorring rigor,
+ Our Northern palms for conscience' sake
+ To-day you clasp the hands that ache
+ With "walloping the nigger!"
+
+ O Englishmen!--in hope and creed,
+ In blood and tongue our brothers!
+ We too are heirs of Runnymede;
+ And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's deed
+ Are not alone our mother's.
+
+ "Thicker than water," in one rill
+ Through centuries of story
+ Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still
+ We share with you its good and ill,
+ The shadow and the glory.
+
+ Joint heirs and kinfolk, leagues of wave
+ Nor length of years can part us
+ Your right is ours to shrine and grave,
+ The common freehold of the brave,
+ The gift of saints and martyrs.
+
+ Our very sins and follies teach
+ Our kindred frail and human
+ We carp at faults with bitter speech,
+ The while, for one unshared by each,
+ We have a score in common.
+
+ We bowed the heart, if not the knee,
+ To England's Queen, God bless her
+ We praised you when your slaves went free
+ We seek to unchain ours. Will ye
+ Join hands with the oppressor?
+
+ And is it Christian England cheers
+ The bruiser, not the bruised?
+ And must she run, despite the tears
+ And prayers of eighteen hundred years,
+ Amuck in Slavery's crusade?
+
+ Oh, black disgrace! Oh, shame and loss
+ Too deep for tongue to phrase on
+ Tear from your flag its holy cross,
+ And in your van of battle toss
+ The pirate's skull-bone blazon!
+
+ 1862.
+
+
+
+
+MITHRIDATES AT CHIOS.
+
+It is recorded that the Chians, when subjugated by Mithridates of
+Cappadocia, were delivered up to their own slaves, to be carried away
+captive to Colchis. Athenxus considers this a just punishment for their
+wickedness in first introducing the slave-trade into Greece. From this
+ancient villany of the Chians the proverb arose, "The Chian hath bought
+himself a master."
+
+
+ KNOW'ST thou, O slave-cursed land
+ How, when the Chian's cup of guilt
+ Was full to overflow, there came
+ God's justice in the sword of flame
+ That, red with slaughter to its hilt,
+ Blazed in the Cappadocian victor's hand?
+
+ The heavens are still and far;
+ But, not unheard of awful Jove,
+ The sighing of the island slave
+ Was answered, when the AEgean wave
+ The keels of Mithridates clove,
+ And the vines shrivelled in the breath of war.
+
+ "Robbers of Chios! hark,"
+ The victor cried, "to Heaven's decree!
+ Pluck your last cluster from the vine,
+ Drain your last cup of Chian wine;
+ Slaves of your slaves, your doom shall be,
+ In Colchian mines by Phasis rolling dark."
+
+ Then rose the long lament
+ From the hoar sea-god's dusky caves
+ The priestess rent her hair and cried,
+ "Woe! woe! The gods are sleepless-eyed!"
+ And, chained and scourged, the slaves of slaves,
+ The lords of Chios into exile went.
+
+ "The gods at last pay well,"
+ So Hellas sang her taunting song,
+ "The fisher in his net is caught,
+ The Chian hath his master bought;"
+ And isle from isle, with laughter long,
+ Took up and sped the mocking parable.
+
+ Once more the slow, dumb years
+ Bring their avenging cycle round,
+ And, more than Hellas taught of old,
+ Our wiser lesson shall be told,
+ Of slaves uprising, freedom-crowned,
+ To break, not wield, the scourge wet with their
+ blood and tears.
+
+ 1868.
+
+
+
+
+AT PORT ROYAL.
+
+In November, 1861, a Union force under Commodore Dupont and General
+Sherman captured Port Royal, and from this point as a basis of
+operations, the neighboring islands between Charleston and Savannah were
+taken possession of. The early occupation of this district, where the
+negro population was greatly in excess of the white, gave an opportunity
+which was at once seized upon, of practically emancipating the slaves
+and of beginning that work of civilization which was accepted as the
+grave responsibility of those who had labored for freedom.
+
+
+ THE tent-lights glimmer on the land,
+ The ship-lights on the sea;
+ The night-wind smooths with drifting sand
+ Our track on lone Tybee.
+
+ At last our grating keels outslide,
+ Our good boats forward swing;
+ And while we ride the land-locked tide,
+ Our negroes row and sing.
+
+ For dear the bondman holds his gifts
+ Of music and of song
+ The gold that kindly Nature sifts
+ Among his sands of wrong:
+
+ The power to make his toiling days
+ And poor home-comforts please;
+ The quaint relief of mirth that plays
+ With sorrow's minor keys.
+
+ Another glow than sunset's fire
+ Has filled the west with light,
+ Where field and garner, barn and byre,
+ Are blazing through the night.
+
+ The land is wild with fear and hate,
+ The rout runs mad and fast;
+ From hand to hand, from gate to gate
+ The flaming brand is passed.
+
+ The lurid glow falls strong across
+ Dark faces broad with smiles
+ Not theirs the terror, hate, and loss
+ That fire yon blazing piles.
+
+ With oar-strokes timing to their song,
+ They weave in simple lays
+ The pathos of remembered wrong,
+ The hope of better days,--
+
+ The triumph-note that Miriam sung,
+ The joy of uncaged birds
+ Softening with Afric's mellow tongue
+ Their broken Saxon words.
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF THE NEGRO BOATMEN.
+
+ Oh, praise an' tanks! De Lord he come
+ To set de people free;
+ An' massa tink it day ob doom,
+ An' we ob jubilee.
+ De Lord dat heap de Red Sea waves
+ He jus' as 'trong as den;
+ He say de word: we las' night slaves;
+ To-day, de Lord's freemen.
+ De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
+ We'll hab de rice an' corn;
+ Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you hear
+ De driver blow his horn!
+
+ Ole massa on he trabbels gone;
+ He leaf de land behind
+ De Lord's breff blow him furder on,
+ Like corn-shuck in de wind.
+ We own de hoe, we own de plough,
+ We own de hands dat hold;
+ We sell de pig, we sell de cow,
+ But nebber chile be sold.
+ De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
+ We'll hab de rice an' corn;
+ Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you hear
+ De driver blow his horn!
+
+ We pray de Lord: he gib us signs
+ Dat some day we be free;
+ De norf-wind tell it to de pines,
+ De wild-duck to de sea;
+ We tink it when de church-bell ring,
+ We dream it in de dream;
+ De rice-bird mean it when he sing,
+ De eagle when be scream.
+ De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
+ We'll hab de rice an' corn
+ Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you hear
+ De driver blow his horn!
+
+ We know de promise nebber fail,
+ An' nebber lie de word;
+ So like de 'postles in de jail,
+ We waited for de Lord
+ An' now he open ebery door,
+ An' trow away de key;
+ He tink we lub him so before,
+ We hub him better free.
+ De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
+ He'll gib de rice an' corn;
+ Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you hear
+ De driver blow his horn!
+
+ So sing our dusky gondoliers;
+ And with a secret pain,
+ And smiles that seem akin to tears,
+ We hear the wild refrain.
+
+ We dare not share the negro's trust,
+ Nor yet his hope deny;
+ We only know that God is just,
+ And every wrong shall die.
+
+ Rude seems the song; each swarthy face,
+ Flame-lighted, ruder still
+ We start to think that hapless race
+ Must shape our good or ill;
+
+ That laws of changeless justice bind
+ Oppressor with oppressed;
+ And, close as sin and suffering joined,
+ We march to Fate abreast.
+
+ Sing on, poor hearts! your chant shall be
+ Our sign of blight or bloom,
+ The Vala-song of Liberty,
+ Or death-rune of our doom!
+
+ 1862.
+
+
+
+
+ASTRAEA AT THE CAPITOL.
+
+ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1862.
+
+ WHEN first I saw our banner wave
+ Above the nation's council-hall,
+ I heard beneath its marble wall
+ The clanking fetters of the slave!
+
+ In the foul market-place I stood,
+ And saw the Christian mother sold,
+ And childhood with its locks of gold,
+ Blue-eyed and fair with Saxon blood.
+
+ I shut my eyes, I held my breath,
+ And, smothering down the wrath and shame
+ That set my Northern blood aflame,
+ Stood silent,--where to speak was death.
+
+ Beside me gloomed the prison-cell
+ Where wasted one in slow decline
+ For uttering simple words of mine,
+ And loving freedom all too well.
+
+ The flag that floated from the dome
+ Flapped menace in the morning air;
+ I stood a perilled stranger where
+ The human broker made his home.
+
+ For crime was virtue: Gown and Sword
+ And Law their threefold sanction gave,
+ And to the quarry of the slave
+ Went hawking with our symbol-bird.
+
+ On the oppressor's side was power;
+ And yet I knew that every wrong,
+ However old, however strong,
+ But waited God's avenging hour.
+
+ I knew that truth would crush the lie,
+ Somehow, some time, the end would be;
+ Yet scarcely dared I hope to see
+ The triumph with my mortal eye.
+
+ But now I see it! In the sun
+ A free flag floats from yonder dome,
+ And at the nation's hearth and home
+ The justice long delayed is done.
+
+ Not as we hoped, in calm of prayer,
+ The message of deliverance comes,
+ But heralded by roll of drums
+ On waves of battle-troubled air!
+
+ Midst sounds that madden and appall,
+ The song that Bethlehem's shepherds knew!
+ The harp of David melting through
+ The demon-agonies of Saul!
+
+ Not as we hoped; but what are we?
+ Above our broken dreams and plans
+ God lays, with wiser hand than man's,
+ The corner-stones of liberty.
+
+ I cavil not with Him: the voice
+ That freedom's blessed gospel tells
+ Is sweet to me as silver bells,
+ Rejoicing! yea, I will rejoice!
+
+ Dear friends still toiling in the sun;
+ Ye dearer ones who, gone before,
+ Are watching from the eternal shore
+ The slow work by your hands begun,
+
+ Rejoice with me! The chastening rod
+ Blossoms with love; the furnace heat
+ Grows cool beneath His blessed feet
+ Whose form is as the Son of God!
+
+ Rejoice! Our Marah's bitter springs
+ Are sweetened; on our ground of grief
+ Rise day by day in strong relief
+ The prophecies of better things.
+
+ Rejoice in hope! The day and night
+ Are one with God, and one with them
+ Who see by faith the cloudy hem
+ Of Judgment fringed with Mercy's light.
+
+ 1862.
+
+
+
+
+THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862.
+
+ THE flags of war like storm-birds fly,
+ The charging trumpets blow;
+ Yet rolls no thunder in the sky,
+ No earthquake strives below.
+
+ And, calm and patient, Nature keeps
+ Her ancient promise well,
+ Though o'er her bloom and greenness sweeps
+ The battle's breath of hell.
+
+ And still she walks in golden hours
+ Through harvest-happy farms,
+ And still she wears her fruits and flowers
+ Like jewels on her arms.
+
+ What mean the gladness of the plain,
+ This joy of eve and morn,
+ The mirth that shakes the beard of grain
+ And yellow locks of corn?
+
+ Ah! eyes may well be full of tears,
+ And hearts with hate are hot;
+ But even-paced come round the years,
+ And Nature changes not.
+
+ She meets with smiles our bitter grief,
+ With songs our groans of pain;
+ She mocks with tint of flower and leaf
+ The war-field's crimson stain.
+
+ Still, in the cannon's pause, we hear
+ Her sweet thanksgiving-psalm;
+ Too near to God for doubt or fear,
+ She shares the eternal calm.
+
+ She knows the seed lies safe below
+ The fires that blast and burn;
+ For all the tears of blood we sow
+ She waits the rich return.
+
+ She sees with clearer eve than ours
+ The good of suffering born,--
+ The hearts that blossom like her flowers,
+ And ripen like her corn.
+
+ Oh, give to us, in times like these,
+ The vision of her eyes;
+ And make her fields and fruited trees
+ Our golden prophecies
+
+ Oh, give to us her finer ear
+ Above this stormy din,
+ We too would hear the bells of cheer
+ Ring peace and freedom in.
+
+ 1862.
+
+
+
+
+HYMN,
+
+SUNG AT CHRISTMAS BY THE SCHOLARS OF ST. HELENA'S ISLAND, S. C.
+
+ OH, none in all the world before
+ Were ever glad as we!
+ We're free on Carolina's shore,
+ We're all at home and free.
+
+ Thou Friend and Helper of the poor,
+ Who suffered for our sake,
+ To open every prison door,
+ And every yoke to break!
+
+ Bend low Thy pitying face and mild,
+ And help us sing and pray;
+ The hand that blessed the little child,
+ Upon our foreheads lay.
+
+ We hear no more the driver's horn,
+ No more the whip we fear,
+ This holy day that saw Thee born
+ Was never half so dear.
+
+ The very oaks are greener clad,
+ The waters brighter smile;
+ Oh, never shone a day so glad
+ On sweet St. Helen's Isle.
+
+ We praise Thee in our songs to-day,
+ To Thee in prayer we call,
+ Make swift the feet and straight the way
+ Of freedom unto all.
+
+ Come once again, O blessed Lord!
+ Come walking on the sea!
+ And let the mainlands hear the word
+ That sets the islands free!
+
+ 1863.
+
+
+
+
+THE PROCLAMATION.
+
+President Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation was issued
+January 1, 1863.
+
+
+ SAINT PATRICK, slave to Milcho of the herds
+ Of Ballymena, wakened with these words
+ "Arise, and flee
+ Out from the land of bondage, and be free!"
+
+ Glad as a soul in pain, who hears from heaven
+ The angels singing of his sins forgiven,
+ And, wondering, sees
+ His prison opening to their golden keys,
+
+ He rose a man who laid him down a slave,
+ Shook from his locks the ashes of the grave,
+ And outward trod
+ Into the glorious liberty of God.
+
+ He cast the symbols of his shame away;
+ And, passing where the sleeping Milcho lay,
+ Though back and limb
+ Smarted with wrong, he prayed, "God pardon
+ him!"
+
+ So went he forth; but in God's time he came
+ To light on Uilline's hills a holy flame;
+ And, dying, gave
+ The land a saint that lost him as a slave.
+
+ O dark, sad millions, patiently and dumb
+ Waiting for God, your hour at last has come,
+ And freedom's song
+ Breaks the long silence of your night of wrong!
+
+ Arise and flee! shake off the vile restraint
+ Of ages; but, like Ballymena's saint,
+ The oppressor spare,
+ Heap only on his head the coals of prayer.
+
+ Go forth, like him! like him return again,
+ To bless the land whereon in bitter pain
+ Ye toiled at first,
+ And heal with freedom what your slavery cursed.
+
+ 1863.
+
+
+
+
+ANNIVERSARY POEM.
+
+Read before the Alumni of the Friends' Yearly Meeting School, at the
+Annual Meeting at Newport, R. I., 15th 6th mo., 1863.
+
+
+ ONCE more, dear friends, you meet beneath
+ A clouded sky
+ Not yet the sword has found its sheath,
+ And on the sweet spring airs the breath
+ Of war floats by.
+
+ Yet trouble springs not from the ground,
+ Nor pain from chance;
+ The Eternal order circles round,
+ And wave and storm find mete and bound
+ In Providence.
+
+ Full long our feet the flowery ways
+ Of peace have trod,
+ Content with creed and garb and phrase:
+ A harder path in earlier days
+ Led up to God.
+
+ Too cheaply truths, once purchased dear,
+ Are made our own;
+ Too long the world has smiled to hear
+ Our boast of full corn in the ear
+ By others sown;
+
+ To see us stir the martyr fires
+ Of long ago,
+ And wrap our satisfied desires
+ In the singed mantles that our sires
+ Have dropped below.
+
+ But now the cross our worthies bore
+ On us is laid;
+ Profession's quiet sleep is o'er,
+ And in the scale of truth once more
+ Our faith is weighed.
+
+ The cry of innocent blood at last
+ Is calling down
+ An answer in the whirlwind-blast,
+ The thunder and the shadow cast
+ From Heaven's dark frown.
+
+ The land is red with judgments. Who
+ Stands guiltless forth?
+ Have we been faithful as we knew,
+ To God and to our brother true,
+ To Heaven and Earth.
+
+ How faint, through din of merchandise
+ And count of gain,
+ Have seemed to us the captive's cries!
+ How far away the tears and sighs
+ Of souls in pain!
+
+ This day the fearful reckoning comes
+ To each and all;
+ We hear amidst our peaceful homes
+ The summons of the conscript drums,
+ The bugle's call.
+
+ Our path is plain; the war-net draws
+ Round us in vain,
+ While, faithful to the Higher Cause,
+ We keep our fealty to the laws
+ Through patient pain.
+
+ The levelled gun, the battle-brand,
+ We may not take
+ But, calmly loyal, we can stand
+ And suffer with our suffering land
+ For conscience' sake.
+
+ Why ask for ease where all is pain?
+ Shall we alone
+ Be left to add our gain to gain,
+ When over Armageddon's plain
+ The trump is blown?
+
+ To suffer well is well to serve;
+ Safe in our Lord
+ The rigid lines of law shall curve
+ To spare us; from our heads shall swerve
+ Its smiting sword.
+
+ And light is mingled with the gloom,
+ And joy with grief;
+ Divinest compensations come,
+ Through thorns of judgment mercies bloom
+ In sweet relief.
+
+ Thanks for our privilege to bless,
+ By word and deed,
+ The widow in her keen distress,
+ The childless and the fatherless,
+ The hearts that bleed!
+
+ For fields of duty, opening wide,
+ Where all our powers
+ Are tasked the eager steps to guide
+ Of millions on a path untried
+ The slave is ours!
+
+ Ours by traditions dear and old,
+ Which make the race
+ Our wards to cherish and uphold,
+ And cast their freedom in the mould
+ Of Christian grace.
+
+ And we may tread the sick-bed floors
+ Where strong men pine,
+ And, down the groaning corridors,
+ Pour freely from our liberal stores
+ The oil and wine.
+
+ Who murmurs that in these dark days
+ His lot is cast?
+ God's hand within the shadow lays
+ The stones whereon His gates of praise
+ Shall rise at last.
+
+ Turn and o'erturn, O outstretched Hand
+ Nor stint, nor stay;
+ The years have never dropped their sand
+ On mortal issue vast and grand
+ As ours to-day.
+
+ Already, on the sable ground
+ Of man's despair
+ Is Freedom's glorious picture found,
+ With all its dusky hands unbound
+ Upraised in prayer.
+
+ Oh, small shall seem all sacrifice
+ And pain and loss,
+ When God shall wipe the weeping eyes,
+ For suffering give the victor's prize,
+ The crown for cross.
+
+
+
+
+BARBARA FRIETCHIE.
+
+This poem was written in strict conformity to the account of the
+incident as I had it from respectable and trustworthy sources. It has
+since been the subject of a good deal of conflicting testimony, and the
+story was probably incorrect in some of its details. It is admitted by
+all that Barbara Frietchie was no myth, but a worthy and highly esteemed
+gentlewoman, intensely loyal and a hater of the Slavery Rebellion,
+holding her Union flag sacred and keeping it with her Bible; that when
+the Confederates halted before her house, and entered her dooryard, she
+denounced them in vigorous language, shook her cane in their faces, and
+drove them out; and when General Burnside's troops followed close upon
+Jackson's, she waved her flag and cheered them. It is stated that May
+Qnantrell, a brave and loyal lady in another part of the city, did wave
+her flag in sight of the Confederates. It is possible that there has
+been a blending of the two incidents.
+
+
+ Up from the meadows rich with corn,
+ Clear in the cool September morn.
+
+ The clustered spires of Frederick stand
+ Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
+
+ Round about them orchards sweep,
+ Apple and peach tree fruited deep,
+
+ Fair as the garden of the Lord
+ To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,
+
+ On that pleasant morn of the early fall
+ When Lee marched over the mountain-wall;
+
+ Over the mountains winding down,
+ Horse and foot, into Frederick town.
+
+ Forty flags with their silver stars,
+ Forty flags with their crimson bars,
+
+ Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
+ Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
+
+ Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
+ Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;
+
+ Bravest of all in Frederick town,
+ She took up the flag the men hauled down;
+
+ In her attic window the staff she set,
+ To show that one heart was loyal yet.
+
+ Up the street came the rebel tread,
+ Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
+
+ Under his slouched hat left and right
+ He glanced; the old flag met his sight.
+
+ "Halt!"--the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
+ "Fire!"--out blazed the rifle-blast.
+
+ It shivered the window, pane and sash;
+ It rent the banner with seam and gash.
+
+ Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
+ Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.
+
+ She leaned far out on the window-sill,
+ And shook it forth with a royal will.
+
+ "Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
+ But spare your country's flag," she said.
+
+ A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
+ Over the face of the leader came;
+
+ The nobler nature within him stirred
+ To life at that woman's deed and word.
+
+ "Who touches a hair of yon gray head
+ Dies like a dog! March on!" he said.
+
+ All day long through Frederick street
+ Sounded the tread of marching feet.
+
+ All day long that free flag tost
+ Over the heads of the rebel host.
+
+ Ever its torn folds rose and fell
+ On the loyal winds that loved it well;
+
+ And through the hill-gaps sunset light
+ Shone over it with a warm good-night.
+
+ Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er,
+ And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.
+
+ Honor to her! and let a tear
+ Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.
+
+ Over Barbara Frietchie's grave,
+ Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!
+
+ Peace and order and beauty draw
+ Round thy symbol of light and law;
+
+ And ever the stars above look down
+ On thy stars below in Frederick town!
+
+ 1863.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT THE BIRDS SAID.
+
+ THE birds against the April wind
+ Flew northward, singing as they flew;
+ They sang, "The land we leave behind
+ Has swords for corn-blades, blood for dew."
+
+ "O wild-birds, flying from the South,
+ What saw and heard ye, gazing down?"
+ "We saw the mortar's upturned mouth,
+ The sickened camp, the blazing town!
+
+ "Beneath the bivouac's starry lamps,
+ We saw your march-worn children die;
+ In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps,
+ We saw your dead uncoffined lie.
+
+ "We heard the starving prisoner's sighs,
+ And saw, from line and trench, your sons
+ Follow our flight with home-sick eyes
+ Beyond the battery's smoking guns."
+
+ "And heard and saw ye only wrong
+ And pain," I cried, "O wing-worn flocks?"
+ "We heard," they sang, "the freedman's song,
+ The crash of Slavery's broken locks!
+
+ "We saw from new, uprising States
+ The treason-nursing mischief spurned,
+ As, crowding Freedom's ample gates,
+ The long estranged and lost returned.
+
+ "O'er dusky faces, seamed and old,
+ And hands horn-hard with unpaid toil,
+ With hope in every rustling fold,
+ We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil.
+
+ "And struggling up through sounds accursed,
+ A grateful murmur clomb the air;
+ A whisper scarcely heard at first,
+ It filled the listening heavens with prayer.
+
+ "And sweet and far, as from a star,
+ Replied a voice which shall not cease,
+ Till, drowning all the noise of war,
+ It sings the blessed song of peace!"
+
+ So to me, in a doubtful day
+ Of chill and slowly greening spring,
+ Low stooping from the cloudy gray,
+ The wild-birds sang or seemed to sing.
+
+ They vanished in the misty air,
+ The song went with them in their flight;
+ But lo! they left the sunset fair,
+ And in the evening there was light.
+ April, 1864.
+
+
+
+
+THE MANTLE OF ST. JOHN DE MATHA.
+
+A LEGEND OF "THE RED, WHITE, AND BLUE," A. D. 1154-1864.
+
+ A STRONG and mighty Angel,
+ Calm, terrible, and bright,
+ The cross in blended red and blue
+ Upon his mantle white.
+
+ Two captives by him kneeling,
+ Each on his broken chain,
+ Sang praise to God who raiseth
+ The dead to life again!
+
+ Dropping his cross-wrought mantle,
+ "Wear this," the Angel said;
+ "Take thou, O Freedom's priest, its sign,
+ The white, the blue, and red."
+
+ Then rose up John de Matha
+ In the strength the Lord Christ gave,
+ And begged through all the land of France
+ The ransom of the slave.
+
+ The gates of tower and castle
+ Before him open flew,
+ The drawbridge at his coming fell,
+ The door-bolt backward drew.
+
+ For all men owned his errand,
+ And paid his righteous tax;
+ And the hearts of lord and peasant
+ Were in his hands as wax.
+
+ At last, outbound from Tunis,
+ His bark her anchor weighed,
+ Freighted with seven-score Christian souls
+ Whose ransom he had paid.
+
+ But, torn by Paynim hatred,
+ Her sails in tatters hung;
+ And on the wild waves, rudderless,
+ A shattered hulk she swung.
+
+ "God save us!" cried the captain,
+ "For naught can man avail;
+ Oh, woe betide the ship that lacks
+ Her rudder and her sail!
+
+ "Behind us are the Moormen;
+ At sea we sink or strand
+ There's death upon the water,
+ There's death upon the land!"
+
+ Then up spake John de Matha
+ "God's errands never fail!
+ Take thou the mantle which I wear,
+ And make of it a sail."
+
+ They raised the cross-wrought mantle,
+ The blue, the white, the red;
+ And straight before the wind off-shore
+ The ship of Freedom sped.
+
+ "God help us!" cried the seamen,
+ "For vain is mortal skill
+ The good ship on a stormy sea
+ Is drifting at its will."
+
+ Then up spake John de Matha
+ "My mariners, never fear
+ The Lord whose breath has filled her sail
+ May well our vessel steer!"
+
+ So on through storm and darkness
+ They drove for weary hours;
+ And lo! the third gray morning shone
+ On Ostia's friendly towers.
+
+ And on the walls the watchers
+ The ship of mercy knew,
+ They knew far off its holy cross,
+ The red, the white, and blue.
+
+ And the bells in all the steeples
+ Rang out in glad accord,
+ To welcome home to Christian soil
+ The ransomed of the Lord.
+
+ So runs the ancient legend
+ By bard and painter told;
+ And lo! the cycle rounds again,
+ The new is as the old!
+
+ With rudder foully broken,
+ And sails by traitors torn,
+ Our country on a midnight sea
+ Is waiting for the morn.
+
+ Before her, nameless terror;
+ Behind, the pirate foe;
+ The clouds are black above her,
+ The sea is white below.
+
+ The hope of all who suffer,
+ The dread of all who wrong,
+ She drifts in darkness and in storm,
+ How long, O Lord I how long?
+
+ But courage, O my mariners
+ Ye shall not suffer wreck,
+ While up to God the freedman's prayers
+ Are rising from your deck.
+
+ Is not your sail the banner
+ Which God hath blest anew,
+ The mantle that De Matha wore,
+ The red, the white, the blue?
+
+ Its hues are all of heaven,
+ The red of sunset's dye,
+ The whiteness of the moon-lit cloud,
+ The blue of morning's sky.
+
+ Wait cheerily, then, O mariners,
+ For daylight and for land;
+ The breath of God is in your sail,
+ Your rudder is His hand.
+
+ Sail on, sail on, deep-freighted
+ With blessings and with hopes;
+ The saints of old with shadowy hands
+ Are pulling at your ropes.
+
+ Behind ye holy martyrs
+ Uplift the palm and crown;
+ Before ye unborn ages send
+ Their benedictions down.
+
+ Take heart from John de Matha!--
+ God's errands never fail!
+ Sweep on through storm and darkness,
+ The thunder and the hail!
+
+ Sail on! The morning cometh,
+ The port ye yet shall win;
+ And all the bells of God shall ring
+ The good ship bravely in!
+
+ 1865.
+
+
+
+
+LAUS DEO!
+
+On hearing the bells ring on the passage of the constitutional amendment
+abolishing slavery. The resolution was adopted by Congress, January 31,
+1865. The ratification by the requisite number of states was announced
+December 18, 1865.
+
+
+ IT is done!
+ Clang of bell and roar of gun
+ Send the tidings up and down.
+ How the belfries rock and reel!
+ How the great guns, peal on peal,
+ Fling the joy from town to town!
+
+ Ring, O bells!
+ Every stroke exulting tells
+ Of the burial hour of crime.
+ Loud and long, that all may hear,
+ Ring for every listening ear
+ Of Eternity and Time!
+
+ Let us kneel
+ God's own voice is in that peal,
+ And this spot is holy ground.
+ Lord, forgive us! What are we,
+ That our eyes this glory see,
+ That our ears have heard the sound!
+
+ For the Lord
+ On the whirlwind is abroad;
+ In the earthquake He has spoken;
+ He has smitten with His thunder
+ The iron walls asunder,
+ And the gates of brass are broken.
+
+ Loud and long
+ Lift the old exulting song;
+ Sing with Miriam by the sea,
+ He has cast the mighty down;
+ Horse and rider sink and drown;
+ "He hath triumphed gloriously!"
+
+ Did we dare,
+ In our agony of prayer,
+ Ask for more than He has done?
+ When was ever His right hand
+ Over any time or land
+ Stretched as now beneath the sun?
+
+ How they pale,
+ Ancient myth and song and tale,
+ In this wonder of our days,
+ When the cruel rod of war
+ Blossoms white with righteous law,
+ And the wrath of man is praise!
+
+ Blotted out
+ All within and all about
+ Shall a fresher life begin;
+ Freer breathe the universe
+ As it rolls its heavy curse
+ On the dead and buried sin!
+
+ It is done!
+ In the circuit of the sun
+ Shall the sound thereof go forth.
+ It shall bid the sad rejoice,
+ It shall give the dumb a voice,
+ It shall belt with joy the earth!
+
+ Ring and swing,
+ Bells of joy! On morning's wing
+ Send the song of praise abroad!
+ With a sound of broken chains
+ Tell the nations that He reigns,
+ Who alone is Lord and God!
+
+ 1865.
+
+
+
+
+HYMN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF EMANCIPATION AT NEWBURYPORT.
+
+ NOT unto us who did but seek
+ The word that burned within to speak,
+ Not unto us this day belong
+ The triumph and exultant song.
+
+ Upon us fell in early youth
+ The burden of unwelcome truth,
+ And left us, weak and frail and few,
+ The censor's painful work to do.
+
+ Thenceforth our life a fight became,
+ The air we breathed was hot with blame;
+ For not with gauged and softened tone
+ We made the bondman's cause our own.
+
+ We bore, as Freedom's hope forlorn,
+ The private hate, the public scorn;
+ Yet held through all the paths we trod
+ Our faith in man and trust in God.
+
+ We prayed and hoped; but still, with awe,
+ The coming of the sword we saw;
+ We heard the nearing steps of doom,
+ We saw the shade of things to come.
+
+ In grief which they alone can feel
+ Who from a mother's wrong appeal,
+ With blended lines of fear and hope
+ We cast our country's horoscope.
+
+ For still within her house of life
+ We marked the lurid sign of strife,
+ And, poisoning and imbittering all,
+ We saw the star of Wormwood fall.
+
+ Deep as our love for her became
+ Our hate of all that wrought her shame,
+ And if, thereby, with tongue and pen
+ We erred,--we were but mortal men.
+
+ We hoped for peace; our eyes survey
+ The blood-red dawn of Freedom's day
+ We prayed for love to loose the chain;
+ 'T is shorn by battle's axe in twain!
+
+ Nor skill nor strength nor zeal of ours
+ Has mined and heaved the hostile towers;
+ Not by our hands is turned the key
+ That sets the sighing captives free.
+
+ A redder sea than Egypt's wave
+ Is piled and parted for the slave;
+ A darker cloud moves on in light;
+ A fiercer fire is guide by night.
+
+ The praise, O Lord! is Thine alone,
+ In Thy own way Thy work is done!
+ Our poor gifts at Thy feet we cast,
+ To whom be glory, first and last!
+
+ 1865.
+
+
+
+
+
+AFTER THE WAR.
+
+
+
+
+THE PEACE AUTUMN.
+
+Written for the Fssex County Agricultural Festival, 1865.
+
+
+ THANK God for rest, where none molest,
+ And none can make afraid;
+ For Peace that sits as Plenty's guest
+ Beneath the homestead shade!
+
+ Bring pike and gun, the sword's red scourge,
+ The negro's broken chains,
+ And beat them at the blacksmith's forge
+ To ploughshares for our plains.
+
+ Alike henceforth our hills of snow,
+ And vales where cotton flowers;
+ All streams that flow, all winds that blow,
+ Are Freedom's motive-powers.
+
+ Henceforth to Labor's chivalry
+ Be knightly honors paid;
+ For nobler than the sword's shall be
+ The sickle's accolade.
+
+ Build up an altar to the Lord,
+ O grateful hearts of ours
+ And shape it of the greenest sward
+ That ever drank the showers.
+
+ Lay all the bloom of gardens there,
+ And there the orchard fruits;
+ Bring golden grain from sun and air,
+ From earth her goodly roots.
+
+ There let our banners droop and flow,
+ The stars uprise and fall;
+ Our roll of martyrs, sad and slow,
+ Let sighing breezes call.
+
+ Their names let hands of horn and tan
+ And rough-shod feet applaud,
+ Who died to make the slave a man,
+ And link with toil reward.
+
+ There let the common heart keep time
+ To such an anthem sung
+ As never swelled on poet's rhyme,
+ Or thrilled on singer's tongue.
+
+ Song of our burden and relief,
+ Of peace and long annoy;
+ The passion of our mighty grief
+ And our exceeding joy!
+
+ A song of praise to Him who filled
+ The harvests sown in tears,
+ And gave each field a double yield
+ To feed our battle-years.
+
+ A song of faith that trusts the end
+ To match the good begun,
+ Nor doubts the power of Love to blend
+ The hearts of men as one!
+
+
+
+
+TO THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS.
+
+The thirty-ninth congress was that which met in 1865 after the close of
+the war, when it was charged with the great question of reconstruction;
+the uppermost subject in men's minds was the standing of those who had
+recently been in arms against the Union and their relations to the
+freedmen.
+
+
+ O PEOPLE-CHOSEN! are ye not
+ Likewise the chosen of the Lord,
+ To do His will and speak His word?
+
+ From the loud thunder-storm of war
+ Not man alone hath called ye forth,
+ But He, the God of all the earth!
+
+ The torch of vengeance in your hands
+ He quenches; unto Him belongs
+ The solemn recompense of wrongs.
+
+ Enough of blood the land has seen,
+ And not by cell or gallows-stair
+ Shall ye the way of God prepare.
+
+ Say to the pardon-seekers: Keep
+ Your manhood, bend no suppliant knees,
+ Nor palter with unworthy pleas.
+
+ Above your voices sounds the wail
+ Of starving men; we shut in vain *
+ Our eyes to Pillow's ghastly stain. **
+
+ What words can drown that bitter cry?
+ What tears wash out the stain of death?
+ What oaths confirm your broken faith?
+
+ From you alone the guaranty
+ Of union, freedom, peace, we claim;
+ We urge no conqueror's terms of shame.
+
+ Alas! no victor's pride is ours;
+ We bend above our triumphs won
+ Like David o'er his rebel son.
+
+ Be men, not beggars. Cancel all
+ By one brave, generous action; trust
+ Your better instincts, and be just.
+
+ Make all men peers before the law,
+ Take hands from off the negro's throat,
+ Give black and white an equal vote.
+
+ Keep all your forfeit lives and lands,
+ But give the common law's redress
+ To labor's utter nakedness.
+
+ Revive the old heroic will;
+ Be in the right as brave and strong
+ As ye have proved yourselves in wrong.
+
+ Defeat shall then be victory,
+ Your loss the wealth of full amends,
+ And hate be love, and foes be friends.
+
+ Then buried be the dreadful past,
+ Its common slain be mourned, and let
+ All memories soften to regret.
+
+ Then shall the Union's mother-heart
+ Her lost and wandering ones recall,
+ Forgiving and restoring all,--
+
+ And Freedom break her marble trance
+ Above the Capitolian dome,
+ Stretch hands, and bid ye welcome home
+ November, 1865.
+
+ * Andersonville prison.
+ ** The massacre of Negro troops at Fort Pillow.
+
+
+
+
+THE HIVE AT GETTYSBURG.
+
+ IN the old Hebrew myth the lion's frame,
+ So terrible alive,
+ Bleached by the desert's sun and wind, became
+ The wandering wild bees' hive;
+ And he who, lone and naked-handed, tore
+ Those jaws of death apart,
+ In after time drew forth their honeyed store
+ To strengthen his strong heart.
+
+ Dead seemed the legend: but it only slept
+ To wake beneath our sky;
+ Just on the spot whence ravening Treason crept
+ Back to its lair to die,
+ Bleeding and torn from Freedom's mountain bounds,
+ A stained and shattered drum
+ Is now the hive where, on their flowery rounds,
+ The wild bees go and come.
+
+ Unchallenged by a ghostly sentinel,
+ They wander wide and far,
+ Along green hillsides, sown with shot and shell,
+ Through vales once choked with war.
+ The low reveille of their battle-drum
+ Disturbs no morning prayer;
+ With deeper peace in summer noons their hum
+ Fills all the drowsy air.
+
+ And Samson's riddle is our own to-day,
+ Of sweetness from the strong,
+ Of union, peace, and freedom plucked away
+ From the rent jaws of wrong.
+ From Treason's death we draw a purer life,
+ As, from the beast he slew,
+ A sweetness sweeter for his bitter strife
+ The old-time athlete drew!
+ 1868.
+
+
+
+
+HOWARD AT ATLANTA.
+
+ RIGHT in the track where Sherman
+ Ploughed his red furrow,
+ Out of the narrow cabin,
+ Up from the cellar's burrow,
+ Gathered the little black people,
+ With freedom newly dowered,
+ Where, beside their Northern teacher,
+ Stood the soldier, Howard.
+
+ He listened and heard the children
+ Of the poor and long-enslaved
+ Reading the words of Jesus,
+ Singing the songs of David.
+ Behold!--the dumb lips speaking,
+ The blind eyes seeing!
+ Bones of the Prophet's vision
+ Warmed into being!
+
+ Transformed he saw them passing
+ Their new life's portal
+ Almost it seemed the mortal
+ Put on the immortal.
+ No more with the beasts of burden,
+ No more with stone and clod,
+ But crowned with glory and honor
+ In the image of God!
+
+ There was the human chattel
+ Its manhood taking;
+ There, in each dark, bronze statue,
+ A soul was waking!
+ The man of many battles,
+ With tears his eyelids pressing,
+ Stretched over those dusky foreheads
+ His one-armed blessing.
+
+ And he said: "Who hears can never
+ Fear for or doubt you;
+ What shall I tell the children
+ Up North about you?"
+ Then ran round a whisper, a murmur,
+ Some answer devising:
+ And a little boy stood up: "General,
+ Tell 'em we're rising!"
+
+ O black boy of Atlanta!
+ But half was spoken
+ The slave's chain and the master's
+ Alike are broken.
+ The one curse of the races
+ Held both in tether
+ They are rising,--all are rising,
+ The black and white together!
+
+ O brave men and fair women!
+ Ill comes of hate and scorning
+ Shall the dark faces only
+ Be turned to mourning?--
+ Make Time your sole avenger,
+ All-healing, all-redressing;
+ Meet Fate half-way, and make it
+ A joy and blessing!
+
+ 1869.
+
+
+
+
+THE EMANCIPATION GROUP.
+
+Moses Kimball, a citizen of Boston, presented to the city a duplicate
+of the Freedman's Memorial statue erected in Lincoln Square, Washington.
+The group, which stands in Park Square, represents the figure of a
+slave, from whose limbs the broken fetters have fallen, kneeling in
+gratitude at the feet of Lincoln. The group was designed by Thomas Ball,
+and was unveiled December 9, 1879. These verses were written for the
+occasion.
+
+ AMIDST thy sacred effigies
+ Of old renown give place,
+ O city, Freedom-loved! to his
+ Whose hand unchained a race.
+
+ Take the worn frame, that rested not
+ Save in a martyr's grave;
+ The care-lined face, that none forgot,
+ Bent to the kneeling slave.
+
+ Let man be free! The mighty word
+ He spake was not his own;
+ An impulse from the Highest stirred
+ These chiselled lips alone.
+
+ The cloudy sign, the fiery guide,
+ Along his pathway ran,
+ And Nature, through his voice, denied
+ The ownership of man.
+
+ We rest in peace where these sad eyes
+ Saw peril, strife, and pain;
+ His was the nation's sacrifice,
+ And ours the priceless gain.
+
+ O symbol of God's will on earth
+ As it is done above!
+ Bear witness to the cost and worth
+ Of justice and of love.
+
+ Stand in thy place and testify
+ To coming ages long,
+ That truth is stronger than a lie,
+ And righteousness than wrong.
+
+
+
+
+THE JUBILEE SINGERS.
+
+A number of students of Fisk University, under the direction of one of
+the officers, gave a series of concerts in the Northern States, for the
+purpose of establishing the college on a firmer financial foundation.
+Their hymns and songs, mostly in a minor key, touched the hearts of the
+people, and were received as peculiarly expressive of a race delivered
+from bondage.
+
+ VOICE of a people suffering long,
+ The pathos of their mournful song,
+ The sorrow of their night of wrong!
+
+ Their cry like that which Israel gave,
+ A prayer for one to guide and save,
+ Like Moses by the Red Sea's wave!
+
+ The stern accord her timbrel lent
+ To Miriam's note of triumph sent
+ O'er Egypt's sunken armament!
+
+ The tramp that startled camp and town,
+ And shook the walls of slavery down,
+ The spectral march of old John Brown!
+
+ The storm that swept through battle-days,
+ The triumph after long delays,
+ The bondmen giving God the praise!
+
+ Voice of a ransomed race, sing on
+ Till Freedom's every right is won,
+ And slavery's every wrong undone
+
+ 1880.
+
+
+
+
+GARRISON.
+
+The earliest poem in this division was my youthful tribute to the great
+reformer when himself a young man he was first sounding his trumpet in
+Essex County. I close with the verses inscribed to him at the end of his
+earthly career, May 24, 1879. My poetical service in the cause of
+freedom is thus almost synchronous with his life of devotion to the
+same cause.
+
+ THE storm and peril overpast,
+ The hounding hatred shamed and still,
+ Go, soul of freedom! take at last
+ The place which thou alone canst fill.
+
+ Confirm the lesson taught of old--
+ Life saved for self is lost, while they
+ Who lose it in His service hold
+ The lease of God's eternal day.
+
+ Not for thyself, but for the slave
+ Thy words of thunder shook the world;
+ No selfish griefs or hatred gave
+ The strength wherewith thy bolts were hurled.
+
+ From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew
+ We heard a tender under song;
+ Thy very wrath from pity grew,
+ From love of man thy hate of wrong.
+
+ Now past and present are as one;
+ The life below is life above;
+ Thy mortal years have but begun
+ Thy immortality of love.
+
+ With somewhat of thy lofty faith
+ We lay thy outworn garment by,
+ Give death but what belongs to death,
+ And life the life that cannot die!
+
+ Not for a soul like thine the calm
+ Of selfish ease and joys of sense;
+ But duty, more than crown or palm,
+ Its own exceeding recompense.
+
+ Go up and on thy day well done,
+ Its morning promise well fulfilled,
+ Arise to triumphs yet unwon,
+ To holier tasks that God has willed.
+
+ Go, leave behind thee all that mars
+ The work below of man for man;
+ With the white legions of the stars
+ Do service such as angels can.
+
+ Wherever wrong shall right deny
+ Or suffering spirits urge their plea,
+ Be thine a voice to smite the lie,
+ A hand to set the captive free!
+
+
+
+
+
+SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM
+
+
+
+
+THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN TIME.
+
+ THE Quaker of the olden time!
+ How calm and firm and true,
+ Unspotted by its wrong and crime,
+ He walked the dark earth through.
+ The lust of power, the love of gain,
+ The thousand lures of sin
+ Around him, had no power to stain
+ The purity within.
+
+ With that deep insight which detects
+ All great things in the small,
+ And knows how each man's life affects
+ The spiritual life of all,
+ He walked by faith and not by sight,
+ By love and not by law;
+ The presence of the wrong or right
+ He rather felt than saw.
+
+ He felt that wrong with wrong partakes,
+ That nothing stands alone,
+ That whoso gives the motive, makes
+ His brother's sin his own.
+ And, pausing not for doubtful choice
+ Of evils great or small,
+ He listened to that inward voice
+ Which called away from all.
+
+ O Spirit of that early day,
+ So pure and strong and true,
+ Be with us in the narrow way
+ Our faithful fathers knew.
+ Give strength the evil to forsake,
+ The cross of Truth to bear,
+ And love and reverent fear to make
+ Our daily lives a prayer!
+
+ 1838.
+
+
+
+
+DEMOCRACY.
+
+All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so
+to them.--MATTHEW vii. 12.
+
+
+ BEARER of Freedom's holy light,
+ Breaker of Slavery's chain and rod,
+ The foe of all which pains the sight,
+ Or wounds the generous ear of God!
+
+ Beautiful yet thy temples rise,
+ Though there profaning gifts are thrown;
+ And fires unkindled of the skies
+ Are glaring round thy altar-stone.
+
+ Still sacred, though thy name be breathed
+ By those whose hearts thy truth deride;
+ And garlands, plucked from thee, are wreathed
+ Around the haughty brows of Pride.
+
+ Oh, ideal of my boyhood's time!
+ The faith in which my father stood,
+ Even when the sons of Lust and Crime
+ Had stained thy peaceful courts with blood!
+
+ Still to those courts my footsteps turn,
+ For through the mists which darken there,
+ I see the flame of Freedom burn,--
+ The Kebla of the patriot's prayer!
+
+ The generous feeling, pure and warm,
+ Which owns the right of all divine;
+ The pitying heart, the helping arm,
+ The prompt self-sacrifice, are thine.
+
+ Beneath thy broad, impartial eye,
+ How fade the lines of caste and birth!
+ How equal in their suffering lie
+ The groaning multitudes of earth!
+
+ Still to a stricken brother true,
+ Whatever clime hath nurtured him;
+ As stooped to heal the wounded Jew
+ The worshipper of Gerizim.
+
+ By misery unrepelled, unawed
+ By pomp or power, thou seest a Man
+ In prince or peasant, slave or lord,
+ Pale priest, or swarthy artisan.
+
+ Through all disguise, form, place, or name,
+ Beneath the flaunting robes of sin,
+ Through poverty and squalid shame,
+ Thou lookest on the man within.
+
+ On man, as man, retaining yet,
+ Howe'er debased, and soiled, and dim,
+ The crown upon his forehead set,
+ The immortal gift of God to him.
+
+ And there is reverence in thy look;
+ For that frail form which mortals wear
+ The Spirit of the Holiest took,
+ And veiled His perfect brightness there.
+
+ Not from the shallow babbling fount
+ Of vain philosophy thou art;
+ He who of old on Syria's Mount
+ Thrilled, warmed, by turns, the listener's heart,
+
+ In holy words which cannot die,
+ In thoughts which angels leaned to know,
+ Proclaimed thy message from on high,
+ Thy mission to a world of woe.
+
+ That voice's echo hath not died!
+ From the blue lake of Galilee,
+ And Tabor's lonely mountain-side,
+ It calls a struggling world to thee.
+
+ Thy name and watchword o'er this land
+ I hear in every breeze that stirs,
+ And round a thousand altars stand
+ Thy banded party worshippers.
+
+ Not, to these altars of a day,
+ At party's call, my gift I bring;
+ But on thy olden shrine I lay
+ A freeman's dearest offering.
+
+ The voiceless utterance of his will,--
+ His pledge to Freedom and to Truth,
+ That manhood's heart remembers still
+ The homage of his generous youth.
+
+ Election Day, 1841
+
+
+
+
+THE GALLOWS.
+
+Written on reading pamphlets published by clergymen against the
+abolition of the gallows.
+
+
+ I.
+ THE suns of eighteen centuries have shone
+ Since the Redeemer walked with man, and made
+ The fisher's boat, the cavern's floor of stone,
+ And mountain moss, a pillow for His head;
+ And He, who wandered with the peasant Jew,
+ And broke with publicans the bread of shame,
+ And drank with blessings, in His Father's name,
+ The water which Samaria's outcast drew,
+ Hath now His temples upon every shore,
+ Altar and shrine and priest; and incense dim
+ Evermore rising, with low prayer and hymn,
+ From lips which press the temple's marble floor,
+ Or kiss the gilded sign of the dread cross He bore.
+
+
+ II.
+ Yet as of old, when, meekly "doing good,"
+ He fed a blind and selfish multitude,
+ And even the poor companions of His lot
+ With their dim earthly vision knew Him not,
+ How ill are His high teachings understood
+ Where He hath spoken Liberty, the priest
+ At His own altar binds the chain anew;
+ Where He hath bidden to Life's equal feast,
+ The starving many wait upon the few;
+ Where He hath spoken Peace, His name hath been
+ The loudest war-cry of contending men;
+ Priests, pale with vigils, in His name have blessed
+ The unsheathed sword, and laid the spear in rest,
+ Wet the war-banner with their sacred wine,
+ And crossed its blazon with the holy sign;
+ Yea, in His name who bade the erring live,
+ And daily taught His lesson, to forgive!
+ Twisted the cord and edged the murderous steel;
+ And, with His words of mercy on their lips,
+ Hung gloating o'er the pincer's burning grips,
+ And the grim horror of the straining wheel;
+ Fed the slow flame which gnawed the victim's limb,
+ Who saw before his searing eyeballs swim
+ The image of their Christ in cruel zeal,
+ Through the black torment-smoke, held mockingly to him!
+
+
+ III.
+ The blood which mingled with the desert sand,
+ And beaded with its red and ghastly dew
+ The vines and olives of the Holy Land;
+ The shrieking curses of the hunted Jew;
+ The white-sown bones of heretics, where'er
+ They sank beneath the Crusade's holy spear;
+ Goa's dark dungeons, Malta's sea-washed cell,
+ Where with the hymns the ghostly fathers sung
+ Mingled the groans by subtle torture wrung,
+ Heaven's anthem blending with the shriek of hell!
+ The midnight of Bartholomew, the stake
+ Of Smithfield, and that thrice-accursed flame
+ Which Calvin kindled by Geneva's lake;
+ New England's scaffold, and the priestly sneer
+ Which mocked its victims in that hour of fear,
+ When guilt itself a human tear might claim,--
+ Bear witness, O Thou wronged and merciful One!
+ That Earth's most hateful crimes have in Thy
+ name been done!
+
+
+ IV.
+ Thank God! that I have lived to see the time
+ When the great truth begins at last to find
+ An utterance from the deep heart of mankind,
+ Earnest and clear, that all Revenge is Crime,
+ That man is holier than a creed, that all
+ Restraint upon him must consult his good,
+ Hope's sunshine linger on his prison wall,
+ And Love look in upon his solitude.
+ The beautiful lesson which our Saviour taught
+ Through long, dark centuries its way hath wrought
+ Into the common mind and popular thought;
+ And words, to which by Galilee's lake shore
+ The humble fishers listened with hushed oar,
+ Have found an echo in the general heart,
+ And of the public faith become a living part.
+
+
+ V.
+ Who shall arrest this tendency? Bring back
+ The cells of Venice and the bigot's rack?
+ Harden the softening human heart again
+ To cold indifference to a brother's pain?
+ Ye most unhappy men! who, turned away
+ From the mild sunshine of the Gospel day,
+ Grope in the shadows of Man's twilight time,
+ What mean ye, that with ghoul-like zest ye brood,
+ O'er those foul altars streaming with warm blood,
+ Permitted in another age and clime?
+ Why cite that law with which the bigot Jew
+ Rebuked the Pagan's mercy, when he knew
+ No evil in the Just One? Wherefore turn
+ To the dark, cruel past? Can ye not learn
+ From the pure Teacher's life how mildly free
+ Is the great Gospel of Humanity?
+ The Flamen's knife is bloodless, and no more
+ Mexitli's altars soak with human gore,
+ No more the ghastly sacrifices smoke
+ Through the green arches of the Druid's oak;
+ And ye of milder faith, with your high claim
+ Of prophet-utterance in the Holiest name,
+ Will ye become the Druids of our time
+ Set up your scaffold-altars in our land,
+ And, consecrators of Law's darkest crime,
+ Urge to its loathsome work the hangman's hand?
+ Beware, lest human nature, roused at last,
+ From its peeled shoulder your encumbrance cast,
+ And, sick to loathing of your cry for blood,
+ Rank ye with those who led their victims round
+ The Celt's red altar and the Indian's mound,
+ Abhorred of Earth and Heaven, a pagan brotherhood!
+
+ 1842.
+
+
+
+
+SEED-TIME AND HARVEST.
+
+ As o'er his furrowed fields which lie
+ Beneath a coldly dropping sky,
+ Yet chill with winter's melted snow,
+ The husbandman goes forth to sow,
+
+ Thus, Freedom, on the bitter blast
+ The ventures of thy seed we cast,
+ And trust to warmer sun and rain
+ To swell the germs and fill the grain.
+
+ Who calls thy glorious service hard?
+ Who deems it not its own reward?
+ Who, for its trials, counts it less.
+ A cause of praise and thankfulness?
+
+ It may not be our lot to wield
+ The sickle in the ripened field;
+ Nor ours to hear, on summer eves,
+ The reaper's song among the sheaves.
+
+ Yet where our duty's task is wrought
+ In unison with God's great thought,
+ The near and future blend in one,
+ And whatsoe'er is willed, is done!
+
+ And ours the grateful service whence
+ Comes day by day the recompense;
+ The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed,
+ The fountain and the noonday shade.
+
+ And were this life the utmost span,
+ The only end and aim of man,
+ Better the toil of fields like these
+ Than waking dream and slothful ease.
+
+ But life, though falling like our grain,
+ Like that revives and springs again;
+ And, early called, how blest are they
+ Who wait in heaven their harvest-day!
+
+ 1843.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE REFORMERS OF ENGLAND.
+
+This poem was addressed to those who like Richard Cobden and John Bright
+were seeking the reform of political evils in Great Britain by peaceful
+and Christian means. It will be remembered that the Anti-Corn Law League
+was in the midst of its labors at this time.
+
+
+ GOD bless ye, brothers! in the fight
+ Ye 're waging now, ye cannot fail,
+ For better is your sense of right
+ Than king-craft's triple mail.
+
+ Than tyrant's law, or bigot's ban,
+ More mighty is your simplest word;
+ The free heart of an honest man
+ Than crosier or the sword.
+
+ Go, let your blinded Church rehearse
+ The lesson it has learned so well;
+ It moves not with its prayer or curse
+ The gates of heaven or hell.
+
+ Let the State scaffold rise again;
+ Did Freedom die when Russell died?
+ Forget ye how the blood of Vane
+ From earth's green bosom cried?
+
+ The great hearts of your olden time
+ Are beating with you, full and strong;
+ All holy memories and sublime
+ And glorious round ye throng.
+
+ The bluff, bold men of Runnymede
+ Are with ye still in times like these;
+ The shades of England's mighty dead,
+ Your cloud of witnesses!
+
+ The truths ye urge are borne abroad
+ By every wind and every tide;
+ The voice of Nature and of God
+ Speaks out upon your side.
+
+ The weapons which your hands have found
+ Are those which Heaven itself has wrought,
+ Light, Truth, and Love; your battle-ground
+ The free, broad field of Thought.
+
+ No partial, selfish purpose breaks
+ The simple beauty of your plan,
+ Nor lie from throne or altar shakes
+ Your steady faith in man.
+
+ The languid pulse of England starts
+ And bounds beneath your words of power,
+ The beating of her million hearts
+ Is with you at this hour!
+
+ O ye who, with undoubting eyes,
+ Through present cloud and gathering storm,
+ Behold the span of Freedom's skies,
+ And sunshine soft and warm;
+
+ Press bravely onward! not in vain
+ Your generous trust in human-kind;
+ The good which bloodshed could not gain
+ Your peaceful zeal shall find.
+
+ Press on! the triumph shall be won
+ Of common rights and equal laws,
+ The glorious dream of Harrington,
+ And Sidney's good old cause.
+
+ Blessing the cotter and the crown,
+ Sweetening worn Labor's bitter cup;
+ And, plucking not the highest down,
+ Lifting the lowest up.
+
+ Press on! and we who may not share
+ The toil or glory of your fight
+ May ask, at least, in earnest prayer,
+ God's blessing on the right!
+
+ 1843.
+
+
+
+
+THE HUMAN SACRIFICE.
+
+Some leading sectarian papers had lately published the letter of a
+clergyman, giving an account of his attendance upon a criminal (who had
+committed murder during a fit of intoxication), at the time of his
+execution, in western New York. The writer describes the agony of the
+wretched being, his abortive attempts at prayer, his appeal for life,
+his fear of a violent death; and, after declaring his belief that the
+poor victim died without hope of salvation, concludes with a warm eulogy
+upon the gallows, being more than ever convinced of its utility by the
+awful dread and horror which it inspired.
+
+
+ I.
+ FAR from his close and noisome cell,
+ By grassy lane and sunny stream,
+ Blown clover field and strawberry dell,
+ And green and meadow freshness, fell
+ The footsteps of his dream.
+ Again from careless feet the dew
+ Of summer's misty morn he shook;
+ Again with merry heart he threw
+ His light line in the rippling brook.
+ Back crowded all his school-day joys;
+ He urged the ball and quoit again,
+ And heard the shout of laughing boys
+ Come ringing down the walnut glen.
+ Again he felt the western breeze,
+ With scent of flowers and crisping hay;
+ And down again through wind-stirred trees
+ He saw the quivering sunlight play.
+ An angel in home's vine-hung door,
+ He saw his sister smile once more;
+ Once more the truant's brown-locked head
+ Upon his mother's knees was laid,
+ And sweetly lulled to slumber there,
+ With evening's holy hymn and prayer!
+
+ II.
+ He woke. At once on heart and brain
+ The present Terror rushed again;
+ Clanked on his limbs the felon's chain
+ He woke, to hear the church-tower tell
+ Time's footfall on the conscious bell,
+ And, shuddering, feel that clanging din
+ His life's last hour had ushered in;
+ To see within his prison-yard,
+ Through the small window, iron barred,
+ The gallows shadow rising dim
+ Between the sunrise heaven and him;
+ A horror in God's blessed air;
+ A blackness in his morning light;
+ Like some foul devil-altar there
+ Built up by demon hands at night.
+ And, maddened by that evil sight,
+ Dark, horrible, confused, and strange,
+ A chaos of wild, weltering change,
+ All power of check and guidance gone,
+ Dizzy and blind, his mind swept on.
+ In vain he strove to breathe a prayer,
+ In vain he turned the Holy Book,
+ He only heard the gallows-stair
+ Creak as the wind its timbers shook.
+ No dream for him of sin forgiven,
+ While still that baleful spectre stood,
+ With its hoarse murmur, "Blood for Blood!"
+ Between him and the pitying Heaven.
+
+ III.
+ Low on his dungeon floor he knelt,
+ And smote his breast, and on his chain,
+ Whose iron clasp he always felt,
+ His hot tears fell like rain;
+ And near him, with the cold, calm look
+ And tone of one whose formal part,
+ Unwarmed, unsoftened of the heart,
+ Is measured out by rule and book,
+ With placid lip and tranquil blood,
+ The hangman's ghostly ally stood,
+ Blessing with solemn text and word
+ The gallows-drop and strangling cord;
+ Lending the sacred Gospel's awe
+ And sanction to the crime of Law.
+
+ IV.
+ He saw the victim's tortured brow,
+ The sweat of anguish starting there,
+ The record of a nameless woe
+ In the dim eye's imploring stare,
+ Seen hideous through the long, damp hair,--
+ Fingers of ghastly skin and bone
+ Working and writhing on the stone!
+ And heard, by mortal terror wrung
+ From heaving breast and stiffened tongue,
+ The choking sob and low hoarse prayer;
+ As o'er his half-crazed fancy came
+ A vision of the eternal flame,
+ Its smoking cloud of agonies,
+ Its demon-worm that never dies,
+ The everlasting rise and fall
+ Of fire-waves round the infernal wall;
+ While high above that dark red flood,
+ Black, giant-like, the gallows stood;
+ Two busy fiends attending there
+ One with cold mocking rite and prayer,
+ The other with impatient grasp,
+ Tightening the death-rope's strangling clasp.
+
+ V.
+ The unfelt rite at length was done,
+ The prayer unheard at length was said,
+ An hour had passed: the noonday sun
+ Smote on the features of the dead!
+ And he who stood the doomed beside,
+ Calm gauger of the swelling tide
+ Of mortal agony and fear,
+ Heeding with curious eye and ear
+ Whate'er revealed the keen excess
+ Of man's extremest wretchedness
+ And who in that dark anguish saw
+ An earnest of the victim's fate,
+ The vengeful terrors of God's law,
+ The kindlings of Eternal hate,
+ The first drops of that fiery rain
+ Which beats the dark red realm of pain,
+ Did he uplift his earnest cries
+ Against the crime of Law, which gave
+ His brother to that fearful grave,
+ Whereon Hope's moonlight never lies,
+ And Faith's white blossoms never wave
+ To the soft breath of Memory's sighs;
+ Which sent a spirit marred and stained,
+ By fiends of sin possessed, profaned,
+ In madness and in blindness stark,
+ Into the silent, unknown dark?
+ No, from the wild and shrinking dread,
+ With which he saw the victim led
+ Beneath the dark veil which divides
+ Ever the living from the dead,
+ And Nature's solemn secret hides,
+ The man of prayer can only draw
+ New reasons for his bloody law;
+ New faith in staying Murder's hand
+ By murder at that Law's command;
+ New reverence for the gallows-rope,
+ As human nature's latest hope;
+ Last relic of the good old time,
+ When Power found license for its crime,
+ And held a writhing world in check
+ By that fell cord about its neck;
+ Stifled Sedition's rising shout,
+ Choked the young breath of Freedom out,
+ And timely checked the words which sprung
+ From Heresy's forbidden tongue;
+ While in its noose of terror bound,
+ The Church its cherished union found,
+ Conforming, on the Moslem plan,
+ The motley-colored mind of man,
+ Not by the Koran and the Sword,
+ But by the Bible and the Cord.
+
+ VI.
+ O Thou at whose rebuke the grave
+ Back to warm life its sleeper gave,
+ Beneath whose sad and tearful glance
+ The cold and changed countenance
+ Broke the still horror of its trance,
+ And, waking, saw with joy above,
+ A brother's face of tenderest love;
+ Thou, unto whom the blind and lame,
+ The sorrowing and the sin-sick came,
+ And from Thy very garment's hem
+ Drew life and healing unto them,
+ The burden of Thy holy faith
+ Was love and life, not hate and death;
+ Man's demon ministers of pain,
+ The fiends of his revenge, were sent
+ From thy pure Gospel's element
+ To their dark home again.
+ Thy name is Love! What, then, is he,
+ Who in that name the gallows rears,
+ An awful altar built to Thee,
+ With sacrifice of blood and tears?
+ Oh, once again Thy healing lay
+ On the blind eyes which knew Thee not,
+ And let the light of Thy pure day
+ Melt in upon his darkened thought.
+ Soften his hard, cold heart, and show
+ The power which in forbearance lies,
+ And let him feel that mercy now
+ Is better than old sacrifice.
+
+ VII.
+ As on the White Sea's charmed shore,
+ The Parsee sees his holy hill (10)
+ With dunnest smoke-clouds curtained o'er,
+ Yet knows beneath them, evermore,
+ The low, pale fire is quivering still;
+ So, underneath its clouds of sin,
+ The heart of man retaineth yet
+ Gleams of its holy origin;
+ And half-quenched stars that never set,
+ Dim colors of its faded bow,
+ And early beauty, linger there,
+ And o'er its wasted desert blow
+ Faint breathings of its morning air.
+ Oh, never yet upon the scroll
+ Of the sin-stained, but priceless soul,
+ Hath Heaven inscribed "Despair!"
+ Cast not the clouded gem away,
+ Quench not the dim but living ray,--
+ My brother man, Beware!
+ With that deep voice which from the skies
+ Forbade the Patriarch's sacrifice,
+ God's angel cries, Forbear.
+
+ 1843
+
+
+
+
+
+SONGS OF LABOR.
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION.
+
+Prefixed to the volume of which the group of six poems following this
+prelude constituted the first portion.
+
+
+ I WOULD the gift I offer here
+ Might graces from thy favor take,
+ And, seen through Friendship's atmosphere,
+ On softened lines and coloring, wear
+ The unaccustomed light of beauty, for thy sake.
+
+ Few leaves of Fancy's spring remain
+ But what I have I give to thee,
+ The o'er-sunned bloom of summer's plain,
+ And paler flowers, the latter rain
+ Calls from the westering slope of life's autumnal lea.
+
+ Above the fallen groves of green,
+ Where youth's enchanted forest stood,
+ Dry root and mossed trunk between,
+ A sober after-growth is seen,
+ As springs the pine where falls the gay-leafed maple wood!
+
+ Yet birds will sing, and breezes play
+ Their leaf-harps in the sombre tree;
+ And through the bleak and wintry day
+ It keeps its steady green alway,--
+ So, even my after-thoughts may have a charm for thee.
+
+ Art's perfect forms no moral need,
+ And beauty is its own excuse;
+ But for the dull and flowerless weed
+ Some healing virtue still must plead,
+ And the rough ore must find its honors in its use.
+
+ So haply these, my simple lays
+ Of homely toil, may serve to show
+ The orchard bloom and tasselled maize
+ That skirt and gladden duty's ways,
+ The unsung beauty hid life's common things below.
+
+ Haply from them the toiler, bent
+ Above his forge or plough, may gain,
+ A manlier spirit of content,
+ And feel that life is wisest spent
+ Where the strong working hand makes strong the
+ working brain.
+
+ The doom which to the guilty pair
+ Without the walls of Eden came,
+ Transforming sinless ease to care
+ And rugged toil, no more shall bear
+ The burden of old crime, or mark of primal shame.
+
+ A blessing now, a curse no more;
+ Since He, whose name we breathe with awe,
+ The coarse mechanic vesture wore,
+ A poor man toiling with the poor,
+ In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the same law.
+
+ 1850.
+
+
+
+
+THE SHOEMAKERS.
+
+ Ho! workers of the old time styled
+ The Gentle Craft of Leather
+ Young brothers of the ancient guild,
+ Stand forth once more together!
+ Call out again your long array,
+ In the olden merry manner
+ Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day,
+ Fling out your blazoned banner!
+
+ Rap, rap! upon the well-worn stone
+ How falls the polished hammer
+ Rap, rap I the measured sound has grown
+ A quick and merry clamor.
+ Now shape the sole! now deftly curl
+ The glossy vamp around it,
+ And bless the while the bright-eyed girl
+ Whose gentle fingers bound it!
+
+ For you, along the Spanish main
+ A hundred keels are ploughing;
+ For you, the Indian on the plain
+ His lasso-coil is throwing;
+ For you, deep glens with hemlock dark
+ The woodman's fire is lighting;
+ For you, upon the oak's gray bark,
+ The woodman's axe is smiting.
+
+ For you, from Carolina's pine
+ The rosin-gum is stealing;
+ For you, the dark-eyed Florentine
+ Her silken skein is reeling;
+ For you, the dizzy goatherd roams
+ His rugged Alpine ledges;
+ For you, round all her shepherd homes,
+ Bloom England's thorny hedges.
+
+ The foremost still, by day or night,
+ On moated mound or heather,
+ Where'er the need of trampled right
+ Brought toiling men together;
+ Where the free burghers from the wall
+ Defied the mail-clad master,
+ Than yours, at Freedom's trumpet-call,
+ No craftsmen rallied faster.
+
+ Let foplings sneer, let fools deride,
+ Ye heed no idle scorner;
+ Free hands and hearts are still your pride,
+ And duty done, your honor.
+ Ye dare to trust, for honest fame,
+ The jury Time empanels,
+ And leave to truth each noble name
+ Which glorifies your annals.
+
+ Thy songs, Hans Sachs, are living yet,
+ In strong and hearty German;
+ And Bloomfield's lay, and Gifford's wit,
+ And patriot fame of Sherman;
+ Still from his book, a mystic seer,
+ The soul of Behmen teaches,
+ And England's priestcraft shakes to hear
+ Of Fox's leathern breeches.
+
+ The foot is yours; where'er it falls,
+ It treads your well-wrought leather,
+ On earthen floor, in marble halls,
+ On carpet, or on heather.
+ Still there the sweetest charm is found
+ Of matron grace or vestal's,
+ As Hebe's foot bore nectar round
+ Among the old celestials.
+
+ Rap, rap!--your stout and bluff brogan,
+ With footsteps slow and weary,
+ May wander where the sky's blue span
+ Shuts down upon the prairie.
+ On Beauty's foot your slippers glance,
+ By Saratoga's fountains,
+ Or twinkle down the summer dance
+ Beneath the Crystal Mountains!
+
+ The red brick to the mason's hand,
+ The brown earth to the tiller's,
+ The shoe in yours shall wealth command,
+ Like fairy Cinderella's!
+ As they who shunned the household maid
+ Beheld the crown upon her,
+ So all shall see your toil repaid
+ With hearth and home and honor.
+
+ Then let the toast be freely quaffed,
+ In water cool and brimming,--
+ "All honor to the good old Craft,
+ Its merry men and women!"
+ Call out again your long array,
+ In the old time's pleasant manner
+ Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day,
+ Fling out his blazoned banner!
+
+ 1845.
+
+
+
+
+THE FISHERMEN.
+
+ HURRAH! the seaward breezes
+ Sweep down the bay amain;
+ Heave up, my lads, the anchor!
+ Run up the sail again
+ Leave to the lubber landsmen
+ The rail-car and the steed;
+ The stars of heaven shall guide us,
+ The breath of heaven shall speed.
+
+ From the hill-top looks the steeple,
+ And the lighthouse from the sand;
+ And the scattered pines are waving
+ Their farewell from the land.
+ One glance, my lads, behind us,
+ For the homes we leave one sigh,
+ Ere we take the change and chances
+ Of the ocean and the sky.
+
+ Now, brothers, for the icebergs
+ Of frozen Labrador,
+ Floating spectral in the moonshine,
+ Along the low, black shore!
+ Where like snow the gannet's feathers
+ On Brador's rocks are shed,
+ And the noisy murr are flying,
+ Like black scuds, overhead;
+
+ Where in mist tie rock is hiding,
+ And the sharp reef lurks below,
+ And the white squall smites in summer,
+ And the autumn tempests blow;
+ Where, through gray and rolling vapor,
+ From evening unto morn,
+ A thousand boats are hailing,
+ Horn answering unto horn.
+
+ Hurrah! for the Red Island,
+ With the white cross on its crown
+ Hurrah! for Meccatina,
+ And its mountains bare and brown!
+ Where the Caribou's tall antlers
+ O'er the dwarf-wood freely toss,
+ And the footstep of the Mickmack
+ Has no sound upon the moss.
+
+ There we'll drop our lines, and gather
+ Old Ocean's treasures in,
+ Where'er the mottled mackerel
+ Turns up a steel-dark fin.
+ The sea's our field of harvest,
+ Its scaly tribes our grain;
+ We'll reap the teeming waters
+ As at home they reap the plain.
+
+ Our wet hands spread the carpet,
+ And light the hearth of home;
+ From our fish, as in the old time,
+ The silver coin shall come.
+ As the demon fled the chamber
+ Where the fish of Tobit lay,
+ So ours from all our dwellings
+ Shall frighten Want away.
+
+ Though the mist upon our jackets
+ In the bitter air congeals,
+ And our lines wind stiff and slowly
+ From off the frozen reels;
+ Though the fog be dark around us,
+ And the storm blow high and loud,
+ We will whistle down the wild wind,
+ And laugh beneath the cloud!
+
+ In the darkness as in daylight,
+ On the water as on land,
+ God's eye is looking on us,
+ And beneath us is His hand!
+ Death will find us soon or later,
+ On the deck or in the cot;
+ And we cannot meet him better
+ Than in working out our lot.
+
+ Hurrah! hurrah! the west-wind
+ Comes freshening down the bay,
+ The rising sails are filling;
+ Give way, my lads, give way!
+ Leave the coward landsman clinging
+ To the dull earth, like a weed;
+ The stars of heaven shall guide us,
+ The breath of heaven shall speed!
+
+ 1845.
+
+
+
+
+THE LUMBERMEN.
+
+ WILDLY round our woodland quarters
+ Sad-voiced Autumn grieves;
+ Thickly down these swelling waters
+ Float his fallen leaves.
+ Through the tall and naked timber,
+ Column-like and old,
+ Gleam the sunsets of November,
+ From their skies of gold.
+
+ O'er us, to the southland heading,
+ Screams the gray wild-goose;
+ On the night-frost sounds the treading
+ Of the brindled moose.
+ Noiseless creeping, while we're sleeping,
+ Frost his task-work plies;
+ Soon, his icy bridges heaping,
+ Shall our log-piles rise.
+
+ When, with sounds of smothered thunder,
+ On some night of rain,
+ Lake and river break asunder
+ Winter's weakened chain,
+ Down the wild March flood shall bear them
+ To the saw-mill's wheel,
+ Or where Steam, the slave, shall tear them
+ With his teeth of steel.
+
+ Be it starlight, be it moonlight,
+ In these vales below,
+ When the earliest beams of sunlight
+ Streak the mountain's snow,
+ Crisps the boar-frost, keen and early,
+ To our hurrying feet,
+ And the forest echoes clearly
+ All our blows repeat.
+
+ Where the crystal Ambijejis
+ Stretches broad and clear,
+ And Millnoket's pine-black ridges
+ Hide the browsing deer
+ Where, through lakes and wide morasses,
+ Or through rocky walls,
+ Swift and strong, Penobscot passes
+ White with foamy falls;
+
+ Where, through clouds, are glimpses given
+ Of Katahdin's sides,--
+ Rock and forest piled to heaven,
+ Torn and ploughed by slides!
+ Far below, the Indian trapping,
+ In the sunshine warm;
+ Far above, the snow-cloud wrapping
+ Half the peak in storm!
+
+ Where are mossy carpets better
+ Than the Persian weaves,
+ And than Eastern perfumes sweeter
+ Seem the fading leaves;
+ And a music wild and solemn,
+ From the pine-tree's height,
+ Rolls its vast and sea-like volume
+ On the wind of night;
+
+ Make we here our camp of winter;
+ And, through sleet and snow,
+ Pitchy knot and beechen splinter
+ On our hearth shall glow.
+ Here, with mirth to lighten duty,
+ We shall lack alone
+ Woman's smile and girlhood's beauty,
+ Childhood's lisping tone.
+
+ But their hearth is brighter burning
+ For our toil to-day;
+ And the welcome of returning
+ Shall our loss repay,
+ When, like seamen from the waters,
+ From the woods we come,
+ Greeting sisters, wives, and daughters,
+ Angels of our home!
+
+ Not for us the measured ringing
+ From the village spire,
+ Not for us the Sabbath singing
+ Of the sweet-voiced choir,
+ Ours the old, majestic temple,
+ Where God's brightness shines
+ Down the dome so grand and ample,
+ Propped by lofty pines!
+
+ Through each branch-enwoven skylight,
+ Speaks He in the breeze,
+ As of old beneath the twilight
+ Of lost Eden's trees!
+ For His ear, the inward feeling
+ Needs no outward tongue;
+ He can see the spirit kneeling
+ While the axe is swung.
+
+ Heeding truth alone, and turning
+ From the false and dim,
+ Lamp of toil or altar burning
+ Are alike to Him.
+ Strike, then, comrades! Trade is waiting
+ On our rugged toil;
+ Far ships waiting for the freighting
+ Of our woodland spoil.
+
+ Ships, whose traffic links these highlands,
+ Bleak and cold, of ours,
+ With the citron-planted islands
+ Of a clime of flowers;
+ To our frosts the tribute bringing
+ Of eternal heats;
+ In our lap of winter flinging
+ Tropic fruits and sweets.
+
+ Cheerly, on the axe of labor,
+ Let the sunbeams dance,
+ Better than the flash of sabre
+ Or the gleam of lance!
+ Strike! With every blow is given
+ Freer sun and sky,
+ And the long-hid earth to heaven
+ Looks, with wondering eye!
+
+ Loud behind us grow the murmurs
+ Of the age to come;
+ Clang of smiths, and tread of farmers,
+ Bearing harvest home!
+ Here her virgin lap with treasures
+ Shall the green earth fill;
+ Waving wheat and golden maize-ears
+ Crown each beechen hill.
+
+ Keep who will the city's alleys
+ Take the smooth-shorn plain';
+ Give to us the cedarn valleys,
+ Rocks and hills of Maine!
+ In our North-land, wild and woody,
+ Let us still have part
+ Rugged nurse and mother sturdy,
+ Hold us to thy heart!
+
+ Oh, our free hearts beat the warmer
+ For thy breath of snow;
+ And our tread is all the firmer
+ For thy rocks below.
+ Freedom, hand in hand with labor,
+ Walketh strong and brave;
+ On the forehead of his neighbor
+ No man writeth Slave!
+
+ Lo, the day breaks! old Katahdin's
+ Pine-trees show its fires,
+ While from these dim forest gardens
+ Rise their blackened spires.
+ Up, my comrades! up and doing!
+ Manhood's rugged play
+ Still renewing, bravely hewing
+ Through the world our way!
+
+ 1845.
+
+
+
+
+THE SHIP-BUILDERS
+
+ THE sky is ruddy in the east,
+ The earth is gray below,
+ And, spectral in the river-mist,
+ The ship's white timbers show.
+ Then let the sounds of measured stroke
+ And grating saw begin;
+ The broad-axe to the gnarled oak,
+ The mallet to the pin!
+
+ Hark! roars the bellows, blast on blast,
+ The sooty smithy jars,
+ And fire-sparks, rising far and fast,
+ Are fading with the stars.
+ All day for us the smith shall stand
+ Beside that flashing forge;
+ All day for us his heavy hand
+ The groaning anvil scourge.
+
+ From far-off hills, the panting team
+ For us is toiling near;
+ For us the raftsmen down the stream
+ Their island barges steer.
+ Rings out for us the axe-man's stroke
+ In forests old and still;
+ For us the century-circled oak
+ Falls crashing down his hill.
+
+ Up! up! in nobler toil than ours
+ No craftsmen bear a part
+ We make of Nature's giant powers
+ The slaves of human Art.
+ Lay rib to rib and beam to beam,
+ And drive the treenails free;
+ Nor faithless joint nor yawning seam
+ Shall tempt the searching sea.
+
+ Where'er the keel of our good ship
+ The sea's rough field shall plough;
+ Where'er her tossing spars shall drip
+ With salt-spray caught below;
+ That ship must heed her master's beck,
+ Her helm obey his hand,
+ And seamen tread her reeling deck
+ As if they trod the land.
+
+ Her oaken ribs the vulture-beak
+ Of Northern ice may peel;
+ The sunken rock and coral peak
+ May grate along her keel;
+ And know we well the painted shell
+ We give to wind and wave,
+ Must float, the sailor's citadel,
+ Or sink, the sailor's grave.
+
+ Ho! strike away the bars and blocks,
+ And set the good ship free!
+ Why lingers on these dusty rocks
+ The young bride of the sea?
+ Look! how she moves adown the grooves,
+ In graceful beauty now!
+ How lowly on the breast she loves
+ Sinks down her virgin prow.
+
+ God bless her! wheresoe'er the breeze
+ Her snowy wing shall fan,
+ Aside the frozen Hebrides,
+ Or sultry Hindostan!
+ Where'er, in mart or on the main,
+ With peaceful flag unfurled,
+ She helps to wind the silken chain
+ Of commerce round the world!
+
+ Speed on the ship! But let her bear
+ No merchandise of sin,
+ No groaning cargo of despair
+ Her roomy hold within;
+ No Lethean drug for Eastern lands,
+ Nor poison-draught for ours;
+ But honest fruits of toiling hands
+ And Nature's sun and showers.
+
+ Be hers the Prairie's golden grain,
+ The Desert's golden sand,
+ The clustered fruits of sunny Spain,
+ The spice of Morning-land!
+ Her pathway on the open main
+ May blessings follow free,
+ And glad hearts welcome back again
+ Her white sails from the sea
+ 1846.
+
+
+
+
+THE DROVERS.
+
+ THROUGH heat and cold, and shower and sun,
+ Still onward cheerly driving
+ There's life alone in duty done,
+ And rest alone in striving.
+ But see! the day is closing cool,
+ The woods are dim before us;
+ The white fog of the wayside pool
+ Is creeping slowly o'er us.
+
+ The night is falling, comrades mine,
+ Our footsore beasts are weary,
+ And through yon elms the tavern sign
+ Looks out upon us cheery.
+ The landlord beckons from his door,
+ His beechen fire is glowing;
+ These ample barns, with feed in store,
+ Are filled to overflowing.
+
+ From many a valley frowned across
+ By brows of rugged mountains;
+ From hillsides where, through spongy moss,
+ Gush out the river fountains;
+ From quiet farm-fields, green and low,
+ And bright with blooming clover;
+ From vales of corn the wandering crow
+ No richer hovers over;
+
+ Day after day our way has been
+ O'er many a hill and hollow;
+ By lake and stream, by wood and glen,
+ Our stately drove we follow.
+ Through dust-clouds rising thick and dun,
+ As smoke of battle o'er us,
+ Their white horns glisten in the sun,
+ Like plumes and crests before us.
+
+ We see them slowly climb the hill,
+ As slow behind it sinking;
+ Or, thronging close, from roadside rill,
+ Or sunny lakelet, drinking.
+ Now crowding in the narrow road,
+ In thick and struggling masses,
+ They glare upon the teamster's load,
+ Or rattling coach that passes.
+
+ Anon, with toss of horn and tail,
+ And paw of hoof, and bellow,
+ They leap some farmer's broken pale,
+ O'er meadow-close or fallow.
+ Forth comes the startled goodman; forth
+ Wife, children, house-dog, sally,
+ Till once more on their dusty path
+ The baffled truants rally.
+
+ We drive no starvelings, scraggy grown,
+ Loose-legged, and ribbed and bony,
+ Like those who grind their noses down
+ On pastures bare and stony,--
+ Lank oxen, rough as Indian dogs,
+ And cows too lean for shadows,
+ Disputing feebly with the frogs
+ The crop of saw-grass meadows!
+
+ In our good drove, so sleek and fair,
+ No bones of leanness rattle;
+ No tottering hide-bound ghosts are there,
+ Or Pharaoh's evil cattle.
+ Each stately beeve bespeaks the hand
+ That fed him unrepining;
+ The fatness of a goodly land
+ In each dun hide is shining.
+
+ We've sought them where, in warmest nooks,
+ The freshest feed is growing,
+ By sweetest springs and clearest brooks
+ Through honeysuckle flowing;
+ Wherever hillsides, sloping south,
+ Are bright with early grasses,
+ Or, tracking green the lowland's drouth,
+ The mountain streamlet passes.
+
+ But now the day is closing cool,
+ The woods are dim before us,
+ The white fog of the wayside pool
+ Is creeping slowly o'er us.
+ The cricket to the frog's bassoon
+ His shrillest time is keeping;
+ The sickle of yon setting moon
+ The meadow-mist is reaping.
+
+ The night is falling, comrades mine,
+ Our footsore beasts are weary,
+ And through yon elms the tavern sign
+ Looks out upon us cheery.
+ To-morrow, eastward with our charge
+ We'll go to meet the dawning,
+ Ere yet the pines of Kearsarge
+ Have seen the sun of morning.
+
+ When snow-flakes o'er the frozen earth,
+ Instead of birds, are flitting;
+ When children throng the glowing hearth,
+ And quiet wives are knitting;
+ While in the fire-light strong and clear
+ Young eyes of pleasure glisten,
+ To tales of all we see and hear
+ The ears of home shall listen.
+
+ By many a Northern lake and bill,
+ From many a mountain pasture,
+ Shall Fancy play the Drover still,
+ And speed the long night faster.
+ Then let us on, through shower and sun,
+ And heat and cold, be driving;
+ There 's life alone in duty done,
+ And rest alone in striving.
+
+ 1847.
+
+
+
+
+THE HUSKERS.
+
+ IT was late in mild October, and the long autumnal rain
+ Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with grass again;
+ The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the woodlands gay
+ With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the meadow-flowers of May.
+
+ Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the sun rose broad and red,
+ At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened as he sped;
+ Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and subdued,
+ On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly pictured wood.
+
+ And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping to the night,
+ He wove with golden shuttle the haze with yellow light;
+ Slanting through the painted beeches, he glorified the hill;
+ And, beneath it, pond and meadow lay brighter, greener still.
+
+ And shouting boys in woodland haunts caught glimpses of that sky,
+ Flecked by the many-tinted leaves, and laughed, they knew not why;
+ And school-girls, gay with aster-flowers, beside the meadow brooks,
+ Mingled the glow of autumn with the sunshine of sweet looks.
+
+ From spire and barn looked westerly the patient weathercocks;
+ But even the birches on the hill stood motionless as rocks.
+ No sound was in the woodlands, save the squirrel's dropping shell,
+ And the yellow leaves among the boughs, low rustling as they fell.
+
+ The summer grains were harvested; the stubble-fields lay dry,
+ Where June winds rolled, in light and shade, the pale green waves
+ of rye;
+ But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in valleys fringed with wood,
+ Ungathered, bleaching in the sun, the heavy corn crop stood.
+
+ Bent low, by autumn's wind and rain, through husks that, dry and sere,
+ Unfolded from their ripened charge, shone out the yellow ear;
+ Beneath, the turnip lay concealed, in many a verdant fold,
+ And glistened in the slanting light the pumpkin's sphere of gold.
+
+ There wrought the busy harvesters; and many a creaking wain
+ Bore slowly to the long barn-floor its load of husk and grain;
+ Till broad and red, as when he rose, the sun sank down, at last,
+ And like a merry guest's farewell, the day in brightness passed.
+
+ And to! as through the western pines, on meadow, stream, and pond,
+ Flamed the red radiance of a sky, set all afire beyond,
+ Slowly o'er the eastern sea-bluffs a milder glory shone,
+ And the sunset and the moonrise were mingled into one!
+
+ As thus into the quiet night the twilight lapsed away,
+ And deeper in the brightening moon the tranquil shadows lay;
+ From many a brown old farm-house, and hamlet without name,
+ Their milking and their home-tasks done, the merry huskers came.
+
+ Swung o'er the heaped-up harvest, from pitchforks in the mow,
+ Shone dimly down the lanterns on the pleasant scene below;
+ The growing pile of husks behind, the golden ears before,
+ And laughing eyes and busy hands and brown cheeks glimmering o'er.
+
+ Half hidden, in a quiet nook, serene of look and heart,
+ Talking their old times over, the old men sat apart;
+ While up and down the unhusked pile, or nestling in its shade,
+ At hide-and-seek, with laugh and shout, the happy children played.
+
+ Urged by the good host's daughter, a maiden young and fair,
+ Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes and pride of soft brown hair,
+ The master of the village school, sleek of hair and smooth of tongue,
+ To the quaint tune of some old psalm, a husking ballad sung.
+
+
+
+
+THE CORN-SONG.
+
+ Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard
+ Heap high the golden corn
+ No richer gift has Autumn poured
+ From out her lavish horn!
+
+ Let other lands, exulting, glean
+ The apple from the pine,
+ The orange from its glossy green,
+ The cluster from the vine;
+
+ We better love the hardy gift
+ Our rugged vales bestow,
+ To cheer us when the storm shall drift
+ Our harvest-fields with snow.
+
+ Through vales of grass and mends of flowers
+ Our ploughs their furrows made,
+ While on the hills the sun and showers
+ Of changeful April played.
+
+ We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain
+ Beneath the sun of May,
+ And frightened from our sprouting grain
+ The robber crows away.
+
+ All through the long, bright days of June
+ Its leaves grew green and fair,
+ And waved in hot midsummer's noon
+ Its soft and yellow hair.
+
+ And now, with autumn's moonlit eves,
+ Its harvest-time has come,
+ We pluck away the frosted leaves,
+ And bear the treasure home.
+
+ There, when the snows about us drift,
+ And winter winds are cold,
+ Fair hands the broken grain shall sift,
+ And knead its meal of gold.
+
+ Let vapid idlers loll in silk
+ Around their costly board;
+ Give us the bowl of samp and milk,
+ By homespun beauty poured!
+
+ Where'er the wide old kitchen hearth
+ Sends up its smoky curls,
+ Who will not thank the kindly earth,
+ And bless our farmer girls!
+
+ Then shame on all the proud and vain,
+ Whose folly laughs to scorn
+ The blessing of our hardy grain,
+ Our wealth of golden corn.
+
+ Let earth withhold her goodly root,
+ Let mildew blight the rye,
+ Give to the worm the orchard's fruit,
+ The wheat-field to the fly.
+
+ But let the good old crop adorn
+ The hills our fathers trod;
+ Still let us, for his golden corn,
+ Send up our thanks to God!
+
+ 1847.
+
+
+
+
+THE REFORMER.
+
+ ALL grim and soiled and brown with tan,
+ I saw a Strong One, in his wrath,
+ Smiting the godless shrines of man
+ Along his path.
+
+ The Church, beneath her trembling dome,
+ Essayed in vain her ghostly charm
+ Wealth shook within his gilded home
+ With strange alarm.
+
+ Fraud from his secret chambers fled
+ Before the sunlight bursting in
+ Sloth drew her pillow o'er her head
+ To drown the din.
+
+ "Spare," Art implored, "yon holy pile;
+ That grand, old, time-worn turret spare;"
+ Meek Reverence, kneeling in the aisle,
+ Cried out, "Forbear!"
+
+ Gray-bearded Use, who, deaf and blind,
+ Groped for his old accustomed stone,
+ Leaned on his staff, and wept to find
+ His seat o'erthrown.
+
+ Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes,
+ O'erhung with paly locks of gold,--
+ "Why smite," he asked in sad surprise,
+ "The fair, the old?"
+
+ Yet louder rang the Strong One's stroke,
+ Yet nearer flashed his axe's gleam;
+ Shuddering and sick of heart I woke,
+ As from a dream.
+
+ I looked: aside the dust-cloud rolled,
+ The Waster seemed the Builder too;
+ Upspringing from the ruined Old
+ I saw the New.
+
+ 'T was but the ruin of the bad,--
+ The wasting of the wrong and ill;
+ Whate'er of good the old time had
+ Was living still.
+
+ Calm grew the brows of him I feared;
+ The frown which awed me passed away,
+ And left behind a smile which cheered
+ Like breaking day.
+
+ The grain grew green on battle-plains,
+ O'er swarded war-mounds grazed the cow;
+ The slave stood forging from his chains
+ The spade and plough.
+
+ Where frowned the fort, pavilions gay
+ And cottage windows, flower-entwined,
+ Looked out upon the peaceful bay
+ And hills behind.
+
+ Through vine-wreathed cups with wine once red,
+ The lights on brimming crystal fell,
+ Drawn, sparkling, from the rivulet head
+ And mossy well.
+
+ Through prison walls, like Heaven-sent hope,
+ Fresh breezes blew, and sunbeams strayed,
+ And with the idle gallows-rope
+ The young child played.
+
+ Where the doomed victim in his cell
+ Had counted o'er the weary hours,
+ Glad school-girls, answering to the bell,
+ Came crowned with flowers.
+
+ Grown wiser for the lesson given,
+ I fear no longer, for I know
+ That, where the share is deepest driven,
+ The best fruits grow.
+
+ The outworn rite, the old abuse,
+ The pious fraud transparent grown,
+ The good held captive in the use
+ Of wrong alone,--
+
+ These wait their doom, from that great law
+ Which makes the past time serve to-day;
+ And fresher life the world shall draw
+ From their decay.
+
+ Oh, backward-looking son of time!
+ The new is old, the old is new,
+ The cycle of a change sublime
+ Still sweeping through.
+
+ So wisely taught the Indian seer;
+ Destroying Seva, forming Brahm,
+ Who wake by turns Earth's love and fear,
+ Are one, the same.
+
+ Idly as thou, in that old day
+ Thou mournest, did thy sire repine;
+ So, in his time, thy child grown gray
+ Shall sigh for thine.
+
+ But life shall on and upward go;
+ Th' eternal step of Progress beats
+ To that great anthem, calm and slow,
+ Which God repeats.
+
+ Take heart! the Waster builds again,
+ A charmed life old Goodness bath;
+ The tares may perish, but the grain
+ Is not for death.
+
+ God works in all things; all obey
+ His first propulsion from the night
+ Wake thou and watch! the world is gray
+ With morning light!
+
+ 1848.
+
+
+
+
+THE PEACE CONVENTION AT BRUSSELS.
+
+ STILL in thy streets, O Paris! doth the stain
+ Of blood defy the cleansing autumn rain;
+ Still breaks the smoke Messina's ruins through,
+ And Naples mourns that new Bartholomew,
+ When squalid beggary, for a dole of bread,
+ At a crowned murderer's beck of license, fed
+ The yawning trenches with her noble dead;
+ Still, doomed Vienna, through thy stately halls
+ The shell goes crashing and the red shot falls,
+ And, leagued to crush thee, on the Danube's side,
+ The bearded Croat and Bosniak spearman ride;
+ Still in that vale where Himalaya's snow
+ Melts round the cornfields and the vines below,
+ The Sikh's hot cannon, answering ball for ball,
+ Flames in the breach of Moultan's shattered wall;
+ On Chenab's side the vulture seeks the slain,
+ And Sutlej paints with blood its banks again.
+
+ "What folly, then," the faithless critic cries,
+ With sneering lip, and wise world-knowing eyes,
+ "While fort to fort, and post to post, repeat
+ The ceaseless challenge of the war-drum's beat,
+ And round the green earth, to the church-bell's chime,
+ The morning drum-roll of the camp keeps time,
+ To dream of peace amidst a world in arms,
+ Of swords to ploughshares changed by Scriptural charms,
+ Of nations, drunken with the wine of blood,
+ Staggering to take the Pledge of Brotherhood,
+ Like tipplers answering Father Matthew's call;
+ The sullen Spaniard, and the mad-cap Gaul,
+ The bull-dog Briton, yielding but with life,
+ The Yankee swaggering with his bowie-knife,
+ The Russ, from banquets with the vulture shared,
+ The blood still dripping from his amber beard,
+ Quitting their mad Berserker dance to hear
+ The dull, meek droning of a drab-coat seer;
+ Leaving the sport of Presidents and Kings,
+ Where men for dice each titled gambler flings,
+ To meet alternate on the Seine and Thames,
+ For tea and gossip, like old country dames
+ No! let the cravens plead the weakling's cant,
+ Let Cobden cipher, and let Vincent rant,
+ Let Sturge preach peace to democratic throngs,
+ And Burritt, stammering through his hundred tongues,
+ Repeat, in all, his ghostly lessons o'er,
+ Timed to the pauses of the battery's roar;
+ Check Ban or Kaiser with the barricade
+ Of "Olive-leaves" and Resolutions made,
+ Spike guns with pointed Scripture-texts, and hope
+ To capsize navies with a windy trope;
+ Still shall the glory and the pomp of War
+ Along their train the shouting millions draw;
+ Still dusty Labor to the passing Brave
+ His cap shall doff, and Beauty's kerchief wave;
+ Still shall the bard to Valor tune his song,
+ Still Hero-worship kneel before the Strong;
+ Rosy and sleek, the sable-gowned divine,
+ O'er his third bottle of suggestive wine,
+ To plumed and sworded auditors, shall prove
+ Their trade accordant with the Law of Love;
+ And Church for State, and State for Church, shall fight,
+ And both agree, that "Might alone is Right!"
+ Despite of sneers like these, O faithful few,
+ Who dare to hold God's word and witness true,
+ Whose clear-eyed faith transcends our evil time,
+ And o'er the present wilderness of crime
+ Sees the calm future, with its robes of green,
+ Its fleece-flecked mountains, and soft streams between,--
+ Still keep the path which duty bids ye tread,
+ Though worldly wisdom shake the cautious head;
+ No truth from Heaven descends upon our sphere,
+ Without the greeting of the skeptic's sneer;
+ Denied and mocked at, till its blessings fall,
+ Common as dew and sunshine, over all."
+
+ Then, o'er Earth's war-field, till the strife shall cease,
+ Like Morven's harpers, sing your song of peace;
+ As in old fable rang the Thracian's lyre,
+ Midst howl of fiends and roar of penal fire,
+ Till the fierce din to pleasing murmurs fell,
+ And love subdued the maddened heart of hell.
+ Lend, once again, that holy song a tongue,
+ Which the glad angels of the Advent sung,
+ Their cradle-anthem for the Saviour's birth,
+ Glory to God, and peace unto the earth
+ Through the mad discord send that calming word
+ Which wind and wave on wild Genesareth heard,
+ Lift in Christ's name his Cross against the Sword!
+ Not vain the vision which the prophets saw,
+ Skirting with green the fiery waste of war,
+ Through the hot sand-gleam, looming soft and calm
+ On the sky's rim, the fountain-shading palm.
+ Still lives for Earth, which fiends so long have trod,
+ The great hope resting on the truth of God,--
+ Evil shall cease and Violence pass away,
+ And the tired world breathe free through a long
+ Sabbath day.
+
+ 11th mo., 1848.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRISONER FOR DEBT.
+
+Before the law authorizing imprisonment for debt had been abolished in
+Massachusetts, a revolutionary pensioner was confined in Charlestown
+jail for a debt of fourteen dollars, and on the fourth of July was seen
+waving a handkerchief from the bars of his cell in honor of the day.
+
+
+ Look on him! through his dungeon grate,
+ Feebly and cold, the morning light
+ Comes stealing round him, dim and late,
+ As if it loathed the sight.
+ Reclining on his strawy bed,
+ His hand upholds his drooping head;
+ His bloodless cheek is seamed and hard,
+ Unshorn his gray, neglected beard;
+ And o'er his bony fingers flow
+ His long, dishevelled locks of snow.
+ No grateful fire before him glows,
+ And yet the winter's breath is chill;
+ And o'er his half-clad person goes
+ The frequent ague thrill!
+ Silent, save ever and anon,
+ A sound, half murmur and half groan,
+ Forces apart the painful grip
+ Of the old sufferer's bearded lip;
+ Oh, sad and crushing is the fate
+ Of old age chained and desolate!
+
+ Just God! why lies that old man there?
+ A murderer shares his prison bed,
+ Whose eyeballs, through his horrid hair,
+ Gleam on him, fierce and red;
+ And the rude oath and heartless jeer
+ Fall ever on his loathing ear,
+ And, or in wakefulness or sleep,
+ Nerve, flesh, and pulses thrill and creep
+ Whene'er that ruffian's tossing limb,
+ Crimson with murder, touches him!
+
+ What has the gray-haired prisoner done?
+ Has murder stained his hands with gore?
+ Not so; his crime's a fouler one;
+ God made the old man poor!
+ For this he shares a felon's cell,
+ The fittest earthly type of hell
+ For this, the boon for which he poured
+ His young blood on the invader's sword,
+ And counted light the fearful cost;
+ His blood-gained liberty is lost!
+
+ And so, for such a place of rest,
+ Old prisoner, dropped thy blood as rain
+ On Concord's field, and Bunker's crest,
+ And Saratoga's plain?
+ Look forth, thou man of many scars,
+ Through thy dim dungeon's iron bars;
+ It must be joy, in sooth, to see
+ Yon monument upreared to thee;
+ Piled granite and a prison cell,
+ The land repays thy service well!
+
+ Go, ring the bells and fire the guns,
+ And fling the starry banner out;
+ Shout "Freedom!" till your lisping ones
+ Give back their cradle-shout;
+ Let boastful eloquence declaim
+ Of honor, liberty, and fame;
+ Still let the poet's strain be heard,
+ With glory for each second word,
+ And everything with breath agree
+ To praise "our glorious liberty!"
+
+ But when the patron cannon jars
+ That prison's cold and gloomy wall,
+ And through its grates the stripes and stars
+ Rise on the wind, and fall,
+ Think ye that prisoner's aged ear
+ Rejoices in the general cheer?
+ Think ye his dim and failing eye
+ Is kindled at your pageantry?
+ Sorrowing of soul, and chained of limb,
+ What is your carnival to him?
+
+ Down with the law that binds him thus!
+ Unworthy freemen, let it find
+ No refuge from the withering curse
+ Of God and human-kind
+ Open the prison's living tomb,
+ And usher from its brooding gloom
+ The victims of your savage code
+ To the free sun and air of God;
+ No longer dare as crime to brand
+ The chastening of the Almighty's hand.
+
+ 1849.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS.
+
+The reader of the biography of William Allen, the philanthropic
+associate of Clarkson and Romilly, cannot fail to admire his simple and
+beautiful record of a tour through Europe, in the years 1818 and 1819,
+in the company of his American friend, Stephen Grellett.
+
+
+ No aimless wanderers, by the fiend Unrest
+ Goaded from shore to shore;
+ No schoolmen, turning, in their classic quest,
+ The leaves of empire o'er.
+ Simple of faith, and bearing in their hearts
+ The love of man and God,
+ Isles of old song, the Moslem's ancient marts,
+ And Scythia's steppes, they trod.
+
+ Where the long shadows of the fir and pine
+ In the night sun are cast,
+ And the deep heart of many a Norland mine
+ Quakes at each riving blast;
+ Where, in barbaric grandeur, Moskwa stands,
+ A baptized Scythian queen,
+ With Europe's arts and Asia's jewelled hands,
+ The North and East between!
+
+ Where still, through vales of Grecian fable, stray
+ The classic forms of yore,
+ And beauty smiles, new risen from the spray,
+ And Dian weeps once more;
+ Where every tongue in Smyrna's mart resounds;
+ And Stamboul from the sea
+ Lifts her tall minarets over burial-grounds
+ Black with the cypress-tree.
+
+ From Malta's temples to the gates of Rome,
+ Following the track of Paul,
+ And where the Alps gird round the Switzer's home
+ Their vast, eternal wall;
+ They paused not by the ruins of old time,
+ They scanned no pictures rare,
+ Nor lingered where the snow-locked mountains
+ climb
+ The cold abyss of air!
+
+ But unto prisons, where men lay in chains,
+ To haunts where Hunger pined,
+ To kings and courts forgetful of the pains
+ And wants of human-kind,
+ Scattering sweet words, and quiet deeds of good,
+ Along their way, like flowers,
+ Or pleading, as Christ's freemen only could,
+ With princes and with powers;
+
+ Their single aim the purpose to fulfil
+ Of Truth, from day to day,
+ Simply obedient to its guiding will,
+ They held their pilgrim way.
+ Yet dream not, hence, the beautiful and old
+ Were wasted on their sight,
+ Who in the school of Christ had learned to hold
+ All outward things aright.
+
+ Not less to them the breath of vineyards blown
+ From off the Cyprian shore,
+ Not less for them the Alps in sunset shone,
+ That man they valued more.
+ A life of beauty lends to all it sees
+ The beauty of its thought;
+ And fairest forms and sweetest harmonies
+ Make glad its way, unsought.
+
+ In sweet accordancy of praise and love,
+ The singing waters run;
+ And sunset mountains wear in light above
+ The smile of duty done;
+ Sure stands the promise,--ever to the meek
+ A heritage is given;
+ Nor lose they Earth who, single-hearted, seek
+ The righteousness of Heaven!
+
+ 1849.
+
+
+
+
+THE MEN OF OLD.
+
+ "WELL speed thy mission, bold Iconoclast!
+ Yet all unworthy of its trust thou art,
+ If, with dry eye, and cold, unloving heart,
+ Thou tread'st the solemn Pantheon of the Past,
+ By the great Future's dazzling hope made blind
+ To all the beauty, power, and truth behind.
+ Not without reverent awe shouldst thou put by
+ The cypress branches and the amaranth blooms,
+ Where, with clasped hands of prayer, upon their tombs
+ The effigies of old confessors lie,
+ God's witnesses; the voices of His will,
+ Heard in the slow march of the centuries still
+ Such were the men at whose rebuking frown,
+ Dark with God's wrath, the tyrant's knee went down;
+ Such from the terrors of the guilty drew
+ The vassal's freedom and the poor man's due."
+
+ St. Anselm (may he rest forevermore
+ In Heaven's sweet peace!) forbade, of old, the sale
+ Of men as slaves, and from the sacred pale
+ Hurled the Northumbrian buyers of the poor.
+ To ransom souls from bonds and evil fate
+ St. Ambrose melted down the sacred plate,--
+ Image of saint, the chalice, and the pix,
+ Crosses of gold, and silver candlesticks.
+ "Man is worth more than temples!" he replied
+ To such as came his holy work to chide.
+ And brave Cesarius, stripping altars bare,
+ And coining from the Abbey's golden hoard
+ The captive's freedom, answered to the prayer
+ Or threat of those whose fierce zeal for the Lord
+ Stifled their love of man,--"An earthen dish
+ The last sad supper of the Master bore
+ Most miserable sinners! do ye wish
+ More than your Lord, and grudge His dying poor
+ What your own pride and not His need requires?
+ Souls, than these shining gauds, He values more
+ Mercy, not sacrifice, His heart desires!"
+ O faithful worthies! resting far behind
+ In your dark ages, since ye fell asleep,
+ Much has been done for truth and human-kind;
+ Shadows are scattered wherein ye groped blind;
+ Man claims his birthright, freer pulses leap
+ Through peoples driven in your day like sheep;
+ Yet, like your own, our age's sphere of light,
+ Though widening still, is walled around by night;
+ With slow, reluctant eye, the Church has read,
+ Skeptic at heart, the lessons of its Head;
+ Counting, too oft, its living members less
+ Than the wall's garnish and the pulpit's dress;
+ World-moving zeal, with power to bless and feed
+ Life's fainting pilgrims, to their utter need,
+ Instead of bread, holds out the stone of creed;
+ Sect builds and worships where its wealth and
+ pride
+ And vanity stand shrined and deified,
+ Careless that in the shadow of its walls
+ God's living temple into ruin falls.
+ We need, methinks, the prophet-hero still,
+ Saints true of life, and martyrs strong of will,
+ To tread the land, even now, as Xavier trod
+ The streets of Goa, barefoot, with his bell,
+ Proclaiming freedom in the name of God,
+ And startling tyrants with the fear of hell
+ Soft words, smooth prophecies, are doubtless well;
+ But to rebuke the age's popular crime,
+ We need the souls of fire, the hearts of that old
+ time!
+
+ 1849.
+
+
+
+
+TO PIUS IX.
+
+The writer of these lines is no enemy of Catholics. He has, on more than
+one occasion, exposed himself to the censures of his Protestant
+brethren, by his strenuous endeavors to procure indemnification for the
+owners of the convent destroyed near Boston. He defended the cause of
+the Irish patriots long before it had become popular in this country;
+and he was one of the first to urge the most liberal aid to the
+suffering and starving population of the Catholic island. The severity
+of his language finds its ample apology in the reluctant confession of
+one of the most eminent Romish priests, the eloquent and devoted Father
+Ventura.
+
+
+ THE cannon's brazen lips are cold;
+ No red shell blazes down the air;
+ And street and tower, and temple old,
+ Are silent as despair.
+
+ The Lombard stands no more at bay,
+ Rome's fresh young life has bled in vain;
+ The ravens scattered by the day
+ Come back with night again.
+
+ Now, while the fratricides of France
+ Are treading on the neck of Rome,
+ Hider at Gaeta, seize thy chance!
+ Coward and cruel, come!
+
+ Creep now from Naples' bloody skirt;
+ Thy mummer's part was acted well,
+ While Rome, with steel and fire begirt,
+ Before thy crusade fell!
+
+ Her death-groans answered to thy prayer;
+ Thy chant, the drum and bugle-call;
+ Thy lights, the burning villa's glare;
+ Thy beads, the shell and ball!
+
+ Let Austria clear thy way, with hands
+ Foul from Ancona's cruel sack,
+ And Naples, with his dastard bands
+ Of murderers, lead thee back!
+
+ Rome's lips are dumb; the orphan's wail,
+ The mother's shriek, thou mayst not hear
+ Above the faithless Frenchman's hail,
+ The unsexed shaveling's cheer!
+
+ Go, bind on Rome her cast-off weight,
+ The double curse of crook and crown,
+ Though woman's scorn and manhood's hate
+ From wall and roof flash down!
+
+ Nor heed those blood-stains on the wall,
+ Not Tiber's flood can wash away,
+ Where, in thy stately Quirinal,
+ Thy mangled victims lay!
+
+ Let the world murmur; let its cry
+ Of horror and disgust be heard;
+ Truth stands alone; thy coward lie
+ Is backed by lance and sword!
+
+ The cannon of St. Angelo,
+ And chanting priest and clanging bell,
+ And beat of drum and bugle blow,
+ Shall greet thy coming well!
+
+ Let lips of iron and tongues of slaves
+ Fit welcome give thee; for her part,
+ Rome, frowning o'er her new-made graves,
+ Shall curse thee from her heart!
+
+ No wreaths of sad Campagna's flowers
+ Shall childhood in thy pathway fling;
+ No garlands from their ravaged bowers
+ Shall Terni's maidens bring;
+
+ But, hateful as that tyrant old,
+ The mocking witness of his crime,
+ In thee shall loathing eyes behold
+ The Nero of our time!
+
+ Stand where Rome's blood was freest shed,
+ Mock Heaven with impious thanks, and call
+ Its curses on the patriot dead,
+ Its blessings on the Gaul!
+
+ Or sit upon thy throne of lies,
+ A poor, mean idol, blood-besmeared,
+ Whom even its worshippers despise,
+ Unhonored, unrevered!
+
+ Yet, Scandal of the World! from thee
+ One needful truth mankind shall learn
+ That kings and priests to Liberty
+ And God are false in turn.
+
+ Earth wearies of them; and the long
+ Meek sufferance of the Heavens doth fail;
+ Woe for weak tyrants, when the strong
+ Wake, struggle, and prevail!
+
+ Not vainly Roman hearts have bled
+ To feed the Crosier and the Crown,
+ If, roused thereby, the world shall tread
+ The twin-born vampires down.
+
+ 1849.
+
+
+
+
+CALEF IN BOSTON.
+
+1692.
+
+ IN the solemn days of old,
+ Two men met in Boston town,
+ One a tradesman frank and bold,
+ One a preacher of renown.
+
+ Cried the last, in bitter tone:
+ "Poisoner of the wells of truth
+ Satan's hireling, thou hast sown
+ With his tares the heart of youth!"
+
+ Spake the simple tradesman then,
+ "God be judge 'twixt thee and me;
+ All thou knowed of truth hath been
+ Once a lie to men like thee.
+
+ "Falsehoods which we spurn to-day
+ Were the truths of long ago;
+ Let the dead boughs fall away,
+ Fresher shall the living grow.
+
+ "God is good and God is light,
+ In this faith I rest secure;
+ Evil can but serve the right,
+ Over all shall love endure.
+
+ "Of your spectral puppet play
+ I have traced the cunning wires;
+ Come what will, I needs must say,
+ God is true, and ye are liars."
+
+ When the thought of man is free,
+ Error fears its lightest tones;
+ So the priest cried, "Sadducee!"
+ And the people took up stones.
+
+ In the ancient burying-ground,
+ Side by side the twain now lie;
+ One with humble grassy mound,
+ One with marbles pale and high.
+
+ But the Lord hath blest the seed
+ Which that tradesman scattered then,
+ And the preacher's spectral creed
+ Chills no more the blood of men.
+
+ Let us trust, to one is known
+ Perfect love which casts out fear,
+ While the other's joys atone
+ For the wrong he suffered here.
+
+ 1849.
+
+
+
+
+OUR STATE.
+
+ THE South-land boasts its teeming cane,
+ The prairied West its heavy grain,
+ And sunset's radiant gates unfold
+ On rising marts and sands of gold.
+
+ Rough, bleak, and hard, our little State
+ Is scant of soil, of limits strait;
+ Her yellow sands are sands alone,
+ Her only mines are ice and stone!
+
+ From Autumn frost to April rain,
+ Too long her winter woods complain;
+ From budding flower to falling leaf,
+ Her summer time is all too brief.
+
+ Yet, on her rocks, and on her sands,
+ And wintry hills, the school-house stands,
+ And what her rugged soil denies,
+ The harvest of the mind supplies.
+
+ The riches of the Commonwealth
+ Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health;
+ And more to her than gold or grain,
+ The cunning hand and cultured brain.
+
+ For well she keeps her ancient stock,
+ The stubborn strength of Pilgrim Rock;
+ And still maintains, with milder laws,
+ And clearer light, the Good Old Cause.
+
+ Nor heeds the skeptic's puny hands,
+ While near her school the church-spire stands;
+ Nor fears the blinded bigot's rule,
+ While near her church-spire stands the school.
+
+ 1849.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES.
+
+ I HAVE been thinking of the victims bound
+ In Naples, dying for the lack of air
+ And sunshine, in their close, damp cells of pain,
+ Where hope is not, and innocence in vain
+ Appeals against the torture and the chain!
+ Unfortunates! whose crime it was to share
+ Our common love of freedom, and to dare,
+ In its behalf, Rome's harlot triple-crowned,
+ And her base pander, the most hateful thing
+ Who upon Christian or on Pagan ground
+ Makes vile the old heroic name of king.
+ O God most merciful! Father just and kind
+ Whom man hath bound let thy right hand unbind.
+ Or, if thy purposes of good behind
+ Their ills lie hidden, let the sufferers find
+ Strong consolations; leave them not to doubt
+ Thy providential care, nor yet without
+ The hope which all thy attributes inspire,
+ That not in vain the martyr's robe of fire
+ Is worn, nor the sad prisoner's fretting chain;
+ Since all who suffer for thy truth send forth,
+ Electrical, with every throb of pain,
+ Unquenchable sparks, thy own baptismal rain
+ Of fire and spirit over all the earth,
+ Making the dead in slavery live again.
+ Let this great hope be with them, as they lie
+ Shut from the light, the greenness, and the sky;
+ From the cool waters and the pleasant breeze,
+ The smell of flowers, and shade of summer trees;
+ Bound with the felon lepers, whom disease
+ And sins abhorred make loathsome; let them share
+ Pellico's faith, Foresti's strength to bear
+ Years of unutterable torment, stern and still,
+ As the chained Titan victor through his will!
+ Comfort them with thy future; let them see
+ The day-dawn of Italian liberty;
+ For that, with all good things, is hid with Thee,
+ And, perfect in thy thought, awaits its time to be.
+
+ I, who have spoken for freedom at the cost
+ Of some weak friendships, or some paltry prize
+ Of name or place, and more than I have lost
+ Have gained in wider reach of sympathies,
+ And free communion with the good and wise;
+ May God forbid that I should ever boast
+ Such easy self-denial, or repine
+ That the strong pulse of health no more is mine;
+ That, overworn at noonday, I must yield
+ To other hands the gleaning of the field;
+ A tired on-looker through the day's decline.
+ For blest beyond deserving still, and knowing
+ That kindly Providence its care is showing
+ In the withdrawal as in the bestowing,
+ Scarcely I dare for more or less to pray.
+ Beautiful yet for me this autumn day
+ Melts on its sunset hills; and, far away,
+ For me the Ocean lifts its solemn psalm,
+ To me the pine-woods whisper; and for me
+ Yon river, winding through its vales of calm,
+ By greenest banks, with asters purple-starred,
+ And gentian bloom and golden-rod made gay,
+ Flows down in silent gladness to the sea,
+ Like a pure spirit to its great reward!
+
+ Nor lack I friends, long-tried and near and dear,
+ Whose love is round me like this atmosphere,
+ Warm, soft, and golden. For such gifts to me
+ What shall I render, O my God, to thee?
+ Let me not dwell upon my lighter share
+ Of pain and ill that human life must bear;
+ Save me from selfish pining; let my heart,
+ Drawn from itself in sympathy, forget
+ The bitter longings of a vain regret,
+ The anguish of its own peculiar smart.
+ Remembering others, as I have to-day,
+ In their great sorrows, let me live alway
+ Not for myself alone, but have a part,
+ Such as a frail and erring spirit may,
+ In love which is of Thee, and which indeed Thou art!
+
+ 1851.
+
+
+
+
+THE PEACE OF EUROPE.
+
+ "GREAT peace in Europe! Order reigns
+ From Tiber's hills to Danube's plains!"
+ So say her kings and priests; so say
+ The lying prophets of our day.
+
+ Go lay to earth a listening ear;
+ The tramp of measured marches hear;
+ The rolling of the cannon's wheel,
+ The shotted musket's murderous peal,
+ The night alarm, the sentry's call,
+ The quick-eared spy in hut and hall!
+ From Polar sea and tropic fen
+ The dying-groans of exiled men!
+ The bolted cell, the galley's chains,
+ The scaffold smoking with its stains!
+ Order, the hush of brooding slaves
+ Peace, in the dungeon-vaults and graves!
+
+ O Fisher! of the world-wide net,
+ With meshes in all waters set,
+ Whose fabled keys of heaven and hell
+ Bolt hard the patriot's prison-cell,
+ And open wide the banquet-hall,
+ Where kings and priests hold carnival!
+ Weak vassal tricked in royal guise,
+ Boy Kaiser with thy lip of lies;
+ Base gambler for Napoleon's crown,
+ Barnacle on his dead renown!
+ Thou, Bourbon Neapolitan,
+ Crowned scandal, loathed of God and man
+ And thou, fell Spider of the North!
+ Stretching thy giant feelers forth,
+ Within whose web the freedom dies
+ Of nations eaten up like flies!
+ Speak, Prince and Kaiser, Priest and Czar I
+ If this be Peace, pray what is War?
+
+ White Angel of the Lord! unmeet
+ That soil accursed for thy pure feet.
+ Never in Slavery's desert flows
+ The fountain of thy charmed repose;
+ No tyrant's hand thy chaplet weaves
+ Of lilies and of olive-leaves;
+ Not with the wicked shalt thou dwell,
+ Thus saith the Eternal Oracle;
+ Thy home is with the pure and free!
+ Stern herald of thy better day,
+ Before thee, to prepare thy way,
+ The Baptist Shade of Liberty,
+ Gray, scarred and hairy-robed, must press
+ With bleeding feet the wilderness!
+ Oh that its voice might pierces the ear
+ Of princes, trembling while they hear
+ A cry as of the Hebrew seer
+ Repent! God's kingdom draweth near!
+
+ 1852.
+
+
+
+
+ASTRAEA.
+
+ "Jove means to settle
+ Astraea in her seat again,
+ And let down from his golden chain
+ An age of better metal."
+ BEN JONSON, 1615.
+
+
+ O POET rare and old!
+ Thy words are prophecies;
+ Forward the age of gold,
+ The new Saturnian lies.
+
+ The universal prayer
+ And hope are not in vain;
+ Rise, brothers! and prepare
+ The way for Saturn's reign.
+
+ Perish shall all which takes
+ From labor's board and can;
+ Perish shall all which makes
+ A spaniel of the man!
+
+ Free from its bonds the mind,
+ The body from the rod;
+ Broken all chains that bind
+ The image of our God.
+
+ Just men no longer pine
+ Behind their prison-bars;
+ Through the rent dungeon shine
+ The free sun and the stars.
+
+ Earth own, at last, untrod
+ By sect, or caste, or clan,
+ The fatherhood of God,
+ The brotherhood of man!
+
+ Fraud fail, craft perish, forth
+ The money-changers driven,
+ And God's will done on earth,
+ As now in heaven.
+
+ 1852.
+
+
+
+
+THE DISENTHRALLED.
+
+ HE had bowed down to drunkenness,
+ An abject worshipper
+ The pride of manhood's pulse had grown
+ Too faint and cold to stir;
+ And he had given his spirit up
+ To the unblessed thrall,
+ And bowing to the poison cup,
+ He gloried in his fall!
+
+ There came a change--the cloud rolled off,
+ And light fell on his brain--
+ And like the passing of a dream
+ That cometh not again,
+ The shadow of the spirit fled.
+ He saw the gulf before,
+ He shuddered at the waste behind,
+ And was a man once more.
+
+ He shook the serpent folds away,
+ That gathered round his heart,
+ As shakes the swaying forest-oak
+ Its poison vine apart;
+ He stood erect; returning pride
+ Grew terrible within,
+ And conscience sat in judgment, on
+ His most familiar sin.
+
+ The light of Intellect again
+ Along his pathway shone;
+ And Reason like a monarch sat
+ Upon his olden throne.
+ The honored and the wise once more
+ Within his presence came;
+ And lingered oft on lovely lips
+ His once forbidden name.
+
+ There may be glory in the might,
+ That treadeth nations down;
+ Wreaths for the crimson conqueror,
+ Pride for the kingly crown;
+ But nobler is that triumph hour,
+ The disenthralled shall find,
+ When evil passion boweth down,
+ Unto the Godlike mind.
+
+
+
+
+THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY.
+
+ THE proudest now is but my peer,
+ The highest not more high;
+ To-day, of all the weary year,
+ A king of men am I.
+ To-day, alike are great and small,
+ The nameless and the known;
+ My palace is the people's hall,
+ The ballot-box my throne!
+
+ Who serves to-day upon the list
+ Beside the served shall stand;
+ Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
+ The gloved and dainty hand!
+ The rich is level with the poor,
+ The weak is strong to-day;
+ And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
+ Than homespun frock of gray.
+
+ To-day let pomp and vain pretence
+ My stubborn right abide;
+ I set a plain man's common sense
+ Against the pedant's pride.
+ To-day shall simple manhood try
+ The strength of gold and land;
+ The wide world has not wealth to buy
+ The power in my right hand!
+
+ While there's a grief to seek redress,
+ Or balance to adjust,
+ Where weighs our living manhood less
+ Than Mammon's vilest dust,--
+ While there's a right to need my vote,
+ A wrong to sweep away,
+ Up! clouted knee and ragged coat
+ A man's a man to-day.
+
+ 1848.
+
+
+
+
+THE DREAM OF PIO NONO.
+
+ IT chanced that while the pious troops of France
+ Fought in the crusade Pio Nono preached,
+ What time the holy Bourbons stayed his hands
+ (The Hun and Aaron meet for such a Moses),
+ Stretched forth from Naples towards rebellious Rome
+ To bless the ministry of Oudinot,
+ And sanctify his iron homilies
+ And sharp persuasions of the bayonet,
+ That the great pontiff fell asleep, and dreamed.
+
+ He stood by Lake Tiberias, in the sun
+ Of the bight Orient; and beheld the lame,
+ The sick, and blind, kneel at the Master's feet,
+ And rise up whole. And, sweetly over all,
+ Dropping the ladder of their hymn of praise
+ From heaven to earth, in silver rounds of song,
+ He heard the blessed angels sing of peace,
+ Good-will to man, and glory to the Lord.
+
+ Then one, with feet unshod, and leathern face
+ Hardened and darkened by fierce summer suns
+ And hot winds of the desert, closer drew
+ His fisher's haick, and girded up his loins,
+ And spake, as one who had authority
+ "Come thou with me."
+
+ Lakeside and eastern sky
+ And the sweet song of angels passed away,
+ And, with a dream's alacrity of change,
+ The priest, and the swart fisher by his side,
+ Beheld the Eternal City lift its domes
+ And solemn fanes and monumental pomp
+ Above the waste Campagna. On the hills
+ The blaze of burning villas rose and fell,
+ And momently the mortar's iron throat
+ Roared from the trenches; and, within the walls,
+ Sharp crash of shells, low groans of human pain,
+ Shout, drum beat, and the clanging larum-bell,
+ And tramp of hosts, sent up a mingled sound,
+ Half wail and half defiance. As they passed
+ The gate of San Pancrazio, human blood
+ Flowed ankle-high about them, and dead men
+ Choked the long street with gashed and gory piles,--
+ A ghastly barricade of mangled flesh,
+ From which at times, quivered a living hand,
+ And white lips moved and moaned. A father tore
+ His gray hairs, by the body of his son,
+ In frenzy; and his fair young daughter wept
+ On his old bosom. Suddenly a flash
+ Clove the thick sulphurous air, and man and maid
+ Sank, crushed and mangled by the shattering shell.
+
+ Then spake the Galilean: "Thou hast seen
+ The blessed Master and His works of love;
+ Look now on thine! Hear'st thou the angels sing
+ Above this open hell? Thou God's high-priest!
+ Thou the Vicegerent of the Prince of Peace!
+ Thou the successor of His chosen ones!
+ I, Peter, fisherman of Galilee,
+ In the dear Master's name, and for the love
+ Of His true Church, proclaim thee Antichrist,
+ Alien and separate from His holy faith,
+ Wide as the difference between death and life,
+ The hate of man and the great love of God!
+ Hence, and repent!"
+
+ Thereat the pontiff woke,
+ Trembling, and muttering o'er his fearful dream.
+ "What means he?" cried the Bourbon, "Nothing more
+ Than that your majesty hath all too well
+ Catered for your poor guests, and that, in sooth,
+ The Holy Father's supper troubleth him,"
+ Said Cardinal Antonelli, with a smile.
+
+ 1853.
+
+
+
+
+THE VOICES.
+
+ WHY urge the long, unequal fight,
+ Since Truth has fallen in the street,
+ Or lift anew the trampled light,
+ Quenched by the heedless million's feet?
+
+ "Give o'er the thankless task; forsake
+ The fools who know not ill from good
+ Eat, drink, enjoy thy own, and take
+ Thine ease among the multitude.
+
+ "Live out thyself; with others share
+ Thy proper life no more; assume
+ The unconcern of sun and air,
+ For life or death, or blight or bloom.
+
+ "The mountain pine looks calmly on
+ The fires that scourge the plains below,
+ Nor heeds the eagle in the sun
+ The small birds piping in the snow!
+
+ "The world is God's, not thine; let Him
+ Work out a change, if change must be
+ The hand that planted best can trim
+ And nurse the old unfruitful tree."
+
+ So spake the Tempter, when the light
+ Of sun and stars had left the sky;
+ I listened, through the cloud and night,
+ And beard, methought, a voice reply:
+
+ "Thy task may well seem over-hard,
+ Who scatterest in a thankless soil
+ Thy life as seed, with no reward
+ Save that which Duty gives to Toil.
+
+ "Not wholly is thy heart resigned
+ To Heaven's benign and just decree,
+ Which, linking thee with all thy kind,
+ Transmits their joys and griefs to thee.
+
+ "Break off that sacred chain, and turn
+ Back on thyself thy love and care;
+ Be thou thine own mean idol, burn
+ Faith, Hope, and Trust, thy children, there.
+
+ "Released from that fraternal law
+ Which shares the common bale and bliss,
+ No sadder lot could Folly draw,
+ Or Sin provoke from Fate, than this.
+
+ "The meal unshared is food unblest
+ Thou hoard'st in vain what love should spend;
+ Self-ease is pain; thy only rest
+ Is labor for a worthy end;
+
+ "A toil that gains with what it yields,
+ And scatters to its own increase,
+ And hears, while sowing outward fields,
+ The harvest-song of inward peace.
+
+ "Free-lipped the liberal streamlets run,
+ Free shines for all the healthful ray;
+ The still pool stagnates in the sun,
+ The lurid earth-fire haunts decay.
+
+ "What is it that the crowd requite
+ Thy love with hate, thy truth with lies?
+ And but to faith, and not to sight,
+ The walls of Freedom's temple rise?
+
+ "Yet do thy work; it shall succeed
+ In thine or in another's day;
+ And, if denied the victor's meed,
+ Thou shalt not lack the toiler's pay.
+
+ "Faith shares the future's promise; Love's
+ Self-offering is a triumph won;
+ And each good thought or action moves
+ The dark world nearer to the sun.
+
+ "Then faint not, falter not, nor plead
+ Thy weakness; truth itself is strong;
+ The lion's strength, the eagle's speed,
+ Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong.
+
+ "Thy nature, which, through fire and flood,
+ To place or gain finds out its way,
+ Hath power to seek the highest good,
+ And duty's holiest call obey!
+
+ "Strivest thou in darkness?--Foes without
+ In league with traitor thoughts within;
+ Thy night-watch kept with trembling Doubt
+ And pale Remorse the ghost of Sin?
+
+ "Hast thou not, on some week of storm,
+ Seen the sweet Sabbath breaking fair,
+ And cloud and shadow, sunlit, form
+ The curtains of its tent of prayer?
+
+ "So, haply, when thy task shall end,
+ The wrong shall lose itself in right,
+ And all thy week-day darkness blend
+ With the long Sabbath of the light!"
+
+ 1854.
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW EXODUS.
+
+Written upon hearing that slavery had been formally abolished in Egypt.
+Unhappily, the professions and pledges of the vacillating government of
+Egypt proved unreliable.
+
+
+ BY fire and cloud, across the desert sand,
+ And through the parted waves,
+ From their long bondage, with an outstretched hand,
+ God led the Hebrew slaves!
+
+ Dead as the letter of the Pentateuch,
+ As Egypt's statues cold,
+ In the adytum of the sacred book
+ Now stands that marvel old.
+
+ "Lo, God is great!" the simple Moslem says.
+ We seek the ancient date,
+ Turn the dry scroll, and make that living phrase
+ A dead one: "God was great!"
+
+ And, like the Coptic monks by Mousa's wells,
+ We dream of wonders past,
+ Vague as the tales the wandering Arab tells,
+ Each drowsier than the last.
+
+ O fools and blind! Above the Pyramids
+ Stretches once more that hand,
+ And tranced Egypt, from her stony lids,
+ Flings back her veil of sand.
+
+ And morning-smitten Memnon, singing, wakes;
+ And, listening by his Nile,
+ O'er Ammon's grave and awful visage breaks
+ A sweet and human smile.
+
+ Not, as before, with hail and fire, and call
+ Of death for midnight graves,
+ But in the stillness of the noonday, fall
+ The fetters of the slaves.
+
+ No longer through the Red Sea, as of old,
+ The bondmen walk dry shod;
+ Through human hearts, by love of Him controlled,
+ Runs now that path of God.
+
+ 1856.
+
+
+
+
+THE CONQUEST OF FINLAND.
+
+"Joseph Sturge, with a companion, Thomas Harvey, has been visiting the
+shores of Finland, to ascertain the amount of mischief and loss to poor
+and peaceable sufferers, occasioned by the gun-boats of the allied
+squadrons in the late war, with a view to obtaining relief for them."--
+Friends' Review.
+
+
+ ACROSS the frozen marshes
+ The winds of autumn blow,
+ And the fen-lands of the Wetter
+ Are white with early snow.
+
+ But where the low, gray headlands
+ Look o'er the Baltic brine,
+ A bark is sailing in the track
+ Of England's battle-line.
+
+ No wares hath she to barter
+ For Bothnia's fish and grain;
+ She saileth not for pleasure,
+ She saileth not for gain.
+
+ But still by isle or mainland
+ She drops her anchor down,
+ Where'er the British cannon
+ Rained fire on tower and town.
+
+ Outspake the ancient Amtman,
+ At the gate of Helsingfors
+ "Why comes this ship a-spying
+ In the track of England's wars?"
+
+ "God bless her," said the coast-guard,--
+ "God bless the ship, I say.
+ The holy angels trim the sails
+ That speed her on her way!
+
+ "Where'er she drops her anchor,
+ The peasant's heart is glad;
+ Where'er she spreads her parting sail,
+ The peasant's heart is sad.
+
+ "Each wasted town and hamlet
+ She visits to restore;
+ To roof the shattered cabin,
+ And feed the starving poor.
+
+ "The sunken boats of fishers,
+ The foraged beeves and grain,
+ The spoil of flake and storehouse,
+ The good ship brings again.
+
+ "And so to Finland's sorrow
+ The sweet amend is made,
+ As if the healing hand of Christ
+ Upon her wounds were laid!"
+
+ Then said the gray old Amtman,
+ "The will of God be done!
+ The battle lost by England's hate,
+ By England's love is won!
+
+ "We braved the iron tempest
+ That thundered on our shore;
+ But when did kindness fail to find
+ The key to Finland's door?
+
+ "No more from Aland's ramparts
+ Shall warning signal come,
+ Nor startled Sweaborg hear again
+ The roll of midnight drum.
+
+ "Beside our fierce Black Eagle
+ The Dove of Peace shall rest;
+ And in the mouths of cannon
+ The sea-bird make her nest.
+
+ "For Finland, looking seaward,
+ No coming foe shall scan;
+ And the holy bells of Abo
+ Shall ring, 'Good-will to man!'
+
+ "Then row thy boat, O fisher!
+ In peace on lake and bay;
+ And thou, young maiden, dance again
+ Around the poles of May!
+
+ "Sit down, old men, together,
+ Old wives, in quiet spin;
+ Henceforth the Anglo-Saxon
+ Is the brother of the Finn!"
+
+ 1856.
+
+
+
+
+THE EVE OF ELECTION.
+
+ FROM gold to gray
+ Our mild sweet day
+ Of Indian Summer fades too soon;
+ But tenderly
+ Above the sea
+ Hangs, white and calm, the hunter's moon.
+
+ In its pale fire,
+ The village spire
+ Shows like the zodiac's spectral lance;
+ The painted walls
+ Whereon it falls
+ Transfigured stand in marble trance!
+
+ O'er fallen leaves
+ The west-wind grieves,
+ Yet comes a seed-time round again;
+ And morn shall see
+ The State sown free
+ With baleful tares or healthful grain.
+
+ Along the street
+ The shadows meet
+ Of Destiny, whose hands conceal
+ The moulds of fate
+ That shape the State,
+ And make or mar the common weal.
+
+ Around I see
+ The powers that be;
+ I stand by Empire's primal springs;
+ And princes meet,
+ In every street,
+ And hear the tread of uncrowned kings!
+
+ Hark! through the crowd
+ The laugh runs loud,
+ Beneath the sad, rebuking moon.
+ God save the land
+ A careless hand
+ May shake or swerve ere morrow's noon!
+
+ No jest is this;
+ One cast amiss
+ May blast the hope of Freedom's year.
+ Oh, take me where
+ Are hearts of prayer,
+ And foreheads bowed in reverent fear!
+
+ Not lightly fall
+ Beyond recall
+ The written scrolls a breath can float;
+ The crowning fact
+ The kingliest act
+ Of Freedom is the freeman's vote!
+
+ For pearls that gem
+ A diadem
+ The diver in the deep sea dies;
+ The regal right
+ We boast to-night
+ Is ours through costlier sacrifice;
+
+ The blood of Vane,
+ His prison pain
+ Who traced the path the Pilgrim trod,
+ And hers whose faith
+ Drew strength from death,
+ And prayed her Russell up to God!
+
+ Our hearts grow cold,
+ We lightly hold
+ A right which brave men died to gain;
+ The stake, the cord,
+ The axe, the sword,
+ Grim nurses at its birth of pain.
+
+ The shadow rend,
+ And o'er us bend,
+ O martyrs, with your crowns and palms;
+ Breathe through these throngs
+ Your battle songs,
+ Your scaffold prayers, and dungeon psalms.
+
+ Look from the sky,
+ Like God's great eye,
+ Thou solemn moon, with searching beam,
+ Till in the sight
+ Of thy pure light
+ Our mean self-seekings meaner seem.
+
+ Shame from our hearts
+ Unworthy arts,
+ The fraud designed, the purpose dark;
+ And smite away
+ The hands we lay
+ Profanely on the sacred ark.
+
+ To party claims
+ And private aims,
+ Reveal that august face of Truth,
+ Whereto are given
+ The age of heaven,
+ The beauty of immortal youth.
+
+ So shall our voice
+ Of sovereign choice
+ Swell the deep bass of duty done,
+ And strike the key
+ Of time to be,
+ When God and man shall speak as one!
+
+ 1858.
+
+
+
+
+FROM PERUGIA.
+
+"The thing which has the most dissevered the people from the Pope,--the
+unforgivable thing,--the breaking point between him and them,--has been
+the encouragement and promotion he gave to the officer under whom were
+executed the slaughters of Perugia. That made the breaking point in many
+honest hearts that had clung to him before."--HARRIET BEECHER STOWE'S
+Letters from Italy.
+
+
+ The tall, sallow guardsmen their horsetails have spread,
+ Flaming out in their violet, yellow, and red;
+ And behind go the lackeys in crimson and buff,
+ And the chamberlains gorgeous in velvet and ruff;
+ Next, in red-legged pomp, come the cardinals forth,
+ Each a lord of the church and a prince of the earth.
+
+ What's this squeak of the fife, and this batter of drum
+ Lo! the Swiss of the Church from Perugia come;
+ The militant angels, whose sabres drive home
+ To the hearts of the malcontents, cursed and abhorred,
+ The good Father's missives, and "Thus saith the Lord!"
+ And lend to his logic the point of the sword!
+
+ O maids of Etruria, gazing forlorn
+ O'er dark Thrasymenus, dishevelled and torn!
+ O fathers, who pluck at your gray beards for shame!
+ O mothers, struck dumb by a woe without name!
+ Well ye know how the Holy Church hireling behaves,
+ And his tender compassion of prisons and graves!
+
+ There they stand, the hired stabbers, the blood-stains yet fresh,
+ That splashed like red wine from the vintage of flesh;
+ Grim instruments, careless as pincers and rack
+ How the joints tear apart, and the strained sinews crack;
+ But the hate that glares on them is sharp as their swords,
+ And the sneer and the scowl print the air with fierce words!
+
+ Off with hats, down with knees, shout your vivas like mad!
+ Here's the Pope in his holiday righteousness clad,
+ From shorn crown to toe-nail, kiss-worn to the quick,
+ Of sainthood in purple the pattern and pick,
+ Who the role of the priest and the soldier unites,
+ And, praying like Aaron, like Joshua fights!
+
+ Is this Pio Nono the gracious, for whom
+ We sang our hosannas and lighted all Rome;
+ With whose advent we dreamed the new era began
+ When the priest should be human, the monk be a man?
+ Ah, the wolf's with the sheep, and the fox with the fowl,
+ When freedom we trust to the crosier and cowl!
+
+ Stand aside, men of Rome! Here's a hangman-faced Swiss--
+ (A blessing for him surely can't go amiss)--
+ Would kneel down the sanctified slipper to kiss.
+ Short shrift will suffice him,--he's blest beyond doubt;
+ But there 's blood on his hands which would scarcely wash out,
+ Though Peter himself held the baptismal spout!
+
+ Make way for the next! Here's another sweet son
+ What's this mastiff-jawed rascal in epaulets done?
+ He did, whispers rumor, (its truth God forbid!)
+ At Perugia what Herod at Bethlehem did.
+ And the mothers? Don't name them! these humors of war
+ They who keep him in service must pardon him for.
+
+ Hist! here's the arch-knave in a cardinal's hat,
+ With the heart of a wolf, and the stealth of a cat
+ (As if Judas and Herod together were rolled),
+ Who keeps, all as one, the Pope's conscience and gold,
+ Mounts guard on the altar, and pilfers from thence,
+ And flatters St. Peter while stealing his pence!
+
+
+ Who doubts Antonelli? Have miracles ceased
+ When robbers say mass, and Barabbas is priest?
+ When the Church eats and drinks, at its mystical board,
+ The true flesh and blood carved and shed by its sword,
+ When its martyr, unsinged, claps the crown on his head,
+ And roasts, as his proxy, his neighbor instead!
+
+ There! the bells jow and jangle the same blessed way
+ That they did when they rang for Bartholomew's day.
+ Hark! the tallow-faced monsters, nor women nor boys,
+ Vex the air with a shrill, sexless horror of noise.
+ Te Deum laudamus! All round without stint
+ The incense-pot swings with a taint of blood in 't!
+
+ And now for the blessing! Of little account,
+ You know, is the old one they heard on the Mount.
+ Its giver was landless, His raiment was poor,
+ No jewelled tiara His fishermen wore;
+ No incense, no lackeys, no riches, no home,
+ No Swiss guards! We order things better at Rome.
+
+ So bless us the strong hand, and curse us the weak;
+ Let Austria's vulture have food for her beak;
+ Let the wolf-whelp of Naples play Bomba again,
+ With his death-cap of silence, and halter, and chain;
+ Put reason, and justice, and truth under ban;
+ For the sin unforgiven is freedom for man!
+
+ 1858.
+
+
+
+
+ITALY.
+
+ ACROSS the sea I heard the groans
+ Of nations in the intervals
+ Of wind and wave. Their blood and bones
+ Cried out in torture, crushed by thrones,
+ And sucked by priestly cannibals.
+
+ I dreamed of Freedom slowly gained
+ By martyr meekness, patience, faith,
+ And lo! an athlete grimly stained,
+ With corded muscles battle-strained,
+ Shouting it from the fields of death!
+
+ I turn me, awe-struck, from the sight,
+ Among the clamoring thousands mute,
+ I only know that God is right,
+ And that the children of the light
+ Shall tread the darkness under foot.
+
+ I know the pent fire heaves its crust,
+ That sultry skies the bolt will form
+ To smite them clear; that Nature must
+ The balance of her powers adjust,
+ Though with the earthquake and the storm.
+
+ God reigns, and let the earth rejoice!
+ I bow before His sterner plan.
+ Dumb are the organs of my choice;
+ He speaks in battle's stormy voice,
+ His praise is in the wrath of man!
+
+ Yet, surely as He lives, the day
+ Of peace He promised shall be ours,
+ To fold the flags of war, and lay
+ Its sword and spear to rust away,
+ And sow its ghastly fields with flowers!
+
+ 1860.
+
+
+
+
+FREEDOM IN BRAZIL.
+
+ WITH clearer light, Cross of the South, shine forth
+ In blue Brazilian skies;
+ And thou, O river, cleaving half the earth
+ From sunset to sunrise,
+
+ From the great mountains to the Atlantic waves
+ Thy joy's long anthem pour.
+ Yet a few years (God make them less!) and slaves
+ Shall shame thy pride no more.
+ No fettered feet thy shaded margins press;
+ But all men shall walk free
+ Where thou, the high-priest of the wilderness,
+ Hast wedded sea to sea.
+
+ And thou, great-hearted ruler, through whose mouth
+ The word of God is said,
+ Once more, "Let there be light!"--Son of the South,
+ Lift up thy honored head,
+ Wear unashamed a crown by thy desert
+ More than by birth thy own,
+ Careless of watch and ward; thou art begirt
+ By grateful hearts alone.
+ The moated wall and battle-ship may fail,
+ But safe shall justice prove;
+ Stronger than greaves of brass or iron mail
+ The panoply of love.
+
+ Crowned doubly by man's blessing and God's grace,
+ Thy future is secure;
+ Who frees a people makes his statue's place
+ In Time's Valhalla sure.
+ Lo! from his Neva's banks the Scythian Czar
+ Stretches to thee his hand,
+ Who, with the pencil of the Northern star,
+ Wrote freedom on his land.
+ And he whose grave is holy by our calm
+ And prairied Sangamon,
+ From his gaunt hand shall drop the martyr's palm
+ To greet thee with "Well done!"
+
+ And thou, O Earth, with smiles thy face make sweet,
+ And let thy wail be stilled,
+ To hear the Muse of prophecy repeat
+ Her promise half fulfilled.
+ The Voice that spake at Nazareth speaks still,
+ No sound thereof hath died;
+ Alike thy hope and Heaven's eternal will
+ Shall yet be satisfied.
+ The years are slow, the vision tarrieth long,
+ And far the end may be;
+ But, one by one, the fiends of ancient wrong
+ Go out and leave thee free.
+
+ 1867.
+
+
+
+
+AFTER ELECTION.
+
+ THE day's sharp strife is ended now,
+ Our work is done, God knoweth how!
+ As on the thronged, unrestful town
+ The patience of the moon looks down,
+ I wait to hear, beside the wire,
+ The voices of its tongues of fire.
+
+ Slow, doubtful, faint, they seem at first
+ Be strong, my heart, to know the worst!
+ Hark! there the Alleghanies spoke;
+ That sound from lake and prairie broke,
+ That sunset-gun of triumph rent
+ The silence of a continent!
+
+ That signal from Nebraska sprung,
+ This, from Nevada's mountain tongue!
+ Is that thy answer, strong and free,
+ O loyal heart of Tennessee?
+ What strange, glad voice is that which calls
+ From Wagner's grave and Sumter's walls?
+
+ From Mississippi's fountain-head
+ A sound as of the bison's tread!
+ There rustled freedom's Charter Oak
+ In that wild burst the Ozarks spoke!
+ Cheer answers cheer from rise to set
+ Of sun. We have a country yet!
+
+ The praise, O God, be thine alone!
+ Thou givest not for bread a stone;
+ Thou hast not led us through the night
+ To blind us with returning light;
+ Not through the furnace have we passed,
+ To perish at its mouth at last.
+
+ O night of peace, thy flight restrain!
+ November's moon, be slow to wane!
+ Shine on the freedman's cabin floor,
+ On brows of prayer a blessing pour;
+ And give, with full assurance blest,
+ The weary heart of Freedom rest!
+
+ 1868.
+
+
+
+
+DISARMAMENT.
+
+ "PUT up the sword!" The voice of Christ once more
+ Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon's roar,
+ O'er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped
+ And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped
+ With nameless dead; o'er cities starving slow
+ Under a rain of fire; through wards of woe
+ Down which a groaning diapason runs
+ From tortured brothers, husbands, lovers, sons
+ Of desolate women in their far-off homes,
+ Waiting to hear the step that never comes!
+ O men and brothers! let that voice be heard.
+ War fails, try peace; put up the useless sword!
+
+ Fear not the end. There is a story told
+ In Eastern tents, when autumn nights grow cold,
+ And round the fire the Mongol shepherds sit
+ With grave responses listening unto it
+ Once, on the errands of his mercy bent,
+ Buddha, the holy and benevolent,
+ Met a fell monster, huge and fierce of look,
+ Whose awful voice the hills and forests shook.
+ "O son of peace!" the giant cried, "thy fate
+ Is sealed at last, and love shall yield to hate."
+ The unarmed Buddha looking, with no trace
+ Of fear or anger, in the monster's face,
+ In pity said: "Poor fiend, even thee I love."
+ Lo! as he spake the sky-tall terror sank
+ To hand-breadth size; the huge abhorrence shrank
+ Into the form and fashion of a dove;
+ And where the thunder of its rage was heard,
+ Circling above him sweetly sang the bird
+ "Hate hath no harm for love," so ran the song;
+ "And peace unweaponed conquers every wrong!"
+
+ 1871.
+
+
+
+
+THE PROBLEM.
+
+ I.
+ NOT without envy Wealth at times must look
+ On their brown strength who wield the reaping-hook
+ And scythe, or at the forge-fire shape the plough
+ Or the steel harness of the steeds of steam;
+ All who, by skill and patience, anyhow
+ Make service noble, and the earth redeem
+ From savageness. By kingly accolade
+ Than theirs was never worthier knighthood made.
+ Well for them, if, while demagogues their vain
+ And evil counsels proffer, they maintain
+ Their honest manhood unseduced, and wage
+ No war with Labor's right to Labor's gain
+ Of sweet home-comfort, rest of hand and brain,
+ And softer pillow for the head of Age.
+
+ II.
+ And well for Gain if it ungrudging yields
+ Labor its just demand; and well for Ease
+ If in the uses of its own, it sees
+ No wrong to him who tills its pleasant fields
+ And spreads the table of its luxuries.
+ The interests of the rich man and the poor
+ Are one and same, inseparable evermore;
+ And, when scant wage or labor fail to give
+ Food, shelter, raiment, wherewithal to live,
+ Need has its rights, necessity its claim.
+ Yea, even self-wrought misery and shame
+ Test well the charity suffering long and kind.
+ The home-pressed question of the age can find
+ No answer in the catch-words of the blind
+ Leaders of blind. Solution there is none
+ Save in the Golden Rule of Christ alone.
+
+ 1877.
+
+
+
+
+OUR COUNTRY.
+
+Read at Woodstock, Conn., July 4,1883.
+
+
+ WE give thy natal day to hope,
+ O Country of our love and prayer I
+ Thy way is down no fatal slope,
+ But up to freer sun and air.
+
+ Tried as by furnace-fires, and yet
+ By God's grace only stronger made,
+ In future tasks before thee set
+ Thou shalt not lack the old-time aid.
+
+ The fathers sleep, but men remain
+ As wise, as true, and brave as they;
+ Why count the loss and not the gain?
+ The best is that we have to-day.
+
+ Whate'er of folly, shame, or crime,
+ Within thy mighty bounds transpires,
+ With speed defying space and time
+ Comes to us on the accusing wires;
+
+ While of thy wealth of noble deeds,
+ Thy homes of peace, thy votes unsold,
+ The love that pleads for human needs,
+ The wrong redressed, but half is told!
+
+ We read each felon's chronicle,
+ His acts, his words, his gallows-mood;
+ We know the single sinner well
+ And not the nine and ninety good.
+
+ Yet if, on daily scandals fed,
+ We seem at times to doubt thy worth,
+ We know thee still, when all is said,
+ The best and dearest spot on earth.
+
+ From the warm Mexic Gulf, or where
+ Belted with flowers Los Angeles
+ Basks in the semi-tropic air,
+ To where Katahdin's cedar trees
+
+ Are dwarfed and bent by Northern winds,
+ Thy plenty's horn is yearly filled;
+ Alone, the rounding century finds
+ Thy liberal soil by free hands tilled.
+
+ A refuge for the wronged and poor,
+ Thy generous heart has borne the blame
+ That, with them, through thy open door,
+ The old world's evil outcasts came.
+
+ But, with thy just and equal rule,
+ And labor's need and breadth of lands,
+ Free press and rostrum, church and school,
+ Thy sure, if slow, transforming hands
+
+ Shall mould even them to thy design,
+ Making a blessing of the ban;
+ And Freedom's chemistry combine
+ The alien elements of man.
+
+ The power that broke their prison bar
+ And set the dusky millions free,
+ And welded in the flame of war
+ The Union fast to Liberty,
+
+ Shall it not deal with other ills,
+ Redress the red man's grievance, break
+ The Circean cup which shames and kills,
+ And Labor full requital make?
+
+ Alone to such as fitly bear
+ Thy civic honors bid them fall?
+ And call thy daughters forth to share
+ The rights and duties pledged to all?
+
+ Give every child his right of school,
+ Merge private greed in public good,
+ And spare a treasury overfull
+ The tax upon a poor man's food?
+
+ No lack was in thy primal stock,
+ No weakling founders builded here;
+ Thine were the men of Plymouth Rock,
+ The Huguenot and Cavalier;
+
+ And they whose firm endurance gained
+ The freedom of the souls of men,
+ Whose hands, unstained with blood, maintained
+ The swordless commonwealth of Penn.
+
+ And thine shall be the power of all
+ To do the work which duty bids,
+ And make the people's council hall
+ As lasting as the Pyramids!
+
+ Well have thy later years made good
+ Thy brave-said word a century back,
+ The pledge of human brotherhood,
+ The equal claim of white and black.
+
+ That word still echoes round the world,
+ And all who hear it turn to thee,
+ And read upon thy flag unfurled
+ The prophecies of destiny.
+
+ Thy great world-lesson all shall learn,
+ The nations in thy school shall sit,
+ Earth's farthest mountain-tops shall burn
+ With watch-fires from thy own uplit.
+
+ Great without seeking to be great
+ By fraud or conquest, rich in gold,
+ But richer in the large estate
+ Of virtue which thy children hold,
+
+ With peace that comes of purity
+ And strength to simple justice due,
+ So runs our loyal dream of thee;
+ God of our fathers! make it true.
+
+ O Land of lands! to thee we give
+ Our prayers, our hopes, our service free;
+ For thee thy sons shall nobly live,
+ And at thy need shall die for thee!
+
+
+
+
+ON THE BIG HORN.
+
+In the disastrous battle on the Big Horn River, in which General Custer
+and his entire force were slain, the chief Rain-in-the-Face was one of
+the fiercest leaders of the Indians. In Longfellow's poem on the
+massacre, these lines will be remembered:--
+
+ "Revenge!" cried Rain-in-the-Face,
+ "Revenge upon all the race
+ Of the White Chief with yellow hair!"
+ And the mountains dark and high
+ From their crags reechoed the cry
+ Of his anger and despair.
+
+He is now a man of peace; and the agent at Standing Rock, Dakota,
+writes, September 28, 1886: "Rain-in-the-Face is very anxious to go to
+Hampton. I fear he is too old, but he desires very much to go." The
+Southern Workman, the organ of General Armstrong's Industrial School at
+Hampton, Va., says in a late number:--
+
+"Rain-in-the-Face has applied before to come to Hampton, but his age
+would exclude him from the school as an ordinary student. He has shown
+himself very much in earnest about it, and is anxious, all say, to learn
+the better ways of life. It is as unusual as it is striking to see a man
+of his age, and one who has had such an experience, willing to give up
+the old way, and put himself in the position of a boy and a student."
+
+
+ THE years are but half a score,
+ And the war-whoop sounds no more
+ With the blast of bugles, where
+ Straight into a slaughter pen,
+ With his doomed three hundred men,
+ Rode the chief with the yellow hair.
+
+ O Hampton, down by the sea!
+ What voice is beseeching thee
+ For the scholar's lowliest place?
+ Can this be the voice of him
+ Who fought on the Big Horn's rim?
+ Can this be Rain-in-the-Face?
+
+ His war-paint is washed away,
+ His hands have forgotten to slay;
+ He seeks for himself and his race
+ The arts of peace and the lore
+ That give to the skilled hand more
+ Than the spoils of war and chase.
+
+ O chief of the Christ-like school!
+ Can the zeal of thy heart grow cool
+ When the victor scarred with fight
+ Like a child for thy guidance craves,
+ And the faces of hunters and braves
+ Are turning to thee for light?
+
+ The hatchet lies overgrown
+ With grass by the Yellowstone,
+ Wind River and Paw of Bear;
+ And, in sign that foes are friends,
+ Each lodge like a peace-pipe sends
+ Its smoke in the quiet air.
+
+ The hands that have done the wrong
+ To right the wronged are strong,
+ And the voice of a nation saith
+ "Enough of the war of swords,
+ Enough of the lying words
+ And shame of a broken faith!"
+
+ The hills that have watched afar
+ The valleys ablaze with war
+ Shall look on the tasselled corn;
+ And the dust of the grinded grain,
+ Instead of the blood of the slain,
+ Shall sprinkle thy banks, Big Horn!
+
+ The Ute and the wandering Crow
+ Shall know as the white men know,
+ And fare as the white men fare;
+ The pale and the red shall be brothers,
+ One's rights shall be as another's,
+ Home, School, and House of Prayer!
+
+ O mountains that climb to snow,
+ O river winding below,
+ Through meadows by war once trod,
+ O wild, waste lands that await
+ The harvest exceeding great,
+ Break forth into praise of God!
+
+ 1887.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+Note 1, page 18. The reader may, perhaps, call to mind the beautiful
+sonnet of William Wordsworth, addressed to Toussaint L'Ouverture, during
+his confinement in France.
+
+ "Toussaint!--thou most unhappy man of men
+ Whether the whistling rustic tends his plough
+ Within thy hearing, or thou liest now
+ Buried in some deep dungeon's earless den;
+ O miserable chieftain!--where and when
+ Wilt thou find patience?--Yet, die not, do thou
+ Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow;
+ Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,
+ Live and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
+ Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies,--
+ There's not a breathing of the common wind
+ That will forget thee; thou hast great allies.
+ Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
+ And love, and man's unconquerable mind."
+
+
+Note 2, page 67. The Northern author of the Congressional rule against
+receiving petitions of the people on the subject of Slavery.
+
+
+Note 3, page 88. There was at the time when this poem was written an
+Association in Liberty County, Georgia, for the religious instruction of
+negroes. One of their annual reports contains an address by the Rev.
+Josiah Spry Law, in which the following passage occurs: "There is a
+growing interest in this community in the religious instruction of
+negroes. There is a conviction that religious instruction promotes the
+quiet and order of the people, and the pecuniary interest of the
+owners."
+
+
+Note 4, page 117. The book-establishment of the Free-Will Baptists in
+Dover was refused the act of incorporation by the New Hampshire
+Legislature, for the reason that the newspaper organ of that sect and
+its leading preachers favored abolition.
+
+
+Note 5, page 118. The senatorial editor of the Belknap Gazette all along
+manifested a peculiar horror of "niggers" and "nigger parties."
+
+
+Note 6, page 118. The justice before whom Elder Storrs was brought for
+preaching abolition on a writ drawn by Hon. M. N., Jr., of Pittsfield.
+The sheriff served the writ while the elder was praying.
+
+
+Note 7, page 118. The academy at Canaan, N. H., received one or two
+colored scholars, and was in consequence dragged off into a swamp by
+Democratic teams.
+
+
+Note 8, page 119. "Papers and memorials touching the subject of slavery
+shall be laid on the table without reading, debate, or reference." So
+read the gag-law, as it was called, introduced in the House by Mr.
+Atherton.
+
+
+Note 9, page 120. The Female Anti-Slavery Society, at its first meeting
+in Concord, was assailed with stones and brickbats.
+
+
+Note 10, page 168. The election of Charles Sumner to the United States
+Senate "followed hard upon" the rendition of the fugitive Sims by the
+United States officials and the armed police of Boston.
+
+
+Note 11, page 290. For the idea of this line, I am indebted to Emerson,
+in his inimitable sonnet to the Rhodora,--
+
+ "If eyes were made for seeing,
+ Then Beauty is its own excuse for being."
+
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME IV. PERSONAL POEMS
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ PERSONAL POEMS
+ A LAMENT
+ TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES B. STORRS
+ LINES ON THE DEATH OF S. OLIVER TORREY
+ TO ----, WITH A COPY OF WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL
+ LEGGETT'S MONUMENT
+ TO A FRIEND, ON HER RETURN FROM EUROPE
+ LUCY HOOPER
+ FOLLEN
+ TO J. P.
+ CHALKLEY HALL
+ GONE
+ TO RONGE
+ CHANNING
+ TO MY FRIEND ON THE DEATH OF HIS SISTER
+ DANIEL WHEELER
+ TO FREDRIKA BREMER
+ TO AVIS KEENE
+ THE HILL-TOP
+ ELLIOTT
+ ICHABOD
+ THE LOST OCCASION
+ WORDSWORTH
+ TO ---- LINES WRITTEN AFTER A SUMMER DAY'S EXCURSION
+ IN PEACE
+ BENEDICITE
+ KOSSUTH
+ TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER
+ THE CROSS
+ THE HERO
+ RANTOUL
+ WILLIAM FORSTER
+ TO CHARLES SUMNER
+ BURNS
+ TO GEORGE B. CHEEVER
+ TO JAMES T. FIELDS
+ THE MEMORY OF BURNS
+ IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGER
+ BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE
+ NAPLES
+ A MEMORIAL
+ BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY
+ THOMAS STARR KING
+ LINES ON A FLY-LEAF
+ GEORGE L. STEARNS
+ GARIBALDI
+ TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD
+ THE SINGER
+ HOW MARY GREW
+ SUMNER
+ THIERS
+ FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
+ WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT
+ BAYARD TAYLOR
+ OUR AUTOCRAT
+ WITHIN THE GATE
+ IN MEMORY: JAMES T. FIELDS
+ WILSON
+ THE POET AND THE CHILDREN
+ A WELCOME TO LOWELL
+ AN ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL
+ MULFORD
+ TO A CAPE ANN SCHOONER
+ SAMUEL J. TILDEN
+
+ OCCASIONAL POEMS.
+ EVA
+ A LAY OF OLD TIME
+ A SONG OF HARVEST
+ KENOZA LAKE
+ FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL
+ THE QUAKER ALUMNI
+ OUR RIVER
+ REVISITED
+ "THE LAURELS"
+ JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC
+ HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF THOMAS STARR KING'S HOUSE OF WORSHIP
+ HYMN FOR THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP AT GEORGETOWN, ERECTED IN MEMORY
+ OF A MOTHER
+ A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION
+ CHICAGO
+ KINSMAN
+ THE GOLDEN WEDDING OF LONGWOOD
+ HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA
+ LEXINGTON
+ THE LIBRARY
+ "I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE TOOK ME IN"
+ CENTENNIAL HYMN
+ AT SCHOOL-CLOSE
+ HYMN OF THE CHILDREN
+ THE LANDMARKS
+ GARDEN
+ A GREETING
+ GODSPEED
+ WINTER ROSES
+ THE REUNION
+ NORUMBEGA HALL
+ THE BARTHOLDI STATUE
+ ONE OF THE SIGNERS
+
+ THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
+ PRELUDE
+ THE TENT ON THE BEACH
+ THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH
+ THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE
+ THE BROTHER OF MERCY
+ THE CHANGELING
+ THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH
+ KALLUNDBORG CHURCH
+ THE CABLE HYMN
+ THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL
+ THE PALATINE
+ ABRAHAM DAVENPORT
+ THE WORSHIP OF NATURE
+
+ AT SUNDOWN.
+ TO E. C. S.
+ THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888.
+ THE Vow OF WASHINGTON
+ THE CAPTAIN'S WELL
+ AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION
+ R. S. S., AT DEER ISLAND ON THE MERRIMAC
+ BURNING DRIFT-WOOD.
+ O. W. HOLMES ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY
+ JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
+ HAVERHILL. 1640-1890
+ To G. G.
+ PRESTON POWERS, INSCRIPTION FOR BASS-RELIEF
+ LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY, INSCRIPTION ON TABLET
+ MILTON, ON MEMORIAL WINDOW
+ THE BIRTHDAY WREATH
+ THE WIND OF MARCH
+ BETWEEN THE GATES
+ THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER
+ TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 8TH Mo. 29TH, 1892
+
+
+
+NOTE. The portrait prefacing this volume is from an engraving on steel
+by J. A. J. WILCOX in 1888, after a photograph taken by Miss ISA E. GRAY
+in July, 1885.
+
+
+
+
+A LAMENT
+
+ "The parted spirit,
+ Knoweth it not our sorrow? Answereth not
+ Its blessing to our tears?"
+
+ The circle is broken, one seat is forsaken,
+ One bud from the tree of our friendship is shaken;
+ One heart from among us no longer shall thrill
+ With joy in our gladness, or grief in our ill.
+
+ Weep! lonely and lowly are slumbering now
+ The light of her glances, the pride of her brow;
+ Weep! sadly and long shall we listen in vain
+ To hear the soft tones of her welcome again.
+
+ Give our tears to the dead! For humanity's claim
+ From its silence and darkness is ever the same;
+ The hope of that world whose existence is bliss
+ May not stifle the tears of the mourners of this.
+
+ For, oh! if one glance the freed spirit can throw
+ On the scene of its troubled probation below,
+ Than the pride of the marble, the pomp of the dead,
+ To that glance will be dearer the tears which we shed.
+
+ Oh, who can forget the mild light of her smile,
+ Over lips moved with music and feeling the while,
+ The eye's deep enchantment, dark, dream-like, and clear,
+ In the glow of its gladness, the shade of its tear.
+
+ And the charm of her features, while over the whole
+ Played the hues of the heart and the sunshine of soul;
+ And the tones of her voice, like the music which seems
+ Murmured low in our ears by the Angel of dreams!
+
+ But holier and dearer our memories hold
+ Those treasures of feeling, more precious than gold,
+ The love and the kindness and pity which gave
+ Fresh flowers for the bridal, green wreaths for the grave!
+
+ The heart ever open to Charity's claim,
+ Unmoved from its purpose by censure and blame,
+ While vainly alike on her eye and her ear
+ Fell the scorn of the heartless, the jesting and jeer.
+
+ How true to our hearts was that beautiful sleeper
+ With smiles for the joyful, with tears for the weeper,
+ Yet, evermore prompt, whether mournful or gay,
+ With warnings in love to the passing astray.
+
+ For, though spotless herself, she could sorrow for them
+ Who sullied with evil the spirit's pure gem;
+ And a sigh or a tear could the erring reprove,
+ And the sting of reproof was still tempered by love.
+
+ As a cloud of the sunset, slow melting in heaven,
+ As a star that is lost when the daylight is given,
+ As a glad dream of slumber, which wakens in bliss,
+ She hath passed to the world of the holy from this.
+
+ 1834.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES B. STORRS,
+
+Late President of Western Reserve College, who died at his post of duty,
+overworn by his strenuous labors with tongue and pen in the cause of
+Human Freedom.
+
+
+ Thou hast fallen in thine armor,
+ Thou martyr of the Lord
+ With thy last breath crying "Onward!"
+ And thy hand upon the sword.
+ The haughty heart derideth,
+ And the sinful lip reviles,
+ But the blessing of the perishing
+ Around thy pillow smiles!
+
+ When to our cup of trembling
+ The added drop is given,
+ And the long-suspended thunder
+ Falls terribly from Heaven,--
+ When a new and fearful freedom
+ Is proffered of the Lord
+ To the slow-consuming Famine,
+ The Pestilence and Sword!
+
+ When the refuges of Falsehood
+ Shall be swept away in wrath,
+ And the temple shall be shaken,
+ With its idol, to the earth,
+ Shall not thy words of warning
+ Be all remembered then?
+ And thy now unheeded message
+ Burn in the hearts of men?
+
+ Oppression's hand may scatter
+ Its nettles on thy tomb,
+ And even Christian bosoms
+ Deny thy memory room;
+ For lying lips shall torture
+ Thy mercy into crime,
+ And the slanderer shall flourish
+ As the bay-tree for a time.
+
+ But where the south-wind lingers
+ On Carolina's pines,
+ Or falls the careless sunbeam
+ Down Georgia's golden mines;
+ Where now beneath his burthen
+ The toiling slave is driven;
+ Where now a tyrant's mockery
+ Is offered unto Heaven;
+
+ Where Mammon hath its altars
+ Wet o'er with human blood,
+ And pride and lust debases
+ The workmanship of God,--
+ There shall thy praise be spoken,
+ Redeemed from Falsehood's ban,
+ When the fetters shall be broken,
+ And the slave shall be a man!
+
+ Joy to thy spirit, brother!
+ A thousand hearts are warm,
+ A thousand kindred bosoms
+ Are baring to the storm.
+ What though red-handed Violence
+ With secret Fraud combine?
+ The wall of fire is round us,
+ Our Present Help was thine.
+
+ Lo, the waking up of nations,
+ From Slavery's fatal sleep;
+ The murmur of a Universe,
+ Deep calling unto Deep!
+ Joy to thy spirit, brother!
+ On every wind of heaven
+ The onward cheer and summons
+ Of Freedom's voice is given!
+
+ Glory to God forever!
+ Beyond the despot's will
+ The soul of Freedom liveth
+ Imperishable still.
+ The words which thou hast uttered
+ Are of that soul a part,
+ And the good seed thou hast scattered
+ Is springing from the heart.
+
+ In the evil days before us,
+ And the trials yet to come,
+ In the shadow of the prison,
+ Or the cruel martyrdom,--
+ We will think of thee, O brother!
+ And thy sainted name shall be
+ In the blessing of the captive,
+ And the anthem of the free.
+
+ 1834
+
+
+
+
+LINES ON THE DEATH OF S. OLIVER TORREY,
+
+SECRETARY OF THE BOSTON YOUNG MEN'S ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.
+
+ Gone before us, O our brother,
+ To the spirit-land!
+ Vainly look we for another
+ In thy place to stand.
+ Who shall offer youth and beauty
+ On the wasting shrine
+ Of a stern and lofty duty,
+ With a faith like thine?
+
+ Oh, thy gentle smile of greeting
+ Who again shall see?
+ Who amidst the solemn meeting
+ Gaze again on thee?
+ Who when peril gathers o'er us,
+ Wear so calm a brow?
+ Who, with evil men before us,
+ So serene as thou?
+
+ Early hath the spoiler found thee,
+ Brother of our love!
+ Autumn's faded earth around thee,
+ And its storms above!
+ Evermore that turf lie lightly,
+ And, with future showers,
+ O'er thy slumbers fresh and brightly
+ Blow the summer flowers
+
+ In the locks thy forehead gracing,
+ Not a silvery streak;
+ Nor a line of sorrow's tracing
+ On thy fair young cheek;
+ Eyes of light and lips of roses,
+ Such as Hylas wore,--
+ Over all that curtain closes,
+ Which shall rise no more!
+
+ Will the vigil Love is keeping
+ Round that grave of thine,
+ Mournfully, like Jazer weeping
+ Over Sibmah's vine;
+ Will the pleasant memories, swelling
+ Gentle hearts, of thee,
+ In the spirit's distant dwelling
+ All unheeded be?
+
+ If the spirit ever gazes,
+ From its journeyings, back;
+ If the immortal ever traces
+ O'er its mortal track;
+ Wilt thou not, O brother, meet us
+ Sometimes on our way,
+ And, in hours of sadness, greet us
+ As a spirit may?
+
+ Peace be with thee, O our brother,
+ In the spirit-land
+ Vainly look we for another
+ In thy place to stand.
+ Unto Truth and Freedom giving
+ All thy early powers,
+ Be thy virtues with the living,
+ And thy spirit ours!
+
+ 1837.
+
+
+
+
+TO ------,
+
+WITH A COPY OF WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL.
+
+"Get the writings of John Woolman by heart."--Essays of Elia.
+
+
+ Maiden! with the fair brown tresses
+ Shading o'er thy dreamy eye,
+ Floating on thy thoughtful forehead
+ Cloud wreaths of its sky.
+
+ Youthful years and maiden beauty,
+ Joy with them should still abide,--
+ Instinct take the place of Duty,
+ Love, not Reason, guide.
+
+ Ever in the New rejoicing,
+ Kindly beckoning back the Old,
+ Turning, with the gift of Midas,
+ All things into gold.
+
+ And the passing shades of sadness
+ Wearing even a welcome guise,
+ As, when some bright lake lies open
+ To the sunny skies,
+
+ Every wing of bird above it,
+ Every light cloud floating on,
+ Glitters like that flashing mirror
+ In the self-same sun.
+
+ But upon thy youthful forehead
+ Something like a shadow lies;
+ And a serious soul is looking
+ From thy earnest eyes.
+
+ With an early introversion,
+ Through the forms of outward things,
+ Seeking for the subtle essence,
+ And the bidden springs.
+
+ Deeper than the gilded surface
+ Hath thy wakeful vision seen,
+ Farther than the narrow present
+ Have thy journeyings been.
+
+ Thou hast midst Life's empty noises
+ Heard the solemn steps of Time,
+ And the low mysterious voices
+ Of another clime.
+
+ All the mystery of Being
+ Hath upon thy spirit pressed,--
+ Thoughts which, like the Deluge wanderer,
+ Find no place of rest:
+
+ That which mystic Plato pondered,
+ That which Zeno heard with awe,
+ And the star-rapt Zoroaster
+ In his night-watch saw.
+
+ From the doubt and darkness springing
+ Of the dim, uncertain Past,
+ Moving to the dark still shadows
+ O'er the Future cast,
+
+ Early hath Life's mighty question
+ Thrilled within thy heart of youth,
+ With a deep and strong beseeching
+ What and where is Truth?
+
+ Hollow creed and ceremonial,
+ Whence the ancient life hath fled,
+ Idle faith unknown to action,
+ Dull and cold and dead.
+
+ Oracles, whose wire-worked meanings
+ Only wake a quiet scorn,--
+ Not from these thy seeking spirit
+ Hath its answer drawn.
+
+ But, like some tired child at even,
+ On thy mother Nature's breast,
+ Thou, methinks, art vainly seeking
+ Truth, and peace, and rest.
+
+ O'er that mother's rugged features
+ Thou art throwing Fancy's veil,
+ Light and soft as woven moonbeams,
+ Beautiful and frail
+
+ O'er the rough chart of Existence,
+ Rocks of sin and wastes of woe,
+ Soft airs breathe, and green leaves tremble,
+ And cool fountains flow.
+
+ And to thee an answer cometh
+ From the earth and from the sky,
+ And to thee the hills and waters
+ And the stars reply.
+
+ But a soul-sufficing answer
+ Hath no outward origin;
+ More than Nature's many voices
+ May be heard within.
+
+ Even as the great Augustine
+ Questioned earth and sea and sky,
+ And the dusty tomes of learning
+ And old poesy.
+
+ But his earnest spirit needed
+ More than outward Nature taught;
+ More than blest the poet's vision
+ Or the sage's thought.
+
+ Only in the gathered silence
+ Of a calm and waiting frame,
+ Light and wisdom as from Heaven
+ To the seeker came.
+
+ Not to ease and aimless quiet
+ Doth that inward answer tend,
+ But to works of love and duty
+ As our being's end;
+
+ Not to idle dreams and trances,
+ Length of face, and solemn tone,
+ But to Faith, in daily striving
+ And performance shown.
+
+ Earnest toil and strong endeavor
+ Of a spirit which within
+ Wrestles with familiar evil
+ And besetting sin;
+
+ And without, with tireless vigor,
+ Steady heart, and weapon strong,
+ In the power of truth assailing
+ Every form of wrong.
+
+ Guided thus, how passing lovely
+ Is the track of Woolman's feet!
+ And his brief and simple record
+ How serenely sweet!
+
+ O'er life's humblest duties throwing
+ Light the earthling never knew,
+ Freshening all its dark waste places
+ As with Hermon's dew.
+
+ All which glows in Pascal's pages,
+ All which sainted Guion sought,
+ Or the blue-eyed German Rahel
+ Half-unconscious taught
+
+ Beauty, such as Goethe pictured,
+ Such as Shelley dreamed of, shed
+ Living warmth and starry brightness
+ Round that poor man's head.
+
+ Not a vain and cold ideal,
+ Not a poet's dream alone,
+ But a presence warm and real,
+ Seen and felt and known.
+
+ When the red right-hand of slaughter
+ Moulders with the steel it swung,
+ When the name of seer and poet
+ Dies on Memory's tongue,
+
+ All bright thoughts and pure shall gather
+ Round that meek and suffering one,--
+ Glorious, like the seer-seen angel
+ Standing in the sun!
+
+ Take the good man's book and ponder
+ What its pages say to thee;
+ Blessed as the hand of healing
+ May its lesson be.
+
+ If it only serves to strengthen
+ Yearnings for a higher good,
+ For the fount of living waters
+ And diviner food;
+
+ If the pride of human reason
+ Feels its meek and still rebuke,
+ Quailing like the eye of Peter
+ From the Just One's look!
+
+ If with readier ear thou heedest
+ What the Inward Teacher saith,
+ Listening with a willing spirit
+ And a childlike faith,--
+
+ Thou mayst live to bless the giver,
+ Who, himself but frail and weak,
+ Would at least the highest welfare
+ Of another seek;
+
+ And his gift, though poor and lowly
+ It may seem to other eyes,
+ Yet may prove an angel holy
+ In a pilgrim's guise.
+
+ 1840.
+
+
+
+
+LEGGETT'S MONUMENT.
+
+William Leggett, who died in 1839 at the age of thirty-seven, was the
+intrepid editor of the New York Evening Post and afterward of The Plain
+Dealer. His vigorous assault upon the system of slavery brought down
+upon him the enmity of political defenders of the system.
+
+"Ye build the tombs of the prophets."--Holy Writ.
+
+
+ Yes, pile the marble o'er him! It is well
+ That ye who mocked him in his long stern strife,
+ And planted in the pathway of his life
+ The ploughshares of your hatred hot from hell,
+ Who clamored down the bold reformer when
+ He pleaded for his captive fellow-men,
+ Who spurned him in the market-place, and sought
+ Within thy walls, St. Tammany, to bind
+ In party chains the free and honest thought,
+ The angel utterance of an upright mind,
+ Well is it now that o'er his grave ye raise
+ The stony tribute of your tardy praise,
+ For not alone that pile shall tell to Fame
+ Of the brave heart beneath, but of the builders' shame!
+
+ 1841.
+
+
+
+
+TO A FRIEND, ON HER RETURN FROM EUROPE.
+
+ How smiled the land of France
+ Under thy blue eye's glance,
+ Light-hearted rover
+ Old walls of chateaux gray,
+ Towers of an early day,
+ Which the Three Colors play
+ Flauntingly over.
+
+ Now midst the brilliant train
+ Thronging the banks of Seine
+ Now midst the splendor
+ Of the wild Alpine range,
+ Waking with change on change
+ Thoughts in thy young heart strange,
+ Lovely, and tender.
+
+ Vales, soft Elysian,
+ Like those in the vision
+ Of Mirza, when, dreaming,
+ He saw the long hollow dell,
+ Touched by the prophet's spell,
+ Into an ocean swell
+ With its isles teeming.
+
+ Cliffs wrapped in snows of years,
+ Splintering with icy spears
+ Autumn's blue heaven
+ Loose rock and frozen slide,
+ Hung on the mountain-side,
+ Waiting their hour to glide
+ Downward, storm-driven!
+
+ Rhine-stream, by castle old,
+ Baron's and robber's hold,
+ Peacefully flowing;
+ Sweeping through vineyards green,
+ Or where the cliffs are seen
+ O'er the broad wave between
+ Grim shadows throwing.
+
+ Or, where St. Peter's dome
+ Swells o'er eternal Rome,
+ Vast, dim, and solemn;
+ Hymns ever chanting low,
+ Censers swung to and fro,
+ Sable stoles sweeping slow
+ Cornice and column!
+
+ Oh, as from each and all
+ Will there not voices call
+ Evermore back again?
+ In the mind's gallery
+ Wilt thou not always see
+ Dim phantoms beckon thee
+ O'er that old track again?
+
+ New forms thy presence haunt,
+ New voices softly chant,
+ New faces greet thee!
+ Pilgrims from many a shrine
+ Hallowed by poet's line,
+ At memory's magic sign,
+ Rising to meet thee.
+
+ And when such visions come
+ Unto thy olden home,
+ Will they not waken
+ Deep thoughts of Him whose hand
+ Led thee o'er sea and land
+ Back to the household band
+ Whence thou wast taken?
+
+ While, at the sunset time,
+ Swells the cathedral's chime,
+ Yet, in thy dreaming,
+ While to thy spirit's eye
+ Yet the vast mountains lie
+ Piled in the Switzer's sky,
+ Icy and gleaming:
+
+ Prompter of silent prayer,
+ Be the wild picture there
+ In the mind's chamber,
+ And, through each coming day
+ Him who, as staff and stay,
+ Watched o'er thy wandering way,
+ Freshly remember.
+
+ So, when the call shall be
+ Soon or late unto thee,
+ As to all given,
+ Still may that picture live,
+ All its fair forms survive,
+ And to thy spirit give
+ Gladness in Heaven!
+
+ 1841
+
+
+
+
+LUCY HOOPER.
+
+Lucy Hooper died at Brooklyn, L. I., on the 1st of 8th mo., 1841, aged
+twenty-four years.
+
+
+ They tell me, Lucy, thou art dead,
+ That all of thee we loved and cherished
+ Has with thy summer roses perished;
+ And left, as its young beauty fled,
+ An ashen memory in its stead,
+ The twilight of a parted day
+ Whose fading light is cold and vain,
+ The heart's faint echo of a strain
+ Of low, sweet music passed away.
+ That true and loving heart, that gift
+ Of a mind, earnest, clear, profound,
+ Bestowing, with a glad unthrift,
+ Its sunny light on all around,
+ Affinities which only could
+ Cleave to the pure, the true, and good;
+ And sympathies which found no rest,
+ Save with the loveliest and best.
+ Of them--of thee--remains there naught
+ But sorrow in the mourner's breast?
+ A shadow in the land of thought?
+ No! Even my weak and trembling faith
+ Can lift for thee the veil which doubt
+ And human fear have drawn about
+ The all-awaiting scene of death.
+
+ Even as thou wast I see thee still;
+ And, save the absence of all ill
+ And pain and weariness, which here
+ Summoned the sigh or wrung the tear,
+ The same as when, two summers back,
+ Beside our childhood's Merrimac,
+ I saw thy dark eye wander o'er
+ Stream, sunny upland, rocky shore,
+ And heard thy low, soft voice alone
+ Midst lapse of waters, and the tone
+ Of pine-leaves by the west-wind blown,
+ There's not a charm of soul or brow,
+ Of all we knew and loved in thee,
+ But lives in holier beauty now,
+ Baptized in immortality!
+ Not mine the sad and freezing dream
+ Of souls that, with their earthly mould,
+ Cast off the loves and joys of old,
+ Unbodied, like a pale moonbeam,
+ As pure, as passionless, and cold;
+ Nor mine the hope of Indra's son,
+ Of slumbering in oblivion's rest,
+ Life's myriads blending into one,
+ In blank annihilation blest;
+ Dust-atoms of the infinite,
+ Sparks scattered from the central light,
+ And winning back through mortal pain
+ Their old unconsciousness again.
+ No! I have friends in Spirit Land,
+ Not shadows in a shadowy band,
+ Not others, but themselves are they.
+ And still I think of them the same
+ As when the Master's summons came;
+ Their change,--the holy morn-light breaking
+ Upon the dream-worn sleeper, waking,--
+ A change from twilight into day.
+
+ They 've laid thee midst the household graves,
+ Where father, brother, sister lie;
+ Below thee sweep the dark blue waves,
+ Above thee bends the summer sky.
+ Thy own loved church in sadness read
+ Her solemn ritual o'er thy head,
+ And blessed and hallowed with her prayer
+ The turf laid lightly o'er thee there.
+ That church, whose rites and liturgy,
+ Sublime and old, were truth to thee,
+ Undoubted to thy bosom taken,
+ As symbols of a faith unshaken.
+ Even I, of simpler views, could feel
+ The beauty of thy trust and zeal;
+ And, owning not thy creed, could see
+ How deep a truth it seemed to thee,
+ And how thy fervent heart had thrown
+ O'er all, a coloring of its own,
+ And kindled up, intense and warm,
+ A life in every rite and form,
+ As. when on Chebar's banks of old,
+ The Hebrew's gorgeous vision rolled,
+ A spirit filled the vast machine,
+ A life, "within the wheels" was seen.
+
+ Farewell! A little time, and we
+ Who knew thee well, and loved thee here,
+ One after one shall follow thee
+ As pilgrims through the gate of fear,
+ Which opens on eternity.
+ Yet shall we cherish not the less
+ All that is left our hearts meanwhile;
+ The memory of thy loveliness
+ Shall round our weary pathway smile,
+ Like moonlight when the sun has set,
+ A sweet and tender radiance yet.
+ Thoughts of thy clear-eyed sense of duty,
+ Thy generous scorn of all things wrong,
+ The truth, the strength, the graceful beauty
+ Which blended in thy song.
+ All lovely things, by thee beloved,
+ Shall whisper to our hearts of thee;
+ These green hills, where thy childhood roved,
+ Yon river winding to the sea,
+ The sunset light of autumn eves
+ Reflecting on the deep, still floods,
+ Cloud, crimson sky, and trembling leaves
+ Of rainbow-tinted woods,
+ These, in our view, shall henceforth take
+ A tenderer meaning for thy sake;
+ And all thou lovedst of earth and sky,
+ Seem sacred to thy memory.
+
+ 1841.
+
+
+
+
+FOLLEN. ON READING HIS ESSAY ON THE "FUTURE STATE."
+
+Charles Follen, one of the noblest contributions of Germany to American
+citizenship, was at an early age driven from his professorship in the
+University of Jena, and compelled to seek shelter from official
+prosecution in Switzerland, on account of his liberal political
+opinions. He became Professor of Civil Law in the University of Basle.
+The governments of Prussia, Austria, and Russia united in demanding his
+delivery as a political offender; and, in consequence, he left
+Switzerland, and came to the United States. At the time of the formation
+of the American Anti-Slavery Society he was a Professor in Harvard
+University, honored for his genius, learning, and estimable character.
+His love of liberty and hatred of oppression led him to seek an
+interview with Garrison and express his sympathy with him. Soon after,
+he attended a meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. An able
+speech was made by Rev. A. A. Phelps, and a letter of mine addressed to
+the Secretary of the Society was read. Whereupon he rose and stated that
+his views were in unison with those of the Society, and that after
+hearing the speech and the letter, he was ready to join it, and abide
+the probable consequences of such an unpopular act. He lost by so doing
+his professorship. He was an able member of the Executive Committee of
+the American Anti-Slavery Society. He perished in the ill-fated steamer
+Lexington, which was burned on its passage from New York, January 13,
+1840. The few writings left behind him show him to have been a profound
+thinker of rare spiritual insight.
+
+
+ Friend of my soul! as with moist eye
+ I look up from this page of thine,
+ Is it a dream that thou art nigh,
+ Thy mild face gazing into mine?
+
+ That presence seems before me now,
+ A placid heaven of sweet moonrise,
+ When, dew-like, on the earth below
+ Descends the quiet of the skies.
+
+ The calm brow through the parted hair,
+ The gentle lips which knew no guile,
+ Softening the blue eye's thoughtful care
+ With the bland beauty of their smile.
+
+ Ah me! at times that last dread scene
+ Of Frost and Fire and moaning Sea
+ Will cast its shade of doubt between
+ The failing eyes of Faith and thee.
+
+ Yet, lingering o'er thy charmed page,
+ Where through the twilight air of earth,
+ Alike enthusiast and sage,
+ Prophet and bard, thou gazest forth,
+
+ Lifting the Future's solemn veil;
+ The reaching of a mortal hand
+ To put aside the cold and pale
+ Cloud-curtains of the Unseen Land;
+
+ Shall these poor elements outlive
+ The mind whose kingly will, they wrought?
+ Their gross unconsciousness survive
+ Thy godlike energy of thought?
+
+ In thoughts which answer to my own,
+ In words which reach my inward ear,
+ Like whispers from the void Unknown,
+ I feel thy living presence here.
+
+ The waves which lull thy body's rest,
+ The dust thy pilgrim footsteps trod,
+ Unwasted, through each change, attest
+ The fixed economy of God.
+
+ Thou livest, Follen! not in vain
+ Hath thy fine spirit meekly borne
+ The burthen of Life's cross of pain,
+ And the thorned crown of suffering worn.
+
+ Oh, while Life's solemn mystery glooms
+ Around us like a dungeon's wall,
+ Silent earth's pale and crowded tombs,
+ Silent the heaven which bends o'er all!
+
+ While day by day our loved ones glide
+ In spectral silence, hushed and lone,
+ To the cold shadows which divide
+ The living from the dread Unknown;
+
+ While even on the closing eye,
+ And on the lip which moves in vain,
+ The seals of that stern mystery
+ Their undiscovered trust retain;
+
+ And only midst the gloom of death,
+ Its mournful doubts and haunting fears,
+ Two pale, sweet angels, Hope and Faith,
+ Smile dimly on us through their tears;
+
+ 'T is something to a heart like mine
+ To think of thee as living yet;
+ To feel that such a light as thine
+ Could not in utter darkness set.
+
+ Less dreary seems the untried way
+ Since thou hast left thy footprints there,
+ And beams of mournful beauty play
+ Round the sad Angel's sable hair.
+
+ Oh! at this hour when half the sky
+ Is glorious with its evening light,
+ And fair broad fields of summer lie
+ Hung o'er with greenness in my sight;
+
+ While through these elm-boughs wet with rain
+ The sunset's golden walls are seen,
+ With clover-bloom and yellow grain
+ And wood-draped hill and stream between;
+
+ I long to know if scenes like this
+ Are hidden from an angel's eyes;
+ If earth's familiar loveliness
+ Haunts not thy heaven's serener skies.
+
+ For sweetly here upon thee grew
+ The lesson which that beauty gave,
+ The ideal of the pure and true
+ In earth and sky and gliding wave.
+
+ And it may be that all which lends
+ The soul an upward impulse here,
+ With a diviner beauty blends,
+ And greets us in a holier sphere.
+
+ Through groves where blighting never fell
+ The humbler flowers of earth may twine;
+ And simple draughts-from childhood's well
+ Blend with the angel-tasted wine.
+
+ But be the prying vision veiled,
+ And let the seeking lips be dumb,
+ Where even seraph eyes have failed
+ Shall mortal blindness seek to come?
+
+ We only know that thou hast gone,
+ And that the same returnless tide
+ Which bore thee from us still glides on,
+ And we who mourn thee with it glide.
+
+ On all thou lookest we shall look,
+ And to our gaze erelong shall turn
+ That page of God's mysterious book
+ We so much wish yet dread to learn.
+
+ With Him, before whose awful power
+ Thy spirit bent its trembling knee;
+ Who, in the silent greeting flower,
+ And forest leaf, looked out on thee,
+
+ We leave thee, with a trust serene,
+ Which Time, nor Change, nor Death can move,
+ While with thy childlike faith we lean
+ On Him whose dearest name is Love!
+
+ 1842.
+
+
+
+
+TO J. P.
+
+John Pierpont, the eloquent preacher and poet of Boston.
+
+
+ Not as a poor requital of the joy
+ With which my childhood heard that lay of thine,
+ Which, like an echo of the song divine
+ At Bethlehem breathed above the Holy Boy,
+ Bore to my ear the Airs of Palestine,--
+ Not to the poet, but the man I bring
+ In friendship's fearless trust my offering
+ How much it lacks I feel, and thou wilt see,
+ Yet well I know that thou Last deemed with me
+ Life all too earnest, and its time too short
+ For dreamy ease and Fancy's graceful sport;
+ And girded for thy constant strife with wrong,
+ Like Nehemiah fighting while he wrought
+ The broken walls of Zion, even thy song
+ Hath a rude martial tone, a blow in every thought!
+
+ 1843.
+
+
+
+
+CHALKLEY HALL.
+
+ Chalkley Hall, near Frankford, Pa., was the residence of Thomas
+ Chalkley, an eminent minister of the Friends' denomination. He was
+ one of the early settlers of the Colony, and his Journal, which was
+ published in 1749, presents a quaint but beautiful picture of a
+ life of unostentatious and simple goodness. He was the master of a
+ merchant vessel, and, in his visits to the west Indies and Great
+ Britain, omitted no opportunity to labor for the highest interests
+ of his fellow-men. During a temporary residence in Philadelphia, in
+ the summer of 1838, the quiet and beautiful scenery around the
+ ancient village of Frankford frequently attracted me from the heat
+ and bustle of the city. I have referred to my youthful acquaintance
+ with his writings in Snow-Bound.
+
+
+ How bland and sweet the greeting of this breeze
+ To him who flies
+ From crowded street and red wall's weary gleam,
+ Till far behind him like a hideous dream
+ The close dark city lies
+ Here, while the market murmurs, while men throng
+ The marble floor
+ Of Mammon's altar, from the crush and din
+ Of the world's madness let me gather in
+ My better thoughts once more.
+
+ Oh, once again revive, while on my ear
+ The cry of Gain
+ And low hoarse hum of Traffic die away,
+ Ye blessed memories of my early day
+ Like sere grass wet with rain!
+
+ Once more let God's green earth and sunset air
+ Old feelings waken;
+ Through weary years of toil and strife and ill,
+ Oh, let me feel that my good angel still
+ Hath not his trust forsaken.
+
+ And well do time and place befit my mood
+ Beneath the arms
+ Of this embracing wood, a good man made
+ His home, like Abraham resting in the shade
+ Of Mamre's lonely palms.
+
+ Here, rich with autumn gifts of countless years,
+ The virgin soil
+ Turned from the share he guided, and in rain
+ And summer sunshine throve the fruits and grain
+ Which blessed his honest toil.
+
+ Here, from his voyages on the stormy seas,
+ Weary and worn,
+ He came to meet his children and to bless
+ The Giver of all good in thankfulness
+ And praise for his return.
+
+ And here his neighbors gathered in to greet
+ Their friend again,
+ Safe from the wave and the destroying gales,
+ Which reap untimely green Bermuda's vales,
+ And vex the Carib main.
+
+ To hear the good man tell of simple truth,
+ Sown in an hour
+ Of weakness in some far-off Indian isle,
+ From the parched bosom of a barren soil,
+ Raised up in life and power.
+
+ How at those gatherings in Barbadian vales,
+ A tendering love
+ Came o'er him, like the gentle rain from heaven,
+ And words of fitness to his lips were given,
+ And strength as from above.
+
+ How the sad captive listened to the Word,
+ Until his chain
+ Grew lighter, and his wounded spirit felt
+ The healing balm of consolation melt
+ Upon its life-long pain
+
+ How the armed warrior sat him down to hear
+ Of Peace and Truth,
+ And the proud ruler and his Creole dame,
+ Jewelled and gorgeous in her beauty came,
+ And fair and bright-eyed youth.
+
+ Oh, far away beneath New England's sky,
+ Even when a boy,
+ Following my plough by Merrimac's green shore,
+ His simple record I have pondered o'er
+ With deep and quiet joy.
+
+ And hence this scene, in sunset glory warm,--
+ Its woods around,
+ Its still stream winding on in light and shade,
+ Its soft, green meadows and its upland glade,--
+ To me is holy ground.
+
+ And dearer far than haunts where Genius keeps
+ His vigils still;
+ Than that where Avon's son of song is laid,
+ Or Vaucluse hallowed by its Petrarch's shade,
+ Or Virgil's laurelled hill.
+
+ To the gray walls of fallen Paraclete,
+ To Juliet's urn,
+ Fair Arno and Sorrento's orange-grove,
+ Where Tasso sang, let young Romance and Love
+ Like brother pilgrims turn.
+
+ But here a deeper and serener charm
+ To all is given;
+ And blessed memories of the faithful dead
+ O'er wood and vale and meadow-stream have shed
+ The holy hues of Heaven!
+
+ 1843.
+
+
+
+
+GONE
+
+ Another hand is beckoning us,
+ Another call is given;
+ And glows once more with Angel-steps
+ The path which reaches Heaven.
+
+ Our young and gentle friend, whose smile
+ Made brighter summer hours,
+ Amid the frosts of autumn time
+ Has left us with the flowers.
+
+ No paling of the cheek of bloom
+ Forewarned us of decay;
+ No shadow from the Silent Land
+ Fell round our sister's way.
+
+ The light of her young life went down,
+ As sinks behind the hill
+ The glory of a setting star,
+ Clear, suddenly, and still.
+
+ As pure and sweet, her fair brow seemed
+ Eternal as the sky;
+ And like the brook's low song, her voice,--
+ A sound which could not die.
+
+ And half we deemed she needed not
+ The changing of her sphere,
+ To give to Heaven a Shining One,
+ Who walked an Angel here.
+
+ The blessing of her quiet life
+ Fell on us like the dew;
+ And good thoughts where her footsteps pressed
+ Like fairy blossoms grew.
+
+ Sweet promptings unto kindest deeds
+ Were in her very look;
+ We read her face, as one who reads
+ A true and holy book,
+
+ The measure of a blessed hymn,
+ To which our hearts could move;
+ The breathing of an inward psalm,
+ A canticle of love.
+
+ We miss her in the place of prayer,
+ And by the hearth-fire's light;
+ We pause beside her door to hear
+ Once more her sweet "Good-night!"
+
+ There seems a shadow on the day,
+ Her smile no longer cheers;
+ A dimness on the stars of night,
+ Like eyes that look through tears.
+
+ Alone unto our Father's will
+ One thought hath reconciled;
+ That He whose love exceedeth ours
+ Hath taken home His child.
+
+ Fold her, O Father! in Thine arms,
+ And let her henceforth be
+ A messenger of love between
+ Our human hearts and Thee.
+
+ Still let her mild rebuking stand
+ Between us and the wrong,
+ And her dear memory serve to make
+ Our faith in Goodness strong.
+
+ And grant that she who, trembling, here
+ Distrusted all her powers,
+ May welcome to her holier home
+ The well-beloved of ours.
+
+ 1845.
+
+
+
+
+TO RONGE.
+
+This was written after reading the powerful and manly protest of
+Johannes Ronge against the "pious fraud" of the Bishop of Treves. The
+bold movement of the young Catholic priest of Prussian Silesia seemed to
+me full of promise to the cause of political as well as religious
+liberty in Europe. That it failed was due partly to the faults of the
+reformer, but mainly to the disagreement of the Liberals of Germany upon
+a matter of dogma, which prevented them from unity of action. Rouge was
+born in Silesia in 1813 and died in October, 1887. His autobiography was
+translated into English and published in London in 1846.
+
+
+ Strike home, strong-hearted man! Down to the root
+ Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel.
+ Thy work is to hew down. In God's name then
+ Put nerve into thy task. Let other men
+ Plant, as they may, that better tree whose fruit
+ The wounded bosom of the Church shall heal.
+ Be thou the image-breaker. Let thy blows
+ Fall heavy as the Suabian's iron hand,
+ On crown or crosier, which shall interpose
+ Between thee and the weal of Fatherland.
+ Leave creeds to closet idlers. First of all,
+ Shake thou all German dream-land with the fall
+ Of that accursed tree, whose evil trunk
+ Was spared of old by Erfurt's stalwart monk.
+ Fight not with ghosts and shadows. Let us hear
+ The snap of chain-links. Let our gladdened ear
+ Catch the pale prisoner's welcome, as the light
+ Follows thy axe-stroke, through his cell of night.
+ Be faithful to both worlds; nor think to feed
+ Earth's starving millions with the husks of creed.
+ Servant of Him whose mission high and holy
+ Was to the wronged, the sorrowing, and the lowly,
+ Thrust not his Eden promise from our sphere,
+ Distant and dim beyond the blue sky's span;
+ Like him of Patmos, see it, now and here,
+ The New Jerusalem comes down to man
+ Be warned by Luther's error. Nor like him,
+ When the roused Teuton dashes from his limb
+ The rusted chain of ages, help to bind
+ His hands for whom thou claim'st the freedom of the mind.
+
+ 1846.
+
+
+
+
+CHANNING.
+
+The last time I saw Dr. Channing was in the summer of 1841, when, in
+company with my English friend, Joseph Sturge, so well known for his
+philanthropic labors and liberal political opinions, I visited him in
+his summer residence in Rhode Island. In recalling the impressions of
+that visit, it can scarcely be necessary to say, that I have no
+reference to the peculiar religious opinions of a man whose life,
+beautifully and truly manifested above the atmosphere of sect, is now
+the world's common legacy.
+
+
+ Not vainly did old poets tell,
+ Nor vainly did old genius paint
+ God's great and crowning miracle,
+ The hero and the saint!
+
+ For even in a faithless day
+ Can we our sainted ones discern;
+ And feel, while with them on the way,
+ Our hearts within us burn.
+
+ And thus the common tongue and pen
+ Which, world-wide, echo Channing's fame,
+ As one of Heaven's anointed men,
+ Have sanctified his name.
+
+ In vain shall Rome her portals bar,
+ And shut from him her saintly prize,
+ Whom, in the world's great calendar,
+ All men shall canonize.
+
+ By Narragansett's sunny bay,
+ Beneath his green embowering wood,
+ To me it seems but yesterday
+ Since at his side I stood.
+
+ The slopes lay green with summer rains,
+ The western wind blew fresh and free,
+ And glimmered down the orchard lanes
+ The white surf of the sea.
+
+ With us was one, who, calm and true,
+ Life's highest purpose understood,
+ And, like his blessed Master, knew
+ The joy of doing good.
+
+ Unlearned, unknown to lettered fame,
+ Yet on the lips of England's poor
+ And toiling millions dwelt his name,
+ With blessings evermore.
+
+ Unknown to power or place, yet where
+ The sun looks o'er the Carib sea,
+ It blended with the freeman's prayer
+ And song of jubilee.
+
+ He told of England's sin and wrong,
+ The ills her suffering children know,
+ The squalor of the city's throng,
+ The green field's want and woe.
+
+ O'er Channing's face the tenderness
+ Of sympathetic sorrow stole,
+ Like a still shadow, passionless,
+ The sorrow of the soul.
+
+ But when the generous Briton told
+ How hearts were answering to his own,
+ And Freedom's rising murmur rolled
+ Up to the dull-eared throne,
+
+ I saw, methought, a glad surprise
+ Thrill through that frail and pain-worn frame,
+ And, kindling in those deep, calm eyes,
+ A still and earnest flame.
+
+ His few, brief words were such as move
+ The human heart,--the Faith-sown seeds
+ Which ripen in the soil of love
+ To high heroic deeds.
+
+ No bars of sect or clime were felt,
+ The Babel strife of tongues had ceased,
+ And at one common altar knelt
+ The Quaker and the priest.
+
+ And not in vain: with strength renewed,
+ And zeal refreshed, and hope less dim,
+ For that brief meeting, each pursued
+ The path allotted him.
+
+ How echoes yet each Western hill
+ And vale with Channing's dying word!
+ How are the hearts of freemen still
+ By that great warning stirred.
+
+ The stranger treads his native soil,
+ And pleads, with zeal unfelt before,
+ The honest right of British toil,
+ The claim of England's poor.
+
+ Before him time-wrought barriers fall,
+ Old fears subside, old hatreds melt,
+ And, stretching o'er the sea's blue wall,
+ The Saxon greets the Celt.
+
+ The yeoman on the Scottish lines,
+ The Sheffield grinder, worn and grim,
+ The delver in the Cornwall mines,
+ Look up with hope to him.
+
+ Swart smiters of the glowing steel,
+ Dark feeders of the forge's flame,
+ Pale watchers at the loom and wheel,
+ Repeat his honored name.
+
+ And thus the influence of that hour
+ Of converse on Rhode Island's strand
+ Lives in the calm, resistless power
+ Which moves our fatherland.
+
+ God blesses still the generous thought,
+ And still the fitting word He speeds
+ And Truth, at His requiring taught,
+ He quickens into deeds.
+
+ Where is the victory of the grave?
+ What dust upon the spirit lies?
+ God keeps the sacred life he gave,--
+ The prophet never dies!
+
+ 1844.
+
+
+
+
+TO MY FRIEND ON THE DEATH OF HIS SISTER.
+
+Sophia Sturge, sister of Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham, the President of
+the British Complete Suffrage Association, died in the 6th month, 1845.
+She was the colleague, counsellor, and ever-ready helpmate of her
+brother in all his vast designs of beneficence. The Birmingham Pilot
+says of her: "Never, perhaps, were the active and passive virtues of the
+human character more harmoniously and beautifully blended than in this
+excellent woman."
+
+
+ Thine is a grief, the depth of which another
+ May never know;
+ Yet, o'er the waters, O my stricken brother!
+ To thee I go.
+
+ I lean my heart unto thee, sadly folding
+ Thy hand in mine;
+ With even the weakness of my soul upholding
+ The strength of thine.
+
+ I never knew, like thee, the dear departed;
+ I stood not by
+ When, in calm trust, the pure and tranquil-hearted
+ Lay down to die.
+
+ And on thy ears my words of weak condoling
+ Must vainly fall
+ The funeral bell which in thy heart is tolling,
+ Sounds over all!
+
+ I will not mock thee with the poor world's common
+ And heartless phrase,
+ Nor wrong the memory of a sainted woman
+ With idle praise.
+
+ With silence only as their benediction,
+ God's angels come
+ Where, in the shadow of a great affliction,
+ The soul sits dumb!
+
+ Yet, would I say what thy own heart approveth
+ Our Father's will,
+ Calling to Him the dear one whom He loveth,
+ Is mercy still.
+
+ Not upon thee or thine the solemn angel
+ Hath evil wrought
+ Her funeral anthem is a glad evangel,--
+ The good die not!
+
+ God calls our loved ones, but we lose not wholly
+ What He hath given;
+ They live on earth, in thought and deed, as truly
+ As in His heaven.
+
+ And she is with thee; in thy path of trial
+ She walketh yet;
+ Still with the baptism of thy self-denial
+ Her locks are wet.
+
+ Up, then, my brother! Lo, the fields of harvest
+ Lie white in view
+ She lives and loves thee, and the God thou servest
+ To both is true.
+
+ Thrust in thy sickle! England's toilworn peasants
+ Thy call abide;
+ And she thou mourn'st, a pure and holy presence,
+ Shall glean beside!
+ 1845.
+
+
+
+
+DANIEL WHEELER
+
+Daniel Wheeler, a minister of the Society of Friends, who had labored in
+the cause of his Divine Master in Great Britain, Russia, and the islands
+of the Pacific, died in New York in the spring of 1840, while on a
+religious visit to this country.
+
+
+ O Dearly loved!
+ And worthy of our love! No more
+ Thy aged form shall rise before
+ The bushed and waiting worshiper,
+ In meek obedience utterance giving
+ To words of truth, so fresh and living,
+ That, even to the inward sense,
+ They bore unquestioned evidence
+ Of an anointed Messenger!
+ Or, bowing down thy silver hair
+ In reverent awfulness of prayer,
+ The world, its time and sense, shut out
+ The brightness of Faith's holy trance
+ Gathered upon thy countenance,
+ As if each lingering cloud of doubt,
+ The cold, dark shadows resting here
+ In Time's unluminous atmosphere,
+ Were lifted by an angel's hand,
+ And through them on thy spiritual eye
+ Shone down the blessedness on high,
+ The glory of the Better Land!
+
+ The oak has fallen!
+ While, meet for no good work, the vine
+ May yet its worthless branches twine,
+ Who knoweth not that with thee fell
+ A great man in our Israel?
+ Fallen, while thy loins were girded still,
+ Thy feet with Zion's dews still wet,
+ And in thy hand retaining yet
+ The pilgrim's staff and scallop-shell
+ Unharmed and safe, where, wild and free,
+ Across the Neva's cold morass
+ The breezes from the Frozen Sea
+ With winter's arrowy keenness pass;
+ Or where the unwarning tropic gale
+ Smote to the waves thy tattered sail,
+ Or where the noon-hour's fervid heat
+ Against Tahiti's mountains beat;
+ The same mysterious Hand which gave
+ Deliverance upon land and wave,
+ Tempered for thee the blasts which blew
+ Ladaga's frozen surface o'er,
+ And blessed for thee the baleful dew
+ Of evening upon Eimeo's shore,
+ Beneath this sunny heaven of ours,
+ Midst our soft airs and opening flowers
+ Hath given thee a grave!
+
+ His will be done,
+ Who seeth not as man, whose way
+ Is not as ours! 'T is well with thee!
+ Nor anxious doubt nor dark dismay
+ Disquieted thy closing day,
+ But, evermore, thy soul could say,
+ "My Father careth still for me!"
+ Called from thy hearth and home,--from her,
+ The last bud on thy household tree,
+ The last dear one to minister
+ In duty and in love to thee,
+ From all which nature holdeth dear,
+ Feeble with years and worn with pain,
+ To seek our distant land again,
+ Bound in the spirit, yet unknowing
+ The things which should befall thee here,
+ Whether for labor or for death,
+ In childlike trust serenely going
+ To that last trial of thy faith!
+ Oh, far away,
+ Where never shines our Northern star
+ On that dark waste which Balboa saw
+ From Darien's mountains stretching far,
+ So strange, heaven-broad, and lone, that there,
+ With forehead to its damp wind bare,
+ He bent his mailed knee in awe;
+ In many an isle whose coral feet
+ The surges of that ocean beat,
+ In thy palm shadows, Oahu,
+ And Honolulu's silver bay,
+ Amidst Owyhee's hills of blue,
+ And taro-plains of Tooboonai,
+ Are gentle hearts, which long shall be
+ Sad as our own at thought of thee,
+ Worn sowers of Truth's holy seed,
+ Whose souls in weariness and need
+ Were strengthened and refreshed by thine.
+ For blessed by our Father's hand
+ Was thy deep love and tender care,
+ Thy ministry and fervent prayer,--
+ Grateful as Eshcol's clustered vine
+ To Israel in a weary land.
+
+ And they who drew
+ By thousands round thee, in the hour
+ Of prayerful waiting, hushed and deep,
+ That He who bade the islands keep
+ Silence before Him, might renew
+ Their strength with His unslumbering power,
+ They too shall mourn that thou art gone,
+ That nevermore thy aged lip
+ Shall soothe the weak, the erring warn,
+ Of those who first, rejoicing, heard
+ Through thee the Gospel's glorious word,--
+ Seals of thy true apostleship.
+ And, if the brightest diadem,
+ Whose gems of glory purely burn
+ Around the ransomed ones in bliss,
+ Be evermore reserved for them
+ Who here, through toil and sorrow, turn
+ Many to righteousness,
+ May we not think of thee as wearing
+ That star-like crown of light, and bearing,
+ Amidst Heaven's white and blissful band,
+ Th' unfading palm-branch in thy hand;
+ And joining with a seraph's tongue
+ In that new song the elders sung,
+ Ascribing to its blessed Giver
+ Thanksgiving, love, and praise forever!
+
+ Farewell!
+ And though the ways of Zion mourn
+ When her strong ones are called away,
+ Who like thyself have calmly borne
+ The heat and burden of the day,
+ Yet He who slumbereth not nor sleepeth
+ His ancient watch around us keepeth;
+ Still, sent from His creating hand,
+ New witnesses for Truth shall stand,
+ New instruments to sound abroad
+ The Gospel of a risen Lord;
+ To gather to the fold once more
+ The desolate and gone astray,
+ The scattered of a cloudy day,
+ And Zion's broken walls restore;
+ And, through the travail and the toil
+ Of true obedience, minister
+ Beauty for ashes, and the oil
+ Of joy for mourning, unto her!
+ So shall her holy bounds increase
+ With walls of praise and gates of peace
+ So shall the Vine, which martyr tears
+ And blood sustained in other years,
+ With fresher life be clothed upon;
+ And to the world in beauty show
+ Like the rose-plant of Jericho,
+ And glorious as Lebanon!
+
+ 1847
+
+
+
+
+TO FREDRIKA BREMER.
+
+It is proper to say that these lines are the joint impromptus of my
+sister and myself. They are inserted here as an expression of our
+admiration of the gifted stranger whom we have since learned to love as
+a friend.
+
+
+ Seeress of the misty Norland,
+ Daughter of the Vikings bold,
+ Welcome to the sunny Vineland,
+ Which thy fathers sought of old!
+
+ Soft as flow of Siija's waters,
+ When the moon of summer shines,
+ Strong as Winter from his mountains
+ Roaring through the sleeted pines.
+
+ Heart and ear, we long have listened
+ To thy saga, rune, and song;
+ As a household joy and presence
+ We have known and loved thee long.
+
+ By the mansion's marble mantel,
+ Round the log-walled cabin's hearth,
+ Thy sweet thoughts and northern fancies
+ Meet and mingle with our mirth.
+
+ And o'er weary spirits keeping
+ Sorrow's night-watch, long and chill,
+ Shine they like thy sun of summer
+ Over midnight vale and hill.
+
+ We alone to thee are strangers,
+ Thou our friend and teacher art;
+ Come, and know us as we know thee;
+ Let us meet thee heart to heart!
+
+ To our homes and household altars
+ We, in turn, thy steps would lead,
+ As thy loving hand has led us
+ O'er the threshold of the Swede.
+
+ 1849.
+
+
+
+
+TO AVIS KEENE ON RECEIVING A BASKET OF SEA-MOSSES.
+
+ Thanks for thy gift
+ Of ocean flowers,
+ Born where the golden drift
+ Of the slant sunshine falls
+ Down the green, tremulous walls
+ Of water, to the cool, still coral bowers,
+ Where, under rainbows of perpetual showers,
+ God's gardens of the deep
+ His patient angels keep;
+ Gladdening the dim, strange solitude
+ With fairest forms and hues, and thus
+ Forever teaching us
+ The lesson which the many-colored skies,
+ The flowers, and leaves, and painted butterflies,
+ The deer's branched antlers, the gay bird that flings
+ The tropic sunshine from its golden wings,
+ The brightness of the human countenance,
+ Its play of smiles, the magic of a glance,
+ Forevermore repeat,
+ In varied tones and sweet,
+ That beauty, in and of itself, is good.
+
+ O kind and generous friend, o'er whom
+ The sunset hues of Time are cast,
+ Painting, upon the overpast
+ And scattered clouds of noonday sorrow
+ The promise of a fairer morrow,
+ An earnest of the better life to come;
+ The binding of the spirit broken,
+ The warning to the erring spoken,
+ The comfort of the sad,
+ The eye to see, the hand to cull
+ Of common things the beautiful,
+ The absent heart made glad
+ By simple gift or graceful token
+ Of love it needs as daily food,
+ All own one Source, and all are good
+ Hence, tracking sunny cove and reach,
+ Where spent waves glimmer up the beach,
+ And toss their gifts of weed and shell
+ From foamy curve and combing swell,
+ No unbefitting task was thine
+ To weave these flowers so soft and fair
+ In unison with His design
+ Who loveth beauty everywhere;
+ And makes in every zone and clime,
+ In ocean and in upper air,
+ All things beautiful in their time.
+
+ For not alone in tones of awe and power
+ He speaks to Inan;
+ The cloudy horror of the thunder-shower
+ His rainbows span;
+ And where the caravan
+ Winds o'er the desert, leaving, as in air
+ The crane-flock leaves, no trace of passage there,
+ He gives the weary eye
+ The palm-leaf shadow for the hot noon hours,
+ And on its branches dry
+ Calls out the acacia's flowers;
+ And where the dark shaft pierces down
+ Beneath the mountain roots,
+ Seen by the miner's lamp alone,
+ The star-like crystal shoots;
+ So, where, the winds and waves below,
+ The coral-branched gardens grow,
+ His climbing weeds and mosses show,
+ Like foliage, on each stony bough,
+ Of varied hues more strangely gay
+ Than forest leaves in autumn's day;--
+ Thus evermore,
+ On sky, and wave, and shore,
+ An all-pervading beauty seems to say
+ God's love and power are one; and they,
+ Who, like the thunder of a sultry day,
+ Smite to restore,
+ And they, who, like the gentle wind, uplift
+ The petals of the dew-wet flowers, and drift
+ Their perfume on the air,
+ Alike may serve Him, each, with their own gift,
+ Making their lives a prayer!
+
+ 1850
+
+
+
+
+THE HILL-TOP
+
+ The burly driver at my side,
+ We slowly climbed the hill,
+ Whose summit, in the hot noontide,
+ Seemed rising, rising still.
+ At last, our short noon-shadows bid
+ The top-stone, bare and brown,
+ From whence, like Gizeh's pyramid,
+ The rough mass slanted down.
+
+ I felt the cool breath of the North;
+ Between me and the sun,
+ O'er deep, still lake, and ridgy earth,
+ I saw the cloud-shades run.
+ Before me, stretched for glistening miles,
+ Lay mountain-girdled Squam;
+ Like green-winged birds, the leafy isles
+ Upon its bosom swam.
+
+ And, glimmering through the sun-haze warm,
+ Far as the eye could roam,
+ Dark billows of an earthquake storm
+ Beflecked with clouds like foam,
+ Their vales in misty shadow deep,
+ Their rugged peaks in shine,
+ I saw the mountain ranges sweep
+ The horizon's northern line.
+
+ There towered Chocorua's peak; and west,
+ Moosehillock's woods were seem,
+ With many a nameless slide-scarred crest
+ And pine-dark gorge between.
+ Beyond them, like a sun-rimmed cloud,
+ The great Notch mountains shone,
+ Watched over by the solemn-browed
+ And awful face of stone!
+
+ "A good look-off!" the driver spake;
+ "About this time, last year,
+ I drove a party to the Lake,
+ And stopped, at evening, here.
+ 'T was duskish down below; but all
+ These hills stood in the sun,
+ Till, dipped behind yon purple wall,
+ He left them, one by one.
+
+ "A lady, who, from Thornton hill,
+ Had held her place outside,
+ And, as a pleasant woman will,
+ Had cheered the long, dull ride,
+ Besought me, with so sweet a smile,
+ That--though I hate delays--
+ I could not choose but rest awhile,--
+ (These women have such ways!)
+
+ "On yonder mossy ledge she sat,
+ Her sketch upon her knees,
+ A stray brown lock beneath her hat
+ Unrolling in the breeze;
+ Her sweet face, in the sunset light
+ Upraised and glorified,--
+ I never saw a prettier sight
+ In all my mountain ride.
+
+ "As good as fair; it seemed her joy
+ To comfort and to give;
+ My poor, sick wife, and cripple boy,
+ Will bless her while they live!"
+ The tremor in the driver's tone
+ His manhood did not shame
+ "I dare say, sir, you may have known"--
+ He named a well-known name.
+
+ Then sank the pyramidal mounds,
+ The blue lake fled away;
+ For mountain-scope a parlor's bounds,
+ A lighted hearth for day!
+ From lonely years and weary miles
+ The shadows fell apart;
+ Kind voices cheered, sweet human smiles
+ Shone warm into my heart.
+
+ We journeyed on; but earth and sky
+ Had power to charm no more;
+ Still dreamed my inward-turning eye
+ The dream of memory o'er.
+ Ah! human kindness, human love,--
+ To few who seek denied;
+ Too late we learn to prize above
+ The whole round world beside!
+
+ 1850
+
+
+
+ELLIOTT.
+
+Ebenezer Elliott was to the artisans of England what Burns was to the
+peasantry of Scotland. His Corn-law Rhymes contributed not a little to
+that overwhelming tide of popular opinion and feeling which resulted in
+the repeal of the tax on bread. Well has the eloquent author of The
+Reforms and Reformers of Great Britain said of him, "Not corn-law
+repealers alone, but all Britons who moisten their scanty bread with the
+sweat of the brow, are largely indebted to his inspiring lay, for the
+mighty bound which the laboring mind of England has taken in our day."
+
+
+ Hands off! thou tithe-fat plunderer! play
+ No trick of priestcraft here!
+ Back, puny lordling! darest thou lay
+ A hand on Elliott's bier?
+ Alive, your rank and pomp, as dust,
+ Beneath his feet he trod.
+
+ He knew the locust swarm that cursed
+ The harvest-fields of God.
+ On these pale lips, the smothered thought
+ Which England's millions feel,
+ A fierce and fearful splendor caught,
+ As from his forge the steel.
+ Strong-armed as Thor, a shower of fire
+ His smitten anvil flung;
+ God's curse, Earth's wrong, dumb Hunger's ire,
+ He gave them all a tongue!
+
+ Then let the poor man's horny hands
+ Bear up the mighty dead,
+ And labor's swart and stalwart bands
+ Behind as mourners tread.
+ Leave cant and craft their baptized bounds,
+ Leave rank its minster floor;
+ Give England's green and daisied grounds
+ The poet of the poor!
+
+ Lay down upon his Sheaf's green verge
+ That brave old heart of oak,
+ With fitting dirge from sounding forge,
+ And pall of furnace smoke!
+ Where whirls the stone its dizzy rounds,
+ And axe and sledge are swung,
+ And, timing to their stormy sounds,
+ His stormy lays are sung.
+
+ There let the peasant's step be heard,
+ The grinder chant his rhyme,
+ Nor patron's praise nor dainty word
+ Befits the man or time.
+ No soft lament nor dreamer's sigh
+ For him whose words were bread;
+ The Runic rhyme and spell whereby
+ The foodless poor were fed!
+
+ Pile up the tombs of rank and pride,
+ O England, as thou wilt!
+ With pomp to nameless worth denied,
+ Emblazon titled guilt!
+ No part or lot in these we claim;
+ But, o'er the sounding wave,
+ A common right to Elliott's name,
+ A freehold in his grave!
+
+ 1850
+
+
+
+
+ICHABOD
+
+This poem was the outcome of the surprise and grief and forecast of evil
+consequences which I felt on reading the seventh of March speech of
+Daniel Webster in support of the "compromise," and the Fugitive Slave
+Law. No partisan or personal enmity dictated it. On the contrary my
+admiration of the splendid personality and intellectual power of the
+great Senator was never stronger than when I laid down his speech, and,
+in one of the saddest moments of my life, penned my protest. I saw, as I
+wrote, with painful clearness its sure results,--the Slave Power
+arrogant and defiant, strengthened and encouraged to carry out its
+scheme for the extension of its baleful system, or the dissolution of
+the Union, the guaranties of personal liberty in the free States broken
+down, and the whole country made the hunting-ground of slave-catchers.
+In the horror of such a vision, so soon fearfully fulfilled, if one
+spoke at all, he could only speak in tones of stern and sorrowful
+rebuke. But death softens all resentments, and the consciousness of a
+common inheritance of frailty and weakness modifies the severity of
+judgment. Years after, in _The Lost Occasion_ I gave utterance to an
+almost universal regret that the great statesman did not live to see the
+flag which he loved trampled under the feet of Slavery, and, in view of
+this desecration, make his last days glorious in defence of "Liberty and
+Union, one and inseparable."
+
+
+ So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
+ Which once he wore!
+ The glory from his gray hairs gone
+ Forevermore!
+
+ Revile him not, the Tempter hath
+ A snare for all;
+ And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
+ Befit his fall!
+
+ Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage,
+ When he who might
+ Have lighted up and led his age,
+ Falls back in night.
+
+ Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark
+ A bright soul driven,
+ Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
+ From hope and heaven!
+
+ Let not the land once proud of him
+ Insult him now,
+ Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
+ Dishonored brow.
+
+ But let its humbled sons, instead,
+ From sea to lake,
+ A long lament, as for the dead,
+ In sadness make.
+
+ Of all we loved and honored, naught
+ Save power remains;
+ A fallen angel's pride of thought,
+ Still strong in chains.
+
+ All else is gone; from those great eyes
+ The soul has fled
+ When faith is lost, when honor dies,
+ The man is dead!
+
+ Then, pay the reverence of old days
+ To his dead fame;
+ Walk backward, with averted gaze,
+ And hide the shame!
+
+ 1850
+
+
+
+
+THE LOST OCCASION.
+
+ Some die too late and some too soon,
+ At early morning, heat of noon,
+ Or the chill evening twilight. Thou,
+ Whom the rich heavens did so endow
+ With eyes of power and Jove's own brow,
+ With all the massive strength that fills
+ Thy home-horizon's granite hills,
+ With rarest gifts of heart and head
+ From manliest stock inherited,
+ New England's stateliest type of man,
+ In port and speech Olympian;
+
+ Whom no one met, at first, but took
+ A second awed and wondering look
+ (As turned, perchance, the eyes of Greece
+ On Phidias' unveiled masterpiece);
+ Whose words in simplest homespun clad,
+ The Saxon strength of Caedmon's had,
+ With power reserved at need to reach
+ The Roman forum's loftiest speech,
+ Sweet with persuasion, eloquent
+ In passion, cool in argument,
+ Or, ponderous, falling on thy foes
+ As fell the Norse god's hammer blows,
+ Crushing as if with Talus' flail
+ Through Error's logic-woven mail,
+ And failing only when they tried
+ The adamant of the righteous side,--
+ Thou, foiled in aim and hope, bereaved
+ Of old friends, by the new deceived,
+ Too soon for us, too soon for thee,
+ Beside thy lonely Northern sea,
+ Where long and low the marsh-lands spread,
+ Laid wearily down thy August head.
+
+ Thou shouldst have lived to feel below
+ Thy feet Disunion's fierce upthrow;
+ The late-sprung mine that underlaid
+ Thy sad concessions vainly made.
+ Thou shouldst have seen from Sumter's wall
+ The star-flag of the Union fall,
+ And armed rebellion pressing on
+ The broken lines of Washington!
+ No stronger voice than thine had then
+ Called out the utmost might of men,
+ To make the Union's charter free
+ And strengthen law by liberty.
+ How had that stern arbitrament
+ To thy gray age youth's vigor lent,
+ Shaming ambition's paltry prize
+ Before thy disillusioned eyes;
+ Breaking the spell about thee wound
+ Like the green withes that Samson bound;
+ Redeeming in one effort grand,
+ Thyself and thy imperilled land!
+ Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee,
+ O sleeper by the Northern sea,
+ The gates of opportunity!
+ God fills the gaps of human need,
+ Each crisis brings its word and deed.
+ Wise men and strong we did not lack;
+ But still, with memory turning back,
+ In the dark hours we thought of thee,
+ And thy lone grave beside the sea.
+
+ Above that grave the east winds blow,
+ And from the marsh-lands drifting slow
+ The sea-fog comes, with evermore
+ The wave-wash of a lonely shore,
+ And sea-bird's melancholy cry,
+ As Nature fain would typify
+ The sadness of a closing scene,
+ The loss of that which should have been.
+ But, where thy native mountains bare
+ Their foreheads to diviner air,
+ Fit emblem of enduring fame,
+ One lofty summit keeps thy name.
+ For thee the cosmic forces did
+ The rearing of that pyramid,
+ The prescient ages shaping with
+ Fire, flood, and frost thy monolith.
+ Sunrise and sunset lay thereon
+ With hands of light their benison,
+ The stars of midnight pause to set
+ Their jewels in its coronet.
+ And evermore that mountain mass
+ Seems climbing from the shadowy pass
+ To light, as if to manifest
+ Thy nobler self, thy life at best!
+
+ 1880
+
+
+
+
+WORDSWORTH, WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF HIS MEMOIRS.
+
+ Dear friends, who read the world aright,
+ And in its common forms discern
+ A beauty and a harmony
+ The many never learn!
+
+ Kindred in soul of him who found
+ In simple flower and leaf and stone
+ The impulse of the sweetest lays
+ Our Saxon tongue has known,--
+
+ Accept this record of a life
+ As sweet and pure, as calm and good,
+ As a long day of blandest June
+ In green field and in wood.
+
+ How welcome to our ears, long pained
+ By strife of sect and party noise,
+ The brook-like murmur of his song
+ Of nature's simple joys!
+
+ The violet' by its mossy stone,
+ The primrose by the river's brim,
+ And chance-sown daffodil, have found
+ Immortal life through him.
+
+ The sunrise on his breezy lake,
+ The rosy tints his sunset brought,
+ World-seen, are gladdening all the vales
+ And mountain-peaks of thought.
+
+ Art builds on sand; the works of pride
+ And human passion change and fall;
+ But that which shares the life of God
+ With Him surviveth all.
+
+ 1851.
+
+
+
+
+TO ------, LINES WRITTEN AFTER A SUMMER DAY'S EXCURSION.
+
+ Fair Nature's priestesses! to whom,
+ In hieroglyph of bud and bloom,
+ Her mysteries are told;
+ Who, wise in lore of wood and mead,
+ The seasons' pictured scrolls can read,
+ In lessons manifold!
+
+ Thanks for the courtesy, and gay
+ Good-humor, which on Washing Day
+ Our ill-timed visit bore;
+ Thanks for your graceful oars, which broke
+ The morning dreams of Artichoke,
+ Along his wooded shore!
+
+ Varied as varying Nature's ways,
+ Sprites of the river, woodland fays,
+ Or mountain nymphs, ye seem;
+ Free-limbed Dianas on the green,
+ Loch Katrine's Ellen, or Undine,
+ Upon your favorite stream.
+
+ The forms of which the poets told,
+ The fair benignities of old,
+ Were doubtless such as you;
+ What more than Artichoke the rill
+ Of Helicon? Than Pipe-stave hill
+ Arcadia's mountain-view?
+
+ No sweeter bowers the bee delayed,
+ In wild Hymettus' scented shade,
+ Than those you dwell among;
+ Snow-flowered azaleas, intertwined
+ With roses, over banks inclined
+ With trembling harebells hung!
+
+ A charmed life unknown to death,
+ Immortal freshness Nature hath;
+ Her fabled fount and glen
+ Are now and here: Dodona's shrine
+ Still murmurs in the wind-swept pine,--
+ All is that e'er hath been.
+
+ The Beauty which old Greece or Rome
+ Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at home;
+ We need but eye and ear
+ In all our daily walks to trace
+ The outlines of incarnate grace,
+ The hymns of gods to hear!
+
+ 1851
+
+
+
+IN PEACE.
+
+ A track of moonlight on a quiet lake,
+ Whose small waves on a silver-sanded shore
+ Whisper of peace, and with the low winds make
+ Such harmonies as keep the woods awake,
+ And listening all night long for their sweet sake
+ A green-waved slope of meadow, hovered o'er
+ By angel-troops of lilies, swaying light
+ On viewless stems, with folded wings of white;
+ A slumberous stretch of mountain-land, far seen
+ Where the low westering day, with gold and green,
+ Purple and amber, softly blended, fills
+ The wooded vales, and melts among the hills;
+ A vine-fringed river, winding to its rest
+ On the calm bosom of a stormless sea,
+ Bearing alike upon its placid breast,
+ With earthly flowers and heavenly' stars impressed,
+ The hues of time and of eternity
+ Such are the pictures which the thought of thee,
+ O friend, awakeneth,--charming the keen pain
+ Of thy departure, and our sense of loss
+ Requiting with the fullness of thy gain.
+ Lo! on the quiet grave thy life-borne cross,
+ Dropped only at its side, methinks doth shine,
+ Of thy beatitude the radiant sign!
+ No sob of grief, no wild lament be there,
+ To break the Sabbath of the holy air;
+ But, in their stead, the silent-breathing prayer
+ Of hearts still waiting for a rest like thine.
+ O spirit redeemed! Forgive us, if henceforth,
+ With sweet and pure similitudes of earth,
+ We keep thy pleasant memory freshly green,
+ Of love's inheritance a priceless part,
+ Which Fancy's self, in reverent awe, is seen
+ To paint, forgetful of the tricks of art,
+ With pencil dipped alone in colors of the heart.
+
+ 1851.
+
+
+
+
+BENEDICITE.
+
+ God's love and peace be with thee, where
+ Soe'er this soft autumnal air
+ Lifts the dark tresses of thy hair.
+
+ Whether through city casements comes
+ Its kiss to thee, in crowded rooms,
+ Or, out among the woodland blooms,
+
+ It freshens o'er thy thoughtful face,
+ Imparting, in its glad embrace,
+ Beauty to beauty, grace to grace!
+
+ Fair Nature's book together read,
+ The old wood-paths that knew our tread,
+ The maple shadows overhead,--
+
+ The hills we climbed, the river seen
+ By gleams along its deep ravine,--
+ All keep thy memory fresh and green.
+
+ Where'er I look, where'er I stray,
+ Thy thought goes with me on my way,
+ And hence the prayer I breathe to-day;
+
+ O'er lapse of time and change of scene,
+ The weary waste which lies between
+ Thyself and me, my heart I lean.
+
+ Thou lack'st not Friendship's spell-word, nor
+ The half-unconscious power to draw
+ All hearts to thine by Love's sweet law.
+
+ With these good gifts of God is cast
+ Thy lot, and many a charm thou hast
+ To hold the blessed angels fast.
+
+ If, then, a fervent wish for thee
+ The gracious heavens will heed from me,
+ What should, dear heart, its burden be?
+
+ The sighing of a shaken reed,--
+ What can I more than meekly plead
+ The greatness of our common need?
+
+ God's love,--unchanging, pure, and true,--
+ The Paraclete white-shining through
+ His peace,--the fall of Hermon's dew!
+
+ With such a prayer, on this sweet day,
+ As thou mayst hear and I may say,
+ I greet thee, dearest, far away!
+
+ 1851.
+
+
+
+
+KOSSUTH
+
+It can scarcely be necessary to say that there are elements in the
+character and passages in the history of the great Hungarian statesman
+and orator, which necessarily command the admiration of those, even, who
+believe that no political revolution was ever worth the price of human
+blood.
+
+
+ Type of two mighty continents!--combining
+ The strength of Europe with the warmth and glow
+ Of Asian song and prophecy,--the shining
+ Of Orient splendors over Northern snow!
+ Who shall receive him? Who, unblushing, speak
+ Welcome to him, who, while he strove to break
+ The Austrian yoke from Magyar necks, smote off
+ At the same blow the fetters of the serf,
+ Rearing the altar of his Fatherland
+ On the firm base of freedom, and thereby
+ Lifting to Heaven a patriot's stainless hand,
+ Mocked not the God of Justice with a lie!
+ Who shall be Freedom's mouthpiece? Who shall give
+ Her welcoming cheer to the great fugitive?
+ Not he who, all her sacred trusts betraying,
+ Is scourging back to slavery's hell of pain
+ The swarthy Kossuths of our land again!
+ Not he whose utterance now from lips designed
+ The bugle-march of Liberty to wind,
+ And call her hosts beneath the breaking light,
+ The keen reveille of her morn of fight,
+ Is but the hoarse note of the blood-hound's baying,
+ The wolf's long howl behind the bondman's flight!
+ Oh for the tongue of him who lies at rest
+ In Quincy's shade of patrimonial trees,
+ Last of the Puritan tribunes and the best,
+ To lend a voice to Freedom's sympathies,
+ And hail the coming of the noblest guest
+ The Old World's wrong has given the New World of the West!
+
+ 1851.
+
+
+
+
+TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER.
+
+AN EPISTLE NOT AFTER THE MANNER OF HORACE
+
+These lines were addressed to my worthy friend Joshua Coffin, teacher,
+historian, and antiquarian. He was one of the twelve persons who with
+William Lloyd Garrison formed the first anti-slavery society in New
+England.
+
+
+ Old friend, kind friend! lightly down
+ Drop time's snow-flakes on thy crown!
+ Never be thy shadow less,
+ Never fail thy cheerfulness;
+ Care, that kills the cat, may, plough
+ Wrinkles in the miser's brow,
+ Deepen envy's spiteful frown,
+ Draw the mouths of bigots down,
+ Plague ambition's dream, and sit
+ Heavy on the hypocrite,
+ Haunt the rich man's door, and ride
+ In the gilded coach of pride;--
+ Let the fiend pass!--what can he
+ Find to do with such as thee?
+ Seldom comes that evil guest
+ Where the conscience lies at rest,
+ And brown health and quiet wit
+ Smiling on the threshold sit.
+
+ I, the urchin unto whom,
+ In that smoked and dingy room,
+ Where the district gave thee rule
+ O'er its ragged winter school,
+ Thou didst teach the mysteries
+ Of those weary A B C's,--
+ Where, to fill the every pause
+ Of thy wise and learned saws,
+ Through the cracked and crazy wall
+ Came the cradle-rock and squall,
+ And the goodman's voice, at strife
+ With his shrill and tipsy wife,
+ Luring us by stories old,
+ With a comic unction told,
+ More than by the eloquence
+ Of terse birchen arguments
+ (Doubtful gain, I fear), to look
+ With complacence on a book!--
+ Where the genial pedagogue
+ Half forgot his rogues to flog,
+ Citing tale or apologue,
+ Wise and merry in its drift
+ As was Phaedrus' twofold gift,
+ Had the little rebels known it,
+ Risum et prudentiam monet!
+ I,--the man of middle years,
+ In whose sable locks appears
+ Many a warning fleck of gray,--
+ Looking back to that far day,
+ And thy primal lessons, feel
+ Grateful smiles my lips unseal,
+ As, remembering thee, I blend
+ Olden teacher, present friend,
+ Wise with antiquarian search,
+ In the scrolls of State and Church
+ Named on history's title-page,
+ Parish-clerk and justice sage;
+ For the ferule's wholesome awe
+ Wielding now the sword of law.
+
+ Threshing Time's neglected sheaves,
+ Gathering up the scattered leaves
+ Which the wrinkled sibyl cast
+ Careless from her as she passed,--
+ Twofold citizen art thou,
+ Freeman of the past and now.
+ He who bore thy name of old
+ Midway in the heavens did hold
+ Over Gibeon moon and sun;
+ Thou hast bidden them backward run;
+ Of to-day the present ray
+ Flinging over yesterday!
+
+ Let the busy ones deride
+ What I deem of right thy pride
+ Let the fools their treadmills grind,
+ Look not forward nor behind,
+ Shuffle in and wriggle out,
+ Veer with every breeze about,
+ Turning like a windmill sail,
+ Or a dog that seeks his tail;
+ Let them laugh to see thee fast
+ Tabernacled in the Past,
+ Working out with eye and lip,
+ Riddles of old penmanship,
+ Patient as Belzoni there
+ Sorting out, with loving care,
+ Mummies of dead questions stripped
+ From their sevenfold manuscript.
+
+ Dabbling, in their noisy way,
+ In the puddles of to-day,
+ Little know they of that vast
+ Solemn ocean of the past,
+ On whose margin, wreck-bespread,
+ Thou art walking with the dead,
+ Questioning the stranded years,
+ Waking smiles, by turns, and tears,
+ As thou callest up again
+ Shapes the dust has long o'erlain,--
+ Fair-haired woman, bearded man,
+ Cavalier and Puritan;
+ In an age whose eager view
+ Seeks but present things, and new,
+ Mad for party, sect and gold,
+ Teaching reverence for the old.
+
+ On that shore, with fowler's tact,
+ Coolly bagging fact on fact,
+ Naught amiss to thee can float,
+ Tale, or song, or anecdote;
+ Village gossip, centuries old,
+ Scandals by our grandams told,
+ What the pilgrim's table spread,
+ Where he lived, and whom he wed,
+ Long-drawn bill of wine and beer
+ For his ordination cheer,
+ Or the flip that wellnigh made
+ Glad his funeral cavalcade;
+ Weary prose, and poet's lines,
+ Flavored by their age, like wines,
+ Eulogistic of some quaint,
+ Doubtful, puritanic saint;
+ Lays that quickened husking jigs,
+ Jests that shook grave periwigs,
+ When the parson had his jokes
+ And his glass, like other folks;
+ Sermons that, for mortal hours,
+ Taxed our fathers' vital powers,
+ As the long nineteenthlies poured
+ Downward from the sounding-board,
+ And, for fire of Pentecost,
+ Touched their beards December's frost.
+
+ Time is hastening on, and we
+ What our fathers are shall be,--
+ Shadow-shapes of memory!
+ Joined to that vast multitude
+ Where the great are but the good,
+ And the mind of strength shall prove
+ Weaker than the heart of love;
+ Pride of graybeard wisdom less
+ Than the infant's guilelessness,
+ And his song of sorrow more
+ Than the crown the Psalmist wore
+ Who shall then, with pious zeal,
+ At our moss-grown thresholds kneel,
+ From a stained and stony page
+ Reading to a careless age,
+ With a patient eye like thine,
+ Prosing tale and limping line,
+ Names and words the hoary rime
+ Of the Past has made sublime?
+ Who shall work for us as well
+ The antiquarian's miracle?
+ Who to seeming life recall
+ Teacher grave and pupil small?
+ Who shall give to thee and me
+ Freeholds in futurity?
+
+ Well, whatever lot be mine,
+ Long and happy days be thine,
+ Ere thy full and honored age
+ Dates of time its latest page!
+ Squire for master, State for school,
+ Wisely lenient, live and rule;
+ Over grown-up knave and rogue
+ Play the watchful pedagogue;
+ Or, while pleasure smiles on duty,
+ At the call of youth and beauty,
+ Speak for them the spell of law
+ Which shall bar and bolt withdraw,
+ And the flaming sword remove
+ From the Paradise of Love.
+ Still, with undimmed eyesight, pore
+ Ancient tome and record o'er;
+ Still thy week-day lyrics croon,
+ Pitch in church the Sunday tune,
+ Showing something, in thy part,
+ Of the old Puritanic art,
+ Singer after Sternhold's heart
+ In thy pew, for many a year,
+ Homilies from Oldbug hear,
+ Who to wit like that of South,
+ And the Syrian's golden mouth,
+ Doth the homely pathos add
+ Which the pilgrim preachers had;
+ Breaking, like a child at play,
+ Gilded idols of the day,
+ Cant of knave and pomp of fool
+ Tossing with his ridicule,
+ Yet, in earnest or in jest,
+ Ever keeping truth abreast.
+ And, when thou art called, at last,
+ To thy townsmen of the past,
+ Not as stranger shalt thou come;
+ Thou shalt find thyself at home
+ With the little and the big,
+ Woollen cap and periwig,
+ Madam in her high-laced ruff,
+ Goody in her home-made stuff,--
+ Wise and simple, rich and poor,
+ Thou hast known them all before!
+
+ 1851
+
+
+
+THE CROSS.
+
+Richard Dillingham, a young member of the Society of Friends, died in
+the Nashville penitentiary, where he was confined for the act of aiding
+the escape of fugitive slaves.
+
+
+ "The cross, if rightly borne, shall be
+ No burden, but support to thee;"
+ So, moved of old time for our sake,
+ The holy monk of Kempen spake.
+
+ Thou brave and true one! upon whom
+ Was laid the cross of martyrdom,
+ How didst thou, in thy generous youth,
+ Bear witness to this blessed truth!
+
+ Thy cross of suffering and of shame
+ A staff within thy hands became,
+ In paths where faith alone could see
+ The Master's steps supporting thee.
+
+ Thine was the seed-time; God alone
+ Beholds the end of what is sown;
+ Beyond our vision, weak and dim,
+ The harvest-time is hid with Him.
+
+ Yet, unforgotten where it lies,
+ That seed of generous sacrifice,
+ Though seeming on the desert cast,
+ Shall rise with bloom and fruit at last.
+
+ 1852.
+
+
+
+
+THE HERO.
+
+The hero of the incident related in this poem was Dr. Samuel Gridley
+Howe, the well-known philanthropist, who when a young man volunteered
+his aid in the Greek struggle for independence.
+
+
+ "Oh for a knight like Bayard,
+ Without reproach or fear;
+ My light glove on his casque of steel,
+ My love-knot on his spear!
+
+ "Oh for the white plume floating
+ Sad Zutphen's field above,--
+ The lion heart in battle,
+ The woman's heart in love!
+
+ "Oh that man once more were manly,
+ Woman's pride, and not her scorn:
+ That once more the pale young mother
+ Dared to boast 'a man is born'!
+
+ "But, now life's slumberous current
+ No sun-bowed cascade wakes;
+ No tall, heroic manhood
+ The level dulness breaks.
+
+ "Oh for a knight like Bayard,
+ Without reproach or fear!
+ My light glove on his casque of steel,
+ My love-knot on his spear!"
+
+ Then I said, my own heart throbbing
+ To the time her proud pulse beat,
+ "Life hath its regal natures yet,
+ True, tender, brave, and sweet!
+
+ "Smile not, fair unbeliever!
+ One man, at least, I know,
+ Who might wear the crest of Bayard
+ Or Sidney's plume of snow.
+
+ "Once, when over purple mountains
+ Died away the Grecian sun,
+ And the far Cyllenian ranges
+ Paled and darkened, one by one,--
+
+ "Fell the Turk, a bolt of thunder,
+ Cleaving all the quiet sky,
+ And against his sharp steel lightnings
+ Stood the Suliote but to die.
+
+ "Woe for the weak and halting!
+ The crescent blazed behind
+ A curving line of sabres,
+ Like fire before the wind!
+
+ "Last to fly, and first to rally,
+ Rode he of whom I speak,
+ When, groaning in his bridle-path,
+ Sank down a wounded Greek.
+
+ "With the rich Albanian costume
+ Wet with many a ghastly stain,
+ Gazing on earth and sky as one
+ Who might not gaze again.
+
+ "He looked forward to the mountains,
+ Back on foes that never spare,
+ Then flung him from his saddle,
+ And placed the stranger there.
+
+ "'Allah! hu!' Through flashing sabres,
+ Through a stormy hail of lead,
+ The good Thessalian charger
+ Up the slopes of olives sped.
+
+ "Hot spurred the turbaned riders;
+ He almost felt their breath,
+ Where a mountain stream rolled darkly down
+ Between the hills and death.
+
+ "One brave and manful struggle,--
+ He gained the solid land,
+ And the cover of the mountains,
+ And the carbines of his band!"
+
+ "It was very great and noble,"
+ Said the moist-eyed listener then,
+ "But one brave deed makes no hero;
+ Tell me what he since hath been!"
+
+ "Still a brave and generous manhood,
+ Still an honor without stain,
+ In the prison of the Kaiser,
+ By the barricades of Seine.
+
+ "But dream not helm and harness
+ The sign of valor true;
+ Peace hath higher tests of manhood
+ Than battle ever knew.
+
+ "Wouldst know him now? Behold him,
+ The Cadmus of the blind,
+ Giving the dumb lip language,
+ The idiot-clay a mind.
+
+ "Walking his round of duty
+ Serenely day by day,
+ With the strong man's hand of labor
+ And childhood's heart of play.
+
+ "True as the knights of story,
+ Sir Lancelot and his peers,
+ Brave in his calm endurance
+ As they in tilt of spears.
+
+ "As waves in stillest waters,
+ As stars in noonday skies,
+ All that wakes to noble action
+ In his noon of calmness lies.
+
+ "Wherever outraged Nature
+ Asks word or action brave,
+ Wherever struggles labor,
+ Wherever groans a slave,--
+
+ "Wherever rise the peoples,
+ Wherever sinks a throne,
+ The throbbing heart of Freedom finds
+ An answer in his own.
+
+ "Knight of a better era,
+ Without reproach or fear!
+ Said I not well that Bayards
+ And Sidneys still are here?"
+
+ 1853.
+
+
+
+
+RANTOUL.
+
+No more fitting inscription could be placed on the tombstone of Robert
+Rantoul than this: "He died at his post in Congress, and his last words
+were a protest in the name of Democracy against the Fugitive-Slave Law."
+
+
+ One day, along the electric wire
+ His manly word for Freedom sped;
+ We came next morn: that tongue of fire
+ Said only, "He who spake is dead!"
+
+ Dead! while his voice was living yet,
+ In echoes round the pillared dome!
+ Dead! while his blotted page lay wet
+ With themes of state and loves of home!
+
+ Dead! in that crowning grace of time,
+ That triumph of life's zenith hour!
+ Dead! while we watched his manhood's prime
+ Break from the slow bud into flower!
+
+ Dead! he so great, and strong, and wise,
+ While the mean thousands yet drew breath;
+ How deepened, through that dread surprise,
+ The mystery and the awe of death!
+
+ From the high place whereon our votes
+ Had borne him, clear, calm, earnest, fell
+ His first words, like the prelude notes
+ Of some great anthem yet to swell.
+
+ We seemed to see our flag unfurled,
+ Our champion waiting in his place
+ For the last battle of the world,
+ The Armageddon of the race.
+
+ Through him we hoped to speak the word
+ Which wins the freedom of a land;
+ And lift, for human right, the sword
+ Which dropped from Hampden's dying hand.
+
+ For he had sat at Sidney's feet,
+ And walked with Pym and Vane apart;
+ And, through the centuries, felt the beat
+ Of Freedom's march in Cromwell's heart.
+
+ He knew the paths the worthies held,
+ Where England's best and wisest trod;
+ And, lingering, drank the springs that welled
+ Beneath the touch of Milton's rod.
+
+ No wild enthusiast of the right,
+ Self-poised and clear, he showed alway
+ The coolness of his northern night,
+ The ripe repose of autumn's day.
+
+ His steps were slow, yet forward still
+ He pressed where others paused or failed;
+ The calm star clomb with constant will,
+ The restless meteor flashed and paled.
+
+ Skilled in its subtlest wile, he knew
+ And owned the higher ends of Law;
+ Still rose majestic on his view
+ The awful Shape the schoolman saw.
+
+ Her home the heart of God; her voice
+ The choral harmonies whereby
+ The stars, through all their spheres, rejoice,
+ The rhythmic rule of earth and sky.
+
+ We saw his great powers misapplied
+ To poor ambitions; yet, through all,
+ We saw him take the weaker side,
+ And right the wronged, and free the thrall.
+
+ Now, looking o'er the frozen North,
+ For one like him in word and act,
+ To call her old, free spirit forth,
+ And give her faith the life of fact,--
+
+ To break her party bonds of shame,
+ And labor with the zeal of him
+ To make the Democratic name
+ Of Liberty the synonyme,--
+
+ We sweep the land from hill to strand,
+ We seek the strong, the wise, the brave,
+ And, sad of heart, return to stand
+ In silence by a new-made grave!
+
+ There, where his breezy hills of home
+ Look out upon his sail-white seas,
+ The sounds of winds and waters come,
+ And shape themselves to words like these.
+
+ "Why, murmuring, mourn that he, whose power
+ Was lent to Party over-long,
+ Heard the still whisper at the hour
+ He set his foot on Party wrong?
+
+ "The human life that closed so well
+ No lapse of folly now can stain
+ The lips whence Freedom's protest fell
+ No meaner thought can now profane.
+
+ "Mightier than living voice his grave
+ That lofty protest utters o'er;
+ Through roaring wind and smiting wave
+ It speaks his hate of wrong once more.
+
+ "Men of the North! your weak regret
+ Is wasted here; arise and pay
+ To freedom and to him your debt,
+ By following where he led the way!"
+
+ 1853.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM FORSTER.
+
+William Forster, of Norwich, England, died in East Tennessee, in the 1st
+month, 1854, while engaged in presenting to the governors of the States
+of this Union the address of his religious society on the evils of
+slavery. He was the relative and coadjutor of the Buxtons, Gurneys, and
+Frys; and his whole life, extending al-most to threescore and ten years,
+was a pore and beautiful example of Christian benevolence. He had
+travelled over Europe, and visited most of its sovereigns, to plead
+against the slave-trade and slavery; and had twice before made visits to
+this country, under impressions of religious duty. He was the father of
+the Right Hon. William Edward Forster. He visited my father's house in
+Haverhill during his first tour in the United States.
+
+
+ The years are many since his hand
+ Was laid upon my head,
+ Too weak and young to understand
+ The serious words he said.
+
+ Yet often now the good man's look
+ Before me seems to swim,
+ As if some inward feeling took
+ The outward guise of him.
+
+ As if, in passion's heated war,
+ Or near temptation's charm,
+ Through him the low-voiced monitor
+ Forewarned me of the harm.
+
+ Stranger and pilgrim! from that day
+ Of meeting, first and last,
+ Wherever Duty's pathway lay,
+ His reverent steps have passed.
+
+ The poor to feed, the lost to seek,
+ To proffer life to death,
+ Hope to the erring,--to the weak
+ The strength of his own faith.
+
+ To plead the captive's right; remove
+ The sting of hate from Law;
+ And soften in the fire of love
+ The hardened steel of War.
+
+ He walked the dark world, in the mild,
+ Still guidance of the Light;
+ In tearful tenderness a child,
+ A strong man in the right.
+
+ From what great perils, on his way,
+ He found, in prayer, release;
+ Through what abysmal shadows lay
+ His pathway unto peace,
+
+ God knoweth: we could only see
+ The tranquil strength he gained;
+ The bondage lost in liberty,
+ The fear in love unfeigned.
+
+ And I,--my youthful fancies grown
+ The habit of the man,
+ Whose field of life by angels sown
+ The wilding vines o'erran,--
+
+ Low bowed in silent gratitude,
+ My manhood's heart enjoys
+ That reverence for the pure and good
+ Which blessed the dreaming boy's.
+
+ Still shines the light of holy lives
+ Like star-beams over doubt;
+ Each sainted memory, Christlike, drives
+ Some dark possession out.
+
+ O friend! O brother I not in vain
+ Thy life so calm and true,
+ The silver dropping of the rain,
+ The fall of summer dew!
+
+ How many burdened hearts have prayed
+ Their lives like thine might be
+ But more shall pray henceforth for aid
+ To lay them down like thee.
+
+ With weary hand, yet steadfast will,
+ In old age as in youth,
+ Thy Master found thee sowing still
+ The good seed of His truth.
+
+ As on thy task-field closed the day
+ In golden-skied decline,
+ His angel met thee on the way,
+ And lent his arm to thine.
+
+ Thy latest care for man,--thy last
+ Of earthly thought a prayer,--
+ Oh, who thy mantle, backward cast,
+ Is worthy now to wear?
+
+ Methinks the mound which marks thy bed
+ Might bless our land and save,
+ As rose, of old, to life the dead
+ Who touched the prophet's grave
+
+ 1854.
+
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES SUMNER.
+
+ If I have seemed more prompt to censure wrong
+ Than praise the right; if seldom to thine ear
+ My voice hath mingled with the exultant cheer
+ Borne upon all our Northern winds along;
+ If I have failed to join the fickle throng
+ In wide-eyed wonder, that thou standest strong
+ In victory, surprised in thee to find
+ Brougham's scathing power with Canning's grace combined;
+ That he, for whom the ninefold Muses sang,
+ From their twined arms a giant athlete sprang,
+ Barbing the arrows of his native tongue
+ With the spent shafts Latona's archer flung,
+ To smite the Python of our land and time,
+ Fell as the monster born of Crissa's slime,
+ Like the blind bard who in Castalian springs
+ Tempered the steel that clove the crest of kings,
+ And on the shrine of England's freedom laid
+ The gifts of Cumve and of Delphi's' shade,--
+ Small need hast thou of words of praise from me.
+ Thou knowest my heart, dear friend, and well canst guess
+ That, even though silent, I have not the less
+ Rejoiced to see thy actual life agree
+ With the large future which I shaped for thee,
+ When, years ago, beside the summer sea,
+ White in the moon, we saw the long waves fall
+ Baffled and broken from the rocky wall,
+ That, to the menace of the brawling flood,
+ Opposed alone its massive quietude,
+ Calm as a fate; with not a leaf nor vine
+ Nor birch-spray trembling in the still moonshine,
+ Crowning it like God's peace. I sometimes think
+ That night-scene by the sea prophetical,
+ (For Nature speaks in symbols and in signs,
+ And through her pictures human fate divines),
+ That rock, wherefrom we saw the billows sink
+ In murmuring rout, uprising clear and tall
+ In the white light of heaven, the type of one
+ Who, momently by Error's host assailed,
+ Stands strong as Truth, in greaves of granite mailed;
+ And, tranquil-fronted, listening over all
+ The tumult, hears the angels say, Well done!
+
+ 1854.
+
+
+
+
+BURNS, ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM.
+
+ No more these simple flowers belong
+ To Scottish maid and lover;
+ Sown in the common soil of song,
+ They bloom the wide world over.
+
+ In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
+ The minstrel and the heather,
+ The deathless singer and the flowers
+ He sang of live together.
+
+ Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns
+ The moorland flower and peasant!
+ How, at their mention, memory turns
+ Her pages old and pleasant!
+
+ The gray sky wears again its gold
+ And purple of adorning,
+ And manhood's noonday shadows hold
+ The dews of boyhood's morning.
+
+ The dews that washed the dust and soil
+ From off the wings of pleasure,
+ The sky, that flecked the ground of toil
+ With golden threads of leisure.
+
+ I call to mind the summer day,
+ The early harvest mowing,
+ The sky with sun and clouds at play,
+ And flowers with breezes blowing.
+
+ I hear the blackbird in the corn,
+ The locust in the haying;
+ And, like the fabled hunter's horn,
+ Old tunes my heart is playing.
+
+ How oft that day, with fond delay,
+ I sought the maple's shadow,
+ And sang with Burns the hours away,
+ Forgetful of the meadow.
+
+ Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead
+ I heard the squirrels leaping,
+ The good dog listened while I read,
+ And wagged his tail in keeping.
+
+ I watched him while in sportive mood
+ I read "_The Twa Dogs_" story,
+ And half believed he understood
+ The poet's allegory.
+
+ Sweet day, sweet songs! The golden hours
+ Grew brighter for that singing,
+ From brook and bird and meadow flowers
+ A dearer welcome bringing.
+
+ New light on home-seen Nature beamed,
+ New glory over Woman;
+ And daily life and duty seemed
+ No longer poor and common.
+
+ I woke to find the simple truth
+ Of fact and feeling better
+ Than all the dreams that held my youth
+ A still repining debtor,
+
+ That Nature gives her handmaid, Art,
+ The themes of sweet discoursing;
+ The tender idyls of the heart
+ In every tongue rehearsing.
+
+ Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,
+ Of loving knight and lady,
+ When farmer boy and barefoot girl
+ Were wandering there already?
+
+ I saw through all familiar things
+ The romance underlying;
+ The joys and griefs that plume the wings
+ Of Fancy skyward flying.
+
+ I saw the same blithe day return,
+ The same sweet fall of even,
+ That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,
+ And sank on crystal Devon.
+
+ I matched with Scotland's heathery hills
+ The sweetbrier and the clover;
+ With Ayr and Doon, my native rills,
+ Their wood-hymns chanting over.
+
+ O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen,
+ I saw the Man uprising;
+ No longer common or unclean,
+ The child of God's baptizing!
+
+ With clearer eyes I saw the worth
+ Of life among the lowly;
+ The Bible at his Cotter's hearth
+ Had made my own more holy.
+
+ And if at times an evil strain,
+ To lawless love appealing,
+ Broke in upon the sweet refrain
+ Of pure and healthful feeling,
+
+ It died upon the eye and ear,
+ No inward answer gaining;
+ No heart had I to see or hear
+ The discord and the staining.
+
+ Let those who never erred forget
+ His worth, in vain bewailings;
+ Sweet Soul of Song! I own my debt
+ Uncancelled by his failings!
+
+ Lament who will the ribald line
+ Which tells his lapse from duty,
+ How kissed the maddening lips of wine
+ Or wanton ones of beauty;
+
+ But think, while falls that shade between
+ The erring one and Heaven,
+ That he who loved like Magdalen,
+ Like her may be forgiven.
+
+ Not his the song whose thunderous chime
+ Eternal echoes render;
+ The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme,
+ And Milton's starry splendor!
+
+ But who his human heart has laid
+ To Nature's bosom nearer?
+ Who sweetened toil like him, or paid
+ To love a tribute dearer?
+
+ Through all his tuneful art, how strong
+ The human feeling gushes
+ The very moonlight of his song
+ Is warm with smiles and blushes!
+
+ Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,
+ So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry;
+ Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme,
+ But spare his Highland Mary!
+
+ 1854.
+
+
+
+
+TO GEORGE B. CHEEVER
+
+ So spake Esaias: so, in words of flame,
+ Tekoa's prophet-herdsman smote with blame
+ The traffickers in men, and put to shame,
+ All earth and heaven before,
+ The sacerdotal robbers of the poor.
+
+ All the dread Scripture lives for thee again,
+ To smite like lightning on the hands profane
+ Lifted to bless the slave-whip and the chain.
+ Once more the old Hebrew tongue
+ Bends with the shafts of God a bow new-strung!
+
+ Take up the mantle which the prophets wore;
+ Warn with their warnings, show the Christ once more
+ Bound, scourged, and crucified in His blameless poor;
+ And shake above our land
+ The unquenched bolts that blazed in Hosea's hand!
+
+ Not vainly shalt thou cast upon our years
+ The solemn burdens of the Orient seers,
+ And smite with truth a guilty nation's ears.
+ Mightier was Luther's word
+ Than Seckingen's mailed arm or Hutton's sword!
+
+ 1858.
+
+
+
+
+TO JAMES T. FIELDS
+
+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?
+
+ 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 him her spindle whirls
+ And sings the songs that Luther sung,
+
+ Than his who, old, and cold, and vain,
+ At Weimar sat, a demigod,
+ And bowed with Jove's imperial nod
+ His votaries in and out again!
+
+ Ply, Vanity, thy winged feet!
+ Ambition, hew thy rocky stair!
+ Who envies him who feeds on air
+ The icy splendor of his seat?
+
+ I see your Alps, above me, cut
+ The dark, cold sky; and dim and lone
+ I see ye sitting,--stone on stone,--
+ With human senses dulled and shut.
+
+ I could not reach you, if I would,
+ Nor sit among your cloudy shapes;
+ And (spare the fable of the grapes
+ And fox) I would not if I could.
+
+ Keep to your lofty pedestals!
+ The safer plain below I choose
+ Who never wins can rarely lose,
+ Who never climbs as rarely falls.
+
+ Let such as love the eagle's scream
+ Divide with him his home of ice
+ For me shall gentler notes suffice,--
+ The valley-song of bird and stream;
+
+ The pastoral bleat, the drone of bees,
+ The flail-beat chiming far away,
+ The cattle-low, at shut of day,
+ The voice of God in leaf and breeze;
+
+ Then lend thy hand, my wiser friend,
+ And help me to the vales below,
+ (In truth, I have not far to go,)
+ Where sweet with flowers the fields extend.
+
+ 1858.
+
+
+
+
+THE MEMORY OF BURNS.
+
+Read at the Boston celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the birth
+of Robert Burns, 25th 1st mo., 1859. In my absence these lines were read
+by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
+
+
+ How sweetly come the holy psalms
+ From saints and martyrs down,
+ The waving of triumphal palms
+ Above the thorny crown
+ The choral praise, the chanted prayers
+ From harps by angels strung,
+ The hunted Cameron's mountain airs,
+ The hymns that Luther sung!
+
+ Yet, jarring not the heavenly notes,
+ The sounds of earth are heard,
+ 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!
+
+ And, if the tender ear be jarred
+ That, haply, hears by turns
+ The saintly harp of Olney's bard,
+ The pastoral pipe of Burns,
+ No discord mars His perfect plan
+ Who gave them both a tongue;
+ For he who sings the love of man
+ The love of God hath sung!
+
+ To-day be every fault forgiven
+ Of him in whom we joy
+ We take, with thanks, the gold of Heaven
+ And leave the earth's alloy.
+ Be ours his music as of spring,
+ His sweetness as of flowers,
+ The songs the bard himself might sing
+ In holier ears than ours.
+
+ Sweet airs of love and home, the hum
+ Of household melodies,
+ Come singing, as the robins come
+ To sing in door-yard trees.
+ And, heart to heart, two nations lean,
+ No rival wreaths to twine,
+ But blending in eternal green
+ The holly and the pine!
+
+
+
+
+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,
+ Bareheaded and wet-eyed!
+
+ Silent for once the restless hive of labor,
+ Save the low funeral tread,
+ Or voice of craftsman whispering to his neighbor
+ The good deeds of the dead.
+
+ For him no minster's chant of the 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!
+
+ 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 sunlit shadows
+ Of Occidental palms;
+
+ From the locked roadsteads of the Bothniaii 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.
+
+ 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.
+
+ 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 and 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 songbirds 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 vale,
+ Hard by, the city of his love is swinging
+ Its clamorous iron flail.
+
+
+ But round his grave are quietude and beauty,
+ And the sweet heaven above,--
+ The fitting symbols of a life of duty
+ Transfigured into love!
+
+ 1859.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+ 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 Christian's sacrifice.
+
+ Nevermore may yon Blue Ridges the Northern rifle hear,
+ Nor see the light of blazing homes flash on the negro's spear.
+ But let the free-winged angel Truth their guarded passes scale,
+ To teach that right is more than might, and justice more than mail!
+
+ So vainly shall Virginia set her battle in array;
+ In vain her trampling squadrons knead the winter snow with clay.
+ She may strike the pouncing eagle, but she dares not harm the dove;
+ And every gate she bars to Hate shall open wide to Love!
+
+ 1859.
+
+
+
+
+NAPLES
+
+INSCRIBED TO ROBERT C. WATERSTON, OF BOSTON.
+
+Helen Waterston died at Naples in her eighteenth year, and lies buried
+in the Protestant cemetery there. The stone over her grave bears the
+lines,
+
+ Fold her, O Father, in Thine arms,
+ And let her henceforth be
+ A messenger of love between
+ Our human hearts and Thee.
+
+
+ I give thee joy!--I know to thee
+ The dearest spot on earth must be
+ Where sleeps thy loved one by the summer sea;
+
+
+ Where, near her sweetest poet's tomb,
+ The land of Virgil gave thee room
+ To lay thy flower with her perpetual bloom.
+
+ I know that when the sky shut down
+ Behind thee on the gleaming town,
+ On Baiae's baths and Posilippo's crown;
+
+ And, through thy tears, the mocking day
+ Burned Ischia's mountain lines away,
+ And Capri melted in its sunny bay;
+
+ Through thy great farewell sorrow shot
+ The sharp pang of a bitter thought
+ That slaves must tread around that holy spot.
+
+ Thou knewest not the land was blest
+ In giving thy beloved rest,
+ Holding the fond hope closer to her breast,
+
+ That every sweet and saintly grave
+ Was freedom's prophecy, and gave
+ The pledge of Heaven to sanctify and save.
+
+ That pledge is answered. To thy ear
+ The unchained city sends its cheer,
+ And, tuned to joy, the muffled bells of fear
+
+ Ring Victor in. The land sits free
+ And happy by the summer sea,
+ And Bourbon Naples now is Italy!
+
+ She smiles above her broken chain
+ The languid smile that follows pain,
+ Stretching her cramped limbs to the sun again.
+
+ Oh, joy for all, who hear her call
+ From gray Camaldoli's convent-wall
+ And Elmo's towers to freedom's carnival!
+
+ A new life breathes among her vines
+ And olives, like the breath of pines
+ Blown downward from the breezy Apennines.
+
+ Lean, O my friend, to meet that breath,
+ Rejoice as one who witnesseth
+ Beauty from ashes rise, and life from death!
+
+ Thy sorrow shall no more be pain,
+ Its tears shall fall in sunlit rain,
+ Writing the grave with flowers: "Arisen again!"
+
+ 1860.
+
+
+
+
+A MEMORIAL
+
+Moses Austin Cartland, a dear friend and relation, who led a faithful
+life as a teacher and died in the summer of 1863.
+
+
+ Oh, thicker, deeper, darker growing,
+ The solemn vista to the tomb
+ Must know henceforth another shadow,
+ And give another cypress room.
+
+ In love surpassing that of brothers,
+ We walked, O friend, from childhood's day;
+ And, looking back o'er fifty summers,
+ Our footprints track a common way.
+
+ One in our faith, and one our longing
+ To make the world within our reach
+ Somewhat the better for our living,
+ And gladder for our human speech.
+
+ Thou heard'st with me the far-off voices,
+ The old beguiling song of fame,
+ But life to thee was warm and present,
+ And love was better than a name.
+
+ To homely joys and loves and friendships
+ Thy genial nature fondly clung;
+ And so the shadow on the dial
+ Ran back and left thee always young.
+
+ And who could blame the generous weakness
+ Which, only to thyself unjust,
+ So overprized the worth of others,
+ And dwarfed thy own with self-distrust?
+
+ All hearts grew warmer in the presence
+ Of one who, seeking not his own,
+ Gave freely for the love of giving,
+ Nor reaped for self the harvest sown.
+
+ Thy greeting smile was pledge and prelude
+ Of generous deeds and kindly words;
+ In thy large heart were fair guest-chambers,
+ Open to sunrise and the birds;
+
+ The task was thine to mould and fashion
+ Life's plastic newness into grace
+ To make the boyish heart heroic,
+ And light with thought the maiden's face.
+
+ O'er all the land, in town and prairie,
+ With bended heads of mourning, stand
+ The living forms that owe their beauty
+ And fitness to thy shaping hand.
+
+ Thy call has come in ripened manhood,
+ The noonday calm of heart and mind,
+ While I, who dreamed of thy remaining
+ To mourn me, linger still behind,
+
+ Live on, to own, with self-upbraiding,
+ A debt of love still due from me,--
+ The vain remembrance of occasions,
+ Forever lost, of serving thee.
+
+ It was not mine among thy kindred
+ To join the silent funeral prayers,
+ But all that long sad day of summer
+ My tears of mourning dropped with theirs.
+
+ All day the sea-waves sobbed with sorrow,
+ The birds forgot their merry trills
+ All day I heard the pines lamenting
+ With thine upon thy homestead hills.
+
+ Green be those hillside pines forever,
+ And green the meadowy lowlands be,
+ And green the old memorial beeches,
+ Name-carven in the woods of Lee.
+
+ Still let them greet thy life companions
+ Who thither turn their pilgrim feet,
+ In every mossy line recalling
+ A tender memory sadly sweet.
+
+ O friend! if thought and sense avail not
+ To know thee henceforth as thou art,
+ That all is well with thee forever
+ I trust the instincts of my heart.
+
+ Thine be the quiet habitations,
+ Thine the green pastures, blossom-sown,
+ And smiles of saintly recognition,
+ As sweet and tender as thy own.
+
+ Thou com'st not from the hush and shadow
+ To meet us, but to thee we come,
+ With thee we never can be strangers,
+ And where thou art must still be home.
+
+ 1863.
+
+
+
+
+BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY
+
+Mr. Bryant's seventieth birthday, November 3, 1864, was celebrated by a
+festival to which these verses were sent.
+
+
+ We praise not now the poet's art,
+ The rounded beauty of his song;
+ Who weighs him from his life apart
+ Must do his nobler nature wrong.
+
+ Not for the eye, familiar grown
+ With charms to common sight denied,
+ The marvellous gift he shares alone
+ With him who walked on Rydal-side;
+
+ Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay,
+ Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears;
+ We speak his praise who wears to-day
+ The glory of his seventy years.
+
+ When Peace brings Freedom in her train,
+ Let happy lips his songs rehearse;
+ His life is now his noblest strain,
+ His manhood better than his verse!
+
+ Thank God! his hand on Nature's keys
+ Its cunning keeps at life's full span;
+ But, dimmed and dwarfed, in times like these,
+ The poet seems beside the man!
+
+ So be it! let the garlands die,
+ The singer's wreath, the painter's meed,
+ Let our names perish, if thereby
+ Our country may be saved and freed!
+
+ 1864.
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS STARR KING
+
+Published originally as a prelude to the posthumous volume of selections
+edited by Richard Frothingham.
+
+
+ The great work laid upon his twoscore years
+ Is done, and well done. If we drop our tears,
+ Who loved him as few men were ever loved,
+ We mourn no blighted hope nor broken plan
+ With him whose life stands rounded and approved
+ In the full growth and stature of a man.
+ Mingle, O bells, along the Western slope,
+ With your deep toll a sound of faith and hope!
+ Wave cheerily still, O banner, half-way down,
+ From thousand-masted bay and steepled town!
+ Let the strong organ with its loftiest swell
+ Lift the proud sorrow of the land, and tell
+ That the brave sower saw his ripened grain.
+ O East and West! O morn and sunset twain
+ No more forever!--has he lived in vain
+ Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one, and told
+ Your bridal service from his lips of gold?
+
+ 1864.
+
+
+
+
+LINES ON A FLY-LEAF.
+
+ I need not ask thee, for my sake,
+ To read a book which well may make
+ Its way by native force of wit
+ Without my manual sign to it.
+ Its piquant writer needs from me
+ No gravely masculine guaranty,
+ And well might laugh her merriest laugh
+ At broken spears in her behalf;
+ Yet, spite of all the critics tell,
+ I frankly own I like her well.
+ It may be that she wields a pen
+ Too sharply nibbed for thin-skinned men,
+ That her keen arrows search and try
+ The armor joints of dignity,
+ And, though alone for error meant,
+ Sing through the air irreverent.
+ I blame her not, the young athlete
+ Who plants her woman's tiny feet,
+ And dares the chances of debate
+ Where bearded men might hesitate,
+ Who, deeply earnest, seeing well
+ The ludicrous and laughable,
+ Mingling in eloquent excess
+ Her anger and her tenderness,
+ And, chiding with a half-caress,
+ Strives, less for her own sex than ours,
+ With principalities and powers,
+ And points us upward to the clear
+ Sunned heights of her new atmosphere.
+
+ Heaven mend her faults!--I will not pause
+ To weigh and doubt and peck at flaws,
+ Or waste my pity when some fool
+ Provokes her measureless ridicule.
+ Strong-minded is she? Better so
+ Than dulness set for sale or show,
+ A household folly, capped and belled
+ In fashion's dance of puppets held,
+ Or poor pretence of womanhood,
+ Whose formal, flavorless platitude
+ Is warranted from all offence
+ Of robust meaning's violence.
+ Give me the wine of thought whose head
+ Sparkles along the page I read,--
+ Electric words in which I find
+ The tonic of the northwest wind;
+ The wisdom which itself allies
+ To sweet and pure humanities,
+ Where scorn of meanness, hate of wrong,
+ Are underlaid by love as strong;
+ The genial play of mirth that lights
+ Grave themes of thought, as when, on nights
+ Of summer-time, the harmless blaze
+ Of thunderless heat-lightning plays,
+ And tree and hill-top resting dim
+ And doubtful on the sky's vague rim,
+ Touched by that soft and lambent gleam,
+ Start sharply outlined from their dream.
+
+ Talk not to me of woman's sphere,
+ Nor point with Scripture texts a sneer,
+ Nor wrong the manliest saint of all
+ By doubt, if he were here, that Paul
+ Would own the heroines who have lent
+ Grace to truth's stern arbitrament,
+ Foregone the praise to woman sweet,
+ And cast their crowns at Duty's feet;
+ Like her, who by her strong Appeal
+ Made Fashion weep and Mammon feel,
+ Who, earliest summoned to withstand
+ The color-madness of the land,
+ Counted her life-long losses gain,
+ And made her own her sisters' pain;
+ Or her who, in her greenwood shade,
+ Heard the sharp call that Freedom made,
+ And, answering, struck from Sappho's lyre
+ Of love the Tyrtman carmen's fire
+ Or that young girl,--Domremy's maid
+ Revived a nobler cause to aid,--
+ Shaking from warning finger-tips
+ The doom of her apocalypse;
+ Or her, who world-wide entrance gave
+ To the log-cabin of the slave,
+ Made all his want and sorrow known,
+ And all earth's languages his own.
+
+ 1866.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE L. STEARNS
+
+No man rendered greater service to the cause of freedom than Major
+Stearns in the great struggle between invading slave-holders and the
+free settlers of Kansas.
+
+
+ He has done the work of a true man,--
+ Crown him, honor him, love him.
+ Weep, over him, tears of woman,
+ Stoop manliest brows above him!
+
+ O dusky mothers and daughters,
+ Vigils of mourning keep for him!
+ Up in the mountains, and down by the waters,
+ Lift up your voices and weep for him,
+
+ For the warmest of hearts is frozen,
+ The freest of hands is still;
+ And the gap in our picked and chosen
+ The long years may not fill.
+
+ No duty could overtask him,
+ No need his will outrun;
+ Or ever our lips could ask him,
+ His hands the work had done.
+
+ He forgot his own soul for others,
+ Himself to his neighbor lending;
+ He found the Lord in his suffering brothers,
+ And not in the clouds descending.
+
+ So the bed was sweet to die on,
+ Whence he saw the doors wide swung
+ Against whose bolted iron
+ The strength of his life was flung.
+
+ And he saw ere his eye was darkened
+ The sheaves of the harvest-bringing,
+ And knew while his ear yet hearkened
+ The voice of the reapers singing.
+
+ Ah, well! The world is discreet;
+ There are plenty to pause and wait;
+ But here was a man who set his feet
+ Sometimes in advance of fate;
+
+ Plucked off the old bark when the inner
+ Was slow to renew it,
+ And put to the Lord's work the sinner
+ When saints failed to do it.
+
+ Never rode to the wrong's redressing
+ A worthier paladin.
+ Shall he not hear the blessing,
+ "Good and faithful, enter in!"
+
+ 1867
+
+
+
+
+GARIBALDI
+
+ In trance and dream of old, God's prophet saw
+ The casting down of thrones. Thou, watching lone
+ The hot Sardinian coast-line, hazy-hilled,
+ Where, fringing round Caprera's rocky zone
+ With foam, the slow waves gather and withdraw,
+ Behold'st the vision of the seer fulfilled,
+ And hear'st the sea-winds burdened with a sound
+ Of falling chains, as, one by one, unbound,
+ The nations lift their right hands up and swear
+ Their oath of freedom. From the chalk-white wall
+ Of England, from the black Carpathian range,
+ Along the Danube and the Theiss, through all
+ The passes of the Spanish Pyrenees,
+ And from the Seine's thronged banks, a murmur strange
+ And glad floats to thee o'er thy summer seas
+ On the salt wind that stirs thy whitening hair,--
+ The song of freedom's bloodless victories!
+ Rejoice, O Garibaldi! Though thy sword
+ Failed at Rome's gates, and blood seemed vainly poured
+ Where, in Christ's name, the crowned infidel
+ Of France wrought murder with the arms of hell
+ On that sad mountain slope whose ghostly dead,
+ Unmindful of the gray exorcist's ban,
+ Walk, unappeased, the chambered Vatican,
+ And draw the curtains of Napoleon's bed!
+ God's providence is not blind, but, full of eyes,
+ It searches all the refuges of lies;
+ And in His time and way, the accursed things
+ Before whose evil feet thy battle-gage
+ Has clashed defiance from hot youth to age
+ Shall perish. All men shall be priests and kings,
+ One royal brotherhood, one church made free
+ By love, which is the law of liberty.
+
+ 1869.
+
+
+
+
+TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD,
+
+ON READING HER POEM IN "THE STANDARD."
+
+Mrs. Child wrote her lines, beginning, "Again the trees are clothed in
+vernal green," May 24, 1859, on the first anniversary of Ellis Gray
+Loring's death, but did not publish them for some years afterward, when
+I first read them, or I could not have made the reference which I did to
+the extinction of slavery.
+
+
+ The sweet spring day is glad with music,
+ But through it sounds a sadder strain;
+ The worthiest of our narrowing circle
+ Sings Loring's dirges o'er again.
+
+ O woman greatly loved! I join thee
+ In tender memories of our friend;
+ With thee across the awful spaces
+ The greeting of a soul I send!
+
+ What cheer hath he? How is it with him?
+ Where lingers he this weary while?
+ Over what pleasant fields of Heaven
+ Dawns the sweet sunrise of his smile?
+
+ Does he not know our feet are treading
+ The earth hard down on Slavery's grave?
+ That, in our crowning exultations,
+ We miss the charm his presence gave?
+
+ Why on this spring air comes no whisper
+ From him to tell us all is well?
+ Why to our flower-time comes no token
+ Of lily and of asphodel?
+
+ I feel the unutterable longing,
+ Thy hunger of the heart is mine;
+ I reach and grope for hands in darkness,
+ My ear grows sharp for voice or sign.
+
+ Still on the lips of all we question
+ The finger of God's silence lies;
+ Will the lost hands in ours be folded?
+ Will the shut eyelids ever rise?
+
+ O friend! no proof beyond this yearning,
+ This outreach of our hearts, we need;
+ God will not mock the hope He giveth,
+ No love He prompts shall vainly plead.
+
+ Then let us stretch our hands in darkness,
+ And call our loved ones o'er and o'er;
+ Some day their arms shall close about us,
+ And the old voices speak once more.
+
+ No dreary splendors wait our coming
+ Where rapt ghost sits from ghost apart;
+ Homeward we go to Heaven's thanksgiving,
+ The harvest-gathering of the heart.
+
+ 1870.
+
+
+
+
+THE SINGER.
+
+This poem was written on the death of Alice Cary. Her sister Phoebe,
+heart-broken by her loss, followed soon after. Noble and richly gifted,
+lovely in person and character, they left behind them only friends and
+admirers.
+
+
+ Years since (but names to me before),
+ Two sisters sought at eve my door;
+ Two song-birds wandering from their nest,
+ A gray old farm-house in the West.
+
+ How fresh of life the younger one,
+ Half smiles, half tears, like rain in sun!
+ Her gravest mood could scarce displace
+ The dimples of her nut-brown face.
+
+ Wit sparkled on her lips not less
+ For quick and tremulous tenderness;
+ And, following close her merriest glance,
+ Dreamed through her eyes the heart's romance.
+
+ Timid and still, the elder had
+ Even then a smile too sweetly sad;
+ The crown of pain that all must wear
+ Too early pressed her midnight hair.
+
+ Yet ere the summer eve grew long,
+ Her modest lips were sweet with song;
+ A memory haunted all her words
+ Of clover-fields and singing birds.
+
+ Her dark, dilating eyes expressed
+ The broad horizons of the west;
+ Her speech dropped prairie flowers; the gold
+ Of harvest wheat about her rolled.
+
+ Fore-doomed to song she seemed to me
+ I queried not with destiny
+ I knew the trial and the need,
+ Yet, all the more, I said, God speed?
+
+ What could I other than I did?
+ Could I a singing-bird forbid?
+ Deny the wind-stirred leaf? Rebuke
+ The music of the forest brook?
+
+ She went with morning from my door,
+ But left me richer than before;
+ Thenceforth I knew her voice of cheer,
+ The welcome of her partial ear.
+
+ Years passed: through all the land her name
+ A pleasant household word became
+ All felt behind the singer stood
+ A sweet and gracious womanhood.
+
+ Her life was earnest work, not play;
+ Her tired feet climbed a weary way;
+ And even through her lightest strain
+ We heard an undertone of pain.
+
+ Unseen of her her fair fame grew,
+ The good she did she rarely knew,
+ Unguessed of her in life the love
+ That rained its tears her grave above.
+
+ When last I saw her, full of peace,
+ She waited for her great release;
+ And that old friend so sage and bland,
+ Our later Franklin, held her hand.
+
+ For all that patriot bosoms stirs
+ Had moved that woman's heart of hers,
+ And men who toiled in storm and sun
+ Found her their meet companion.
+
+ Our converse, from her suffering bed
+ To healthful themes of life she led
+ The out-door world of bud and bloom
+ And light and sweetness filled her room.
+
+ Yet evermore an underthought
+ Of loss to come within us wrought,
+ And all the while we felt the strain
+ Of the strong will that conquered pain.
+
+ God giveth quietness at last!
+ The common way that all have passed
+ She went, with mortal yearnings fond,
+ To fuller life and love beyond.
+
+ Fold the rapt soul in your embrace,
+ My dear ones! Give the singer place
+ To you, to her,--I know not where,--
+ I lift the silence of a prayer.
+
+ For only thus our own we find;
+ The gone before, the left behind,
+ All mortal voices die between;
+ The unheard reaches the unseen.
+
+ Again the blackbirds sing; the streams
+ Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams,
+ And tremble in the April showers
+ The tassels of the maple flowers.
+
+ But not for her has spring renewed
+ The sweet surprises of the wood;
+ And bird and flower are lost to her
+ Who was their best interpreter.
+
+ What to shut eyes has God revealed?
+ What hear the ears that death has sealed?
+ What undreamed beauty passing show
+ Requites the loss of all we know?
+
+ O silent land, to which we move,
+ Enough if there alone be love,
+ And mortal need can ne'er outgrow
+ What it is waiting to bestow!
+
+ O white soul! from that far-off shore
+ Float some sweet song the waters o'er.
+ Our faith confirm, our fears dispel,
+ With the old voice we loved so well!
+
+ 1871.
+
+
+
+
+HOW MARY GREW.
+
+These lines were in answer to an invitation to hear a lecture of Mary
+Grew, of Philadelphia, before the Boston Radical Club. The reference in
+the last stanza is to an essay on Sappho by T. W. Higginson, read at the
+club the preceding month.
+
+
+ With wisdom far beyond her years,
+ And graver than her wondering peers,
+ So strong, so mild, combining still
+ The tender heart and queenly will,
+ To conscience and to duty true,
+ So, up from childhood, Mary Grew!
+
+ Then in her gracious womanhood
+ She gave her days to doing good.
+ She dared the scornful laugh of men,
+ The hounding mob, the slanderer's pen.
+ She did the work she found to do,--
+ A Christian heroine, Mary Grew!
+
+ The freed slave thanks her; blessing comes
+ To her from women's weary homes;
+ The wronged and erring find in her
+ Their censor mild and comforter.
+ The world were safe if but a few
+ Could grow in grace as Mary Grew!
+
+ So, New Year's Eve, I sit and say,
+ By this low wood-fire, ashen gray;
+ Just wishing, as the night shuts down,
+ That I could hear in Boston town,
+ In pleasant Chestnut Avenue,
+ From her own lips, how Mary Grew!
+
+ And hear her graceful hostess tell
+ The silver-voiced oracle
+ Who lately through her parlors spoke
+ As through Dodona's sacred oak,
+ A wiser truth than any told
+ By Sappho's lips of ruddy gold,--
+ The way to make the world anew,
+ Is just to grow--as Mary Grew.
+ 1871.
+
+
+
+
+SUMNER
+
+"I am not one who has disgraced beauty of sentiment by deformity of
+conduct, or the maxims of a freeman by the actions of a slave; but, by
+the grace of God, I have kept my life unsullied." --MILTON'S _Defence of
+the People of England_.
+
+
+ O Mother State! the winds of March
+ Blew chill o'er Auburn's Field of God,
+ Where, slow, beneath a leaden arch
+ Of sky, thy mourning children trod.
+
+ And now, with all thy woods in leaf,
+ Thy fields in flower, beside thy dead
+ Thou sittest, in thy robes of grief,
+ A Rachel yet uncomforted!
+
+ And once again the organ swells,
+ Once more the flag is half-way hung,
+ And yet again the mournful bells
+ In all thy steeple-towers are rung.
+
+ And I, obedient to thy will,
+ Have come a simple wreath to lay,
+ Superfluous, on a grave that still
+ Is sweet with all the flowers of May.
+
+ I take, with awe, the task assigned;
+ It may be that my friend might miss,
+ In his new sphere of heart and mind,
+ Some token from my band in this.
+
+ By many a tender memory moved,
+ Along the past my thought I send;
+ The record of the cause he loved
+ Is the best record of its friend.
+
+ No trumpet sounded in his ear,
+ He saw not Sinai's cloud and flame,
+ But never yet to Hebrew seer
+ A clearer voice of duty came.
+
+ God said: "Break thou these yokes; undo
+ These heavy burdens. I ordain
+ A work to last thy whole life through,
+ A ministry of strife and pain.
+
+ "Forego thy dreams of lettered ease,
+ Put thou the scholar's promise by,
+ The rights of man are more than these."
+ He heard, and answered: "Here am I!"
+
+ He set his face against the blast,
+ His feet against the flinty shard,
+ Till the hard service grew, at last,
+ Its own exceeding great reward.
+
+ Lifted like Saul's above the crowd,
+ Upon his kingly forehead fell
+ The first sharp bolt of Slavery's cloud,
+ Launched at the truth he urged so well.
+
+ Ah! never yet, at rack or stake,
+ Was sorer loss made Freedom's gain,
+ Than his, who suffered for her sake
+ The beak-torn Titan's lingering pain!
+
+ The fixed star of his faith, through all
+ Loss, doubt, and peril, shone the same;
+ As through a night of storm, some tall,
+ Strong lighthouse lifts its steady flame.
+
+ Beyond the dust and smoke he saw
+ The sheaves of Freedom's large increase,
+ The holy fanes of equal law,
+ The New Jerusalem of peace.
+
+ The weak might fear, the worldling mock,
+ The faint and blind of heart regret;
+ All knew at last th' eternal rock
+ On which his forward feet were set.
+
+ The subtlest scheme of compromise
+ Was folly to his purpose bold;
+ The strongest mesh of party lies
+ Weak to the simplest truth he told.
+
+ One language held his heart and lip,
+ Straight onward to his goal he trod,
+ And proved the highest statesmanship
+ Obedience to the voice of God.
+
+ No wail was in his voice,--none heard,
+ When treason's storm-cloud blackest grew,
+ The weakness of a doubtful word;
+ His duty, and the end, he knew.
+
+ The first to smite, the first to spare;
+ When once the hostile ensigns fell,
+ He stretched out hands of generous care
+ To lift the foe he fought so well.
+
+ For there was nothing base or small
+ Or craven in his soul's broad plan;
+ Forgiving all things personal,
+ He hated only wrong to man.
+
+ The old traditions of his State,
+ The memories of her great and good,
+ Took from his life a fresher date,
+ And in himself embodied stood.
+
+ How felt the greed of gold and place,
+ The venal crew that schemed and planned,
+ The fine scorn of that haughty face,
+ The spurning of that bribeless hand!
+
+ If than Rome's tribunes statelier
+ He wore his senatorial robe,
+ His lofty port was all for her,
+ The one dear spot on all the globe.
+
+ If to the master's plea he gave
+ The vast contempt his manhood felt,
+ He saw a brother in the slave,--
+ With man as equal man he dealt.
+
+ Proud was he? If his presence kept
+ Its grandeur wheresoe'er he trod,
+ As if from Plutarch's gallery stepped
+ The hero and the demigod,
+
+ None failed, at least, to reach his ear,
+ Nor want nor woe appealed in vain;
+ The homesick soldier knew his cheer,
+ And blessed him from his ward of pain.
+
+ Safely his dearest friends may own
+ The slight defects he never hid,
+ The surface-blemish in the stone
+ Of the tall, stately pyramid.
+
+ Suffice it that he never brought
+ His conscience to the public mart;
+ But lived himself the truth he taught,
+ White-souled, clean-handed, pure of heart.
+
+ What if he felt the natural pride
+ Of power in noble use, too true
+ With thin humilities to hide
+ The work he did, the lore he knew?
+
+ Was he not just? Was any wronged
+ By that assured self-estimate?
+ He took but what to him belonged,
+ Unenvious of another's state.
+
+ Well might he heed the words he spake,
+ And scan with care the written page
+ Through which he still shall warm and wake
+ The hearts of men from age to age.
+
+ Ah! who shall blame him now because
+ He solaced thus his hours of pain!
+ Should not the o'erworn thresher pause,
+ And hold to light his golden grain?
+
+ No sense of humor dropped its oil
+ On the hard ways his purpose went;
+ Small play of fancy lightened toil;
+ He spake alone the thing he meant.
+
+ He loved his books, the Art that hints
+ A beauty veiled behind its own,
+ The graver's line, the pencil's tints,
+ The chisel's shape evoked from stone.
+
+ He cherished, void of selfish ends,
+ The social courtesies that bless
+ And sweeten life, and loved his friends
+ With most unworldly tenderness.
+
+ But still his tired eyes rarely learned
+ The glad relief by Nature brought;
+ Her mountain ranges never turned
+ His current of persistent thought.
+
+ The sea rolled chorus to his speech
+ Three-banked like Latium's' tall trireme,
+ With laboring oars; the grove and beach
+ Were Forum and the Academe.
+
+ The sensuous joy from all things fair
+ His strenuous bent of soul repressed,
+ And left from youth to silvered hair
+ Few hours for pleasure, none for rest.
+
+ For all his life was poor without,
+ O Nature, make the last amends
+ Train all thy flowers his grave about,
+ And make thy singing-birds his friends!
+
+ Revive again, thou summer rain,
+ The broken turf upon his bed
+ Breathe, summer wind, thy tenderest strain
+ Of low, sweet music overhead!
+
+ With calm and beauty symbolize
+ The peace which follows long annoy,
+ And lend our earth-bent, mourning eyes,
+ Some hint of his diviner joy.
+
+ For safe with right and truth he is,
+ As God lives he must live alway;
+ There is no end for souls like his,
+ No night for children of the day!
+
+ Nor cant nor poor solicitudes
+ Made weak his life's great argument;
+ Small leisure his for frames and moods
+ Who followed Duty where she went.
+
+ The broad, fair fields of God he saw
+ Beyond the bigot's narrow bound;
+ The truths he moulded into law
+ In Christ's beatitudes he found.
+
+ His state-craft was the Golden Rule,
+ His right of vote a sacred trust;
+ Clear, over threat and ridicule,
+ All heard his challenge: "Is it just?"
+
+ And when the hour supreme had come,
+ Not for himself a thought he gave;
+ In that last pang of martyrdom,
+ His care was for the half-freed slave.
+
+ Not vainly dusky hands upbore,
+ In prayer, the passing soul to heaven
+ Whose mercy to His suffering poor
+ Was service to the Master given.
+
+ Long shall the good State's annals tell,
+ Her children's children long be taught,
+ How, praised or blamed, he guarded well
+ The trust he neither shunned nor sought.
+
+ If for one moment turned thy face,
+ O Mother, from thy son, not long
+ He waited calmly in his place
+ The sure remorse which follows wrong.
+
+ Forgiven be the State he loved
+ The one brief lapse, the single blot;
+ Forgotten be the stain removed,
+ Her righted record shows it not!
+
+ The lifted sword above her shield
+ With jealous care shall guard his fame;
+ The pine-tree on her ancient field
+ To all the winds shall speak his name.
+
+ The marble image of her son
+ Her loving hands shall yearly crown,
+ And from her pictured Pantheon
+ His grand, majestic face look down.
+
+ O State so passing rich before,
+ Who now shall doubt thy highest claim?
+ The world that counts thy jewels o'er
+ Shall longest pause at Sumner's name!
+
+ 1874.
+
+
+
+
+THEIRS
+
+ I.
+ Fate summoned, in gray-bearded age, to act
+ A history stranger than his written fact,
+ Him who portrayed the splendor and the gloom
+ Of that great hour when throne and altar fell
+ With long death-groan which still is audible.
+ He, when around the walls of Paris rung
+ The Prussian bugle like the blast of doom,
+ And every ill which follows unblest war
+ Maddened all France from Finistere to Var,
+ The weight of fourscore from his shoulders flung,
+ And guided Freedom in the path he saw
+ Lead out of chaos into light and law,
+ Peace, not imperial, but republican,
+ And order pledged to all the Rights of Man.
+
+ II.
+ Death called him from a need as imminent
+ As that from which the Silent William went
+ When powers of evil, like the smiting seas
+ On Holland's dikes, assailed her liberties.
+ Sadly, while yet in doubtful balance hung
+ The weal and woe of France, the bells were rung
+ For her lost leader. Paralyzed of will,
+ Above his bier the hearts of men stood still.
+ Then, as if set to his dead lips, the horn
+ Of Roland wound once more to rouse and warn,
+ The old voice filled the air! His last brave word
+ Not vainly France to all her boundaries stirred.
+ Strong as in life, he still for Freedom wrought,
+ As the dead Cid at red Toloso fought.
+
+ 1877.
+
+
+
+
+FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. AT THE UNVEILING OF HIS STATUE.
+
+ Among their graven shapes to whom
+ Thy civic wreaths belong,
+ O city of his love, make room
+ For one whose gift was song.
+
+ Not his the soldier's sword to wield,
+ Nor his the helm of state,
+ Nor glory of the stricken field,
+ Nor triumph of debate.
+
+ In common ways, with common men,
+ He served his race and time
+ As well as if his clerkly pen
+ Had never danced to rhyme.
+
+ If, in the thronged and noisy mart,
+ The Muses found their son,
+ Could any say his tuneful art
+ A duty left undone?
+
+ He toiled and sang; and year by year
+ Men found their homes more sweet,
+ And through a tenderer atmosphere
+ Looked down the brick-walled street.
+
+ The Greek's wild onset gall Street knew;
+ The Red King walked Broadway;
+ And Alnwick Castle's roses blew
+ From Palisades to Bay.
+
+ Fair City by the Sea! upraise
+ His veil with reverent hands;
+ And mingle with thy own the praise
+ And pride of other lands.
+
+ Let Greece his fiery lyric breathe
+ Above her hero-urns;
+ And Scotland, with her holly, wreathe
+ The flower he culled for Burns.
+
+ Oh, stately stand thy palace walls,
+ Thy tall ships ride the seas;
+ To-day thy poet's name recalls
+ A prouder thought than these.
+
+ Not less thy pulse of trade shall beat,
+ Nor less thy tall fleets swim,
+ That shaded square and dusty street
+ Are classic ground through him.
+
+ Alive, he loved, like all who sing,
+ The echoes of his song;
+ Too late the tardy meed we bring,
+ The praise delayed so long.
+
+ Too late, alas! Of all who knew
+ The living man, to-day
+ Before his unveiled face, how few
+ Make bare their locks of gray!
+
+ Our lips of praise must soon be dumb,
+ Our grateful eyes be dim;
+ O brothers of the days to come,
+ Take tender charge of him!
+
+ New hands the wires of song may sweep,
+ New voices challenge fame;
+ But let no moss of years o'ercreep
+ The lines of Halleck's name.
+
+ 1877.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT.
+
+ Oh, well may Essex sit forlorn
+ Beside her sea-blown shore;
+ Her well beloved, her noblest born,
+ Is hers in life no more!
+
+ No lapse of years can render less
+ Her memory's sacred claim;
+ No fountain of forgetfulness
+ Can wet the lips of Fame.
+
+ A grief alike to wound and heal,
+ A thought to soothe and pain,
+ The sad, sweet pride that mothers feel
+ To her must still remain.
+
+ Good men and true she has not lacked,
+ And brave men yet shall be;
+ The perfect flower, the crowning fact,
+ Of all her years was he!
+
+ As Galahad pure, as Merlin sage,
+ What worthier knight was found
+ To grace in Arthur's golden age
+ The fabled Table Round?
+
+ A voice, the battle's trumpet-note,
+ To welcome and restore;
+ A hand, that all unwilling smote,
+ To heal and build once more;
+
+ A soul of fire, a tender heart
+ Too warm for hate, he knew
+ The generous victor's graceful part
+ To sheathe the sword he drew.
+
+ When Earth, as if on evil dreams,
+ Looks back upon her wars,
+ And the white light of Christ outstreams
+ From the red disk of Mars,
+
+ His fame who led the stormy van
+ Of battle well may cease,
+ But never that which crowns the man
+ Whose victory was Peace.
+
+ Mourn, Essex, on thy sea-blown shore
+ Thy beautiful and brave,
+ Whose failing hand the olive bore,
+ Whose dying lips forgave!
+
+ Let age lament the youthful chief,
+ And tender eyes be dim;
+ The tears are more of joy than grief
+ That fall for one like him!
+
+ 1878.
+
+
+
+
+BAYARD TAYLOR.
+
+ I.
+ "And where now, Bayard, will thy footsteps tend?"
+ My sister asked our guest one winter's day.
+ Smiling he answered in the Friends' sweet way
+ Common to both: "Wherever thou shall send!
+ What wouldst thou have me see for thee?" She laughed,
+ Her dark eyes dancing in the wood-fire's glow
+ "Loffoden isles, the Kilpis, and the low,
+ Unsetting sun on Finmark's fishing-craft."
+ "All these and more I soon shall see for thee!"
+ He answered cheerily: and he kept his pledge
+ On Lapland snows, the North Cape's windy wedge,
+ And Tromso freezing in its winter sea.
+ He went and came. But no man knows the track
+ Of his last journey, and he comes not back!
+
+ II.
+ He brought us wonders of the new and old;
+ We shared all climes with him. The Arab's tent
+ To him its story-telling secret lent.
+ And, pleased, we listened to the tales he told.
+ His task, beguiled with songs that shall endure,
+ In manly, honest thoroughness he wrought;
+ From humble home-lays to the heights of thought
+ Slowly he climbed, but every step was sure.
+ How, with the generous pride that friendship hath,
+ We, who so loved him, saw at last the crown
+ Of civic honor on his brows pressed down,
+ Rejoiced, and knew not that the gift was death.
+ And now for him, whose praise in deafened ears
+ Two nations speak, we answer but with tears!
+
+ III.
+ O Vale of Chester! trod by him so oft,
+ Green as thy June turf keep his memory. Let
+ Nor wood, nor dell, nor storied stream forget,
+ Nor winds that blow round lonely Cedarcroft;
+ Let the home voices greet him in the far,
+ Strange land that holds him; let the messages
+ Of love pursue him o'er the chartless seas
+ And unmapped vastness of his unknown star
+ Love's language, heard beyond the loud discourse
+ Of perishable fame, in every sphere
+ Itself interprets; and its utterance here
+ Somewhere in God's unfolding universe
+ Shall reach our traveller, softening the surprise
+ Of his rapt gaze on unfamiliar skies!
+
+ 1879.
+
+
+
+OUR AUTOCRAT.
+
+Read at the breakfast given in honor of Dr. Holmes by the publishers of
+the Atlantic Monthly, December 3, 1879.
+
+
+ His laurels fresh from song and lay,
+ Romance, art, science, rich in all,
+ And young of heart, how dare we say
+ We keep his seventieth festival?
+
+ No sense is here of loss or lack;
+ Before his sweetness and his light
+ The dial holds its shadow back,
+ The charmed hours delay their flight.
+
+ His still the keen analysis
+ Of men and moods, electric wit,
+ Free play of mirth, and tenderness
+ To heal the slightest wound from it.
+
+ And his the pathos touching all
+ Life's sins and sorrows and regrets,
+ Its hopes and fears, its final call
+ And rest beneath the violets.
+
+ His sparkling surface scarce betrays
+ The thoughtful tide beneath it rolled,
+ The wisdom of the latter days,
+ And tender memories of the old.
+
+ What shapes and fancies, grave or gay,
+ Before us at his bidding come
+ The Treadmill tramp, the One-Horse Shay,
+ The dumb despair of Elsie's doom!
+
+ The tale of Avis and the Maid,
+ The plea for lips that cannot speak,
+ The holy kiss that Iris laid
+ On Little Boston's pallid cheek!
+
+ Long may he live to sing for us
+ His sweetest songs at evening time,
+ And, like his Chambered Nautilus,
+ To holier heights of beauty climb,
+
+ Though now unnumbered guests surround
+ The table that he rules at will,
+ Its Autocrat, however crowned,
+ Is but our friend and comrade still.
+
+ The world may keep his honored name,
+ The wealth of all his varied powers;
+ A stronger claim has love than fame,
+ And he himself is only ours!
+
+
+
+
+WITHIN THE GATE. L. M. C.
+
+I have more fully expressed my admiration and regard for Lydia Maria
+Child in the biographical introduction which I wrote for the volume of
+Letters, published after her death.
+
+
+ We sat together, last May-day, and talked
+ Of the dear friends who walked
+ Beside us, sharers of the hopes and fears
+ Of five and forty years,
+
+ Since first we met in Freedom's hope forlorn,
+ And heard her battle-horn
+ Sound through the valleys of the sleeping North,
+ Calling her children forth,
+
+ And youth pressed forward with hope-lighted eyes,
+ And age, with forecast wise
+ Of the long strife before the triumph won,
+ Girded his armor on.
+
+ Sadly, ass name by name we called the roll,
+ We heard the dead-bells toll
+ For the unanswering many, and we knew
+ The living were the few.
+
+ And we, who waited our own call before
+ The inevitable door,
+ Listened and looked, as all have done, to win
+ Some token from within.
+
+ No sign we saw, we heard no voices call;
+ The impenetrable wall
+ Cast down its shadow, like an awful doubt,
+ On all who sat without.
+
+ Of many a hint of life beyond the veil,
+ And many a ghostly tale
+ Wherewith the ages spanned the gulf between
+ The seen and the unseen,
+
+ Seeking from omen, trance, and dream to gain
+ Solace to doubtful pain,
+ And touch, with groping hands, the garment hem
+ Of truth sufficing them,
+
+ We talked; and, turning from the sore unrest
+ Of an all-baffling quest,
+ We thought of holy lives that from us passed
+ Hopeful unto the last,
+
+ As if they saw beyond the river of death,
+ Like Him of Nazareth,
+ The many mansions of the Eternal days
+ Lift up their gates of praise.
+
+ And, hushed to silence by a reverent awe,
+ Methought, O friend, I saw
+ In thy true life of word, and work, and thought
+ The proof of all we sought.
+
+ Did we not witness in the life of thee
+ Immortal prophecy?
+ And feel, when with thee, that thy footsteps trod
+ An everlasting road?
+
+ Not for brief days thy generous sympathies,
+ Thy scorn of selfish ease;
+ Not for the poor prize of an earthly goal
+ Thy strong uplift of soul.
+
+ Than thine was never turned a fonder heart
+ To nature and to art
+ In fair-formed Hellas in her golden prime,
+ Thy Philothea's time.
+
+ Yet, loving beauty, thou couldst pass it by,
+ And for the poor deny
+ Thyself, and see thy fresh, sweet flower of fame
+ Wither in blight and blame.
+
+ Sharing His love who holds in His embrace
+ The lowliest of our race,
+ Sure the Divine economy must be
+ Conservative of thee!
+
+ For truth must live with truth, self-sacrifice
+ Seek out its great allies;
+ Good must find good by gravitation sure,
+ And love with love endure.
+
+ And so, since thou hast passed within the gate
+ Whereby awhile I wait,
+ I give blind grief and blinder sense the lie
+ Thou hast not lived to die!
+
+ 1881.
+
+
+
+
+IN MEMORY. JAMES T. FIELDS.
+
+ As a guest who may not stay
+ Long and sad farewells to say
+ Glides with smiling face away,
+
+ Of the sweetness and the zest
+ Of thy happy life possessed
+ Thou hast left us at thy best.
+
+ Warm of heart and clear of brain,
+ Of thy sun-bright spirit's wane
+ Thou hast spared us all the pain.
+
+ Now that thou hast gone away,
+ What is left of one to say
+ Who was open as the day?
+
+ What is there to gloss or shun?
+ Save with kindly voices none
+ Speak thy name beneath the sun.
+
+ Safe thou art on every side,
+ Friendship nothing finds to hide,
+ Love's demand is satisfied.
+
+ Over manly strength and worth,
+ At thy desk of toil, or hearth,
+ Played the lambent light of mirth,--
+
+ Mirth that lit, but never burned;
+ All thy blame to pity turned;
+ Hatred thou hadst never learned.
+
+ Every harsh and vexing thing
+ At thy home-fire lost its sting;
+ Where thou wast was always spring.
+
+ And thy perfect trust in good,
+ Faith in man and womanhood,
+ Chance and change and time, withstood.
+
+ Small respect for cant and whine,
+ Bigot's zeal and hate malign,
+ Had that sunny soul of thine.
+
+ But to thee was duty's claim
+ Sacred, and thy lips became
+ Reverent with one holy Name.
+
+ Therefore, on thy unknown way,
+ Go in God's peace! We who stay
+ But a little while delay.
+
+ Keep for us, O friend, where'er
+ Thou art waiting, all that here
+ Made thy earthly presence dear;
+
+ Something of thy pleasant past
+ On a ground of wonder cast,
+ In the stiller waters glassed!
+
+ Keep the human heart of thee;
+ Let the mortal only be
+ Clothed in immortality.
+
+ And when fall our feet as fell
+ Thine upon the asphodel,
+ Let thy old smile greet us well;
+
+ Proving in a world of bliss
+ What we fondly dream in this,--
+ Love is one with holiness!
+
+ 1881.
+
+
+
+
+WILSON
+
+Read at the Massachusetts Club on the seventieth anniversary the
+birthday of Vice-President Wilson, February 16, 1882.
+
+
+ The lowliest born of all the land,
+ He wrung from Fate's reluctant hand
+ The gifts which happier boyhood claims;
+ And, tasting on a thankless soil
+ The bitter bread of unpaid toil,
+ He fed his soul with noble aims.
+
+ And Nature, kindly provident,
+ To him the future's promise lent;
+ The powers that shape man's destinies,
+ Patience and faith and toil, he knew,
+ The close horizon round him grew,
+ Broad with great possibilities.
+
+ By the low hearth-fire's fitful blaze
+ He read of old heroic days,
+ The sage's thought, the patriot's speech;
+ Unhelped, alone, himself he taught,
+ His school the craft at which he wrought,
+ His lore the book within his, reach.
+
+ He felt his country's need; he knew
+ The work her children had to do;
+ And when, at last, he heard the call
+ In her behalf to serve and dare,
+ Beside his senatorial chair
+ He stood the unquestioned peer of all.
+
+ Beyond the accident of birth
+ He proved his simple manhood's worth;
+ Ancestral pride and classic grace
+ Confessed the large-brained artisan,
+ So clear of sight, so wise in plan
+ And counsel, equal to his place.
+
+ With glance intuitive he saw
+ Through all disguise of form and law,
+ And read men like an open book;
+ Fearless and firm, he never quailed
+ Nor turned aside for threats, nor failed
+ To do the thing he undertook.
+
+ How wise, how brave, he was, how well
+ He bore himself, let history tell
+ While waves our flag o'er land and sea,
+ No black thread in its warp or weft;
+ He found dissevered States, he left
+ A grateful Nation, strong and free!
+
+
+
+
+THE POET AND THE CHILDREN. LONGFELLOW.
+
+ WITH a glory of winter sunshine
+ Over his locks of gray,
+ In the old historic mansion
+ He sat on his last birthday;
+
+ With his books and his pleasant pictures,
+ And his household and his kin,
+ While a sound as of myriads singing
+ From far and near stole in.
+
+ It came from his own fair city,
+ From the prairie's boundless plain,
+ From the Golden Gate of sunset,
+ And the cedarn woods of Maine.
+
+ And his heart grew warm within him,
+ And his moistening eyes grew dim,
+ For he knew that his country's children
+ Were singing the songs of him,
+
+ The lays of his life's glad morning,
+ The psalms of his evening time,
+ Whose echoes shall float forever
+ On the winds of every clime.
+
+ All their beautiful consolations,
+ Sent forth like birds of cheer,
+ Came flocking back to his windows,
+ And sang in the Poet's ear.
+
+ Grateful, but solemn and tender,
+ The music rose and fell
+ With a joy akin to sadness
+ And a greeting like farewell.
+
+ With a sense of awe he listened
+ To the voices sweet and young;
+ The last of earth and the first of heaven
+ Seemed in the songs they sung.
+
+ And waiting a little longer
+ For the wonderful change to come,
+ He heard the Summoning Angel,
+ Who calls God's children home!
+
+ And to him in a holier welcome
+ Was the mystical meaning given
+ Of the words of the blessed Master
+ "Of such is the kingdom of heaven!"
+
+ 1882
+
+
+
+
+A WELCOME TO LOWELL
+
+ Take our hands, James Russell Lowell,
+ Our hearts are all thy own;
+ To-day we bid thee welcome
+ Not for ourselves alone.
+
+ In the long years of thy absence
+ Some of us have grown old,
+ And some have passed the portals
+ Of the Mystery untold;
+
+ For the hands that cannot clasp thee,
+ For the voices that are dumb,
+ For each and all I bid thee
+ A grateful welcome home!
+
+ For Cedarcroft's sweet singer
+ To the nine-fold Muses dear;
+ For the Seer the winding Concord
+ Paused by his door to hear;
+
+ For him, our guide and Nestor,
+ Who the march of song began,
+ The white locks of his ninety years
+ Bared to thy winds, Cape Ann!
+
+ For him who, to the music
+ Her pines and hemlocks played,
+ Set the old and tender story
+ Of the lorn Acadian maid;
+
+ For him, whose voice for freedom
+ Swayed friend and foe at will,
+ Hushed is the tongue of silver,
+ The golden lips are still!
+
+ For her whose life of duty
+ At scoff and menace smiled,
+ Brave as the wife of Roland,
+ Yet gentle as a Child.
+
+ And for him the three-hilled city
+ Shall hold in memory long,
+ Those name is the hint and token
+ Of the pleasant Fields of Song!
+
+ For the old friends unforgotten,
+ For the young thou hast not known,
+ I speak their heart-warm greeting;
+ Come back and take thy own!
+
+ From England's royal farewells,
+ And honors fitly paid,
+ Come back, dear Russell Lowell,
+ To Elmwood's waiting shade!
+
+ Come home with all the garlands
+ That crown of right thy head.
+ I speak for comrades living,
+ I speak for comrades dead!
+
+ AMESBURY, 6th mo., 1885.
+
+
+
+
+AN ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL. GEORGE FULLER
+
+ Haunted of Beauty, like the marvellous youth
+ Who sang Saint Agnes' Eve! How passing fair
+ Her shapes took color in thy homestead air!
+ How on thy canvas even her dreams were truth!
+ Magician! who from commonest elements
+ Called up divine ideals, clothed upon
+ By mystic lights soft blending into one
+ Womanly grace and child-like innocence.
+ Teacher I thy lesson was not given in vain.
+ Beauty is goodness; ugliness is sin;
+ Art's place is sacred: nothing foul therein
+ May crawl or tread with bestial feet profane.
+ If rightly choosing is the painter's test,
+ Thy choice, O master, ever was the best.
+
+ 1885.
+
+
+
+
+MULFORD.
+
+Author of The Nation and The Republic of God.
+
+
+ Unnoted as the setting of a star
+ He passed; and sect and party scarcely knew
+ When from their midst a sage and seer withdrew
+ To fitter audience, where the great dead are
+ In God's republic of the heart and mind,
+ Leaving no purer, nobler soul behind.
+
+ 1886.
+
+
+
+
+TO A CAPE ANN SCHOONER
+
+ Luck to the craft that bears this name of mine,
+ Good fortune follow with her golden spoon
+ The glazed hat and tarry pantaloon;
+ And wheresoe'er her keel shall cut the brine,
+ Cod, hake and haddock quarrel for her line.
+ Shipped with her crew, whatever wind may blow,
+ Or tides delay, my wish with her shall go,
+ Fishing by proxy. Would that it might show
+ At need her course, in lack of sun and star,
+ Where icebergs threaten, and the sharp reefs are;
+ Lift the blind fog on Anticosti's lee
+ And Avalon's rock; make populous the sea
+ Round Grand Manan with eager finny swarms,
+ Break the long calms, and charm away the storms.
+
+ OAK KNOLL, 23 3rd mo., 1886.
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL J. TILDEN.
+
+GREYSTONE, AUG. 4, 1886.
+
+ Once more, O all-adjusting Death!
+ The nation's Pantheon opens wide;
+ Once more a common sorrow saith
+ A strong, wise man has died.
+
+ Faults doubtless had he. Had we not
+ Our own, to question and asperse
+ The worth we doubted or forgot
+ Until beside his hearse?
+
+ Ambitious, cautious, yet the man
+ To strike down fraud with resolute hand;
+ A patriot, if a partisan,
+ He loved his native land.
+
+ So let the mourning bells be rung,
+ The banner droop its folds half way,
+ And while the public pen and tongue
+ Their fitting tribute pay,
+
+ Shall we not vow above his bier
+ To set our feet on party lies,
+ And wound no more a living ear
+ With words that Death denies?
+
+ 1886
+
+
+
+
+
+OCCASIONAL POEMS
+
+
+
+
+EVA
+
+Suggested by Mrs. Stowe's tale of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and written when
+the characters in the tale were realities by the fireside of countless
+American homes.
+
+
+ Dry the tears for holy Eva,
+ With the blessed angels leave her;
+ Of the form so soft and fair
+ Give to earth the tender care.
+
+ For the golden locks of Eva
+ Let the sunny south-land give her
+ Flowery pillow of repose,
+ Orange-bloom and budding rose.
+
+ In the better home of Eva
+ Let the shining ones receive her,
+ With the welcome-voiced psalm,
+ Harp of gold and waving palm,
+
+ All is light and peace with Eva;
+ There the darkness cometh never;
+ Tears are wiped, and fetters fall.
+ And the Lord is all in all.
+
+ Weep no more for happy Eva,
+ Wrong and sin no more shall grieve her;
+ Care and pain and weariness
+ Lost in love so measureless.
+
+ Gentle Eva, loving Eva,
+ Child confessor, true believer,
+ Listener at the Master's knee,
+ "Suffer such to come to me."
+
+ Oh, for faith like thine, sweet Eva,
+ Lighting all the solemn river,
+ And the blessings of the poor
+ Wafting to the heavenly shore!
+ 1852
+
+
+
+
+A LAY OF OLD TIME.
+
+Written for the Essex County Agricultural Fair, and sung at the banquet
+at Newburyport, October 2, 1856.
+
+
+ One morning of the first sad Fall,
+ Poor Adam and his bride
+ Sat in the shade of Eden's wall--
+ But on the outer side.
+
+ She, blushing in her fig-leaf suit
+ For the chaste garb of old;
+ He, sighing o'er his bitter fruit
+ For Eden's drupes of gold.
+
+ Behind them, smiling in the morn,
+ Their forfeit garden lay,
+ Before them, wild with rock and thorn,
+ The desert stretched away.
+
+ They heard the air above them fanned,
+ A light step on the sward,
+ And lo! they saw before them stand
+ The angel of the Lord!
+
+ "Arise," he said, "why look behind,
+ When hope is all before,
+ And patient hand and willing mind,
+ Your loss may yet restore?
+
+ "I leave with you a spell whose power
+ Can make the desert glad,
+ And call around you fruit and flower
+ As fair as Eden had.
+
+ "I clothe your hands with power to lift
+ The curse from off your soil;
+ Your very doom shall seem a gift,
+ Your loss a gain through Toil.
+
+ "Go, cheerful as yon humming-bees,
+ To labor as to play."
+ White glimmering over Eden's trees
+ The angel passed away.
+
+ The pilgrims of the world went forth
+ Obedient to the word,
+ And found where'er they tilled the earth
+ A garden of the Lord!
+
+ The thorn-tree cast its evil fruit
+ And blushed with plum and pear,
+ And seeded grass and trodden root
+ Grew sweet beneath their care.
+
+ We share our primal parents' fate,
+ And, in our turn and day,
+ Look back on Eden's sworded gate
+ As sad and lost as they.
+
+ But still for us his native skies
+ The pitying Angel leaves,
+ And leads through Toil to Paradise
+ New Adams and new Eves!
+
+
+
+
+A SONG OF HARVEST
+
+For the Agricultural and Horticultural Exhibition at Amesbury and
+Salisbury, September 28, 1858.
+
+
+ This day, two hundred years ago,
+ The wild grape by the river's side,
+ And tasteless groundnut trailing low,
+ The table of the woods supplied.
+
+ Unknown the apple's red and gold,
+ The blushing tint of peach and pear;
+ 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.
+
+ O Painter of the fruits and flowers!
+ We thank Thee for thy wise design
+ Whereby these human hands of ours
+ In Nature's garden work with Thine.
+
+ And thanks that from our daily need
+ The joy of simple faith is born;
+ That he who smites the summer weed,
+ May trust Thee for the autumn corn.
+
+ Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
+ Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall;
+ Who sows a field, or trains a flower,
+ Or plants a tree, is more than all.
+
+ For he who blesses most is blest;
+ And God and man shall own his worth
+ Who toils to leave as his bequest
+ An added beauty to the earth.
+
+ And, soon or late, to all that sow,
+ The time of harvest shall be given;
+ The flower shall bloom, the fruit shall grow,
+ If not on earth, at last in heaven.
+
+
+
+
+KENOZA LAKE.
+
+This beautiful lake in East Haverhill was the "Great Pond" the writer's
+boyhood. In 1859 a movement was made for improving its shores as a
+public park. At the opening of the park, August 31, 1859, the poem which
+gave it the name of Kenoza (in Indian language signifying Pickerel) was
+read.
+
+
+ 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 back the ancient name to thee,
+ As with the voice of pines.
+
+ The shores we trod as barefoot boys,
+ The nutted woods we wandered through,
+ To friendship, love, and social joys
+ We consecrate anew.
+
+ Here shall the tender song be sung,
+ And memory's dirges soft and low,
+ And wit shall sparkle on the tongue,
+ And mirth shall overflow,
+
+ Harmless as summer lightning plays
+ From a low, hidden cloud by night,
+ A light to set the hills ablaze,
+ But not a bolt to smite.
+
+ In sunny South and prairied West
+ Are exiled hearts remembering still,
+ As bees their hive, as birds their nest,
+ The homes of Haverhill.
+
+ They join us in our rites to-day;
+ And, listening, we may hear, erelong,
+ From inland lake and ocean bay,
+ The echoes of our song.
+
+ Kenoza! o'er no sweeter lake
+ Shall morning break or noon-cloud sail,--
+ No fairer face than thine shall take
+ The sunset's golden veil.
+
+ Long be it ere the tide of trade
+ Shall break with harsh-resounding din
+ The quiet of thy banks of shade,
+ And hills that fold thee in.
+
+ Still let thy woodlands hide the hare,
+ The shy loon sound his trumpet-note,
+ Wing-weary from his fields of air,
+ The wild-goose on thee float.
+
+ Thy peace rebuke our feverish stir,
+ Thy beauty our deforming strife;
+ Thy woods and waters minister
+ The healing of their life.
+
+ And sinless Mirth, from care released,
+ Behold, unawed, thy mirrored sky,
+ Smiling as smiled on Cana's feast
+ The Master's loving eye.
+
+ And when the summer day grows dim,
+ And light mists walk thy mimic sea,
+ Revive in us the thought of Him
+ Who walked on Galilee!
+
+
+
+
+FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL
+
+ The Persian's flowery gifts, the shrine
+ Of fruitful Ceres, charm no more;
+ The woven wreaths of oak and pine
+ Are dust along the Isthmian shore.
+
+ But beauty hath its homage still,
+ And nature holds us still in debt;
+ And woman's grace and household skill,
+ And manhood's toil, are honored yet.
+
+ And we, to-day, amidst our flowers
+ And fruits, have come to own again
+ The blessings of the summer hours,
+ 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!
+
+ 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.
+
+ Oh, favors every year made new!
+ Oh, gifts with rain and sunshine sent
+ The bounty overruns our due,
+ The fulness shames our discontent.
+
+ We shut our eyes, the flowers bloom on;
+ We murmur, but the corn-ears fill,
+ We choose the shadow, but the sun
+ That casts it shines behind us still.
+
+ God gives us with our rugged soil
+ The power to make it Eden-fair,
+ And richer fruits to crown our toil
+ Than summer-wedded islands bear.
+
+ Who murmurs at his lot to-day?
+ Who scorns his native fruit and bloom?
+ Or sighs for dainties far away,
+ Beside the bounteous board of home?
+
+ Thank Heaven, instead, that Freedom's arm
+ Can change a rocky soil to gold,--
+ That brave and generous lives can warm
+ A clime with northern ices cold.
+
+ And let these altars, wreathed with flowers
+ And piled with fruits, awake again
+ Thanksgivings for the golden hours,
+ The early and the latter rain!
+
+ 1859
+
+
+
+
+THE QUAKER ALUMNI.
+
+Read at the Friends' School Anniversary, Providence, R. I., 6th mo.,
+1860.
+
+
+ From the well-springs of Hudson, the sea-cliffs of Maine,
+ Grave men, sober matrons, you gather again;
+ And, with hearts warmer grown as your heads grow more cool,
+ Play over the old game of going to school.
+
+ All your strifes and vexations, your whims and complaints,
+ (You were not saints yourselves, if the children of saints!)
+ All your petty self-seekings and rivalries done,
+ Round the dear Alma Mater your hearts beat as one!
+
+ How widely soe'er you have strayed from the fold,
+ Though your "thee" has grown "you," and your drab blue and gold,
+ To the old friendly speech and the garb's sober form,
+ Like the heart of Argyle to the tartan, you warm.
+
+ But, the first greetings over, you glance round the hall;
+ Your hearts call the roll, but they answer not all
+ Through the turf green above them the dead cannot hear;
+ Name by name, in the silence, falls sad as a tear!
+
+ In love, let us trust, they were summoned so soon
+ rom the morning of life, while we toil through its noon;
+ They were frail like ourselves, they had needs like our own,
+ And they rest as we rest in God's mercy alone.
+
+ Unchanged by our changes of spirit and frame,
+ Past, now, and henceforward the Lord is the same;
+ Though we sink in the darkness, His arms break our fall,
+ And in death as in life, He is Father of all!
+
+ We are older: our footsteps, so light in the play
+ Of the far-away school-time, move slower to-day;--
+ Here a beard touched with frost, there a bald, shining crown,
+ And beneath the cap's border gray 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;
+ For the wounds of rebuke, when love tempered its 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!
+
+ 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 scoffs at our birthright?--the words of the seers,
+ And the songs of the bards in the twilight of years,
+ All the foregleams of wisdom in santon 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-fire 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;
+ But the fountains they opened still gush by the way,
+ And the world for their healing is better to-day.
+
+ He who lies where the minster's groined arches curve down
+ To the tomb-crowded transept of 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 forgive him!
+
+ There are those who take note that our numbers are small,--
+ New Gibbons who write our decline and our fall;
+ But the Lord of the seed-field takes care of His own,
+ 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 garb that they wore,
+ And for Barclay's Apology offer one more?
+
+ Shall we fawn round the priestcraft that glutted the shears,
+ And festooned the stocks with our grandfathers' ears?
+ Talk of Woolman's unsoundness? count Penn heterodox?
+ And take Cotton Mather in place of George Fox?
+
+ Make our preachers war-chaplains? quote Scripture to take
+ The hunted slave back, for Onesimus' sake?
+ 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;
+ 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.
+ When she makes up her jewels, what cares yon good town
+ For the Baptist of Wayland, the Quaker of Brown?
+
+ And this green, favored island, so fresh and seablown,
+ 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 hand,--
+ 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 threefold accord,
+ And they own one baptism, one faith, and one Lord!
+
+ But the golden sands run out: occasions like these
+ Glide swift into shadow, like sails on the seas
+ While we sport with the mosses and pebbles ashore,
+ They lessen and fade, 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 own
+ The tender in feeling, the playful in tone.
+
+ I, who never sat down with the boys and the girls
+ At the feet of your Slocums, and Cartlands, and Earles,--
+ By courtesy only permitted to lay
+ On your festival's altar my poor gift, to-day,--
+
+ I would joy in your joy: let me have a friend's part
+ In the warmth of your welcome of 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 Narragansett the tides come and go;
+ And 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.
+
+ 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!
+
+
+
+
+OUR RIVER.
+
+FOR A SUMMER FESTIVAL AT "THE LAURELS" ON THE MERRIMAC.
+
+Jean Pierre Brissot, the famous leader of the Girondist party in the
+French Revolution, when a young man travelled extensively in the United
+States. He visited the valley of the Merrimac, and speaks in terms of
+admiration of the view from Moulton's hill opposite Amesbury. The
+"Laurel Party" so called, as composed of ladies and gentlemen in the
+lower valley of the Merrimac, and invited friends and guests in other
+sections of the country. Its thoroughly enjoyable annual festivals were
+held in the early summer on the pine-shaded, laurel-blossomed slopes of
+the Newbury side of the river opposite Pleasant Valley in Amesbury. The
+several poems called out by these gatherings are here printed in
+sequence.
+
+
+ Once more on yonder laurelled height
+ The summer flowers have budded;
+ Once more with summer's golden light
+ The vales of home are flooded;
+ And once more, by the grace of Him
+ Of every good the Giver,
+ We sing upon its wooded rim
+ The praises of our river,
+
+ Its pines above, its waves below,
+ The west-wind down it blowing,
+ As fair as when the young Brissot
+ Beheld it seaward flowing,--
+ And bore its memory o'er the deep,
+ To soothe a martyr's sadness,
+ And fresco, hi his troubled sleep,
+ His prison-walls with gladness.
+
+ We know the world is rich with streams
+ Renowned in song and story,
+ Whose music murmurs through our dreams
+ Of human love and glory
+ We know that Arno's banks are fair,
+ And Rhine has castled shadows,
+ And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr
+ Go singing down their meadows.
+
+ But while, unpictured and unsung
+ By painter or by poet,
+ Our river waits the tuneful tongue
+ And cunning hand to show it,--
+ We only know the fond skies lean
+ Above it, warm with blessing,
+ And the sweet soul of our Undine
+ Awakes to our caressing.
+
+ No fickle sun-god holds the flocks
+ That graze its shores in keeping;
+ No icy kiss of Dian mocks
+ The youth beside it sleeping
+ Our Christian river loveth most
+ The beautiful and human;
+ The heathen streams of Naiads boast,
+ But ours of man and woman.
+
+ The miner in his cabin hears
+ The ripple we are hearing;
+ It whispers soft to homesick ears
+ Around the settler's clearing
+ In Sacramento's vales of corn,
+ Or Santee's bloom of cotton,
+ Our river by its valley-born
+ Was never yet forgotten.
+
+ The drum rolls loud, the bugle fills
+ The summer air with clangor;
+ The war-storm shakes the solid hills
+ Beneath its tread of anger;
+ Young eyes that last year smiled in ours
+ Now point the rifle's barrel,
+ And hands then stained with fruits and flowers
+ Bear redder stains of quarrel.
+
+ But blue skies smile, and flowers bloom on,
+ And rivers still keep flowing,
+ The dear God still his rain and sun
+ On good and ill bestowing.
+ His pine-trees whisper, "Trust and wait!"
+ His flowers are prophesying
+ That all we dread of change or fate
+ His live is underlying.
+
+ And thou, O Mountain-born!--no more
+ We ask the wise Allotter
+ Than for the firmness of thy shore,
+ The calmness of thy water,
+ The cheerful lights that overlay,
+ Thy rugged slopes with beauty,
+ To match our spirits to our day
+ And make a joy of duty.
+
+ 1861.
+
+
+
+
+REVISITED.
+
+Read at "The Laurels," on the Merrimac, 6th month, 1865.
+
+
+ The roll of drums and the bugle's wailing
+ Vex the air of our vales-no more;
+ The spear is beaten to hooks of pruning,
+ The share is the sword the soldier wore!
+
+ Sing soft, sing low, our lowland river,
+ Under thy banks of laurel bloom;
+ Softly and sweet, as the hour beseemeth,
+ Sing us the songs of peace and home.
+
+ Let all the tenderer voices of nature
+ Temper the triumph and chasten mirth,
+ Full of the infinite love and pity
+ For fallen martyr and darkened hearth.
+
+ But to Him who gives us beauty for ashes,
+ And the oil of joy for mourning long,
+ Let thy hills give thanks, and all thy waters
+ Break into jubilant waves of song!
+
+ Bring us the airs of hills and forests,
+ The sweet aroma of birch and pine,
+ Give us a waft of the north-wind laden
+ With sweethrier odors and breath of kine!
+
+ Bring us the purple of mountain sunsets,
+ Shadows of clouds that rake the hills,
+ The green repose of thy Plymouth meadows,
+ The gleam and ripple of Campton rills.
+
+ Lead us away in shadow and sunshine,
+ Slaves of fancy, through all thy miles,
+ The winding ways of Pemigewasset,
+ And Winnipesaukee's hundred isles.
+
+ Shatter in sunshine over thy ledges,
+ Laugh in thy plunges from fall to fall;
+ Play with thy fringes of elms, and darken
+ Under the shade of the mountain wall.
+
+ The cradle-song of thy hillside fountains
+ Here in thy glory and strength repeat;
+ Give us a taste of thy upland music,
+ Show us the dance of thy silver feet.
+
+ Into thy dutiful life of uses
+ Pour the music and weave the flowers;
+ With the song of birds and bloom of meadows
+ Lighten and gladden thy heart and ours.
+
+ Sing on! bring down, O lowland river,
+ The joy of the hills to the waiting sea;
+ The wealth of the vales, the pomp of mountains,
+ The breath of the woodlands, bear with thee.
+
+ Here, in the calm of thy seaward, valley,
+ Mirth and labor shall hold their truce;
+ Dance of water and mill of grinding,
+ Both are beauty and both are use.
+
+ Type of the Northland's strength and glory,
+ Pride and hope of our home and race,--
+ Freedom lending to rugged labor
+ Tints of beauty and lines of grace.
+
+ Once again, O beautiful river,
+ Hear our greetings and take our thanks;
+ Hither we come, as Eastern pilgrims
+ Throng to the Jordan's sacred banks.
+
+ For though by the Master's feet untrodden,
+ Though never His word has stilled thy waves,
+ Well for us may thy shores be holy,
+ With Christian altars and saintly graves.
+
+ And well may we own thy hint and token
+ Of fairer valleys and streams than these,
+ Where the rivers of God are full of water,
+ And full of sap are His healing trees!
+
+
+
+
+"THE LAURELS"
+
+At the twentieth and last anniversary.
+
+
+ FROM these wild rocks I look to-day
+ O'er leagues of dancing waves, and see
+ The far, low coast-line stretch away
+ To where our river meets the sea.
+
+ The light wind blowing off the land
+ Is burdened with old voices; through
+ Shut eyes I see how lip and hand
+ The greeting of old days renew.
+
+ O friends whose hearts still keep their prime,
+ Whose bright example warms and cheers,
+ Ye teach us how to smile at Time,
+ And set to music all his years!
+
+ I thank you for sweet summer days,
+ For pleasant memories lingering long,
+ For joyful meetings, fond delays,
+ And ties of friendship woven strong.
+
+ As for the last time, side by side,
+ You tread the paths familiar grown,
+ I reach across the severing tide,
+ And blend my farewells with your own.
+
+ Make room, O river of our home!
+ For other feet in place of ours,
+ And in the summers yet to come,
+ Make glad another Feast of Flowers!
+
+ Hold in thy mirror, calm and deep,
+ The pleasant pictures thou hast seen;
+ Forget thy lovers not, but keep
+ Our memory like thy laurels green.
+
+ ISLES of SHOALS, 7th mo., 1870.
+
+
+
+
+JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC.
+
+ O dwellers in the stately towns,
+ What come ye out to see?
+ This common earth, this common sky,
+ This water flowing free?
+
+ As gayly as these kalmia flowers
+ Your door-yard blossoms spring;
+ As sweetly as these wild-wood birds
+ Your caged minstrels sing.
+
+ You find but common bloom and green,
+ The rippling river's rune,
+ The beauty which is everywhere
+ Beneath the skies of June;
+
+ The Hawkswood oaks, the storm-torn plumes
+ Of old pine-forest kings,
+ Beneath whose century-woven shade
+ Deer Island's mistress sings.
+
+ And here are pictured Artichoke,
+ And Curson's bowery mill;
+ And Pleasant Valley smiles between
+ The river and the hill.
+
+ You know full well these banks of bloom,
+ The upland's wavy line,
+ And how the sunshine tips with fire
+ The needles of the pine.
+
+ Yet, like some old remembered psalm,
+ Or sweet, familiar face,
+ Not less because of commonness
+ You love the day and place.
+
+ And not in vain in this soft air
+ Shall hard-strung nerves relax,
+ Not all in vain the o'erworn brain
+ Forego its daily tax.
+
+ The lust of power, the greed of gain
+ Have all the year their own;
+ The haunting demons well may let
+ Our one bright day alone.
+
+ Unheeded let the newsboy call,
+ Aside the ledger lay
+ The world will keep its treadmill step
+ Though we fall out to-day.
+
+ The truants of life's weary school,
+ Without excuse from thrift
+ We change for once the gains of toil
+ For God's unpurchased gift.
+
+ From ceiled rooms, from silent books,
+ From crowded car and town,
+ Dear Mother Earth, upon thy lap,
+ We lay our tired heads down.
+
+ Cool, summer wind, our heated brows;
+ Blue river, through the green
+ Of clustering pines, refresh the eyes
+ Which all too much have seen.
+
+ For us these pleasant woodland ways
+ Are thronged with memories old,
+ Have felt the grasp of friendly hands
+ And heard love's story told.
+
+ A sacred presence overbroods
+ The earth whereon we meet;
+ These winding forest-paths are trod
+ By more than mortal feet.
+
+ Old friends called from us by the voice
+ Which they alone could hear,
+ From mystery to mystery,
+ From life to life, draw near.
+
+ More closely for the sake of them
+ Each other's hands we press;
+ Our voices take from them a tone
+ Of deeper tenderness.
+
+ Our joy is theirs, their trust is ours,
+ Alike below, above,
+ Or here or there, about us fold
+ The arms of one great love!
+
+ We ask to-day no countersign,
+ No party names we own;
+ Unlabelled, individual,
+ We bring ourselves alone.
+
+ What cares the unconventioned wood
+ For pass-words of the town?
+ The sound of fashion's shibboleth
+ The laughing waters drown.
+
+ Here cant forgets his dreary tone,
+ And care his face forlorn;
+ The liberal air and sunshine laugh
+ The bigot's zeal to scorn.
+
+ From manhood's weary shoulder falls
+ His load of selfish cares;
+ And woman takes her rights as flowers
+ And brooks and birds take theirs.
+
+ The license of the happy woods,
+ The brook's release are ours;
+ The freedom of the unshamed wind
+ Among the glad-eyed flowers.
+
+ Yet here no evil thought finds place,
+ Nor foot profane comes in;
+ Our grove, like that of Samothrace,
+ Is set apart from sin.
+
+ We walk on holy ground; above
+ A sky more holy smiles;
+ The chant of the beatitudes
+ Swells down these leafy aisles.
+
+ Thanks to the gracious Providence
+ That brings us here once more;
+ For memories of the good behind
+ And hopes of good before.
+
+ And if, unknown to us, sweet days
+ Of June like this must come,
+ Unseen of us these laurels clothe
+ The river-banks with bloom;
+
+ And these green paths must soon be trod
+ By other feet than ours,
+ Full long may annual pilgrims come
+ To keep the Feast of Flowers;
+
+ The matron be a girl once more,
+ The bearded man a boy,
+ And we, in heaven's eternal June,
+ Be glad for earthly joy!
+
+ 1876.
+
+
+
+
+HYMN
+
+FOR THE OPENING OF THOMAS STARR KING'S HOUSE OF WORSHIP, 1864.
+
+The poetic and patriotic preacher, who had won fame in the East, went to
+California in 1860 and became a power on the Pacific coast. It was not
+long after the opening of the house of worship built for him that he
+died.
+
+
+ Amidst these glorious works of Thine,
+ The solemn minarets of the pine,
+ And awful Shasta's icy shrine,--
+
+ Where swell Thy hymns from wave and gale,
+ And organ-thunders never fail,
+ Behind the cataract's silver veil,
+
+ Our puny walls to Thee we raise,
+ Our poor reed-music sounds Thy praise:
+ Forgive, O Lord, our childish ways!
+
+ For, kneeling on these altar-stairs,
+ We urge Thee not with selfish prayers,
+ Nor murmur at our daily cares.
+
+ Before Thee, in an evil day,
+ Our country's bleeding heart we lay,
+ And dare not ask Thy hand to stay;
+
+ But, through the war-cloud, pray to Thee
+ For union, but a union free,
+ With peace that comes of purity!
+
+ That Thou wilt bare Thy arm to, save
+ And, smiting through this Red Sea wave,
+ Make broad a pathway for the slave!
+
+ For us, confessing all our need,
+ We trust nor rite nor word nor deed,
+ Nor yet the broken staff of creed.
+
+ Assured alone that Thou art good
+ To each, as to the multitude,
+ Eternal Love and Fatherhood,--
+
+ Weak, sinful, blind, to Thee we kneel,
+ Stretch dumbly forth our hands, and feel
+ Our weakness is our strong appeal.
+
+ So, by these Western gates of Even
+ We wait to see with Thy forgiven
+ The opening Golden Gate of Heaven!
+
+ Suffice it now. In time to be
+ Shall holier altars rise to Thee,--
+ Thy Church our broad humanity
+
+ White flowers of love its walls shall climb,
+ Soft bells of peace shall ring its chime,
+ Its days shall all be holy time.
+
+ A sweeter song shall then be heard,--
+ The music of the world's accord
+ Confessing Christ, the Inward Word!
+
+ That song shall swell from shore to shore,
+ One hope, one faith, one love, restore
+ The seamless robe that Jesus wore.
+
+
+
+
+HYMN
+
+FOR THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP AT GEORGETOWN,
+ERECTED IN MEMORY OF A MOTHER.
+
+The giver of the house was the late George Peabody, of London.
+
+
+ Thou dwellest not, O Lord of all
+ In temples which thy children raise;
+ Our work to thine is mean and small,
+ And brief to thy eternal days.
+
+ Forgive the weakness and the pride,
+ If marred thereby our gift may be,
+ For love, at least, has sanctified
+ The altar that we rear to thee.
+
+ The heart and not the hand has wrought
+ From sunken base to tower above
+ The image of a tender thought,
+ The memory of a deathless love!
+
+ And though should never sound of speech
+ Or organ echo from its wall,
+ Its stones would pious lessons teach,
+ Its shade in benedictions fall.
+
+ Here should the dove of peace be found,
+ And blessings and not curses given;
+ Nor strife profane, nor hatred wound,
+ The mingled loves of earth and heaven.
+
+ Thou, who didst soothe with dying breath
+ The dear one watching by Thy cross,
+ Forgetful of the pains of death
+ In sorrow for her mighty loss,
+
+ In memory of that tender claim,
+ O Mother-born, the offering take,
+ And make it worthy of Thy name,
+ And bless it for a mother's sake!
+
+ 1868.
+
+
+
+
+A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION.
+
+Read at the President's Levee, Brown University, 29th 6th month, 1870.
+
+
+ To-day the plant by Williams set
+ Its summer bloom discloses;
+ The wilding sweethrier of his prayers
+ Is crowned with cultured roses.
+
+ Once more the Island State repeats
+ The lesson that he taught her,
+ And binds his pearl of charity
+ Upon her brown-locked daughter.
+
+ Is 't fancy that he watches still
+ His Providence plantations?
+ That still the careful Founder takes
+ A part on these occasions.
+
+ Methinks I see that reverend form,
+ Which all of us so well know
+ He rises up to speak; he jogs
+ The presidential elbow.
+
+ "Good friends," he says, "you reap a field
+ I sowed in self-denial,
+ For toleration had its griefs
+ And charity its trial.
+
+ "Great grace, as saith Sir Thomas More,
+ To him must needs be given
+ Who heareth heresy and leaves
+ The heretic to Heaven!
+
+ "I hear again the snuffled tones,
+ I see in dreary vision
+ Dyspeptic dreamers, spiritual bores,
+ And prophets with a mission.
+
+ "Each zealot thrust before my eyes
+ His Scripture-garbled label;
+ All creeds were shouted in my ears
+ As with the tongues of Babel.
+
+ "Scourged at one cart-tail, each denied
+ The hope of every other;
+ Each martyr shook his branded fist
+ At the conscience of his brother!
+
+ "How cleft the dreary drone of man.
+ The shriller pipe of woman,
+ As Gorton led his saints elect,
+ Who held all things in common!
+
+ "Their gay robes trailed in ditch and swamp,
+ And torn by thorn and thicket,
+ The dancing-girls of Merry Mount
+ Came dragging to my wicket.
+
+ "Shrill Anabaptists, shorn of ears;
+ Gray witch-wives, hobbling slowly;
+ And Antinomians, free of law,
+ Whose very sins were holy.
+
+ "Hoarse ranters, crazed Fifth Monarchists,
+ Of stripes and bondage braggarts,
+ Pale Churchmen, with singed rubrics snatched
+ From Puritanic fagots.
+
+ "And last, not least, the Quakers came,
+ With tongues still sore from burning,
+ The Bay State's dust from off their feet
+ Before my threshold spurning;
+
+ "A motley host, the Lord's debris,
+ Faith's odds and ends together;
+ Well might I shrink from guests with lungs
+ Tough as their breeches leather
+
+ "If, when the hangman at their heels
+ Came, rope in hand to catch them,
+ I took the hunted outcasts in,
+ I never sent to fetch them.
+
+ "I fed, but spared them not a whit;
+ I gave to all who walked in,
+ Not clams and succotash alone,
+ But stronger meat of doctrine.
+
+ "I proved the prophets false, I pricked
+ The bubble of perfection,
+ And clapped upon their inner light
+ The snuffers of election.
+
+ "And looking backward on my times,
+ This credit I am taking;
+ I kept each sectary's dish apart,
+ No spiritual chowder making.
+
+ "Where now the blending signs of sect
+ Would puzzle their assorter,
+ The dry-shod Quaker kept the land,
+ The Baptist held the water.
+
+ "A common coat now serves for both,
+ The hat's no more a fixture;
+ And which was wet and which was dry,
+ Who knows in such a mixture?
+
+ "Well! He who fashioned Peter's dream
+ To bless them all is able;
+ And bird and beast and creeping thing
+ Make clean upon His table!
+
+ "I walked by my own light; but when
+ The ways of faith divided,
+ Was I to force unwilling feet
+ To tread the path that I did?
+
+ "I touched the garment-hem of truth,
+ Yet saw not all its splendor;
+ I knew enough of doubt to feel
+ For every conscience tender.
+
+ "God left men free of choice, as when
+ His Eden-trees were planted;
+ Because they chose amiss, should I
+ Deny the gift He granted?
+
+ "So, with a common sense of need,
+ Our common weakness feeling,
+ I left them with myself to God
+ And His all-gracious dealing!
+
+ "I kept His plan whose rain and sun
+ To tare and wheat are given;
+ And if the ways to hell were free,
+ I left then free to heaven!"
+
+ Take heart with us, O man of old,
+ Soul-freedom's brave confessor,
+ So love of God and man wax strong,
+ Let sect and creed be lesser.
+
+ The jarring discords of thy day
+ In ours one hymn are swelling;
+ The wandering feet, the severed paths,
+ All seek our Father's dwelling.
+
+ And slowly learns the world the truth
+ That makes us all thy debtor,--
+ That holy life is more than rite,
+ And spirit more than letter;
+
+ That they who differ pole-wide serve
+ Perchance the common Master,
+ And other sheep He hath than they
+ Who graze one narrow pasture!
+
+ For truth's worst foe is he who claims
+ To act as God's avenger,
+ And deems, beyond his sentry-beat,
+ The crystal walls in danger!
+
+ Who sets for heresy his traps
+ Of verbal quirk and quibble,
+ And weeds the garden of the Lord
+ With Satan's borrowed dibble.
+
+ To-day our hearts like organ keys
+ One Master's touch are feeling;
+ The branches of a common Vine
+ Have only leaves of healing.
+
+ Co-workers, yet from varied fields,
+ We share this restful nooning;
+ The Quaker with the Baptist here
+ Believes in close communing.
+
+ Forgive, dear saint, the playful tone,
+ Too light for thy deserving;
+ Thanks for thy generous faith in man,
+ Thy trust in God unswerving.
+
+ Still echo in the hearts of men
+ The words that thou hast spoken;
+ No forge of hell can weld again
+ The fetters thou hast broken.
+
+ The pilgrim needs a pass no more
+ From Roman or Genevan;
+ Thought-free, no ghostly tollman keeps
+ Henceforth the road to Heaven!
+
+
+
+
+CHICAGO
+
+The great fire at Chicago was on 8-10 October, 1871.
+
+
+ Men said at vespers: "All is well!"
+ In one wild night the city fell;
+ Fell shrines of prayer and marts of gain
+ Before the fiery hurricane.
+
+ On threescore spires had sunset shone,
+ Where ghastly sunrise looked on none.
+ Men clasped each other's hands, and said
+ "The City of the West is dead!"
+
+ Brave hearts who fought, in slow retreat,
+ The fiends of fire from street to street,
+ Turned, powerless, to the blinding glare,
+ The dumb defiance of despair.
+
+ A sudden impulse thrilled each wire
+ That signalled round that sea of fire;
+ Swift words of cheer, warm heart-throbs came;
+ In tears of pity died the flame!
+
+ From East, from West, from South and North,
+ The messages of hope shot forth,
+ And, underneath the severing wave,
+ The world, full-handed, reached to save.
+
+ Fair seemed the old; but fairer still
+ The new, the dreary void shall fill
+ With dearer homes than those o'erthrown,
+ For love shall lay each corner-stone.
+
+ Rise, stricken city! from thee throw
+ The ashen sackcloth of thy woe;
+ And build, as to Amphion's strain,
+ To songs of cheer thy walls again!
+
+ How shrivelled in thy hot distress
+ The primal sin of selfishness!
+ How instant rose, to take thy part,
+ The angel in the human heart!
+
+ Ah! not in vain the flames that tossed
+ Above thy dreadful holocaust;
+ The Christ again has preached through thee
+ The Gospel of Humanity!
+
+ Then lift once more thy towers on high,
+ And fret with spires the western sky,
+ To tell that God is yet with us,
+ And love is still miraculous!
+
+ 1871.
+
+
+
+
+KINSMAN.
+
+Died at the Island of Panay (Philippine group), aged nineteen years.
+
+
+ Where ceaseless Spring her garland twines,
+ As sweetly shall the loved one rest,
+ As if beneath the whispering pines
+ And maple shadows of the West.
+
+ Ye mourn, O hearts of home! for him,
+ But, haply, mourn ye not alone;
+ For him shall far-off eyes be dim,
+ And pity speak in tongues unknown.
+
+ There needs no graven line to give
+ The story of his blameless youth;
+ All hearts shall throb intuitive,
+ And nature guess the simple truth.
+
+ The very meaning of his name
+ Shall many a tender tribute win;
+ The stranger own his sacred claim,
+ And all the world shall be his kin.
+
+ And there, as here, on main and isle,
+ The dews of holy peace shall fall,
+ The same sweet heavens above him smile,
+ And God's dear love be over all
+ 1874.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN WEDDING OF LONGWOOD.
+
+Longwood, not far from Bayard Taylor's birthplace in Kennett Square,
+Pennsylvania, was the home of my esteemed friends John and Hannah Cox,
+whose golden wedding was celebrated in 1874.
+
+
+ With fifty years between you and your well-kept wedding vow,
+ The Golden Age, old friends of mine, is not a fable now.
+
+ And, sweet as has life's vintage been through all your pleasant past,
+ Still, as at Cana's marriage-feast, the best wine is the last!
+
+ Again before me, with your names, fair Chester's landscape comes,
+ Its meadows, woods, and ample barns, and quaint, stone-builded homes.
+
+ The smooth-shorn vales, the wheaten slopes, the boscage green and soft,
+ Of which their poet sings so well from towered Cedarcroft.
+
+ And lo! from all the country-side come neighbors, kith and kin;
+ From city, hamlet, farm-house old, the wedding guests come in.
+
+ And they who, without scrip or purse, mob-hunted, travel-worn,
+ In Freedom's age of martyrs came, as victors now return.
+
+ Older and slower, yet the same, files in the long array,
+ And hearts are light and eyes are glad, though heads are badger-gray.
+
+ The fire-tried men of Thirty-eight who saw with me the fall,
+ Midst roaring flames and shouting mob, of Pennsylvania Hall;
+
+ And they of Lancaster who turned the cheeks of tyrants pale,
+ Singing of freedom through the grates of Moyamensing jail!
+
+ And haply with them, all unseen, old comrades, gone before,
+ Pass, silently as shadows pass, within your open door,--
+
+ The eagle face of Lindley Coates, brave Garrett's daring zeal,
+ Christian grace of Pennock, the steadfast heart of Neal.
+
+ Ah me! beyond all power to name, the worthies tried and true,
+ Grave men, fair women, youth and maid, pass by in hushed review.
+
+ Of varying faiths, a common cause fused all their hearts in one.
+ God give them now, whate'er their names, the peace of duty done!
+
+ How gladly would I tread again the old-remembered places,
+ Sit down beside your hearth once more and look in the dear old faces!
+
+ And thank you for the lessons your fifty years are teaching,
+ For honest lives that louder speak than half our noisy preaching;
+
+ For your steady faith and courage in that dark and evil time,
+ When the Golden Rule was treason, and to feed the hungry, crime;
+
+ For the poor slave's house of refuge when the hounds were on his track,
+ And saint and sinner, church and state, joined hands to send him back.
+
+ Blessings upon you!--What you did for each sad, suffering one,
+ So homeless, faint, and naked, unto our Lord was done!
+
+ Fair fall on Kennett's pleasant vales and Longwood's bowery ways
+ The mellow sunset of your lives, friends of my early days.
+
+ May many more of quiet years be added to your sum,
+ And, late at last, in tenderest love, the beckoning angel come.
+
+ Dear hearts are here, dear hearts are there, alike below, above;
+ Our friends are now in either world, and love is sure of love.
+
+ 1874.
+
+
+
+
+HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA.
+
+ All things are Thine: no gift have we,
+ Lord of all gifts, to offer Thee;
+ And hence with grateful hearts to-day,
+ Thy own before Thy feet we lay.
+
+ Thy will was in the builders' thought;
+ Thy hand unseen amidst us wrought;
+ Through mortal motive, scheme and plan,
+ Thy wise eternal purpose ran.
+
+ No lack Thy perfect fulness knew;
+ For human needs and longings grew
+ This house of prayer, this home of rest,
+ In the fair garden of the West.
+
+ In weakness and in want we call
+ On Thee for whom the heavens are small;
+ Thy glory is Thy children's good,
+ Thy joy Thy tender Fatherhood.
+
+ O Father! deign these walls to bless,
+ Fill with Thy love their emptiness,
+ And let their door a gateway be
+ To lead us from ourselves to Thee!
+
+ 1872.
+
+
+
+
+LEXINGTON 1775.
+
+ No Berserk thirst of blood had they,
+ No battle-joy was theirs, who set
+ Against the alien bayonet
+ Their homespun breasts in that old day.
+
+ Their feet had trodden peaceful, ways;
+ They loved not strife, they dreaded pain;
+ They saw not, what to us is plain,
+ That God would make man's wrath his praise.
+
+ No seers were they, but simple men;
+ Its vast results the future hid
+ The meaning of the work they did
+ Was strange and dark and doubtful then.
+
+ Swift as their summons came they left
+ The plough mid-furrow standing still,
+ The half-ground corn grist in the mill,
+ The spade in earth, the axe in cleft.
+
+ They went where duty seemed to call,
+ They scarcely asked the reason why;
+ They only knew they could but die,
+ And death was not the worst of all!
+
+ Of man for man the sacrifice,
+ All that was theirs to give, they gave.
+ The flowers that blossomed from their grave
+ Have sown themselves beneath all skies.
+
+ Their death-shot shook the feudal tower,
+ And shattered slavery's chain as well;
+ On the sky's dome, as on a bell,
+ Its echo struck the world's great hour.
+
+ That fateful echo is not dumb
+ The nations listening to its sound
+ Wait, from a century's vantage-ground,
+ The holier triumphs yet to come,--
+
+ The bridal time of Law and Love,
+ The gladness of the world's release,
+ When, war-sick, at the feet of Peace
+ The hawk shall nestle with the dove!--
+
+ The golden age of brotherhood
+ Unknown to other rivalries
+ Than of the mild humanities,
+ And gracious interchange of good,
+
+ When closer strand shall lean to strand,
+ Till meet, beneath saluting flags,
+ The eagle of our mountain-crags,
+ The lion of our Motherland!
+
+ 1875.
+
+
+
+
+THE LIBRARY.
+
+Sung at the opening of the Haverhill Library, November 11, 1875.
+
+
+ "Let there be light!" God spake of old,
+ And over chaos dark and cold,
+ And through the dead and formless frame
+ Of nature, life and order came.
+
+ Faint was the light at first that shone
+ On giant fern and mastodon,
+ On half-formed plant and beast of prey,
+ And man as rude and wild as they.
+
+ Age after age, like waves, o'erran
+ The earth, uplifting brute and man;
+ And mind, at length, in symbols dark
+ Its meanings traced on stone and bark.
+
+ On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll,
+ On plastic clay and leathern scroll,
+ Man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed,
+ And to! the Press was found at last!
+
+ Then dead souls woke; the thoughts of men
+ Whose bones were dust revived again;
+ The cloister's silence found a tongue,
+ Old prophets spake, old poets sung.
+
+ And here, to-day, the dead look down,
+ The kings of mind again we crown;
+ We hear the voices lost so long,
+ The sage's word, the sibyl's song.
+
+ Here Greek and Roman find themselves
+ Alive along these crowded shelves;
+ And Shakespeare treads again his stage,
+ And Chaucer paints anew his age.
+
+ As if some Pantheon's marbles broke
+ Their stony trance, and lived and spoke,
+ Life thrills along the alcoved hall,
+ The lords of thought await our call!
+
+
+
+
+"I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE TOOK ME IN."
+
+An incident in St. Augustine, Florida.
+
+
+ 'Neath skies that winter never knew
+ The air was full of light and balm,
+ And warm and soft the Gulf wind blew
+ Through orange bloom and groves of palm.
+
+ A stranger from the frozen North,
+ Who sought the fount of health in vain,
+ Sank homeless on the alien earth,
+ And breathed the languid air with pain.
+
+ God's angel came! The tender shade
+ Of pity made her blue eye dim;
+ Against her woman's breast she laid
+ The drooping, fainting head of him.
+
+ She bore him to a pleasant room,
+ Flower-sweet and cool with salt sea air,
+ And watched beside his bed, for whom
+ His far-off sisters might not care.
+
+ She fanned his feverish brow and smoothed
+ Its lines of pain with tenderest touch.
+ With holy hymn and prayer she soothed
+ The trembling soul that feared so much.
+
+ Through her the peace that passeth sight
+ Came to him, as he lapsed away
+ As one whose troubled dreams of night
+ Slide slowly into tranquil day.
+
+ The sweetness of the Land of Flowers
+ Upon his lonely grave she laid
+ The jasmine dropped its golden showers,
+ The orange lent its bloom and shade.
+
+ And something whispered in her thought,
+ More sweet than mortal voices be
+ "The service thou for him hast wrought
+ O daughter! hath been done for me."
+
+ 1875.
+
+
+
+
+CENTENNIAL HYMN.
+
+Written for the opening of the International Exhibition, Philadelphia,
+May 10, 1876. The music for the hymn was written by John K. Paine, and
+may be found in The Atlantic Monthly for June, 1876.
+
+
+ I.
+ Our fathers' God! from out whose hand
+ The centuries fall like grains of sand,
+ We meet to-day, united, free,
+ And loyal to our land and Thee,
+ To thank Thee for the era done,
+ And trust Thee for the opening one.
+
+ II.
+ Here, where of old, by Thy design,
+ The fathers spake that word of Thine
+ Whose echo is the glad refrain
+ Of rended bolt and falling chain,
+ To grace our festal time, from all
+ The zones of earth our guests we call.
+
+ III.
+ Be with us while the New World greets
+ The Old World thronging all its streets,
+ Unveiling all the triumphs won
+ By art or toil beneath the sun;
+ And unto common good ordain
+ This rivalship of hand and brain.
+
+ IV.
+ Thou, who hast here in concord furled
+ The war flags of a gathered world,
+ Beneath our Western skies fulfil
+ The Orient's mission of good-will,
+ And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece,
+ Send back its Argonauts of peace.
+
+ V.
+ For art and labor met in truce,
+ For beauty made the bride of use,
+ We thank Thee; but, withal, we crave
+ The austere virtues strong to save,
+ The honor proof to place or gold,
+ The manhood never bought nor sold.
+
+ VI.
+ Oh make Thou us, through centuries long,
+ In peace secure, in justice strong;
+ Around our gift of freedom draw
+ The safeguards of Thy righteous law
+ And, cast in some diviner mould,
+ Let the new cycle shame the old!
+
+
+
+
+AT SCHOOL-CLOSE. BOWDOIN STREET, BOSTON, 1877.
+
+ The end has come, as come it must
+ To all things; in these sweet June days
+ The teacher and the scholar trust
+ Their parting feet to separate ways.
+
+ They part: but in the years to be
+ Shall pleasant memories cling to each,
+ As shells bear inland from the sea
+ The murmur of the rhythmic beach.
+
+ One knew the joy the sculptor knows
+ When, plastic to his lightest touch,
+ His clay-wrought model slowly grows
+ To that fine grace desired so much.
+
+ So daily grew before her eyes
+ The living shapes whereon she wrought,
+ Strong, tender, innocently wise,
+ The child's heart with the woman's thought.
+
+ And one shall never quite forget
+ The voice that called from dream and play,
+ The firm but kindly hand that set
+ Her feet in learning's pleasant way,--
+
+ The joy of Undine soul-possessed,
+ The wakening sense, the strange delight
+ That swelled the fabled statue's breast
+ And filled its clouded eyes with sight.
+
+ O Youth and Beauty, loved of all!
+ Ye pass from girlhood's gate of dreams;
+ In broader ways your footsteps fall,
+ Ye test the truth of all that seams.
+
+ Her little realm the teacher leaves,
+ She breaks her wand of power apart,
+ While, for your love and trust, she gives
+ The warm thanks of a grateful heart.
+
+ Hers is the sober summer noon
+ Contrasted with your morn of spring,
+ The waning with the waxing moon,
+ The folded with the outspread wing.
+
+ Across the distance of the years
+ She sends her God-speed back to you;
+ She has no thought of doubts or fears
+ Be but yourselves, be pure, be true,
+
+ And prompt in duty; heed the deep,
+ Low voice of conscience; through the ill
+ And discord round about you, keep
+ Your faith in human nature still.
+
+ Be gentle: unto griefs and needs,
+ Be pitiful as woman should,
+ And, spite of all the lies of creeds,
+ Hold fast the truth that God is good.
+
+ Give and receive; go forth and bless
+ The world that needs the hand and heart
+ Of Martha's helpful carefulness
+ No less than Mary's better part.
+
+ So shall the stream of time flow by
+ And leave each year a richer good,
+ And matron loveliness outvie
+ The nameless charm of maidenhood.
+
+ And, when the world shall link your names
+ With gracious lives and manners fine,
+ The teacher shall assert her claims,
+ And proudly whisper, "These were mine!"
+
+
+
+
+HYMN OF THE CHILDREN.
+
+Sung at the anniversary of the Children's Mission, Boston, 1878.
+
+
+ Thine are all the gifts, O God!
+ Thine the broken bread;
+ Let the naked feet be shod,
+ And the starving fed.
+
+ Let Thy children, by Thy grace,
+ Give as they abound,
+ Till the poor have breathing-space,
+ And the lost are found.
+
+ Wiser than the miser's hoards
+ Is the giver's choice;
+ Sweeter than the song of birds
+ Is the thankful voice.
+
+ Welcome smiles on faces sad
+ As the flowers of spring;
+ Let the tender hearts be glad
+ With the joy they bring.
+
+ Happier for their pity's sake
+ Make their sports and plays,
+ And from lips of childhood take
+ Thy perfected praise!
+
+
+
+
+THE LANDMARKS.
+
+This poem was read at a meeting of citizens of Boston having for its
+object the preservation of the Old South Church famous in Colonial and
+Revolutionary history.
+
+
+ I.
+ THROUGH the streets of Marblehead
+ Fast the red-winged terror sped;
+
+ Blasting, withering, on it came,
+ With its hundred tongues of flame,
+
+ Where St. Michael's on its way
+ Stood like chained Andromeda,
+
+ Waiting on the rock, like her,
+ Swift doom or deliverer!
+
+ Church that, after sea-moss grew
+ Over walls no longer new,
+
+ Counted generations five,
+ Four entombed and one alive;
+
+ Heard the martial thousand tread
+ Battleward from Marblehead;
+
+ Saw within the rock-walled bay
+ Treville's liked pennons play,
+
+ And the fisher's dory met
+ By the barge of Lafayette,
+
+ Telling good news in advance
+ Of the coming fleet of France!
+
+ Church to reverend memories, dear,
+ Quaint in desk and chandelier;
+
+ Bell, whose century-rusted tongue
+ Burials tolled and bridals rung;
+
+ Loft, whose tiny organ kept
+ Keys that Snetzler's hand had swept;
+
+ Altar, o'er whose tablet old
+ Sinai's law its thunders rolled!
+
+ Suddenly the sharp cry came
+ "Look! St. Michael's is aflame!"
+
+ Round the low tower wall the fire
+ Snake-like wound its coil of ire.
+
+ Sacred in its gray respect
+ From the jealousies of sect,
+
+ "Save it," seemed the thought of all,
+ "Save it, though our roof-trees fall!"
+
+ Up the tower the young men sprung;
+ One, the bravest, outward swung
+
+ By the rope, whose kindling strands
+ Smoked beneath the holder's hands,
+
+ Smiting down with strokes of power
+ Burning fragments from the tower.
+
+ Then the gazing crowd beneath
+ Broke the painful pause of breath;
+
+ Brave men cheered from street to street,
+ With home's ashes at their feet;
+
+ Houseless women kerchiefs waved:
+ "Thank the Lord! St. Michael's saved!"
+
+ II.
+ In the heart of Boston town
+ Stands the church of old renown,
+
+ From whose walls the impulse went
+ Which set free a continent;
+
+ From whose pulpit's oracle
+ Prophecies of freedom fell;
+
+ And whose steeple-rocking din
+ Rang the nation's birth-day in!
+
+ Standing at this very hour
+ Perilled like St. Michael's tower,
+
+ Held not in the clasp of flame,
+ But by mammon's grasping claim.
+
+ Shall it be of Boston said
+ She is shamed by Marblehead?
+
+ City of our pride! as there,
+ Hast thou none to do and dare?
+
+ Life was risked for Michael's shrine;
+ Shall not wealth be staked for thine?
+
+ Woe to thee, when men shall search
+ Vainly for the Old South Church;
+
+ When from Neck to Boston Stone,
+ All thy pride of place is gone;
+
+ When from Bay and railroad car,
+ Stretched before them wide and far,
+
+ Men shall only see a great
+ Wilderness of brick and slate,
+
+ Every holy spot o'erlaid
+ By the commonplace of trade!
+
+ City of our love': to thee
+ Duty is but destiny.
+
+ True to all thy record saith,
+ Keep with thy traditions faith;
+
+ Ere occasion's overpast,
+ Hold its flowing forelock fast;
+
+ Honor still the precedents
+ Of a grand munificence;
+
+ In thy old historic way
+ Give, as thou didst yesterday
+
+ At the South-land's call, or on
+ Need's demand from fired St. John.
+
+ Set thy Church's muffled bell
+ Free the generous deed to tell.
+
+ Let thy loyal hearts rejoice
+ In the glad, sonorous voice,
+
+ Ringing from the brazen mouth
+ Of the bell of the Old South,--
+
+ Ringing clearly, with a will,
+ "What she was is Boston still!"
+
+ 1879
+
+
+
+
+GARDEN
+
+The American Horticultural Society, 1882.
+
+
+ O painter of the fruits and flowers,
+ We own wise design,
+ Where these human hands of ours
+ May share work of Thine!
+
+ Apart from Thee we plant in vain
+ The root and sow the seed;
+ Thy early and Thy later rain,
+ Thy sun and dew we need.
+
+ Our toil is sweet with thankfulness,
+ Our burden is our boon;
+ The curse of Earth's gray morning is
+ The blessing of its noon.
+
+ Why search the wide world everywhere
+ For Eden's unknown ground?
+ That garden of the primal pair
+ May nevermore be found.
+
+ But, blest by Thee, our patient toil
+ May right the ancient wrong,
+ And give to every clime and soil
+ The beauty lost so long.
+
+ Our homestead flowers and fruited trees
+ May Eden's orchard shame;
+ We taste the tempting sweets of these
+ Like Eve, without her blame.
+
+ And, North and South and East and West,
+ The pride of every zone,
+ The fairest, rarest, and the best
+ May all be made our own.
+
+ Its earliest shrines the young world sought
+ In hill-groves and in bowers,
+ The fittest offerings thither brought
+ Were Thy own fruits and flowers.
+
+ And still with reverent hands we cull
+ Thy gifts each year renewed;
+ The good is always beautiful,
+ The beautiful is good.
+
+
+
+
+A GREETING
+
+Read at Harriet Beecher Stowe's seventieth anniversary, June 14, 1882,
+at a garden party at ex-Governor Claflin's in Newtonville, Mass.
+
+
+ Thrice welcome from the Land of Flowers
+ And golden-fruited orange bowers
+ To this sweet, green-turfed June of ours!
+ To her who, in our evil time,
+ Dragged into light the nation's crime
+ With strength beyond the strength of men,
+ And, mightier than their swords, her pen!
+ To her who world-wide entrance gave
+ To the log-cabin of the slave;
+ Made all his wrongs and sorrows known,
+ And all earth's languages his own,--
+ North, South, and East and West, made all
+ The common air electrical,
+ Until the o'ercharged bolts of heaven
+ Blazed down, and every chain was riven!
+
+ Welcome from each and all to her
+ Whose Wooing of the Minister
+ Revealed the warm heart of the man
+ Beneath the creed-bound Puritan,
+ And taught the kinship of the love
+ Of man below and God above;
+ To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes
+ Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks;
+ Whose fireside stories, grave or gay,
+ In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way,
+ With old New England's flavor rife,
+ Waifs from her rude idyllic life,
+ Are racy as the legends old
+ By Chaucer or Boccaccio told;
+ To her who keeps, through change of place
+ And time, her native strength and grace,
+ Alike where warm Sorrento smiles,
+ Or where, by birchen-shaded isles,
+ Whose summer winds have shivered o'er
+ The icy drift of Labrador,
+ She lifts to light the priceless Pearl
+ Of Harpswell's angel-beckoned girl!
+ To her at threescore years and ten
+ Be tributes of the tongue and pen;
+ Be honor, praise, and heart-thanks given,
+ The loves of earth, the hopes of heaven!
+
+ Ah, dearer than the praise that stirs
+ The air to-day, our love is hers!
+ She needs no guaranty of fame
+ Whose own is linked with Freedom's name.
+ Long ages after ours shall keep
+ Her memory living while we sleep;
+ The waves that wash our gray coast lines,
+ The winds that rock the Southern pines,
+ Shall sing of her; the unending years
+ Shall tell her tale in unborn ears.
+ And when, with sins and follies past,
+ Are numbered color-hate and caste,
+ White, black, and red shall own as one
+ The noblest work by woman done.
+
+
+
+
+GODSPEED
+
+Written on the occasion of a voyage made by my friends Annie Fields and
+Sarah Orne Jewett.
+
+
+ Outbound, your bark awaits you. Were I one
+ Whose prayer availeth much, my wish should be
+ Your favoring trade-wind and consenting sea.
+ By sail or steed was never love outrun,
+ And, here or there, love follows her in whom
+ All graces and sweet charities unite,
+ The old Greek beauty set in holier light;
+ And her for whom New England's byways bloom,
+ Who walks among us welcome as the Spring,
+ Calling up blossoms where her light feet stray.
+ God keep you both, make beautiful your way,
+ Comfort, console, and bless; and safely bring,
+ Ere yet I make upon a vaster sea
+ The unreturning voyage, my friends to me.
+
+ 1882.
+
+
+
+
+WINTER ROSES.
+
+In reply to a flower gift from Mrs. Putnam's school at Jamaica Plain.
+
+
+ My garden roses long ago
+ Have perished from the leaf-strewn walks;
+ Their pale, fair sisters smile no more
+ Upon the sweet-brier stalks.
+
+ Gone with the flower-time of my life,
+ Spring's violets, summer's blooming pride,
+ And Nature's winter and my own
+ Stand, flowerless, side by side.
+
+ So might I yesterday have sung;
+ To-day, in bleak December's noon,
+ Come sweetest fragrance, shapes, and hues,
+ The rosy wealth of June!
+
+ Bless the young bands that culled the gift,
+ And bless the hearts that prompted it;
+ If undeserved it comes, at least
+ It seems not all unfit.
+
+ Of old my Quaker ancestors
+ Had gifts of forty stripes save one;
+ To-day as many roses crown
+ The gray head of their son.
+
+ And with them, to my fancy's eye,
+ The fresh-faced givers smiling come,
+ And nine and thirty happy girls
+ Make glad a lonely room.
+
+ They bring the atmosphere of youth;
+ The light and warmth of long ago
+ Are in my heart, and on my cheek
+ The airs of morning blow.
+
+ O buds of girlhood, yet unblown,
+ And fairer than the gift ye chose,
+ For you may years like leaves unfold
+ The heart of Sharon's rose.
+
+ 1883.
+
+
+
+
+THE REUNION
+
+Read September 10, 1885, to the surviving students of Haverhill Academy
+in 1827-1830.
+
+
+ The gulf of seven and fifty years
+ We stretch our welcoming hands across;
+ The distance but a pebble's toss
+ Between us and our youth appears.
+
+ For in life's school we linger on
+ The remnant of a once full list;
+ Conning our lessons, undismissed,
+ With faces to the setting sun.
+
+ And some have gone the unknown way,
+ And some await the call to rest;
+ Who knoweth whether it is best
+ For those who went or those who stay?
+
+ And yet despite of loss and ill,
+ If faith and love and hope remain,
+ Our length of days is not in vain,
+ And life is well worth living still.
+
+ Still to a gracious Providence
+ The thanks of grateful hearts are due,
+ For blessings when our lives were new,
+ For all the good vouchsafed us since.
+
+ The pain that spared us sorer hurt,
+ The wish denied, the purpose crossed,
+ And pleasure's fond occasions lost,
+ Were mercies to our small desert.
+
+ 'T is something that we wander back,
+ Gray pilgrims, to our ancient ways,
+ And tender memories of old days
+ Walk with us by the Merrimac;
+
+ That even in life's afternoon
+ A sense of youth comes back again,
+ As through this cool September rain
+ The still green woodlands dream of June.
+
+ The eyes grown dim to present things
+ Have keener sight for bygone years,
+ And sweet and clear, in deafening ears,
+ The bird that sang at morning sings.
+
+ Dear comrades, scattered wide and far,
+ Send from their homes their kindly word,
+ And dearer ones, unseen, unheard,
+ Smile on us from some heavenly star.
+
+ For life and death with God are one,
+ Unchanged by seeming change His care
+ And love are round us here and there;
+ He breaks no thread His hand has spun.
+
+ Soul touches soul, the muster roll
+ Of life eternal has no gaps;
+ And after half a century's lapse
+ Our school-day ranks are closed and whole.
+
+ Hail and farewell! We go our way;
+ Where shadows end, we trust in light;
+ The star that ushers in the night
+ Is herald also of the day!
+
+
+
+
+NORUMBEGA HALL.
+
+Norumbega Hall at Wellesley College, named in honor of Eben Norton
+Horsford, who has been one of the most munificent patrons of that noble
+institution, and who had just published an essay claiming the discovery
+of the site of the somewhat mythical city of Norumbega, was opened with
+appropriate ceremonies, in April, 1886. The following sonnet was written
+for the occasion, and was read by President Alice E. Freeman, to whom it
+was addressed.
+
+
+ Not on Penobscot's wooded bank the spires
+ Of the sought City rose, nor yet beside
+ The winding Charles, nor where the daily tide
+ Of Naumkeag's haven rises and retires,
+ The vision tarried; but somewhere we knew
+ The beautiful gates must open to our quest,
+ Somewhere that marvellous City of the West
+ Would lift its towers and palace domes in view,
+ And, to! at last its mystery is made known--
+ Its only dwellers maidens fair and young,
+ Its Princess such as England's Laureate sung;
+ And safe from capture, save by love alone,
+ It lends its beauty to the lake's green shore,
+ And Norumbega is a myth no more.
+
+
+
+
+THE BARTHOLDI STATUE 1886
+
+ The land, that, from the rule of kings,
+ In freeing us, itself made free,
+ Our Old World Sister, to us brings
+ Her sculptured Dream of Liberty,
+
+ Unlike the shapes on Egypt's sands
+ Uplifted by the toil-worn slave,
+ On Freedom's soil with freemen's hands
+ We rear the symbol free hands gave.
+
+ O France, the beautiful! to thee
+ Once more a debt of love we owe
+ In peace beneath thy Colors Three,
+ We hail a later Rochambeau!
+
+ Rise, stately Symbol! holding forth
+ Thy light and hope to all who sit
+ In chains and darkness! Belt the earth
+ With watch-fires from thy torch uplit!
+
+ Reveal the primal mandate still
+ Which Chaos heard and ceased to be,
+ Trace on mid-air th' Eternal Will
+ In signs of fire: "Let man be free!"
+
+ Shine far, shine free, a guiding light
+ To Reason's ways and Virtue's aim,
+ A lightning-flash the wretch to smite
+ Who shields his license with thy name!
+
+
+
+
+ONE OF THE SIGNERS.
+
+Written for the unveiling of the statue of Josiah Bartlett at Amesbury,
+Mass., July 4, 1888. Governor Bartlett, who was a native of the town,
+was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Amesbury or Ambresbury,
+so called from the "anointed stones" of the great Druidical temple near
+it, was the seat of one of the earliest religious houses in Britain. The
+tradition that the guilty wife of King Arthur fled thither for
+protection forms one of the finest passages in Tennyson's Idyls of the
+King.
+
+
+ O storied vale of Merrimac
+ Rejoice through all thy shade and shine,
+ And from his century's sleep call back
+ A brave and honored son of thine.
+
+ Unveil his effigy between
+ The living and the dead to-day;
+ The fathers of the Old Thirteen
+ Shall witness bear as spirits may.
+
+ Unseen, unheard, his gray compeers
+ The shades of Lee and Jefferson,
+ Wise Franklin reverend with his years
+ And Carroll, lord of Carrollton!
+
+ Be thine henceforth a pride of place
+ Beyond thy namesake's over-sea,
+ Where scarce a stone is left to trace
+ The Holy House of Amesbury.
+
+ A prouder memory lingers round
+ The birthplace of thy true man here
+ Than that which haunts the refuge found
+ By Arthur's mythic Guinevere.
+
+ The plain deal table where he sat
+ And signed a nation's title-deed
+ Is dearer now to fame than that
+ Which bore the scroll of Runnymede.
+
+ Long as, on Freedom's natal morn,
+ Shall ring the Independence bells,
+ Give to thy dwellers yet unborn
+ The lesson which his image tells.
+
+ For in that hour of Destiny,
+ Which tried the men of bravest stock,
+ He knew the end alone must be
+ A free land or a traitor's block.
+
+ Among those picked and chosen men
+ Than his, who here first drew his breath,
+ No firmer fingers held the pen
+ Which wrote for liberty or death.
+
+ Not for their hearths and homes alone,
+ But for the world their work was done;
+ On all the winds their thought has flown
+ Through all the circuit of the sun.
+
+ We trace its flight by broken chains,
+ By songs of grateful Labor still;
+ To-day, in all her holy fanes,
+ It rings the bells of freed Brazil.
+
+ O hills that watched his boyhood's home,
+ O earth and air that nursed him, give,
+ In this memorial semblance, room
+ To him who shall its bronze outlive!
+
+ And thou, O Land he loved, rejoice
+ That in the countless years to come,
+ Whenever Freedom needs a voice,
+ These sculptured lips shall not be dumb!
+
+
+
+
+THE TENT ON THE BEACH
+
+It can scarcely be necessary to name as the two companions whom I
+reckoned with myself in this poetical picnic, Fields the lettered
+magnate, and Taylor the free cosmopolite. The long line of sandy beach
+which defines almost the whole of the New Hampshire sea-coast is
+especially marked near its southern extremity, by the salt-meadows of
+Hampton. The Hampton River winds through these meadows, and the reader
+may, if he choose, imagine my tent pitched near its mouth, where also
+was the scene of the _Wreck of Rivermouth_. The green bluff to the
+northward is Great Boar's Head; southward is the Merrimac, with
+Newburyport lifting its steeples above brown roofs and green trees on
+banks.
+
+
+ I would not sin, in this half-playful strain,--
+ Too light perhaps for serious years, though born
+ Of the enforced leisure of slow pain,--
+ Against the pure ideal which has drawn
+ My feet to follow its far-shining gleam.
+ A simple plot is mine: legends and runes
+ Of credulous days, old fancies that have lain
+ Silent, from boyhood taking voice again,
+ Warmed into life once more, even as the tunes
+ That, frozen in the fabled hunting-horn,
+ Thawed into sound:--a winter fireside dream
+ Of dawns and-sunsets by the summer sea,
+ Whose sands are traversed by a silent throng
+ Of voyagers from that vaster mystery
+ Of which it is an emblem;--and the dear
+ Memory of one who might have tuned my song
+ To sweeter music by her delicate ear.
+
+
+ When heats as of a tropic clime
+ Burned all our inland valleys through,
+ Three friends, the guests of summer time,
+ Pitched their white tent where sea-winds blew.
+ Behind them, marshes, seamed and crossed
+ With narrow creeks, and flower-embossed,
+ Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose leafy arms
+ Screened from the stormy East the pleasant inland farms.
+
+ At full of tide their bolder shore
+ Of sun-bleached sand the waters beat;
+ At ebb, a smooth and glistening floor
+ They touched with light, receding feet.
+ Northward a 'green bluff broke the chain
+ Of sand-hills; southward stretched a plain
+ Of salt grass, with a river winding down,
+ Sail-whitened, and beyond the steeples of the town,
+
+ Whence sometimes, when the wind was light
+ And dull the thunder of the beach,
+ They heard the bells of morn and night
+ Swing, miles away, their silver speech.
+ Above low scarp and turf-grown wall
+ They saw the fort-flag rise and fall;
+ And, the first star to signal twilight's hour,
+ The lamp-fire glimmer down from the tall light-house tower.
+
+ They rested there, escaped awhile
+ From cares that wear the life away,
+ To eat the lotus of the Nile
+ And drink the poppies of Cathay,--
+ To fling their loads of custom down,
+ Like drift-weed, on the sand-slopes brown,
+ And in the sea waves drown the restless pack
+ Of duties, claims, and needs that barked upon their track.
+
+ One, with his beard scarce silvered, bore
+ A ready credence in his looks,
+ A lettered magnate, lording o'er
+ An ever-widening realm of books.
+ In him brain-currents, near and far,
+ Converged as in a Leyden jar;
+ The old, dead authors thronged him round about,
+ And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern graves looked out.
+
+ He knew each living pundit well,
+ Could weigh the gifts of him or her,
+ And well the market value tell
+ Of poet and philosopher.
+ But if he lost, the scenes behind,
+ Somewhat of reverence vague and blind,
+ Finding the actors human at the best,
+ No readier lips than his the good he saw confessed.
+
+ His boyhood fancies not outgrown,
+ He loved himself the singer's art;
+ Tenderly, gently, by his own
+ He knew and judged an author's heart.
+ No Rhadamanthine brow of doom
+ Bowed the dazed pedant from his room;
+ And bards, whose name is legion, if denied,
+ Bore off alike intact their verses and their pride.
+
+ Pleasant it was to roam about
+ The lettered world as he had, done,
+ And see the lords of song without
+ Their singing robes and garlands on.
+ With Wordsworth paddle Rydal mere,
+ Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed beer,
+ And with the ears of Rogers, at fourscore,
+ Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Walpole's wit once more.
+
+ And one there was, a dreamer born,
+ Who, with a mission to fulfil,
+ Had left the Muses' haunts to turn
+ The crank of an opinion-mill,
+ Making his rustic reed of song
+ A weapon in the war with wrong,
+ Yoking his fancy to the breaking-plough
+ That beam-deep turned the soil for truth to spring and grow.
+
+ Too quiet seemed the man to ride
+ The winged Hippogriff Reform;
+ Was his a voice from side to side
+ To pierce the tumult of the storm?
+ A silent, shy, peace-loving man,
+ He seemed no fiery partisan
+ To hold his way against the public frown,
+ The ban of Church and State, the fierce mob's hounding down.
+
+ For while he wrought with strenuous will
+ The work his hands had found to do,
+ He heard the fitful music still
+ Of winds that out of dream-land blew.
+ The din about him could not drown
+ What the strange voices whispered down;
+ Along his task-field weird processions swept,
+ The visionary pomp of stately phantoms stepped:
+
+ The common air was thick with dreams,--
+ He told them to the toiling crowd;
+ Such music as the woods and streams
+ Sang in his ear he sang aloud;
+ In still, shut bays, on windy capes,
+ He heard the call of beckoning shapes,
+ And, as the gray old shadows prompted him,
+ To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped their legends grim.
+
+ He rested now his weary hands,
+ And lightly moralized and laughed,
+ As, tracing on the shifting sands
+ A burlesque of his paper-craft,
+ He saw the careless waves o'errun
+ His words, as time before had done,
+ Each day's tide-water washing clean away,
+ Like letters from the sand, the work of yesterday.
+
+ And one, whose Arab face was tanned
+ By tropic sun and boreal frost,
+ So travelled there was scarce a land
+ Or people left him to exhaust,
+ In idling mood had from him hurled
+ The poor squeezed orange of the world,
+ And in the tent-shade, as beneath a palm,
+ Smoked, cross-legged like a Turk, in Oriental calm.
+
+ The very waves that washed the sand
+ Below him, he had seen before
+ Whitening the Scandinavian strand
+ And sultry Mauritanian shore.
+ From ice-rimmed isles, from summer seas
+ Palm-fringed, they bore him messages;
+ He heard the plaintive Nubian songs again,
+ And mule-bells tinkling down the mountain-paths of Spain.
+
+ His memory round the ransacked earth
+ On Puck's long girdle slid at ease;
+ And, instant, to the valley's girth
+ Of mountains, spice isles of the seas,
+ Faith flowered in minster stones, Art's guess
+ At truth and beauty, found access;
+ Yet loved the while, that free cosmopolite,
+ Old friends, old ways, and kept his boyhood's dreams in sight.
+
+ Untouched as yet by wealth and pride,
+ That virgin innocence of beach
+ No shingly monster, hundred-eyed,
+ Stared its gray sand-birds out of reach;
+ Unhoused, save where, at intervals,
+ The white tents showed their canvas walls,
+ Where brief sojourners, in the cool, soft air,
+ Forgot their inland heats, hard toil, and year-long care.
+
+ Sometimes along the wheel-deep sand
+ A one-horse wagon slowly crawled,
+ Deep laden with a youthful band,
+ Whose look some homestead old recalled;
+ Brother perchance, and sisters twain,
+ And one whose blue eyes told, more plain
+ Than the free language of her rosy lip,
+ Of the still dearer claim of love's relationship.
+
+ With cheeks of russet-orchard tint,
+ The light laugh of their native rills,
+ The perfume of their garden's mint,
+ The breezy freedom of the hills,
+ They bore, in unrestrained delight,
+ The motto of the Garter's knight,
+ Careless as if from every gazing thing
+ Hid by their innocence, as Gyges by his ring.
+
+ The clanging sea-fowl came and went,
+ The hunter's gun in the marshes rang;
+ At nightfall from a neighboring tent
+ A flute-voiced woman sweetly sang.
+ Loose-haired, barefooted, hand-in-hand,
+ Young girls went tripping down the sand;
+ And youths and maidens, sitting in the moon,
+ Dreamed o'er the old fond dream from which we wake too soon.
+
+ At times their fishing-lines they plied,
+ With an old Triton at the oar,
+ Salt as the sea-wind, tough and dried
+ As a lean cusk from Labrador.
+ Strange tales he told of wreck and storm,--
+ Had seen the sea-snake's awful form,
+ And heard the ghosts on Haley's Isle complain,
+ Speak him off shore, and beg a passage to old Spain!
+
+ And there, on breezy morns, they saw
+ The fishing-schooners outward run,
+ Their low-bent sails in tack and flaw
+ Turned white or dark to shade and sun.
+ Sometimes, in calms of closing day,
+ They watched the spectral mirage play,
+ Saw low, far islands looming tall and nigh,
+ And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the sky.
+
+ Sometimes a cloud, with thunder black,
+ Stooped low upon the darkening main,
+ Piercing the waves along its track
+ With the slant javelins of rain.
+ And when west-wind and sunshine warm
+ Chased out to sea its wrecks of storm,
+ They saw the prismy hues in thin spray showers
+ Where the green buds of waves burst into white froth flowers.
+
+ And when along the line of shore
+ The mists crept upward chill and damp,
+ Stretched, careless, on their sandy floor
+ Beneath the flaring lantern lamp,
+ They talked of all things old and new,
+ Read, slept, and dreamed as idlers do;
+ And in the unquestioned freedom of the tent,
+ Body and o'er-taxed mind to healthful ease unbent.
+
+ Once, when the sunset splendors died,
+ And, trampling up the sloping sand,
+ In lines outreaching far and wide,
+ The white-waned billows swept to land,
+ Dim seen across the gathering shade,
+ A vast and ghostly cavalcade,
+ They sat around their lighted kerosene,
+ Hearing the deep bass roar their every pause between.
+
+ Then, urged thereto, the Editor
+ Within his full portfolio dipped,
+ Feigning excuse while seaching for
+ (With secret pride) his manuscript.
+ His pale face flushed from eye to beard,
+ With nervous cough his throat he cleared,
+ And, in a voice so tremulous it betrayed
+ The anxious fondness of an author's heart, he read:
+
+ . . . . .
+
+
+
+
+THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH
+
+The Goody Cole who figures in this poem and The Changeling as Eunice
+Cole, who for a quarter of a century or more was feared, persecuted, and
+hated as the witch of Hampton. She lived alone in a hovel a little
+distant from the spot where the Hampton Academy now stands, and there
+she died, unattended. When her death was discovered, she was hastily
+covered up in the earth near by, and a stake driven through her body, to
+exorcise the evil spirit. Rev. Stephen Bachiler or Batchelder was one of
+the ablest of the early New England preachers. His marriage late in life
+to a woman regarded by his church as disreputable induced him to return
+to England, where he enjoyed the esteem and favor of Oliver Cromwell
+during the Protectorate.
+
+
+ Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see,
+ By dawn or sunset shone across,
+ When the ebb of the sea has left them free,
+ To dry their fringes of gold-green moss
+ For there the river comes winding down,
+ From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown,
+ And waves on the outer rocks afoam
+ Shout to its waters, "Welcome home!"
+
+ And fair are the sunny isles in view
+ East of the grisly Head of the Boar,
+ And Agamenticus lifts its blue
+ Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er;
+ And southerly, when the tide is down,
+ 'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown,
+ The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel
+ Over a floor of burnished steel.
+
+ Once, in the old Colonial days,
+ Two hundred years ago and more,
+ A boat sailed down through the winding ways
+ Of Hampton River to that low shore,
+ Full of a goodly company
+ Sailing out on the summer sea,
+ Veering to catch the land-breeze light,
+ With the Boar to left and the Rocks to right.
+
+ In Hampton meadows, where mowers laid
+ Their scythes to the swaths of salted grass,
+ "Ah, well-a-day! our hay must be made!"
+ A young man sighed, who saw them pass.
+ Loud laughed his fellows to see him stand
+ Whetting his scythe with a listless hand,
+ Hearing a voice in a far-off song,
+ Watching a white hand beckoning long.
+
+ "Fie on the witch!" cried a merry girl,
+ As they rounded the point where Goody Cole
+ Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl,
+ A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul.
+ "Oho!" she muttered, "ye 're brave to-day!
+ But I hear the little waves laugh and say,
+ 'The broth will be cold that waits at home;
+ For it 's one to go, but another to come!'"
+
+ "She's cursed," said the skipper; "speak her fair:
+ I'm scary always to see her shake
+ Her wicked head, with its wild gray hair,
+ And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a snake."
+ But merrily still, with laugh and shout,
+ From Hampton River the boat sailed out,
+ Till the huts and the flakes on Star seemed nigh,
+ And they lost the scent of the pines of Rye.
+
+ They dropped their lines in the lazy tide,
+ Drawing up haddock and mottled cod;
+ They saw not the Shadow that walked beside,
+ They heard not the feet with silence shod.
+ But thicker and thicker a hot mist grew,
+ Shot by the lightnings through and through;
+ And muffled growls, like the growl of a beast,
+ Ran along the sky from west to east.
+
+ Then the skipper looked from the darkening sea
+ Up to the dimmed and wading sun;
+ But he spake like a brave man cheerily,
+ "Yet there is time for our homeward run."
+ Veering and tacking, they backward wore;
+ And just as a breath-from the woods ashore
+ Blew out to whisper of danger past,
+ The wrath of the storm came down at last!
+
+ The skipper hauled at the heavy sail
+ "God be our help!" he only cried,
+ As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a flail,
+ Smote the boat on its starboard side.
+ The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone
+ Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown,
+ Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's glare,
+ The strife and torment of sea and air.
+
+ Goody Cole looked out from her door
+ The Isles of Shoals were drowned and gone,
+ Scarcely she saw the Head of the Boar
+ Toss the foam from tusks of stone.
+ She clasped her hands with a grip of pain,
+ The tear on her cheek was not of rain
+ "They are lost," she muttered, "boat and crew!
+ Lord, forgive me! my words were true!"
+
+ Suddenly seaward swept the squall;
+ The low sun smote through cloudy rack;
+ The Shoals stood clear in the light, and all
+ The trend of the coast lay hard and black.
+ But far and wide as eye could reach,
+ No life was seen upon wave or beach;
+ The boat that went out at morning never
+ Sailed back again into Hampton River.
+
+ O mower, lean on thy bended snath,
+ Look from the meadows green and low
+ The wind of the sea is a waft of death,
+ The waves are singing a song of woe!
+ By silent river, by moaning sea,
+ Long and vain shall thy watching be
+ Never again shall the sweet voice call,
+ Never the white hand rise and fall!
+
+ O Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight
+ Ye saw in the light of breaking day
+ Dead faces looking up cold and white
+ From sand and seaweed where they lay.
+ The mad old witch-wife wailed and wept,
+ And cursed the tide as it backward crept
+ "Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-snake
+ Leave your dead for the hearts that break!"
+
+ Solemn it was in that old day
+ In Hampton town and its log-built church,
+ Where side by side the coffins lay
+ And the mourners stood in aisle and porch.
+ In the singing-seats young eyes were dim,
+ The voices faltered that raised the hymn,
+ And Father Dalton, grave and stern,
+ Sobbed through his prayer and wept in turn.
+
+ But his ancient colleague did not pray;
+ Under the weight of his fourscore years
+ He stood apart with the iron-gray
+ Of his strong brows knitted to hide his tears;
+ And a fair-faced woman of doubtful fame,
+ Linking her own with his honored name,
+ Subtle as sin, at his side withstood
+ The felt reproach of her neighborhood.
+
+ Apart with them, like them forbid,
+ Old Goody Cole looked drearily round,
+ As, two by two, with their faces hid,
+ The mourners walked to the burying-ground.
+ She let the staff from her clasped hands fall
+ "Lord, forgive us! we're sinners all!"
+ And the voice of the old man answered her
+ "Amen!" said Father Bachiler.
+
+ So, as I sat upon Appledore
+ In the calm of a closing summer day,
+ And the broken lines of Hampton shore
+ In purple mist of cloudland lay,
+ The Rivermouth Rocks their story told;
+ And waves aglow with sunset gold,
+ Rising and breaking in steady chime,
+ Beat the rhythm and kept the time.
+
+ And the sunset paled, and warmed once more
+ With a softer, tenderer after-glow;
+ In the east was moon-rise, with boats off-shore
+ And sails in the distance drifting slow.
+ The beacon glimmered from Portsmouth bar,
+ The White Isle kindled its great red star;
+ And life and death in my old-time lay
+ Mingled in peace like the night and day!
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ "Well!" said the Man of Books, "your story
+ Is really not ill told in verse.
+ As the Celt said of purgatory,
+ One might go farther and fare worse."
+ The Reader smiled; and once again
+ With steadier voice took up his strain,
+ While the fair singer from the neighboring tent
+ Drew near, and at his side a graceful listener bent.
+
+ 1864.
+
+
+
+
+THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE
+
+ At the mouth of the Melvin River, which empties into Moulton-Bay in
+ Lake Winnipesaukee, is a great mound. The Ossipee Indians had their
+ home in the neighborhood of the bay, which is plentifully stocked
+ with fish, and many relics of their occupation have been found.
+
+
+ Where the Great Lake's sunny smiles
+ Dimple round its hundred isles,
+ And the mountain's granite ledge
+ Cleaves the water like a wedge,
+ Ringed about with smooth, gray stones,
+ Rest the giant's mighty bones.
+
+ Close beside, in shade and gleam,
+ Laughs and ripples Melvin stream;
+ Melvin water, mountain-born,
+ All fair flowers its banks adorn;
+ All the woodland's voices meet,
+ Mingling with its murmurs sweet.
+
+ Over lowlands forest-grown,
+ Over waters island-strown,
+ Over silver-sanded beach,
+ Leaf-locked bay and misty reach,
+ Melvin stream and burial-heap,
+ Watch and ward the mountains keep.
+
+ Who that Titan cromlech fills?
+ Forest-kaiser, lord o' the hills?
+ Knight who on the birchen tree
+ Carved his savage heraldry?
+ Priest o' the pine-wood temples dim,
+ Prophet, sage, or wizard grim?
+
+ Rugged type of primal man,
+ Grim utilitarian,
+ Loving woods for hunt and prowl,
+ Lake and hill for fish and fowl,
+ As the brown bear blind and dull
+ To the grand and beautiful:
+
+ Not for him the lesson drawn
+ From the mountains smit with dawn,
+ Star-rise, moon-rise, flowers of May,
+ Sunset's purple bloom of day,--
+ Took his life no hue from thence,
+ Poor amid such affluence?
+
+ Haply unto hill and tree
+ All too near akin was he
+ Unto him who stands afar
+ Nature's marvels greatest are;
+ Who the mountain purple seeks
+ Must not climb the higher peaks.
+
+ Yet who knows in winter tramp,
+ Or the midnight of the camp,
+ What revealings faint and far,
+ Stealing down from moon and star,
+ Kindled in that human clod
+ Thought of destiny and God?
+
+ Stateliest forest patriarch,
+ Grand in robes of skin and bark,
+ What sepulchral mysteries,
+ What weird funeral-rites, were his?
+ What sharp wail, what drear lament,
+ Back scared wolf and eagle sent?
+
+ Now, whate'er he may have been,
+ Low he lies as other men;
+ On his mound the partridge drums,
+ There the noisy blue-jay comes;
+ Rank nor name nor pomp has he
+ In the grave's democracy.
+
+ Part thy blue lips, Northern lake!
+ Moss-grown rocks, your silence break!
+ Tell the tale, thou ancient tree!
+ Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee!
+ Speak, and tell us how and when
+ Lived and died this king of men!
+
+ Wordless moans the ancient pine;
+ Lake and mountain give no sign;
+ Vain to trace this ring of stones;
+ Vain the search of crumbling bones
+ Deepest of all mysteries,
+ And the saddest, silence is.
+
+ Nameless, noteless, clay with clay
+ Mingles slowly day by day;
+ But somewhere, for good or ill,
+ That dark soul is living still;
+ Somewhere yet that atom's force
+ Moves the light-poised universe.
+
+ Strange that on his burial-sod
+ Harebells bloom, and golden-rod,
+ While the soul's dark horoscope
+ Holds no starry sign of hope!
+ Is the Unseen with sight at odds?
+ Nature's pity more than God's?
+
+ Thus I mused by Melvin's side,
+ While the summer eventide
+ Made the woods and inland sea
+ And the mountains mystery;
+ And the hush of earth and air
+ Seemed the pause before a prayer,--
+
+ Prayer for him, for all who rest,
+ Mother Earth, upon thy breast,--
+ Lapped on Christian turf, or hid
+ In rock-cave or pyramid
+ All who sleep, as all who live,
+ Well may need the prayer, "Forgive!"
+
+ Desert-smothered caravan,
+ Knee-deep dust that once was man,
+ Battle-trenches ghastly piled,
+ Ocean-floors with white bones tiled,
+ Crowded tomb and mounded sod,
+ Dumbly crave that prayer to God.
+
+ Oh, the generations old
+ Over whom no church-bells tolled,
+ Christless, lifting up blind eyes
+ To the silence of the skies!
+ For the innumerable dead
+ Is my soul disquieted.
+
+ Where be now these silent hosts?
+ Where the camping-ground of ghosts?
+ Where the spectral conscripts led
+ To the white tents of the dead?
+ What strange shore or chartless sea
+ Holds the awful mystery?
+
+ Then the warm sky stooped to make
+ Double sunset in the lake;
+ While above I saw with it,
+ Range on range, the mountains lit;
+ And the calm and splendor stole
+ Like an answer to my soul.
+
+ Hear'st thou, O of little faith,
+ What to thee the mountain saith,
+ What is whispered by the trees?
+ Cast on God thy care for these;
+ Trust Him, if thy sight be dim
+ Doubt for them is doubt of Him.
+
+ "Blind must be their close-shut eyes
+ Where like night the sunshine lies,
+ Fiery-linked the self-forged chain
+ Binding ever sin to pain,
+ Strong their prison-house of will,
+ But without He waiteth still.
+
+ "Not with hatred's undertow
+ Doth the Love Eternal flow;
+ Every chain that spirits wear
+ Crumbles in the breath of prayer;
+ And the penitent's desire
+ Opens every gate of fire.
+
+ "Still Thy love, O Christ arisen,
+ Yearns to reach these souls in prison!
+ Through all depths of sin and loss
+ Drops the plummet of Thy cross!
+ Never yet abyss was found
+ Deeper than that cross could sound!"
+
+ Therefore well may Nature keep
+ Equal faith with all who sleep,
+ Set her watch of hills around
+ Christian grave and heathen mound,
+ And to cairn and kirkyard send
+ Summer's flowery dividend.
+
+ Keep, O pleasant Melvin stream,
+ Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam
+ On the Indian's grassy tomb
+ Swing, O flowers, your bells of bloom!
+ Deep below, as high above,
+ Sweeps the circle of God's love.
+ 1865
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ He paused and questioned with his eye
+ The hearers' verdict on his song.
+ A low voice asked: Is 't well to pry
+ Into the secrets which belong
+ Only to God?--The life to be
+ Is still the unguessed mystery
+ Unsealed, unpierced the cloudy walls remain,
+ We beat with dream and wish the soundless doors in vain.
+
+ "But faith beyond our sight may go."
+ He said: "The gracious Fatherhood
+ Can only know above, below,
+ Eternal purposes of good.
+ From our free heritage of will,
+ The bitter springs of pain and ill
+ Flow only in all worlds. The perfect day
+ Of God is shadowless, and love is love alway."
+
+ "I know," she said, "the letter kills;
+ That on our arid fields of strife
+ And heat of clashing texts distils
+ The clew of spirit and of life.
+ But, searching still the written Word,
+ I fain would find, Thus saith the Lord,
+ A voucher for the hope I also feel
+ That sin can give no wound beyond love's power to heal."
+
+ "Pray," said the Man of Books, "give o'er
+ A theme too vast for time and place.
+ Go on, Sir Poet, ride once more
+ Your hobby at his old free pace.
+ But let him keep, with step discreet,
+ The solid earth beneath his feet.
+ In the great mystery which around us lies,
+ The wisest is a fool, the fool Heaven-helped is wise."
+
+ The Traveller said: "If songs have creeds,
+ Their choice of them let singers make;
+ But Art no other sanction needs
+ Than beauty for its own fair sake.
+ It grinds not in the mill of use,
+ Nor asks for leave, nor begs excuse;
+ It makes the flexile laws it deigns to own,
+ And gives its atmosphere its color and its tone.
+
+ "Confess, old friend, your austere school
+ Has left your fancy little chance;
+ You square to reason's rigid rule
+ The flowing outlines of romance.
+ With conscience keen from exercise,
+ And chronic fear of compromise,
+ You check the free play of your rhymes, to clap
+ A moral underneath, and spring it like a trap."
+
+ The sweet voice answered: "Better so
+ Than bolder flights that know no check;
+ Better to use the bit, than throw
+ The reins all loose on fancy's neck.
+ The liberal range of Art should be
+ The breadth of Christian liberty,
+ Restrained alone by challenge and alarm
+ Where its charmed footsteps tread the border land of harm.
+
+ "Beyond the poet's sweet dream lives
+ The eternal epic of the man.
+ He wisest is who only gives,
+ True to himself, the best he can;
+ Who, drifting in the winds of praise,
+ The inward monitor obeys;
+ And, with the boldness that confesses fear,
+ Takes in the crowded sail, and lets his conscience steer.
+
+ "Thanks for the fitting word he speaks,
+ Nor less for doubtful word unspoken;
+ For the false model that he breaks,
+ As for the moulded grace unbroken;
+ For what is missed and what remains,
+ For losses which are truest gains,
+ For reverence conscious of the Eternal eye,
+ And truth too fair to need the garnish of a lie."
+
+ Laughing, the Critic bowed. "I yield
+ The point without another word;
+ Who ever yet a case appealed
+ Where beauty's judgment had been heard?
+ And you, my good friend, owe to me
+ Your warmest thanks for such a plea,
+ As true withal as sweet. For my offence
+ Of cavil, let her words be ample recompense."
+
+ Across the sea one lighthouse star,
+ With crimson ray that came and went,
+ Revolving on its tower afar,
+ Looked through the doorway of the tent.
+ While outward, over sand-slopes wet,
+ The lamp flashed down its yellow jet
+ On the long wash of waves, with red and green
+ Tangles of weltering weed through the white foam-wreaths seen.
+
+ "Sing while we may,--another day
+ May bring enough of sorrow;'--thus
+ Our Traveller in his own sweet lay,
+ His Crimean camp-song, hints to us,"
+ The lady said. "So let it be;
+ Sing us a song," exclaimed all three.
+ She smiled: "I can but marvel at your choice
+ To hear our poet's words through my poor borrowed voice."
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ Her window opens to the bay,
+ On glistening light or misty gray,
+ And there at dawn and set of day
+ In prayer she kneels.
+
+ "Dear Lord!" she saith, "to many a borne
+ From wind and wave the wanderers come;
+ I only see the tossing foam
+ Of stranger keels.
+
+ "Blown out and in by summer gales,
+ The stately ships, with crowded sails,
+ And sailors leaning o'er their rails,
+ Before me glide;
+ They come, they go, but nevermore,
+ Spice-laden from the Indian shore,
+ I see his swift-winged Isidore
+ The waves divide.
+
+ "O Thou! with whom the night is day
+ And one the near and far away,
+ Look out on yon gray waste, and say
+ Where lingers he.
+ Alive, perchance, on some lone beach
+ Or thirsty isle beyond the reach
+ Of man, he hears the mocking speech
+ Of wind and sea.
+
+ "O dread and cruel deep, reveal
+ The secret which thy waves conceal,
+ And, ye wild sea-birds, hither wheel
+ And tell your tale.
+ Let winds that tossed his raven hair
+ A message from my lost one bear,--
+ Some thought of me, a last fond prayer
+ Or dying wail!
+
+ "Come, with your dreariest truth shut out
+ The fears that haunt me round about;
+ O God! I cannot bear this doubt
+ That stifles breath.
+ The worst is better than the dread;
+ Give me but leave to mourn my dead
+ Asleep in trust and hope, instead
+ Of life in death!"
+
+ It might have been the evening breeze
+ That whispered in the garden trees,
+ It might have been the sound of seas
+ That rose and fell;
+ But, with her heart, if not her ear,
+ The old loved voice she seemed to hear
+ "I wait to meet thee: be of cheer,
+ For all is well!"
+ 1865
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ The sweet voice into silence went,
+ A silence which was almost pain
+ As through it rolled the long lament,
+ The cadence of the mournful main.
+ Glancing his written pages o'er,
+ The Reader tried his part once more;
+ Leaving the land of hackmatack and pine
+ For Tuscan valleys glad with olive and with vine.
+
+
+
+
+THE BROTHER OF MERCY.
+
+ Piero Luca, known of all the town
+ As the gray porter by the Pitti wall
+ Where the noon shadows of the gardens fall,
+ Sick and in dolor, waited to lay down
+ His last sad burden, and beside his mat
+ The barefoot monk of La Certosa sat.
+
+ Unseen, in square and blossoming garden drifted,
+ Soft sunset lights through green Val d'Arno sifted;
+ Unheard, below the living shuttles shifted
+ Backward and forth, and wove, in love or strife,
+ In mirth or pain, the mottled web of life
+ But when at last came upward from the street
+ Tinkle of bell and tread of measured feet,
+ The sick man started, strove to rise in vain,
+ Sinking back heavily with a moan of pain.
+ And the monk said, "'T is but the Brotherhood
+ Of Mercy going on some errand good
+ Their black masks by the palace-wall I see."
+ Piero answered faintly, "Woe is me!
+ This day for the first time in forty years
+ In vain the bell hath sounded in my ears,
+ Calling me with my brethren of the mask,
+ Beggar and prince alike, to some new task
+ Of love or pity,--haply from the street
+ To bear a wretch plague-stricken, or, with feet
+ Hushed to the quickened ear and feverish brain,
+ To tread the crowded lazaretto's floors,
+ Down the long twilight of the corridors,
+ Midst tossing arms and faces full of pain.
+ I loved the work: it was its own reward.
+ I never counted on it to offset
+ My sins, which are many, or make less my debt
+ To the free grace and mercy of our Lord;
+ But somehow, father, it has come to be
+ In these long years so much a part of me,
+ I should not know myself, if lacking it,
+ But with the work the worker too would die,
+ And in my place some other self would sit
+ Joyful or sad,--what matters, if not I?
+ And now all's over. Woe is me!"--"My son,"
+ The monk said soothingly, "thy work is done;
+ And no more as a servant, but the guest
+ Of God thou enterest thy eternal rest.
+ No toil, no tears, no sorrow for the lost,
+ Shall mar thy perfect bliss. Thou shalt sit down
+ Clad in white robes, and wear a golden crown
+ Forever and forever."--Piero tossed
+ On his sick-pillow: "Miserable me!
+ I am too poor for such grand company;
+ The crown would be too heavy for this gray
+ Old head; and God forgive me if I say
+ It would be hard to sit there night and day,
+ Like an image in the Tribune, doing naught
+ With these hard hands, that all my life have wrought,
+ Not for bread only, but for pity's sake.
+ I'm dull at prayers: I could not keep awake,
+ Counting my beads. Mine's but a crazy head,
+ Scarce worth the saving, if all else be dead.
+ And if one goes to heaven without a heart,
+ God knows he leaves behind his better part.
+ I love my fellow-men: the worst I know
+ I would do good to. Will death change me so
+ That I shall sit among the lazy saints,
+ Turning a deaf ear to the sore complaints
+ Of souls that suffer? Why, I never yet
+ Left a poor dog in the strada hard beset,
+ Or ass o'erladen! Must I rate man less
+ Than dog or ass, in holy selfishness?
+ Methinks (Lord, pardon, if the thought be sin!)
+ The world of pain were better, if therein
+ One's heart might still be human, and desires
+ Of natural pity drop upon its fires
+ Some cooling tears."
+
+ Thereat the pale monk crossed
+ His brow, and, muttering, "Madman! thou art lost!"
+ Took up his pyx and fled; and, left alone,
+ The sick man closed his eyes with a great groan
+ That sank into a prayer, "Thy will be done!"
+ Then was he made aware, by soul or ear,
+ Of somewhat pure and holy bending o'er him,
+ And of a voice like that of her who bore him,
+ Tender and most compassionate: "Never fear!
+ For heaven is love, as God himself is love;
+ Thy work below shall be thy work above."
+ And when he looked, lo! in the stern monk's place
+ He saw the shining of an angel's face!
+
+ 1864.
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ The Traveller broke the pause. "I've seen
+ The Brothers down the long street steal,
+ Black, silent, masked, the crowd between,
+ And felt to doff my hat and kneel
+ With heart, if not with knee, in prayer,
+ For blessings on their pious care."
+
+ Reader wiped his glasses: "Friends of mine,
+ I'll try our home-brewed next, instead of foreign wine."
+
+
+
+
+THE CHANGELING.
+
+ For the fairest maid in Hampton
+ They needed not to search,
+ Who saw young Anna Favor
+ Come walking into church,
+
+ Or bringing from the meadows,
+ At set of harvest-day,
+ The frolic of the blackbirds,
+ The sweetness of the hay.
+
+ Now the weariest of all mothers,
+ The saddest two-years bride,
+ She scowls in the face of her husband,
+ And spurns her child aside.
+
+ "Rake out the red coals, goodman,--
+ For there the child shall lie,
+ Till the black witch comes to fetch her
+ And both up chimney fly.
+
+ "It's never my own little daughter,
+ It's never my own," she said;
+ "The witches have stolen my Anna,
+ And left me an imp instead.
+
+ "Oh, fair and sweet was my baby,
+ Blue eyes, and hair of gold;
+ But this is ugly and wrinkled,
+ Cross, and cunning, and old.
+
+ "I hate the touch of her fingers,
+ I hate the feel of her skin;
+ It's not the milk from my bosom,
+ But my blood, that she sucks in.
+
+ "My face grows sharp with the torment;
+ Look! my arms are skin and bone!
+ Rake open the red coals, goodman,
+ And the witch shall have her own.
+
+ "She 'll come when she hears it crying,
+ In the shape of an owl or bat,
+ And she'll bring us our darling Anna
+ In place of her screeching brat."
+
+ Then the goodman, Ezra Dalton,
+ Laid his hand upon her head
+ "Thy sorrow is great, O woman!
+ I sorrow with thee," he said.
+
+ "The paths to trouble are many,
+ And never but one sure way
+ Leads out to the light beyond it
+ My poor wife, let us pray."
+
+ Then he said to the great All-Father,
+ "Thy daughter is weak and blind;
+ Let her sight come back, and clothe her
+ Once more in her right mind.
+
+ "Lead her out of this evil shadow,
+ Out of these fancies wild;
+ Let the holy love of the mother
+ Turn again to her child.
+
+ "Make her lips like the lips of Mary
+ Kissing her blessed Son;
+ Let her hands, like the hands of Jesus,
+ Rest on her little one.
+
+ "Comfort the soul of thy handmaid,
+ Open her prison-door,
+ And thine shall be all the glory
+ And praise forevermore."
+
+ Then into the face of its mother
+ The baby looked up and smiled;
+ And the cloud of her soul was lifted,
+ And she knew her little child.
+
+ A beam of the slant west sunshine
+ Made the wan face almost fair,
+ Lit the blue eyes' patient wonder,
+ And the rings of pale gold hair.
+
+ She kissed it on lip and forehead,
+ She kissed it on cheek and chin,
+ And she bared her snow-white bosom
+ To the lips so pale and thin.
+
+ Oh, fair on her bridal morning
+ Was the maid who blushed and smiled,
+ But fairer to Ezra Dalton
+ Looked the mother of his child.
+
+ With more than a lover's fondness
+ He stooped to her worn young face,
+ And the nursing child and the mother
+ He folded in one embrace.
+
+ "Blessed be God!" he murmured.
+ "Blessed be God!" she said;
+ "For I see, who once was blinded,--
+ I live, who once was dead.
+
+ "Now mount and ride, my goodman,
+ As thou lovest thy own soul
+ Woe's me, if my wicked fancies
+ Be the death of Goody Cole!"
+
+ His horse he saddled and bridled,
+ And into the night rode he,
+ Now through the great black woodland,
+ Now by the white-beached sea.
+
+ He rode through the silent clearings,
+ He came to the ferry wide,
+ And thrice he called to the boatman
+ Asleep on the other side.
+
+ He set his horse to the river,
+ He swam to Newbury town,
+ And he called up Justice Sewall
+ In his nightcap and his gown.
+
+ And the grave and worshipful justice
+ (Upon whose soul be peace!)
+ Set his name to the jailer's warrant
+ For Goodwife Cole's release.
+
+ Then through the night the hoof-beats
+ Went sounding like a flail;
+ And Goody Cole at cockcrow
+ Came forth from Ipswich jail.
+ 1865
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ "Here is a rhyme: I hardly dare
+ To venture on its theme worn out;
+ What seems so sweet by Doon and Ayr
+ Sounds simply silly hereabout;
+ And pipes by lips Arcadian blown
+ Are only tin horns at our own.
+ Yet still the muse of pastoral walks with us,
+ While Hosea Biglow sings, our new Theocritus."
+
+
+
+
+THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH.
+
+Attitash, an Indian word signifying "huckleberry," is the name of a
+large and beautiful lake in the northern part of Amesbury.
+
+
+ In sky and wave the white clouds swam,
+ And the blue hills of Nottingham
+ Through gaps of leafy green
+ Across the lake were seen,
+
+ When, in the shadow of the ash
+ That dreams its dream in Attitash,
+ In the warm summer weather,
+ Two maidens sat together.
+
+ They sat and watched in idle mood
+ The gleam and shade of lake and wood;
+ The beach the keen light smote,
+ The white sail of a boat;
+
+ Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying,
+ In sweetness, not in music, dying;
+ Hardback, and virgin's-bower,
+ And white-spiked clethra-flower.
+
+ With careless ears they heard the plash
+ And breezy wash of Attitash,
+ The wood-bird's plaintive cry,
+ The locust's sharp reply.
+
+ And teased the while, with playful band,
+ The shaggy dog of Newfoundland,
+ Whose uncouth frolic spilled
+ Their baskets berry-filled.
+
+ Then one, the beauty of whose eyes
+ Was evermore a great surprise,
+ Tossed back her queenly head,
+ And, lightly laughing, said:
+
+ "No bridegroom's hand be mine to hold
+ That is not lined with yellow gold;
+ I tread no cottage-floor;
+ I own no lover poor.
+
+ "My love must come on silken wings,
+ With bridal lights of diamond rings,
+ Not foul with kitchen smirch,
+ With tallow-dip for torch."
+
+ The other, on whose modest head
+ Was lesser dower of beauty shed,
+ With look for home-hearths meet,
+ And voice exceeding sweet,
+
+ Answered, "We will not rivals be;
+ Take thou the gold, leave love to me;
+ Mine be the cottage small,
+ And thine the rich man's hall.
+
+ "I know, indeed, that wealth is good;
+ But lowly roof and simple food,
+ With love that hath no doubt,
+ Are more than gold without."
+
+ Hard by a farmer hale and young
+ His cradle in the rye-field swung,
+ Tracking the yellow plain
+ With windrows of ripe grain.
+
+ And still, whene'er he paused to whet
+ His scythe, the sidelong glance he met
+ Of large dark eyes, where strove
+ False pride and secret love.
+
+ Be strong, young mower of the-grain;
+ That love shall overmatch disdain,
+ Its instincts soon or late
+ The heart shall vindicate.
+
+ In blouse of gray, with fishing-rod,
+ Half screened by leaves, a stranger trod
+ The margin of the pond,
+ Watching the group beyond.
+
+ The supreme hours unnoted come;
+ Unfelt the turning tides of doom;
+ And so the maids laughed on,
+ Nor dreamed what Fate had done,--
+
+ Nor knew the step was Destiny's
+ That rustled in the birchen trees,
+ As, with their lives forecast,
+ Fisher and mower passed.
+
+ Erelong by lake and rivulet side
+ The summer roses paled and died,
+ And Autumn's fingers shed
+ The maple's leaves of red.
+
+ Through the long gold-hazed afternoon,
+ Alone, but for the diving loon,
+ The partridge in the brake,
+ The black duck on the lake,
+
+ Beneath the shadow of the ash
+ Sat man and maid by Attitash;
+ And earth and air made room
+ For human hearts to bloom.
+
+ Soft spread the carpets of the sod,
+ And scarlet-oak and golden-rod
+ With blushes and with smiles
+ Lit up the forest aisles.
+
+ The mellow light the lake aslant,
+ The pebbled margin's ripple-chant
+ Attempered and low-toned,
+ The tender mystery owned.
+
+ And through the dream the lovers dreamed
+ Sweet sounds stole in and soft lights streamed;
+ The sunshine seemed to bless,
+ The air was a caress.
+
+ Not she who lightly laughed is there,
+ With scornful toss of midnight hair,
+ Her dark, disdainful eyes,
+ And proud lip worldly-wise.
+
+ Her haughty vow is still unsaid,
+ But all she dreamed and coveted
+ Wears, half to her surprise,
+ The youthful farmer's guise!
+
+ With more than all her old-time pride
+ She walks the rye-field at his side,
+ Careless of cot or hall,
+ Since love transfigures all.
+
+ Rich beyond dreams, the vantage-ground
+ Of life is gained; her hands have found
+ The talisman of old
+ That changes all to gold.
+
+ While she who could for love dispense
+ With all its glittering accidents,
+ And trust her heart alone,
+ Finds love and gold her own.
+
+ What wealth can buy or art can build
+ Awaits her; but her cup is filled
+ Even now unto the brim;
+ Her world is love and him!
+ 1866.
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ The while he heard, the Book-man drew
+ A length of make-believing face,
+ With smothered mischief laughing through
+ "Why, you shall sit in Ramsay's place,
+ And, with his Gentle Shepherd, keep
+ On Yankee hills immortal sheep,
+ While love-lorn swains and maids the seas beyond
+ Hold dreamy tryst around your huckleberry-pond."
+
+ The Traveller laughed: "Sir Galahad
+ Singing of love the Trouvere's lay!
+ How should he know the blindfold lad
+ From one of Vulcan's forge-boys?"--"Nay,
+ He better sees who stands outside
+ Than they who in procession ride,"
+ The Reader answered: "selectmen and squire
+ Miss, while they make, the show that wayside folks admire.
+
+ "Here is a wild tale of the North,
+ Our travelled friend will own as one
+ Fit for a Norland Christmas hearth
+ And lips of Christian Andersen.
+ They tell it in the valleys green
+ Of the fair island he has seen,
+ Low lying off the pleasant Swedish shore,
+ Washed by the Baltic Sea, and watched by Elsinore."
+
+
+
+
+KALLUNDBORG CHURCH
+
+ "Tie stille, barn min
+ Imorgen kommer Fin,
+ Fa'er din,
+ Og gi'er dig Esbern Snares nine og hjerte at lege med!"
+ Zealand Rhyme.
+
+
+ "Build at Kallundborg by the sea
+ A church as stately as church may be,
+ And there shalt thou wed my daughter fair,"
+ Said the Lord of Nesvek to Esbern Snare.
+
+ And the Baron laughed. But Esbern said,
+ "Though I lose my soul, I will Helva wed!"
+ And off he strode, in his pride of will,
+ To the Troll who dwelt in Ulshoi hill.
+
+ "Build, O Troll, a church for me
+ At Kallundborg by the mighty sea;
+ Build it stately, and build it fair,
+ Build it quickly," said Esbern Snare.
+
+ But the sly Dwarf said, "No work is wrought
+ By Trolls of the Hills, O man, for naught.
+ What wilt thou give for thy church so fair?"
+ "Set thy own price," quoth Esbern Snare.
+
+ "When Kallundborg church is builded well,
+ Than must the name of its builder tell,
+ Or thy heart and thy eyes must be my boon."
+ "Build," said Esbern, "and build it soon."
+
+ By night and by day the Troll wrought on;
+ He hewed the timbers, he piled the stone;
+ But day by day, as the walls rose fair,
+ Darker and sadder grew Esbern Snare.
+
+ He listened by night, he watched by day,
+ He sought and thought, but he dared not pray;
+ In vain he called on the Elle-maids shy,
+ And the Neck and the Nis gave no reply.
+
+ Of his evil bargain far and wide
+ A rumor ran through the country-side;
+ And Helva of Nesvek, young and fair,
+ Prayed for the soul of Esbern Snare.
+
+ And now the church was wellnigh done;
+ One pillar it lacked, and one alone;
+ And the grim Troll muttered, "Fool thou art
+ To-morrow gives me thy eyes and heart!"
+
+ By Kallundborg in black despair,
+ Through wood and meadow, walked Esbern Snare,
+ Till, worn and weary, the strong man sank
+ Under the birches on Ulshoi bank.
+
+ At, his last day's work he heard the Troll
+ Hammer and delve in the quarry's hole;
+ Before him the church stood large and fair
+ "I have builded my tomb," said Esbern Snare.
+
+ And he closed his eyes the sight to hide,
+ When he heard a light step at his side
+ "O Esbern Snare!" a sweet voice said,
+ "Would I might die now in thy stead!"
+
+ With a grasp by love and by fear made strong,
+ He held her fast, and he held her long;
+ With the beating heart of a bird afeard,
+ She hid her face in his flame-red beard.
+
+ "O love!" he cried, "let me look to-day
+ In thine eyes ere mine are plucked away;
+ Let me hold thee close, let me feel thy heart
+ Ere mine by the Troll is torn apart!
+
+ "I sinned, O Helva, for love of thee!
+ Pray that the Lord Christ pardon me!"
+ But fast as she prayed, and faster still,
+ Hammered the Troll in Ulshoi hill.
+
+ He knew, as he wrought, that a loving heart
+ Was somehow baffling his evil art;
+ For more than spell of Elf or Troll
+ Is a maiden's prayer for her lover's soul.
+
+ And Esbern listened, and caught the sound
+ Of a Troll-wife singing underground
+ "To-morrow comes Fine, father thine
+ Lie still and hush thee, baby mine!
+
+ "Lie still, my darling! next sunrise
+ Thou'lt play with Esbern Snare's heart and eyes!"
+ "Ho! ho!" quoth Esbern, "is that your game?
+ Thanks to the Troll-wife, I know his name!"
+
+ The Troll he heard him, and hurried on
+ To Kallundborg church with the lacking stone.
+ "Too late, Gaffer Fine!" cried Esbern Snare;
+ And Troll and pillar vanished in air!
+
+ That night the harvesters heard the sound
+ Of a woman sobbing underground,
+ And the voice of the Hill-Troll loud with blame
+ Of the careless singer who told his name.
+
+ Of the Troll of the Church they sing the rune
+ By the Northern Sea in the harvest moon;
+ And the fishers of Zealand hear him still
+ Scolding his wife in Ulshoi hill.
+
+ And seaward over its groves of birch
+ Still looks the tower of Kallundborg church,
+ Where, first at its altar, a wedded pair,
+ Stood Helva of Nesvek and Esbern Snare!
+ 1865.
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ "What," asked the Traveller, "would our sires,
+ The old Norse story-tellers, say
+ Of sun-graved pictures, ocean wires,
+ And smoking steamboats of to-day?
+ And this, O lady, by your leave,
+ Recalls your song of yester eve:
+ Pray, let us have that Cable-hymn once more."
+ "Hear, hear!" the Book-man cried, "the lady has the floor.
+
+ "These noisy waves below perhaps
+ To such a strain will lend their ear,
+ With softer voice and lighter lapse
+ Come stealing up the sands to hear,
+ And what they once refused to do
+ For old King Knut accord to you.
+ Nay, even the fishes shall your listeners be,
+ As once, the legend runs, they heard St. Anthony."
+
+
+
+
+THE CABLE HYMN.
+
+ O lonely bay of Trinity,
+ O dreary shores, give ear!
+ Lean down unto the white-lipped sea
+ The voice of God to hear!
+
+ From world to world His couriers fly,
+ Thought-winged and shod with fire;
+ The angel of His stormy sky
+ Rides down the sunken wire.
+
+ What saith the herald of the Lord?
+ "The world's long strife is done;
+ Close wedded by that mystic cord,
+ Its continents are one.
+
+ "And one in heart, as one in blood,
+ Shall all her peoples be;
+ The hands of human brotherhood
+ Are clasped beneath the sea.
+
+ "Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain
+ And Asian mountains borne,
+ The vigor of the Northern brain
+ Shall nerve the world outworn.
+
+ "From clime to clime, from shore to shore,
+ Shall thrill the magic thread;
+ The new Prometheus steals once more
+ The fire that wakes the dead."
+
+ Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat
+ From answering beach to beach;
+ Fuse nations in thy kindly heat,
+ And melt the chains of each!
+
+ Wild terror of the sky above,
+ Glide tamed and dumb below!
+ Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove,
+ Thy errands to and fro.
+
+ Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord,
+ Beneath the deep so far,
+ The bridal robe of earth's accord,
+ The funeral shroud of war!
+
+ For lo! the fall of Ocean's wall
+ Space mocked and time outrun;
+ And round the world the thought of all
+ Is as the thought of one!
+
+ The poles unite, the zones agree,
+ The tongues of striving cease;
+ As on the Sea of Galilee
+ The Christ is whispering, Peace!
+ 1858.
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ "Glad prophecy! to this at last,"
+ The Reader said, "shall all things come.
+ Forgotten be the bugle's blast,
+ And battle-music of the drum.
+
+ "A little while the world may run
+ Its old mad way, with needle-gun
+ And iron-clad, but truth, at last, shall reign
+ The cradle-song of Christ was never sung in vain!"
+
+ Shifting his scattered papers, "Here,"
+ He said, as died the faint applause,
+ "Is something that I found last year
+ Down on the island known as Orr's.
+ I had it from a fair-haired girl
+ Who, oddly, bore the name of Pearl,
+ (As if by some droll freak of circumstance,)
+ Classic, or wellnigh so, in Harriet Stowe's romance."
+
+
+
+
+THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL.
+
+ What flecks the outer gray beyond
+ The sundown's golden trail?
+ The white flash of a sea-bird's wing,
+ Or gleam of slanting sail?
+ Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point,
+ And sea-worn elders pray,--
+ The ghost of what was once a ship
+ Is sailing up the bay.
+
+ From gray sea-fog, from icy drift,
+ From peril and from pain,
+ The home-bound fisher greets thy lights,
+ O hundred-harbored Maine!
+ But many a keel shall seaward turn,
+ And many a sail outstand,
+ When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms
+ Against the dusk of land.
+
+ She rounds the headland's bristling pines;
+ She threads the isle-set bay;
+ No spur of breeze can speed her on,
+ Nor ebb of tide delay.
+ Old men still walk the Isle of Orr
+ Who tell her date and name,
+ Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards
+ Who hewed her oaken frame.
+
+ What weary doom of baffled quest,
+ Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine?
+ What makes thee in the haunts of home
+ A wonder and a sign?
+ No foot is on thy silent deck,
+ Upon thy helm no hand;
+ No ripple hath the soundless wind
+ That smites thee from the land!
+
+ For never comes the ship to port,
+ Howe'er the breeze may be;
+ Just when she nears the waiting shore
+ She drifts again to sea.
+ No tack of sail, nor turn of helm,
+ Nor sheer of veering side;
+ Stern-fore she drives to sea and night,
+ Against the wind and tide.
+
+ In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the star
+ Of evening guides her in;
+ In vain for her the lamps are lit
+ Within thy tower, Seguin!
+ In vain the harbor-boat shall hail,
+ In vain the pilot call;
+ No hand shall reef her spectral sail,
+ Or let her anchor fall.
+
+ Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy,
+ Your gray-head hints of ill;
+ And, over sick-beds whispering low,
+ Your prophecies fulfil.
+ Some home amid yon birchen trees
+ Shall drape its door with woe;
+ And slowly where the Dead Ship sails,
+ The burial boat shall row!
+
+ From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point,
+ From island and from main,
+ From sheltered cove and tided creek,
+ Shall glide the funeral train.
+ The dead-boat with the bearers four,
+ The mourners at her stern,--
+ And one shall go the silent way
+ Who shall no more return!
+
+ And men shall sigh, and women weep,
+ Whose dear ones pale and pine,
+ And sadly over sunset seas
+ Await the ghostly sign.
+ They know not that its sails are filled
+ By pity's tender breath,
+ Nor see the Angel at the helm
+ Who steers the Ship of Death!
+ 1866.
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ "Chill as a down-east breeze should be,"
+ The Book-man said. "A ghostly touch
+ The legend has. I'm glad to see
+ Your flying Yankee beat the Dutch."
+ "Well, here is something of the sort
+ Which one midsummer day I caught
+ In Narragansett Bay, for lack of fish."
+ "We wait," the Traveller said;
+ "serve hot or cold your dish."
+
+
+
+
+THE PALATINE.
+
+Block Island in Long Island Sound, called by the Indians Manisees, the
+isle of the little god, was the scene of a tragic incident a hundred
+years or more ago, when _The Palatine_, an emigrant ship bound for
+Philadelphia, driven off its course, came upon the coast at this point.
+A mutiny on board, followed by an inhuman desertion on the part of the
+crew, had brought the unhappy passengers to the verge of starvation and
+madness. Tradition says that wreckers on shore, after rescuing all but
+one of the survivors, set fire to the vessel, which was driven out to
+sea before a gale which had sprung up. Every twelvemonth, according to
+the same tradition, the spectacle of a ship on fire is visible to the
+inhabitants of the island.
+
+
+ Leagues north, as fly the gull and auk,
+ Point Judith watches with eye of hawk;
+ Leagues south, thy beacon flames, Montauk!
+
+ Lonely and wind-shorn, wood-forsaken,
+ With never a tree for Spring to waken,
+ For tryst of lovers or farewells taken,
+
+ Circled by waters that never freeze,
+ Beaten by billow and swept by breeze,
+ Lieth the island of Manisees,
+
+ Set at the mouth of the Sound to hold
+ The coast lights up on its turret old,
+ Yellow with moss and sea-fog mould.
+
+ Dreary the land when gust and sleet
+ At its doors and windows howl and beat,
+ And Winter laughs at its fires of peat!
+
+ But in summer time, when pool and pond,
+ Held in the laps of valleys fond,
+ Are blue as the glimpses of sea beyond;
+
+ When the hills are sweet with the brier-rose,
+ And, hid in the warm, soft dells, unclose
+ Flowers the mainland rarely knows;
+
+ When boats to their morning fishing go,
+ And, held to the wind and slanting low,
+ Whitening and darkening the small sails show,--
+
+ Then is that lonely island fair;
+ And the pale health-seeker findeth there
+ The wine of life in its pleasant air.
+
+ No greener valleys the sun invite,
+ On smoother beaches no sea-birds light,
+ No blue waves shatter to foam more white!
+
+ There, circling ever their narrow range,
+ Quaint tradition and legend strange
+ Live on unchallenged, and know no change.
+
+ Old wives spinning their webs of tow,
+ Or rocking weirdly to and fro
+ In and out of the peat's dull glow,
+
+ And old men mending their nets of twine,
+ Talk together of dream and sign,
+ Talk of the lost ship Palatine,--
+
+ The ship that, a hundred years before,
+ Freighted deep with its goodly store,
+ In the gales of the equinox went ashore.
+
+ The eager islanders one by one
+ Counted the shots of her signal gun,
+ And heard the crash when she drove right on!
+
+ Into the teeth of death she sped
+ (May God forgive the hands that fed
+ The false lights over the rocky Head!)
+
+ O men and brothers! what sights were there!
+ White upturned faces, hands stretched in prayer!
+ Where waves had pity, could ye not spare?
+
+ Down swooped the wreckers, like birds of prey
+ Tearing the heart of the ship away,
+ And the dead had never a word to say.
+
+ And then, with ghastly shimmer and shine
+ Over the rocks and the seething brine,
+ They burned the wreck of the Palatine.
+
+ In their cruel hearts, as they homeward sped,
+ "The sea and the rocks are dumb," they said
+ "There 'll be no reckoning with the dead."
+
+ But the year went round, and when once more
+ Along their foam-white curves of shore
+ They heard the line-storm rave and roar,
+
+ Behold! again, with shimmer and shine,
+ Over the rocks and the seething brine,
+ The flaming wreck of the Palatine!
+
+ So, haply in fitter words than these,
+ Mending their nets on their patient knees
+ They tell the legend of Manisees.
+
+ Nor looks nor tones a doubt betray;
+ "It is known to us all," they quietly say;
+ "We too have seen it in our day."
+
+ Is there, then, no death for a word once spoken?
+ Was never a deed but left its token
+ Written on tables never broken?
+
+ Do the elements subtle reflections give?
+ Do pictures of all the ages live
+ On Nature's infinite negative,
+
+ Which, half in sport, in malice half,
+ She shows at times, with shudder or laugh,
+ Phantom and shadow in photograph?
+
+ For still, on many a moonless night,
+ From Kingston Head and from Montauk light
+ The spectre kindles and burns in sight.
+
+ Now low and dim, now clear and higher,
+ Leaps up the terrible Ghost of Fire,
+ Then, slowly sinking, the flames expire.
+
+ And the wise Sound skippers, though skies be fine,
+ Reef their sails when they see the sign
+ Of the blazing wreck of the Palatine!
+ 1867.
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ "A fitter tale to scream than sing,"
+ The Book-man said. "Well, fancy, then,"
+ The Reader answered, "on the wing
+ The sea-birds shriek it, not for men,
+ But in the ear of wave and breeze!"
+ The Traveller mused: "Your Manisees
+ Is fairy-land: off Narragansett shore
+ Who ever saw the isle or heard its name before?
+
+ "'T is some strange land of Flyaway,
+ Whose dreamy shore the ship beguiles,
+ St. Brandan's in its sea-mist gray,
+ Or sunset loom of Fortunate Isles!"
+ "No ghost, but solid turf and rock
+ Is the good island known as Block,"
+ The Reader said. "For beauty and for ease
+ I chose its Indian name, soft-flowing Manisees!
+
+ "But let it pass; here is a bit
+ Of unrhymed story, with a hint
+ Of the old preaching mood in it,
+ The sort of sidelong moral squint
+ Our friend objects to, which has grown,
+ I fear, a habit of my own.
+ 'Twas written when the Asian plague drew near,
+ And the land held its breath and paled with sudden fear."
+
+
+
+
+ABRAHAM DAVENPORT
+
+The famous Dark Day of New England, May 19, 1780, was a physical puzzle
+for many years to our ancestors, but its occurrence brought something
+more than philosophical speculation into the winds of those who passed
+through it. The incident of Colonel Abraham Davenport's sturdy protest
+is a matter of history.
+
+
+ In the old days (a custom laid aside
+ With breeches and cocked hats) the people sent
+ Their wisest men to make the public laws.
+ And so, from a brown homestead, where the Sound
+ Drinks the small tribute of the Mianas,
+ Waved over by the woods of Rippowams,
+ And hallowed by pure lives and tranquil deaths,
+ Stamford sent up to the councils of the State
+ Wisdom and grace in Abraham Davenport.
+
+ 'T was on a May-day of the far old year
+ Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell
+ Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring,
+ Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon,
+ A horror of great darkness, like the night
+ In day of which the Norland sagas tell,--
+
+ The Twilight of the Gods. The low-hung sky
+ Was black with ominous clouds, save where its rim
+ Was fringed with a dull glow, like that which climbs
+ The crater's sides from the red hell below.
+ Birds ceased to sing, and all the barn-yard fowls
+ Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars
+ Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings
+ Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died;
+ Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp
+ To hear the doom-blast of the trumpet shatter
+ The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ
+ Might look from the rent clouds, not as he looked
+ A loving guest at Bethany, but stern
+ As Justice and inexorable Law.
+
+ Meanwhile in the old State House, dim as ghosts,
+ Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut,
+ Trembling beneath their legislative robes.
+ "It is the Lord's Great Day! Let us adjourn,"
+ Some said; and then, as if with one accord,
+ All eyes were turned to Abraham Davenport.
+ He rose, slow cleaving with his steady voice
+ The intolerable hush. "This well may be
+ The Day of Judgment which the world awaits;
+ But be it so or not, I only know
+ My present duty, and my Lord's command
+ To occupy till He come. So at the post
+ Where He hath set me in His providence,
+ I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face,--
+ No faithless servant frightened from my task,
+ But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls;
+ And therefore, with all reverence, I would say,
+ Let God do His work, we will see to ours.
+ Bring in the candles." And they brought them in.
+
+ Then by the flaring lights the Speaker read,
+ Albeit with husky voice and shaking hands,
+ An act to amend an act to regulate
+ The shad and alewive fisheries. Whereupon
+ Wisely and well spake Abraham Davenport,
+ Straight to the question, with no figures of speech
+ Save the ten Arab signs, yet not without
+ The shrewd dry humor natural to the man
+ His awe-struck colleagues listening all the while,
+ Between the pauses of his argument,
+ To hear the thunder of the wrath of God
+ Break from the hollow trumpet of the cloud.
+
+ And there he stands in memory to this day,
+ Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen
+ Against the background of unnatural dark,
+ A witness to the ages as they pass,
+ That simple duty hath no place for fear.
+ 1866.
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ He ceased: just then the ocean seemed
+ To lift a half-faced moon in sight;
+ And, shore-ward, o'er the waters gleamed,
+ From crest to crest, a line of light,
+ Such as of old, with solemn awe,
+ The fishers by Gennesaret saw,
+ When dry-shod o'er it walked the Son of God,
+ Tracking the waves with light where'er his sandals trod.
+
+ Silently for a space each eye
+ Upon that sudden glory turned
+ Cool from the land the breeze blew by,
+ The tent-ropes flapped, the long beach churned
+ Its waves to foam; on either hand
+ Stretched, far as sight, the hills of sand;
+ With bays of marsh, and capes of bush and tree,
+ The wood's black shore-line loomed beyond the meadowy sea.
+
+ The lady rose to leave. "One song,
+ Or hymn," they urged, "before we part."
+ And she, with lips to which belong
+ Sweet intuitions of all art,
+ Gave to the winds of night a strain
+ Which they who heard would hear again;
+ And to her voice the solemn ocean lent,
+ Touching its harp of sand, a deep accompaniment.
+
+
+
+
+THE WORSHIP OF NATURE.
+
+ The harp at Nature's advent strung
+ Has never ceased to play;
+ The song the stars of morning sung
+ Has never died away.
+
+ And prayer is made, and praise is given,
+ By all things near and far;
+ The ocean looketh up to heaven,
+ And mirrors every star.
+
+ Its waves are kneeling on the strand,
+ As kneels the human knee,
+ Their white locks bowing to the sand,
+ The priesthood of the sea'
+
+ They pour their glittering treasures forth,
+ Their gifts of pearl they bring,
+ And all the listening hills of earth
+ Take up the song they sing.
+
+ The green earth sends her incense up
+ From many a mountain shrine;
+ From folded leaf and dewy cup
+ She pours her sacred wine.
+
+ The mists above the morning rills
+ Rise white as wings of prayer;
+ The altar-curtains of the hills
+ Are sunset's purple air.
+
+ The winds with hymns of praise are loud,
+ Or low with sobs of pain,--
+ The thunder-organ of the cloud,
+ The dropping tears of rain.
+
+ With drooping head and branches crossed
+ The twilight forest grieves,
+ Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost
+ From all its sunlit leaves.
+
+ The blue sky is the temple's arch,
+ Its transept earth and air,
+ The music of its starry march
+ The chorus of a prayer.
+
+ So Nature keeps the reverent frame
+ With which her years began,
+ And all her signs and voices shame
+ The prayerless heart of man.
+
+ . . . . .
+
+ The singer ceased. The moon's white rays
+ Fell on the rapt, still face of her.
+ "_Allah il Allah_! He hath praise
+ From all things," said the Traveller.
+ "Oft from the desert's silent nights,
+ And mountain hymns of sunset lights,
+ My heart has felt rebuke, as in his tent
+ The Moslem's prayer has shamed my Christian knee unbent."
+
+ He paused, and lo! far, faint, and slow
+ The bells in Newbury's steeples tolled
+ The twelve dead hours; the lamp burned low;
+ The singer sought her canvas fold.
+ One sadly said, "At break of day
+ We strike our tent and go our way."
+ But one made answer cheerily, "Never fear,
+ We'll pitch this tent of ours in type another year."
+
+
+
+
+AT SUNDOWN, TO E. C. S.
+
+ Poet and friend of poets, if thy glass
+ Detects no flower in winter's tuft of grass,
+ Let this slight token of the debt I owe
+ Outlive for thee December's frozen day,
+ And, like the arbutus budding under snow,
+ Take bloom and fragrance from some morn of May
+ When he who gives it shall have gone the way
+ Where faith shall see and reverent trust shall know.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888.
+
+ Low in the east, against a white, cold dawn,
+ The black-lined silhouette of the woods was drawn,
+ And on a wintry waste
+ Of frosted streams and hillsides bare and brown,
+ Through thin cloud-films, a pallid ghost looked down,
+ The waning moon half-faced!
+
+ In that pale sky and sere, snow-waiting earth,
+ What sign was there of the immortal birth?
+ What herald of the One?
+ Lo! swift as thought the heavenly radiance came,
+ A rose-red splendor swept the sky like flame,
+ Up rolled the round, bright sun!
+
+ And all was changed. From a transfigured world
+ The moon's ghost fled, the smoke of home-hearths curled
+ Up the still air unblown.
+ In Orient warmth and brightness, did that morn
+ O'er Nain and Nazareth, when the Christ was born,
+ Break fairer than our own?
+
+ The morning's promise noon and eve fulfilled
+ In warm, soft sky and landscape hazy-hilled
+ And sunset fair as they;
+ A sweet reminder of His holiest time,
+ A summer-miracle in our winter clime,
+ God gave a perfect day.
+
+ The near was blended with the old and far,
+ And Bethlehem's hillside and the Magi's star
+ Seemed here, as there and then,--
+ Our homestead pine-tree was the Syrian palm,
+ Our heart's desire the angels' midnight psalm,
+ Peace, and good-will to men!
+
+
+
+
+THE VOW OF WASHINGTON.
+
+Read in New York, April 30, 1889, at the Centennial Celebration of the
+Inauguration of George Washington as the first President of the United
+States.
+
+
+ The sword was sheathed: in April's sun
+ Lay green the fields by Freedom won;
+ And severed sections, weary of debates,
+ Joined hands at last and were United States.
+
+ O City sitting by the Sea
+ How proud the day that dawned on thee,
+ When the new era, long desired, began,
+ And, in its need, the hour had found the man!
+
+ One thought the cannon salvos spoke,
+ The resonant bell-tower's vibrant stroke,
+ The voiceful streets, the plaudit-echoing halls,
+ And prayer and hymn borne heavenward from St. Paul's!
+
+ How felt the land in every part
+ The strong throb of a nation's heart,
+ As its great leader gave, with reverent awe,
+ His pledge to Union, Liberty, and Law.
+
+ That pledge the heavens above him heard,
+ That vow the sleep of centuries stirred;
+ In world-wide wonder listening peoples bent
+ Their gaze on Freedom's great experiment.
+
+ Could it succeed? Of honor sold
+ And hopes deceived all history told.
+ Above the wrecks that strewed the mournful past,
+ Was the long dream of ages true at last?
+
+ Thank God! the people's choice was just,
+ The one man equal to his trust,
+ Wise beyond lore, and without weakness good,
+ Calm in the strength of flawless rectitude.
+
+ His rule of justice, order, peace,
+ Made possible the world's release;
+ Taught prince and serf that power is but a trust,
+ And rule, alone, which serves the ruled, is just;
+
+ That Freedom generous is, but strong
+ In hate of fraud and selfish wrong,
+ Pretence that turns her holy truths to lies,
+ And lawless license masking in her guise.
+
+ Land of his love! with one glad voice
+ Let thy great sisterhood rejoice;
+ A century's suns o'er thee have risen and set,
+ And, God be praised, we are one nation yet.
+
+ And still we trust the years to be
+ Shall prove his hope was destiny,
+ Leaving our flag, with all its added stars,
+ Unrent by faction and unstained by wars.
+
+ Lo! where with patient toil he nursed
+ And trained the new-set plant at first,
+ The widening branches of a stately tree
+ Stretch from the sunrise to the sunset sea.
+
+ And in its broad and sheltering shade,
+ Sitting with none to make afraid,
+ Were we now silent, through each mighty limb,
+ The winds of heaven would sing the praise of him.
+
+ Our first and best!--his ashes lie
+ Beneath his own Virginian sky.
+ Forgive, forget, O true and just and brave,
+ The storm that swept above thy sacred grave.
+
+ For, ever in the awful strife
+ And dark hours of the nation's life,
+ Through the fierce tumult pierced his warning word,
+ Their father's voice his erring children heard.
+
+ The change for which he prayed and sought
+ In that sharp agony was wrought;
+ No partial interest draws its alien line
+ 'Twixt North and South, the cypress and the pine!
+
+ One people now, all doubt beyond,
+ His name shall be our Union-bond;
+ We lift our hands to Heaven, and here and now.
+ Take on our lips the old Centennial vow.
+
+ For rule and trust must needs be ours;
+ Chooser and chosen both are powers
+ Equal in service as in rights; the claim
+ Of Duty rests on each and all the same.
+
+ Then let the sovereign millions, where
+ Our banner floats in sun and air,
+ From the warm palm-lands to Alaska's cold,
+ Repeat with us the pledge a century old?
+
+
+
+
+THE CAPTAIN'S WELL.
+
+The story of the shipwreck of Captain Valentine Bagley, on the coast of
+Arabia, and his sufferings in the desert, has been familiar from my
+childhood. It has been partially told in the singularly beautiful lines
+of my friend, Harriet Prescott Spofford, an the occasion of a public
+celebration at the Newburyport Library. To the charm and felicity of her
+verse, as far as it goes, nothing can be added; but in the following
+ballad I have endeavored to give a fuller detail of the touching
+incident upon which it is founded.
+
+
+ From pain and peril, by land and main,
+ The shipwrecked sailor came back again;
+
+ And like one from the dead, the threshold cross'd
+ Of his wondering home, that had mourned him lost.
+
+ Where he sat once more with his kith and kin,
+ And welcomed his neighbors thronging in.
+
+ But when morning came he called for his spade.
+ "I must pay my debt to the Lord," he said.
+
+ "Why dig you here?" asked the passer-by;
+ "Is there gold or silver the road so nigh?"
+
+ "No, friend," he answered: "but under this sod
+ Is the blessed water, the wine of God."
+
+ "Water! the Powow is at your back,
+ And right before you the Merrimac,
+
+ "And look you up, or look you down,
+ There 's a well-sweep at every door in town."
+
+ "True," he said, "we have wells of our own;
+ But this I dig for the Lord alone."
+
+ Said the other: "This soil is dry, you know.
+ I doubt if a spring can be found below;
+
+ "You had better consult, before you dig,
+ Some water-witch, with a hazel twig."
+
+ "No, wet or dry, I will dig it here,
+ Shallow or deep, if it takes a year.
+
+ "In the Arab desert, where shade is none,
+ The waterless land of sand and sun,
+
+ "Under the pitiless, brazen sky
+ My burning throat as the sand was dry;
+
+ "My crazed brain listened in fever dreams
+ For plash of buckets and ripple of streams;
+
+ "And opening my eyes to the blinding glare,
+ And my lips to the breath of the blistering air,
+
+ "Tortured alike by the heavens and earth,
+ I cursed, like Job, the day of my birth.
+
+ "Then something tender, and sad, and mild
+ As a mother's voice to her wandering child,
+
+ "Rebuked my frenzy; and bowing my head,
+ I prayed as I never before had prayed:
+
+ "Pity me, God! for I die of thirst;
+ Take me out of this land accurst;
+
+ "And if ever I reach my home again,
+ Where earth has springs, and the sky has rain,
+
+ "I will dig a well for the passers-by,
+ And none shall suffer from thirst as I.
+
+ "I saw, as I prayed, my home once more,
+ The house, the barn, the elms by the door,
+
+ "The grass-lined road, that riverward wound,
+ The tall slate stones of the burying-ground,
+
+ "The belfry and steeple on meeting-house hill,
+ The brook with its dam, and gray grist mill,
+
+ "And I knew in that vision beyond the sea,
+ The very place where my well must be.
+
+ "God heard my prayer in that evil day;
+ He led my feet in their homeward way,
+
+ "From false mirage and dried-up well,
+ And the hot sand storms of a land of hell,
+
+ "Till I saw at last through the coast-hill's gap,
+ A city held in its stony lap,
+
+ "The mosques and the domes of scorched Muscat,
+ And my heart leaped up with joy thereat;
+
+ "For there was a ship at anchor lying,
+ A Christian flag at its mast-head flying,
+
+ "And sweetest of sounds to my homesick ear
+ Was my native tongue in the sailor's cheer.
+
+ "Now the Lord be thanked, I am back again,
+ Where earth has springs, and the skies have rain,
+
+ "And the well I promised by Oman's Sea,
+ I am digging for him in Amesbury."
+
+ His kindred wept, and his neighbors said
+ "The poor old captain is out of his head."
+
+ But from morn to noon, and from noon to night,
+ He toiled at his task with main and might;
+
+ And when at last, from the loosened earth,
+ Under his spade the stream gushed forth,
+
+ And fast as he climbed to his deep well's brim,
+ The water he dug for followed him,
+
+ He shouted for joy: "I have kept my word,
+ And here is the well I promised the Lord!"
+
+ The long years came and the long years went,
+ And he sat by his roadside well content;
+
+ He watched the travellers, heat-oppressed,
+ Pause by the way to drink and rest,
+
+ And the sweltering horses dip, as they drank,
+ Their nostrils deep in the cool, sweet tank,
+
+ And grateful at heart, his memory went
+ Back to that waterless Orient,
+
+ And the blessed answer of prayer, which came
+ To the earth of iron and sky of flame.
+
+ And when a wayfarer weary and hot,
+ Kept to the mid road, pausing not
+
+ For the well's refreshing, he shook his head;
+ "He don't know the value of water," he said;
+
+ "Had he prayed for a drop, as I have done,
+ In the desert circle of sand and sun,
+
+ "He would drink and rest, and go home to tell
+ That God's best gift is the wayside well!"
+
+
+
+
+AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION.
+
+The substance of these lines, hastily pencilled several years ago, I
+find among such of my unprinted scraps as have escaped the waste-basket
+and the fire. In transcribing it I have made some changes, additions,
+and omissions.
+
+
+ On these green banks, where falls too soon
+ The shade of Autumn's afternoon,
+ The south wind blowing soft and sweet,
+ The water gliding at nay feet,
+ The distant northern range uplit
+ By the slant sunshine over it,
+ With changes of the mountain mist
+ From tender blush to amethyst,
+ The valley's stretch of shade and gleam
+ Fair as in Mirza's Bagdad dream,
+ With glad young faces smiling near
+ And merry voices in my ear,
+ I sit, methinks, as Hafiz might
+ In Iran's Garden of Delight.
+ For Persian roses blushing red,
+ Aster and gentian bloom instead;
+ For Shiraz wine, this mountain air;
+ For feast, the blueberries which I share
+ With one who proffers with stained hands
+ Her gleanings from yon pasture lands,
+ Wild fruit that art and culture spoil,
+ The harvest of an untilled soil;
+ And with her one whose tender eyes
+ Reflect the change of April skies,
+ Midway 'twixt child and maiden yet,
+ Fresh as Spring's earliest violet;
+ And one whose look and voice and ways
+ Make where she goes idyllic days;
+ And one whose sweet, still countenance
+ Seems dreamful of a child's romance;
+ And others, welcome as are these,
+ Like and unlike, varieties
+ Of pearls on nature's chaplet strung,
+ And all are fair, for all are young.
+ Gathered from seaside cities old,
+ From midland prairie, lake, and wold,
+ From the great wheat-fields, which might feed
+ The hunger of a world at need,
+ In healthful change of rest and play
+ Their school-vacations glide away.
+
+ No critics these: they only see
+ An old and kindly friend in me,
+ In whose amused, indulgent look
+ Their innocent mirth has no rebuke.
+ They scarce can know my rugged rhymes,
+ The harsher songs of evil times,
+ Nor graver themes in minor keys
+ Of life's and death's solemnities;
+ But haply, as they bear in mind
+ Some verse of lighter, happier kind,--
+ Hints of the boyhood of the man,
+ Youth viewed from life's meridian,
+ Half seriously and half in play
+ My pleasant interviewers pay
+ Their visit, with no fell intent
+ Of taking notes and punishment.
+
+ As yonder solitary pine
+ Is ringed below with flower and vine,
+ More favored than that lonely tree,
+ The bloom of girlhood circles me.
+ In such an atmosphere of youth
+ I half forget my age's truth;
+ The shadow of my life's long date
+ Runs backward on the dial-plate,
+ Until it seems a step might span
+ The gulf between the boy and man.
+
+ My young friends smile, as if some jay
+ On bleak December's leafless spray
+ Essayed to sing the songs of May.
+ Well, let them smile, and live to know,
+ When their brown locks are flecked with snow,
+ 'T is tedious to be always sage
+ And pose the dignity of age,
+ While so much of our early lives
+ On memory's playground still survives,
+ And owns, as at the present hour,
+ The spell of youth's magnetic power.
+
+ But though I feel, with Solomon,
+ 'T is pleasant to behold the sun,
+ I would not if I could repeat
+ A life which still is good and sweet;
+ I keep in age, as in my prime,
+ A not uncheerful step with time,
+ And, grateful for all blessings sent,
+ I go the common way, content
+ To make no new experiment.
+ On easy terms with law and fate,
+ For what must be I calmly wait,
+ And trust the path I cannot see,--
+ That God is good sufficeth me.
+ And when at last on life's strange play
+ The curtain falls, I only pray
+ That hope may lose itself in truth,
+ And age in Heaven's immortal youth,
+ And all our loves and longing prove
+ The foretaste of diviner love.
+
+ The day is done. Its afterglow
+ Along the west is burning low.
+ My visitors, like birds, have flown;
+ I hear their voices, fainter grown,
+ And dimly through the dusk I see
+ Their 'kerchiefs wave good-night to me,--
+ Light hearts of girlhood, knowing nought
+ Of all the cheer their coming brought;
+ And, in their going, unaware
+ Of silent-following feet of prayer
+ Heaven make their budding promise good
+ With flowers of gracious womanhood!
+
+
+
+
+R. S. S., AT DEER ISLAND ON THE MERRIMAC.
+
+ Make, for he loved thee well, our Merrimac,
+ From wave and shore a low and long lament
+ For him, whose last look sought thee, as he went
+ The unknown way from which no step comes back.
+ And ye, O ancient pine-trees, at whose feet
+ He watched in life the sunset's reddening glow,
+ Let the soft south wind through your needles blow
+ A fitting requiem tenderly and sweet!
+ No fonder lover of all lovely things
+ Shall walk where once he walked, no smile more glad
+ Greet friends than his who friends in all men had,
+ Whose pleasant memory, to that Island clings,
+ Where a dear mourner in the home he left
+ Of love's sweet solace cannot be bereft.
+
+
+
+
+BURNING DRIFT-WOOD
+
+ Before my drift-wood fire I sit,
+ And see, with every waif I burn,
+ Old dreams and fancies coloring it,
+ And folly's unlaid ghosts return.
+
+ O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft
+ The enchanted sea on which they sailed,
+ Are these poor fragments only left
+ Of vain desires and hopes that failed?
+
+ Did I not watch from them the light
+ Of sunset on my towers in Spain,
+ And see, far off, uploom in sight
+ The Fortunate Isles I might not gain?
+
+ Did sudden lift of fog reveal
+ Arcadia's vales of song and spring,
+ And did I pass, with grazing keel,
+ The rocks whereon the sirens sing?
+
+ Have I not drifted hard upon
+ The unmapped regions lost to man,
+ The cloud-pitched tents of Prester John,
+ The palace domes of Kubla Khan?
+
+ Did land winds blow from jasmine flowers,
+ Where Youth the ageless Fountain fills?
+ Did Love make sign from rose blown bowers,
+ And gold from Eldorado's hills?
+
+ Alas! the gallant ships, that sailed
+ On blind Adventure's errand sent,
+ Howe'er they laid their courses, failed
+ To reach the haven of Content.
+
+ And of my ventures, those alone
+ Which Love had freighted, safely sped,
+ Seeking a good beyond my own,
+ By clear-eyed Duty piloted.
+
+ O mariners, hoping still to meet
+ The luck Arabian voyagers met,
+ And find in Bagdad's moonlit street,
+ Haroun al Raschid walking yet,
+
+ Take with you, on your Sea of Dreams,
+ The fair, fond fancies dear to youth.
+ I turn from all that only seems,
+ And seek the sober grounds of truth.
+
+ What matter that it is not May,
+ That birds have flown, and trees are bare,
+ That darker grows the shortening day,
+ And colder blows the wintry air!
+
+ The wrecks of passion and desire,
+ The castles I no more rebuild,
+ May fitly feed my drift-wood fire,
+ And warm the hands that age has chilled.
+
+ Whatever perished with my ships,
+ I only know the best remains;
+ A song of praise is on my lips
+ For losses which are now my gains.
+
+ Heap high my hearth! No worth is lost;
+ No wisdom with the folly dies.
+ Burn on, poor shreds, your holocaust
+ Shall be my evening sacrifice.
+
+ Far more than all I dared to dream,
+ Unsought before my door I see;
+ On wings of fire and steeds of steam
+ The world's great wonders come to me,
+
+ And holier signs, unmarked before,
+ Of Love to seek and Power to save,--
+ The righting of the wronged and poor,
+ The man evolving from the slave;
+
+ And life, no longer chance or fate,
+ Safe in the gracious Fatherhood.
+ I fold o'er-wearied hands and wait,
+ In full assurance of the good.
+
+ And well the waiting time must be,
+ Though brief or long its granted days,
+ If Faith and Hope and Charity
+ Sit by my evening hearth-fire's blaze.
+
+ And with them, friends whom Heaven has spared,
+ Whose love my heart has comforted,
+ And, sharing all my joys, has shared
+ My tender memories of the dead,--
+
+ Dear souls who left us lonely here,
+ Bound on their last, long voyage, to whom
+ We, day by day, are drawing near,
+ Where every bark has sailing room!
+
+ I know the solemn monotone
+ Of waters calling unto me
+ I know from whence the airs have blown
+ That whisper of the Eternal Sea.
+
+ As low my fires of drift-wood burn,
+ I hear that sea's deep sounds increase,
+ And, fair in sunset light, discern
+ Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace.
+
+
+
+
+O. W. HOLMES ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTH-DAY.
+
+ Climbing a path which leads back never more
+ We heard behind his footsteps and his cheer;
+ Now, face to face, we greet him standing here
+ Upon the lonely summit of Fourscore
+ Welcome to us, o'er whom the lengthened day
+ Is closing and the shadows colder grow,
+ His genial presence, like an afterglow,
+ Following the one just vanishing away.
+ Long be it ere the table shall be set
+ For the last breakfast of the Autocrat,
+ And love repeat with smiles and tears thereat
+ His own sweet songs that time shall not forget.
+ Waiting with us the call to come up higher,
+ Life is not less, the heavens are only higher!
+
+
+
+
+JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
+
+From purest wells of English undefiled
+None deeper drank than he, the New World's child,
+Who in the language of their farm-fields spoke
+The wit and wisdom of New England folk,
+Shaming a monstrous wrong. The world-wide laugh
+Provoked thereby might well have shaken half
+The walls of Slavery down, ere yet the ball
+And mine of battle overthrew them all.
+
+
+
+
+HAVERHILL. 1640-1890.
+
+Read at the Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of
+the City, July 2, 1890.
+
+
+ O river winding to the sea!
+ We call the old time back to thee;
+ From forest paths and water-ways
+ The century-woven veil we raise.
+
+ The voices of to-day are dumb,
+ Unheard its sounds that go and come;
+ We listen, through long-lapsing years,
+ To footsteps of the pioneers.
+
+ Gone steepled town and cultured plain,
+ The wilderness returns again,
+ The drear, untrodden solitude,
+ The gloom and mystery of the wood!
+
+ Once more the bear and panther prowl,
+ The wolf repeats his hungry howl,
+ And, peering through his leafy screen,
+ The Indian's copper face is seen.
+
+ We see, their rude-built huts beside,
+ Grave men and women anxious-eyed,
+ And wistful youth remembering still
+ Dear homes in England's Haverhill.
+
+ We summon forth to mortal view
+ Dark Passaquo and Saggahew,--
+ Wild chiefs, who owned the mighty sway
+ Of wizard Passaconaway.
+
+ Weird memories of the border town,
+ By old tradition handed down,
+ In chance and change before us pass
+ Like pictures in a magic glass,--
+
+ The terrors of the midnight raid,
+ The-death-concealing ambuscade,
+ The winter march, through deserts wild,
+ Of captive mother, wife, and child.
+
+ Ah! bleeding hands alone subdued
+ And tamed the savage habitude
+ Of forests hiding beasts of prey,
+ And human shapes as fierce as they.
+
+ Slow from the plough the woods withdrew,
+ Slowly each year the corn-lands grew;
+ Nor fire, nor frost, nor foe could kill
+ The Saxon energy of will.
+
+ And never in the hamlet's bound
+ Was lack of sturdy manhood found,
+ And never failed the kindred good
+ Of brave and helpful womanhood.
+
+ That hamlet now a city is,
+ Its log-built huts are palaces;
+ The wood-path of the settler's cow
+ Is Traffic's crowded highway now.
+
+ And far and wide it stretches still,
+ Along its southward sloping hill,
+ And overlooks on either hand
+ A rich and many-watered land.
+
+ And, gladdening all the landscape, fair
+ As Pison was to Eden's pair,
+ Our river to its valley brings
+ The blessing of its mountain springs.
+
+ And Nature holds with narrowing space,
+ From mart and crowd, her old-time grace,
+ And guards with fondly jealous arms
+ The wild growths of outlying farms.
+
+ Her sunsets on Kenoza fall,
+ Her autumn leaves by Saltonstall;
+ No lavished gold can richer make
+ Her opulence of hill and lake.
+
+ Wise was the choice which led out sires
+ To kindle here their household fires,
+ And share the large content of all
+ Whose lines in pleasant places fall.
+
+ More dear, as years on years advance,
+ We prize the old inheritance,
+ And feel, as far and wide we roam,
+ That all we seek we leave at home.
+
+ Our palms are pines, our oranges
+ Are apples on our orchard trees;
+ Our thrushes are our nightingales,
+ Our larks the blackbirds of our vales.
+
+ No incense which the Orient burns
+ Is sweeter than our hillside ferns;
+ What tropic splendor can outvie
+ Our autumn woods, our sunset sky?
+
+ If, where the slow years came and went,
+ And left not affluence, but content,
+ Now flashes in our dazzled eyes
+ The electric light of enterprise;
+
+ And if the old idyllic ease
+ Seems lost in keen activities,
+ And crowded workshops now replace
+ The hearth's and farm-field's rustic grace;
+
+
+ No dull, mechanic round of toil
+ Life's morning charm can quite despoil;
+ And youth and beauty, hand in hand,
+ Will always find enchanted land.
+
+ No task is ill where hand and brain
+ And skill and strength have equal gain,
+ And each shall each in honor hold,
+ And simple manhood outweigh gold.
+
+ Earth shall be near to Heaven when all
+ That severs man from man shall fall,
+ For, here or there, salvation's plan
+ Alone is love of God and man.
+
+ O dwellers by the Merrimac,
+ The heirs of centuries at your back,
+ Still reaping where you have not sown,
+ A broader field is now your own.
+
+ Hold fast your Puritan heritage,
+ But let the free thought of the age
+ Its light and hope and sweetness add
+ To the stern faith the fathers had.
+
+ Adrift on Time's returnless tide,
+ As waves that follow waves, we glide.
+ God grant we leave upon the shore
+ Some waif of good it lacked before;
+
+ Some seed, or flower, or plant of worth,
+ Some added beauty to the earth;
+ Some larger hope, some thought to make
+ The sad world happier for its sake.
+
+ As tenants of uncertain stay,
+ So may we live our little day
+ That only grateful hearts shall fill
+ The homes we leave in Haverhill.
+
+ The singer of a farewell rhyme,
+ Upon whose outmost verge of time
+ The shades of night are falling down,
+ I pray, God bless the good old town!
+
+
+
+
+TO G. G. AN AUTOGRAPH.
+
+The daughter of Daniel Gurteen, Esq., delegate from Haverhill, England,
+to the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary celebration of Haverhill,
+Massachusetts. The Rev. John Ward of the former place and many of his
+old parishioners were the pioneer settlers of the new town on the
+Merrimac.
+
+
+ Graceful in name and in thyself, our river
+ None fairer saw in John Ward's pilgrim flock,
+ Proof that upon their century-rooted stock
+ The English roses bloom as fresh as ever.
+
+ Take the warm welcome of new friends with thee,
+ And listening to thy home's familiar chime
+ Dream that thou hearest, with it keeping time,
+ The bells on Merrimac sound across the sea.
+
+ Think of our thrushes, when the lark sings clear,
+ Of our sweet Mayflowers when the daisies bloom;
+ And bear to our and thy ancestral home
+ The kindly greeting of its children here.
+
+ Say that our love survives the severing strain;
+ That the New England, with the Old, holds fast
+ The proud, fond memories of a common past;
+ Unbroken still the ties of blood remain!
+
+
+
+
+INSCRIPTION
+
+For the bass-relief by Preston Powers, carved upon the huge boulder in
+Denver Park, Col., and representing the Last Indian and the Last Bison.
+
+ The eagle, stooping from yon snow-blown peaks,
+ For the wild hunter and the bison seeks,
+ In the changed world below; and finds alone
+ Their graven semblance in the eternal stone.
+
+
+
+
+LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.
+
+Inscription on her Memorial Tablet in Christ Church at Hartford, Conn.
+
+ She sang alone, ere womanhood had known
+ The gift of song which fills the air to-day
+ Tender and sweet, a music all her own
+ May fitly linger where she knelt to pray.
+
+
+
+
+MILTON
+
+Inscription on the Memorial Window in St. Margaret's Church,
+Westminster, the gift of George W. Childs, of America.
+
+ The new world honors him whose lofty plea
+ For England's freedom made her own more sure,
+ Whose song, immortal as its theme, shall be
+ Their common freehold while both worlds endure.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIRTHDAY WREATH
+
+December 17, 1891.
+
+
+ Blossom and greenness, making all
+ The winter birthday tropical,
+ And the plain Quaker parlors gay,
+ Have gone from bracket, stand, and wall;
+ We saw them fade, and droop, and fall,
+ And laid them tenderly away.
+
+ White virgin lilies, mignonette,
+ Blown rose, and pink, and violet,
+ A breath of fragrance passing by;
+ Visions of beauty and decay,
+ Colors and shapes that could not stay,
+ The fairest, sweetest, first to die.
+
+ But still this rustic wreath of mine,
+ Of acorned oak and needled pine,
+ And lighter growths of forest lands,
+ Woven and wound with careful pains,
+ And tender thoughts, and prayers, remains,
+ As when it dropped from love's dear hands.
+
+ And not unfitly garlanded,
+ Is he, who, country-born and bred,
+ Welcomes the sylvan ring which gives
+ A feeling of old summer days,
+ The wild delight of woodland ways,
+ The glory of the autumn leaves.
+
+ And, if the flowery meed of song
+ To other bards may well belong,
+ Be his, who from the farm-field spoke
+ A word for Freedom when her need
+ Was not of dulcimer and reed.
+ This Isthmian wreath of pine and oak.
+
+
+
+
+THE WIND OF MARCH.
+
+ Up from the sea, the wild north wind is blowing
+ Under the sky's gray arch;
+ Smiling, I watch the shaken elm-boughs, knowing
+ It is the wind of March.
+
+ Between the passing and the coming season,
+ This stormy interlude
+ Gives to our winter-wearied hearts a reason
+ For trustful gratitude.
+
+ Welcome to waiting ears its harsh forewarning
+ Of light and warmth to come,
+ The longed-for joy of Nature's Easter morning,
+ The earth arisen in bloom.
+
+ In the loud tumult winter's strength is breaking;
+ I listen to the sound,
+ As to a voice of resurrection, waking
+ To life the dead, cold ground.
+
+ Between these gusts, to the soft lapse I hearken
+ Of rivulets on their way;
+ I see these tossed and naked tree-tops darken
+ With the fresh leaves of May.
+
+ This roar of storm, this sky so gray and lowering
+ Invite the airs of Spring,
+ A warmer sunshine over fields of flowering,
+ The bluebird's song and wing.
+
+ Closely behind, the Gulf's warm breezes follow
+ This northern hurricane,
+ And, borne thereon, the bobolink and swallow
+ Shall visit us again.
+
+ And, in green wood-paths, in the kine-fed pasture
+ And by the whispering rills,
+ Shall flowers repeat the lesson of the Master,
+ Taught on his Syrian hills.
+
+ Blow, then, wild wind! thy roar shall end in singing,
+ Thy chill in blossoming;
+ Come, like Bethesda's troubling angel, bringing
+ The healing of the Spring.
+
+
+
+
+BETWEEN THE GATES.
+
+ Between the gates of birth and death
+ An old and saintly pilgrim passed,
+ With look of one who witnesseth
+ The long-sought goal at last.
+
+ O thou whose reverent feet have found
+ The Master's footprints in thy way,
+ And walked thereon as holy ground,
+ A boon of thee I pray.
+
+ "My lack would borrow thy excess,
+ My feeble faith the strength of thine;
+ I need thy soul's white saintliness
+ To hide the stains of mine.
+
+ "The grace and favor else denied
+ May well be granted for thy sake."
+ So, tempted, doubting, sorely tried,
+ A younger pilgrim spake.
+
+ "Thy prayer, my son, transcends my gift;
+ No power is mine," the sage replied,
+ "The burden of a soul to lift
+ Or stain of sin to hide.
+
+ "Howe'er the outward life may seem,
+ For pardoning grace we all must pray;
+ No man his brother can redeem
+ Or a soul's ransom pay.
+
+ "Not always age is growth of good;
+ Its years have losses with their gain;
+ Against some evil youth withstood
+ Weak hands may strive in vain.
+
+ "With deeper voice than any speech
+ Of mortal lips from man to man,
+ What earth's unwisdom may not teach
+ The Spirit only can.
+
+ "Make thou that holy guide thine own,
+ And following where it leads the way,
+ The known shall lapse in the unknown
+ As twilight into day.
+
+ "The best of earth shall still remain,
+ And heaven's eternal years shall prove
+ That life and death, and joy and pain,
+ Are ministers of Love."
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER.
+
+ Summer's last sun nigh unto setting shines
+ Through yon columnar pines,
+ And on the deepening shadows of the lawn
+ Its golden lines are drawn.
+
+ Dreaming of long gone summer days like this,
+ Feeling the wind's soft kiss,
+ Grateful and glad that failing ear and sight
+ Have still their old delight,
+
+ I sit alone, and watch the warm, sweet day
+ Lapse tenderly away;
+ And, wistful, with a feeling of forecast,
+ I ask, "Is this the last?
+
+ "Will nevermore for me the seasons run
+ Their round, and will the sun
+ Of ardent summers yet to come forget
+ For me to rise and set?"
+
+ Thou shouldst be here, or I should be with thee
+ Wherever thou mayst be,
+ Lips mute, hands clasped, in silences of speech
+ Each answering unto each.
+
+ For this still hour, this sense of mystery far
+ Beyond the evening star,
+ No words outworn suffice on lip or scroll:
+ The soul would fain with soul
+
+ Wait, while these few swift-passing days fulfil
+ The wise-disposing Will,
+ And, in the evening as at morning, trust
+ The All-Merciful and Just.
+
+ The solemn joy that soul-communion feels
+ Immortal life reveals;
+ And human love, its prophecy and sign,
+ Interprets love divine.
+
+ Come then, in thought, if that alone may be,
+ O friend! and bring with thee
+ Thy calm assurance of transcendent Spheres
+ And the Eternal Years!
+
+ August 31, 1890.
+
+
+
+
+TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
+
+8TH Mo. 29TH, 1892.
+
+This, the last of Mr. Whittier's poems, was written but a few weeks
+before his death.
+
+ Among the thousands who with hail and cheer
+ Will welcome thy new year,
+ How few of all have passed, as thou and I,
+ So many milestones by!
+
+ We have grown old together; we have seen,
+ Our youth and age between,
+ Two generations leave us, and to-day
+ We with the third hold way,
+
+ Loving and loved. If thought must backward run
+ To those who, one by one,
+ In the great silence and the dark beyond
+ Vanished with farewells fond,
+
+ Unseen, not lost; our grateful memories still
+ Their vacant places fill,
+ And with the full-voiced greeting of new friends
+ A tenderer whisper blends.
+
+ Linked close in a pathetic brotherhood
+ Of mingled ill and good,
+ Of joy and grief, of grandeur and of shame,
+ For pity more than blame,--
+
+ The gift is thine the weary world to make
+ More cheerful for thy sake,
+ Soothing the ears its Miserere pains,
+ With the old Hellenic strains,
+
+ Lighting the sullen face of discontent
+ With smiles for blessings sent.
+ Enough of selfish wailing has been had,
+ Thank God! for notes more glad.
+
+ Life is indeed no holiday; therein
+ Are want, and woe, and sin,
+ Death and its nameless fears, and over all
+ Our pitying tears must fall.
+
+ Sorrow is real; but the counterfeit
+ Which folly brings to it,
+ We need thy wit and wisdom to resist,
+ O rarest Optimist!
+
+ Thy hand, old friend! the service of our days,
+ In differing moods and ways,
+ May prove to those who follow in our train
+ Not valueless nor vain.
+
+ Far off, and faint as echoes of a dream,
+ The songs of boyhood seem,
+ Yet on our autumn boughs, unflown with spring,
+ The evening thrushes sing.
+
+ The hour draws near, howe'er delayed and late,
+ When at the Eternal Gate
+ We leave the words and works we call our own,
+ And lift void hands alone
+
+ For love to fill. Our nakedness of soul
+ Brings to that Gate no toll;
+ Giftless we come to Him, who all things gives,
+ And live because He lives.
+
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME V. MARGARET SMITH'S JOURNAL TALES AND SKETCHES
+
+
+The intelligent reader of the following record cannot fail to notice
+occasional inaccuracies in respect to persons, places, and dates; and,
+as a matter of course, will make due allowance for the prevailing
+prejudices and errors of the period to which it relates. That there are
+passages indicative of a comparatively recent origin, and calculated to
+cast a shade of doubt over the entire narrative, the Editor would be the
+last to deny, notwithstanding its general accordance with historical
+verities and probabilities. Its merit consists mainly in the fact that
+it presents a tolerably lifelike picture of the Past, and introduces us
+familiarly to the hearths and homes of New England in the seventeenth
+century.
+
+A full and accurate account of Secretary Rawson and his family is about
+to be published by his descendants, to which the reader is referred who
+wishes to know more of the personages who figure prominently in this
+Journal.
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+
+
+MARGARET SMITH'S JOURNAL IN THE PROVINCE OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY, 1678-9
+
+ TALES AND SKETCHES
+
+ MY SUMMER WITH DR. SINGLETARY: A FRAGMENT
+
+ THE LITTLE IRON SOLDIER
+ PASSACONAWAY
+ THE OPIUM EATER
+ THE PROSELYTES
+ DAVID MATSON
+ THE FISH I DID N'T CATCH
+ YANKEE GYPSIES
+ THE TRAINING
+ THE CITY OF A DAY
+ PATUCKET FALLS
+ FIRST DAY IN LOWELL
+ THE LIGHTING UP
+ TAKING COMFORT
+ CHARMS AND FAIRY FAITH
+ MAGICIANS AND WITCH FOLK
+ THE BEAUTIFUL
+ THE WORLD'S END
+ THE HEROINE OF LONG POINT
+
+
+
+
+
+MARGARET SMITH'S JOURNAL IN THE PROVINCE OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY 1678-9.
+
+
+BOSTON, May 8, 1678.
+
+I remember I did promise my kind Cousin Oliver (whom I pray God to have
+always in his keeping), when I parted with him nigh unto three months
+ago, at mine Uncle Grindall's, that, on coming to this new country,
+I would, for his sake and perusal, keep a little journal of whatsoever
+did happen both unto myself and unto those with whom I might sojourn;
+as also, some account of the country and its marvels, and mine own
+cogitations thereon. So I this day make a beginning of the same;
+albeit, as my cousin well knoweth, not from any vanity of authorship,
+or because of any undue confiding in my poor ability to edify one justly
+held in repute among the learned, but because my heart tells me that
+what I write, be it ever so faulty, will be read by the partial eye of
+my kinsman, and not with the critical observance of the scholar, and
+that his love will not find it difficult to excuse what offends his
+clerkly judgment. And, to embolden me withal, I will never forget that
+I am writing for mine old playmate at hide-and-seek in the farm-house at
+Hilton,--the same who used to hunt after flowers for me in the spring,
+and who did fill my apron with hazel-nuts in the autumn, and who was
+then, I fear, little wiser than his still foolish cousin, who, if she
+hath not since learned so many new things as himself, hath perhaps
+remembered more of the old. Therefore, without other preface, I will
+begin my record.
+
+Of my voyage out I need not write, as I have spoken of it in my letters
+already, and it greatly irks me to think of it. Oh, a very long, dismal
+time of sickness and great discomforts, and many sad thoughts of all
+I had left behind, and fears of all I was going to meet in the New
+England! I can liken it only to an ugly dream. When we got at last
+to Boston, the sight of the land and trees, albeit they were exceeding
+bleak and bare (it being a late season, and nipping cold), was like unto
+a vision of a better world. As we passed the small wooded islands,
+which make the bay very pleasant, and entered close upon the town, and
+saw the houses; and orchards, and meadows, and the hills beyond covered
+with a great growth of wood, my brother, lifting up both of his hands,
+cried out, "How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy habitations, O
+Israel!" and for my part I did weep for joy and thankfulness of heart,
+that God had brought us safely to so fair a haven. Uncle and Aunt
+Rawson met us on the wharf, and made us very comfortable at their house,
+which is about half a mile from the water-side, at the foot of a hill,
+with an oaken forest behind it, to shelter it from the north wind, which
+is here very piercing. Uncle is Secretary of the Massachusetts, and
+spends a great part of his time in town; and his wife and family are
+with him in the winter season, but they spend their summers at his
+plantation on the Merrimac River, in Newbury. His daughter, Rebecca,
+is just about my age, very tall and lady-looking; she is like her
+brother John, who was at Uncle Hilton's last year. She hath, moreover,
+a pleasant wit, and hath seen much goodly company, being greatly admired
+by the young men of family and distinction in the Province. She hath
+been very kind to me, telling me that she looked upon me as a sister.
+I have been courteously entertained, moreover, by many of the principal
+people, both of the reverend clergy and the magistracy. Nor must I
+forbear to mention a visit which I paid with Uncle and Aunt Rawson at
+the house of an aged magistrate of high esteem and influence in these
+parts. He saluted me courteously, and made inquiries concerning our
+family, and whether I had been admitted into the Church. On my telling
+him that I had not, he knit his brows, and looked at me very sternly.
+
+"Mr. Rawson," said he, "your niece, I fear me, has much more need of
+spiritual adorning than of such gewgaws as these," and took hold of my
+lace ruff so hard that I heard the stitches break; and then he pulled
+out my sleeves, to see how wide they were, though they were only half an
+ell. Madam ventured to speak a word to encourage me, for she saw I was
+much abashed and flustered, yet he did not heed her, but went on talking
+very loud against the folly and the wasteful wantonness of the times.
+Poor Madam is a quiet, sickly-looking woman, and seems not a little in
+awe of her husband, at the which I do not marvel, for he hath a very
+impatient, forbidding way with him, and, I must say, seemed to carry
+himself harshly at times towards her. Uncle Rawson says he has had much
+to try his temper; that there have been many and sore difficulties in
+Church as well as State; and he hath bitter enemies, in some of the
+members of the General Court, who count him too severe with the Quakers
+and other disturbers and ranters. I told him it was no doubt true; but
+that I thought it a bad use of the Lord's chastenings to abuse one's
+best friends for the wrongs done by enemies; and, that to be made to
+atone for what went ill in Church or State, was a kind of vicarious
+suffering that, if I was in Madam's place, I should not bear with half
+her patience and sweetness.
+
+
+
+Ipswitch, near Agawam, May 12.
+
+We set out day before yesterday on our journey to Newbury. There were
+eight of us,--Rebecca Rawson and her sister, Thomas Broughton, his wife,
+and their man-servant, my brother Leonard and myself, and young Robert
+Pike, of Newbury, who had been to Boston on business, his father having
+great fisheries in the river as well as the sea. He is, I can perceive,
+a great admirer of my cousin, and indeed not without reason; for she
+hath in mind and person, in her graceful carriage and pleasant
+discourse, and a certain not unpleasing waywardness, as of a merry
+child, that which makes her company sought of all. Our route the first
+day lay through the woods and along the borders of great marshes and
+meadows on the seashore. We came to Linne at night, and stopped at the
+house of a kinsman of Robert Pike's,--a man of some substance and note
+in that settlement. We were tired and hungry, and the supper of warm
+Indian bread and sweet milk relished quite as well as any I ever ate in
+the Old Country. The next day we went on over a rough road to Wenham,
+through Salem, which is quite a pleasant town. Here we stopped until
+this morning, when we again mounted our horses, and reached this place,
+after a smart ride of three hours. The weather in the morning was warm
+and soft as our summer days at home; and, as we rode through the woods,
+where the young leaves were fluttering, and the white blossoms of the
+wind-flowers, and the blue violets and the yellow blooming of the
+cowslips in the low grounds, were seen on either hand, and the birds all
+the time making a great and pleasing melody in the branches, I was glad
+of heart as a child, and thought if my beloved friends and Cousin Oliver
+were only with us, I could never wish to leave so fair a country.
+
+Just before we reached Agawam, as I was riding a little before my
+companions, I was startled greatly by the sight of an Indian. He was
+standing close to the bridle-path, his half-naked body partly hidden by
+a clump of white birches, through which he looked out on me with eyes
+like two live coals. I cried for my brother and turned my horse, when
+Robert Pike came up and bid me be of cheer, for he knew the savage, and
+that he was friendly. Whereupon, he bade him come out of the bushes,
+which he did, after a little parley. He was a tall man, of very fair
+and comely make, and wore a red woollen blanket with beads and small
+clam-shells jingling about it. His skin was swarthy, not black like a
+Moor or Guinea-man, but of a color not unlike that of tarnished copper
+coin. He spake but little, and that in his own tongue, very harsh and
+strange-sounding to my ear. Robert Pike tells me that he is Chief of
+the Agawams, once a great nation in these parts, but now quite small and
+broken. As we rode on, and from the top of a hill got a fair view of
+the great sea off at the east, Robert Pike bade me notice a little bay,
+around which I could see four or five small, peaked huts or tents,
+standing just where the white sands of the beach met the green line of
+grass and bushes of the uplands.
+
+"There," said he, "are their summer-houses, which they build near unto
+their fishing-grounds and corn-fields. In the winter they go far back
+into the wilderness, where game is plenty of all kinds, and there build
+their wigwams in warm valleys thick with trees, which do serve to
+shelter them from the winds."
+
+"Let us look into them," said I to Cousin Rebecca; "it seems but a
+stone's throw from our way."
+
+She tried to dissuade me, by calling them a dirty, foul people; but
+seeing I was not to be put off, she at last consented, and we rode aside
+down the hill, the rest following. On our way we had the misfortune to
+ride over their corn-field; at the which, two or three women and as many
+boys set up a yell very hideous to hear; whereat Robert Pike came up,
+and appeased them by giving them some money and a drink of Jamaica
+spirits, with which they seemed vastly pleased. I looked into one of
+their huts; it was made of poles like unto a tent, only it was covered
+with the silver-colored bark of the birch, instead of hempen stuff. A
+bark mat, braided of many exceeding brilliant colors, covered a goodly
+part of the space inside; and from the poles we saw fishes hanging, and
+strips of dried meat. On a pile of skins in the corner sat a young
+woman with a child a-nursing; they both looked sadly wild and neglected;
+yet had she withal a pleasant face, and as she bent over her little one,
+her long, straight, and black hair falling over him, and murmuring a low
+and very plaintive melody, I forgot everything save that she was a woman
+and a mother, and I felt my heart greatly drawn towards her. So, giving
+my horse in charge, I ventured in to her, speaking as kindly as I could,
+and asking to see her child. She understood me, and with a smile held
+up her little papoose, as she called him,--who, to say truth, I could
+not call very pretty. He seemed to have a wild, shy look, like the
+offspring of an untamed, animal. The woman wore a blanket, gaudily
+fringed, and she had a string of beads on her neck. She took down a
+basket, woven of white and red willows, and pressed me to taste of her
+bread; which I did, that I might not offend her courtesy by refusing.
+It was not of ill taste, although so hard one could scarcely bite it,
+and was made of corn meal unleavened, mixed with a dried berry, which
+gives it a sweet flavor. She told me, in her broken way, that the whole
+tribe now numbered only twenty-five men and women, counting out the
+number very fast with yellow grains of corn, on the corner of her
+blanket. She was, she said, the youngest woman in the tribe; and her
+husband, Peckanaminet, was the Indian we had met in the bridlepath. I
+gave her a pretty piece of ribbon, and an apron for the child; and she
+thanked me in her manner, going with us on our return to the path; and
+when I had ridden a little onward, I saw her husband running towards us;
+so, stopping my horse, I awaited until he came up, when he offered me a
+fine large fish, which he had just caught, in acknowledgment, as I
+judged, of my gift to his wife. Rebecca and Mistress Broughton laughed,
+and bid him take the thing away; but I would not suffer it, and so
+Robert Pike took it, and brought it on to our present tarrying place,
+where truly it hath made a fair supper for us all. These poor heathen
+people seem not so exceeding bad as they have been reported; they be
+like unto ourselves, only lacking our knowledge and opportunities,
+which, indeed, are not our own to boast of, but gifts of God, calling
+for humble thankfulness, and daily prayer and watchfulness, that they be
+rightly improved.
+
+
+
+Newbery on the Merrimac, May 14, 1678.
+
+We were hardly on our way yesterday, from Agawam, when a dashing young
+gallant rode up very fast behind us. He was fairly clad in rich stuffs,
+and rode a nag of good mettle. He saluted us with much ease and
+courtliness, offering especial compliments to Rebecca, to whom he seemed
+well known, and who I thought was both glad and surprised at his coming.
+As I rode near, she said it gave her great joy to bring to each other's
+acquaintance, Sir Thomas Hale, a good friend of her father's, and her
+cousin Margaret, who, like himself, was a new-comer. He replied, that
+he should look with favor on any one who was near to her in friendship
+or kindred; and, on learning my father's name, said he had seen him at
+his uncle's, Sir Matthew Hale's, many years ago, and could vouch for him
+as a worthy man. After some pleasant and merry discoursing with us, he
+and my brother fell into converse upon the state of affairs in the
+Colony, the late lamentable war with the Narragansett and Pequod
+Indians, together with the growth of heresy and schism in the churches,
+which latter he did not scruple to charge upon the wicked policy of the
+home government in checking the wholesome severity of the laws here
+enacted against the schemers and ranters. "I quite agree," said he,
+"with Mr. Rawson, that they should have hanged ten where they did one."
+Cousin Rebecca here said she was sure her father was now glad the laws
+were changed, and that he had often told her that, although the
+condemned deserved their punishment, he was not sure that it was the
+best way to put down the heresy. If she was ruler, she continued, in
+her merry way, she would send all the schemers and ranters, and all the
+sour, crabbed, busybodies in the churches, off to Rhode Island, where
+all kinds of folly, in spirituals as well as temporals, were permitted,
+and one crazy head could not reproach another.
+
+Falling back a little, and waiting for Robert Pike and Cousin Broughton
+to come up, I found them marvelling at the coming of the young
+gentleman, who it did seem had no special concernment in these parts,
+other than his acquaintance with Rebecca, and his desire of her company.
+Robert Pike, as is natural, looks upon him with no great partiality, yet
+he doth admit him to be wellbred, and of much and varied knowledge,
+acquired by far travel as well as study. I must say, I like not his
+confident and bold manner and bearing toward my fair cousin; and he hath
+more the likeness of a cast-off dangler at the court, than of a modest
+and seemly country gentleman, of a staid and well-ordered house.
+Mistress Broughton says he was not at first accredited in Boston, but
+that her father, and Mr. Atkinson, and the chief people there now, did
+hold him to be not only what he professeth, as respecteth his
+gentlemanly lineage, but also learned and ingenious, and well-versed in
+the Scriptures, and the works of godly writers, both of ancient and
+modern time. I noted that Robert was very silent during the rest of our
+journey, and seemed abashed and troubled in the presence of the gay
+gentleman; for, although a fair and comely youth, and of good family and
+estate, and accounted solid and judicious beyond his years, he does,
+nevertheless, much lack the ease and ready wit with which the latter
+commendeth himself to my sweet kinswoman. We crossed about noon a broad
+stream near to the sea, very deep and miry, so that we wetted our hose
+and skirts somewhat; and soon, to our great joy, beheld the pleasant
+cleared fields and dwellings of the settlement, stretching along for a
+goodly distance; while, beyond all, the great ocean rolled, blue and
+cold, under an high easterly wind. Passing through a broad path, with
+well-tilled fields on each hand, where men were busy planting corn, and
+young maids dropping the seed, we came at length to Uncle Rawson's
+plantation, looking wellnigh as fair and broad as the lands of Hilton
+Grange, with a good frame house, and large barns thereon. Turning up
+the lane, we were met by the housekeeper, a respectable kinswoman, who
+received us with great civility. Sir Thomas, although pressed to stay,
+excused himself for the time, promising to call on the morrow, and rode
+on to the ordinary. I was sadly tired with my journey, and was glad to
+be shown to a chamber and a comfortable bed.
+
+I was awakened this morning by the pleasant voice of my cousin, who
+shared my bed. She had arisen and thrown open the window looking
+towards the sunrising, and the air came in soft and warm, and laden with
+the sweets of flowers and green-growing things. And when I had gotten
+myself ready, I sat with her at the window, and I think I may say it was
+with a feeling of praise and thanksgiving that mine eyes wandered up and
+down over the green meadows, and corn-fields, and orchards of my new
+home. Where, thought I, foolish one, be the terrors of the wilderness,
+which troubled thy daily thoughts and thy nightly dreams! Where be the
+gloomy shades, and desolate mountains, and the wild beasts, with their
+dismal howlings and rages! Here all looked peaceful, and bespoke
+comfort and contentedness. Even the great woods which climbed up the
+hills in the distance looked thin and soft, with their faint young
+leaves a yellowish-gray, intermingled with pale, silvery shades,
+indicating, as my cousin saith, the different kinds of trees, some of
+which, like the willow, do put on their leaves early, and others late,
+like the oak, with which the whole region aboundeth. A sweet, quiet
+picture it was, with a warm sun, very bright and clear, shining over it,
+and the great sea, glistening with the exceeding light, bounding the
+view of mine eyes, but bearing my thoughts, like swift ships, to the
+land of my birth, and so uniting, as it were, the New World with the
+Old. Oh, thought I, the merciful God, who reneweth the earth and maketh
+it glad and brave with greenery and flowers of various hues and smells,
+and causeth his south winds to blow and his rains to fall, that seed-
+time may not fail, doth even here, in the ends of his creation, prank
+and beautify the work of his hands, making the desert places to rejoice,
+and the wilderness to blossom as the rose. Verily his love is over
+all,--the Indian heathen as well as the English Christian. And what
+abundant cause for thanks have I, that I have been safely landed on a
+shore so fair and pleasant, and enabled to open mine eyes in peace and
+love on so sweet a May morning! And I was minded of a verse which I
+learned from my dear and honored mother when a child,--
+
+ "Teach me, my God, thy love to know,
+ That this new light, which now I see,
+ May both the work and workman show;
+ Then by the sunbeams I will climb to thee."
+
+When we went below, we found on the window seat which looketh to the
+roadway, a great bunch of flowers of many kinds, such as I had never
+seen in mine own country, very fresh, and glistening with the dew. Now,
+when Rebecca took them up, her sister said, "Nay, they are not Sir
+Thomas's gift, for young Pike hath just left them." Whereat, as I
+thought, she looked vexed, and ill at ease. "They are yours, then,
+Cousin Margaret," said she, rallying, "for Robert and you did ride aside
+all the way from Agawam, and he scarce spake to me the day long. I see
+I have lost mine old lover, and my little cousin hath found a new one.
+I shall write Cousin Oliver all about it."
+
+"Nay," said I, "old lovers are better than new; but I fear my sweet
+cousin hath not so considered It." She blushed, and looked aside, and
+for some space of time I did miss her smile, and she spake little.
+
+
+
+May 20.
+
+We had scarcely breakfasted, when him they Call Sir Thomas called on us,
+and with him came also a Mr. Sewall, and the minister of the church, Mr.
+Richardson, both of whom did cordially welcome home my cousins, and were
+civil to my brother and myself. Mr. Richardson and Leonard fell to
+conversing about the state of the Church; and Sir Thomas discoursed us
+in his lively way. After some little tarry, Mr. Sewall asked us to go
+with him to Deer's Island, a small way up the river, where he and Robert
+Pike had some men splitting staves for the Bermuda market. As the day
+was clear and warm, we did readily agree to go, and forthwith set out
+for the river, passing through the woods for nearly a half mile. When
+we came to the Merrimac, we found it a great and broad stream. We took
+a boat, and were rowed up the river, enjoying the pleasing view of the
+green banks, and the rocks hanging over the water, covered with bright
+mosses, and besprinkled with pale, white flowers. Mr. Sewall pointed
+out to us the different kinds of trees, and their nature and uses, and
+especially the sugar-tree, which is very beautiful in its leaf and
+shape, and from which the people of this country do draw a sap wellnigh
+as sweet as the juice of the Indian cane, making good treacle and sugar.
+Deer's Island hath rough, rocky shores, very high and steep, and is well
+covered with a great growth of trees, mostly evergreen pines and
+hemlocks which looked exceeding old. We found a good seat on the mossy
+trunk of one of these great trees, which had fallen from its extreme
+age, or from some violent blast of wind, from whence we could see the
+water breaking into white foam on the rocks, and hear the melodious
+sound of the wind in the leaves of the pines, and the singing of birds
+ever and anon; and lest this should seem too sad and lonely, we could
+also hear the sounds of the axes and beetles of the workmen, cleaving
+the timber not far off. It was not long before Robert Pike came up and
+joined us. He was in his working dress, and his face and hands were
+much discolored by the smut of the burnt logs, which Rebecca playfully
+remarking, he said there were no mirrors in the woods, and that must be
+his apology; that, besides, it did not become a plain man, like himself,
+who had to make his own fortune in the world, to try to imitate those
+who had only to open their mouths, to be fed like young robins, without
+trouble or toil. Such might go as brave as they would, if they would
+only excuse his necessity. I thought he spoke with some bitterness,
+which, indeed, was not without the excuse, that the manner of our gay
+young gentleman towards him savored much of pride and contemptuousness.
+My beloved cousin, who hath a good heart, and who, I must think, apart
+from the wealth and family of Sir Thomas, rather inclineth to her old
+friend and neighbor, spake cheerily and kindly to him, and besought me
+privately to do somewhat to help her remove his vexation. So we did
+discourse of many things very pleasantly. Mr. Richardson, on hearing
+Rebecca say that the Indians did take the melancholy noises of the
+pinetrees in the winds to be the voices of the Spirits of the woods,
+said that they always called to his mind the sounds in the mulberry-
+trees which the Prophet spake of. Hereupon Rebecca, who hath her memory
+well provided with divers readings, both of the poets and other writers,
+did cite very opportunely some ingenious lines, touching what the
+heathens do relate of the Sacred Tree of Dodona, the rustling of whose
+leaves the negro priestesses did hold to be the language of the gods.
+And a late writer, she said, had something in one of his pieces, which
+might well be spoken of the aged and dead tree-trunk, upon which we were
+sitting. And when we did all desire to know their import, she repeated
+them thus:--
+
+ "Sure thou didst flourish once, and many springs,
+ Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers,
+ Passed o'er thy head; many light hearts and wings,
+ Which now are dead, lodged in thy living towers."
+
+ "And still a new succession sings and flies,
+ Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shoot
+ Towards the old and still enduring skies,
+ While the low violet thriveth at their root."
+
+
+These lines, she said, were written by one Vaughn, a Brecknockshire
+Welsh Doctor of Medicine, who had printed a little book not many years
+ago. Mr. Richardson said the lines were good, but that he did hold the
+reading of ballads and the conceits of rhymers a waste of time, to say
+nothing worse. Sir Thomas hereat said that, as far as he could judge,
+the worthy folk of New England had no great temptation to that sin from
+their own poets, and did then, in a drolling tone, repeat some verses of
+the 137th Psalm, which he said were the best he had seen in the
+Cambridge Psalm Book:--
+
+ "The rivers of Babylon,
+ There when we did sit down,
+ Yea, even then we mourned when
+ We remembered Sion.
+
+ Our harp we did hang it amid
+ Upon the willow-tree;
+ Because there they that us away
+ Led to captivity!
+
+ Required of us a song, and thus
+ Asked mirth us waste who laid,
+ Sing us among a Sion's song
+ Unto us as then they said."
+
+"Nay, Sir Thomas," quoth Mr. Richardson, "it is not seemly to jest over
+the Word of God. The writers of our Book of Psalms in metre held
+rightly, that God's altar needs no polishing; and truly they have
+rendered the words of David into English verse with great fidelity."
+
+Our young gentleman, not willing to displeasure a man so esteemed as Mr.
+Richardson, here made an apology for his jesting, and said that, as to
+the Cambridge version, it was indeed faithful; and that it was no blame
+to uninspired men, that they did fall short of the beauties and richness
+of the Lord's Psalmist. It being now near noon, we crossed over the
+river, to where was a sweet spring of water, very clear and bright,
+running out upon the green bank. Now, as we stood thirsty, having no
+cup to drink from, seeing some people near, we called to them, and
+presently there came running to us a young and modest woman, with a
+bright pewter tankard, which she filled and gave us. I thought her
+sweet and beautiful, as Rebecca of old, at her father's fountain. She
+was about leaving, when Mr. Richardson said to her, it was a foul shame
+for one like her to give heed to the ranting of the Quakers, and bade
+her be a good girl, and come to the meeting.
+
+"Nay," said she, "I have been there often, to small profit. The spirit
+which thou persecutest testifieth against thee and thy meeting."
+
+Sir Thomas jestingly asked her if the spirit she spoke of was not such
+an one as possessed Mary Magdalen.
+
+"Or the swine of the Gadarenes?" asked Mr. Richardson.
+
+I did smile with the others, but was presently sorry for it; for the
+young maid answered not a word to this, but turning to Rebecca, she
+said, "Thy father hath been hard with us, but thou seemest kind and
+gentle, and I have heard of thy charities to the poor. The Lord keep
+thee, for thou walkest in slippery places; there is danger, and thou
+seest it not; thou trustest to the hearing of the ear and the seeing of
+the eye; the Lord alone seeth the deceitfulness and the guile of man;
+and if thou wilt cry mightily to Him, He can direct thee rightly."
+
+Her voice and manner were very weighty and solemn. I felt an awe come
+upon me, and Rebecca's countenance was troubled. As the maiden left us,
+the minister, looking after said, "There is a deal of poison under the
+fair outside of yonder vessel, which I fear is fitted for destruction."
+
+"Peggy Brewster is indeed under a delusion," answered Robert Pike, "but
+I know no harm of her. She is kind to all, even to them who evil
+entreat her."
+
+"Robert, Robert!" cried the minister, "I fear me you will follow your
+honored father, who has made himself of ill repute, by favoring these
+people."--"The Quaker hath bewitched him with her bright eyes, perhaps,"
+quoth Sir Thomas. "I would she had laid a spell on an uncivil tongue I
+wot of," answered Robert, angrily. Hereupon, Mr. Sewall proposed that
+we should return, and in making ready and getting to the boat, the
+matter was dropped.
+
+
+
+NEWBURY, June 1, 1678.
+
+To-day Sir Thomas took his leave of us, being about to go back to
+Boston. Cousin Rebecca is, I can see, much taken with his outside
+bravery and courtliness, yet she hath confessed to me that her sober
+judgment doth greatly incline her towards her old friend and neighbor,
+Robert Pike. She hath even said that she doubted not she could live a
+quieter and happier life with him than with such an one as Sir Thomas;
+and that the words of the Quaker maid, whom we met at the spring on the
+river side, had disquieted her not a little, inasmuch as they did seem
+to confirm her own fears and misgivings. But her fancy is so bedazzled
+with the goodly show of her suitor, that I much fear he can have her for
+the asking, especially as her father, to my knowledge, doth greatly
+favor him. And, indeed, by reason of her gracious manner, witty and
+pleasant discoursing, excellent breeding, and dignity, she would do no
+discredit to the choice of one far higher than this young gentleman in
+estate and rank.
+
+
+
+June 10.
+
+I went this morning with Rebecca to visit Elnathan Stone, a young
+neighbor, who has been lying sorely ill for a long time. He was a
+playmate of my cousin when a boy, and was thought to be of great promise
+as he grew up to manhood; but, engaging in the war with the heathen, he
+was wounded and taken captive by them, and after much suffering was
+brought back to his home a few months ago. On entering the house where
+he lay, we found his mother, a careworn and sad woman, spinning in the
+room by his bedside. A very great and bitter sorrow was depicted on her
+features; it was the anxious, unreconciled, and restless look of one who
+did feel herself tried beyond her patience, and might not be comforted.
+For, as I learned, she was a poor widow, who had seen her young daughter
+tomahawked by the Indians; and now her only son, the hope of her old
+age, was on his death-bed. She received us with small civility, telling
+Rebecca that it was all along of the neglect of the men in authority
+that her son had got his death in the wars, inasmuch as it was the want
+of suitable diet and clothing, rather than his wounds, which had brought
+him into his present condition. Now, as Uncle Rawson is one of the
+principal magistrates, my sweet cousin knew that the poor afflicted
+creature meant to reproach him; but her good heart did excuse and
+forgive the rudeness and distemper of one whom the Lord had sorely
+chastened. So she spake kindly and lovingly, and gave her sundry nice
+dainty fruits and comforting cordials, which she had got from Boston for
+the sick man. Then, as she came to his bedside, and took his hand
+lovingly in her own, he thanked her for her many kindnesses, and prayed
+God to bless her. He must have been a handsome lad in health, for he
+had a fair, smooth forehead, shaded with brown, curling hair, and large,
+blue eyes, very sweet and gentle in their look. He told us that he felt
+himself growing weaker, and that at times his bodily suffering was
+great. But through the mercy of his Saviour he had much peace of mind.
+He was content to leave all things in His hand. For his poor mother's
+sake, he said, more than for his own, he would like to get about once
+more; there were many things he would like to do for her, and for all
+who had befriended him; but he knew his Heavenly Father could do more
+and better for them, and he felt resigned to His will. He had, he said,
+forgiven all who ever wronged him, and he had now no feeling of anger or
+unkindness left towards any one, for all seemed kind to him beyond his
+deserts, and like brothers and sisters. He had much pity for the poor
+savages even, although he had suffered sorely at their hands; for he did
+believe that they had been often ill-used, and cheated, and otherwise
+provoked to take up arms against us. Hereupon, Goodwife Stone twirled
+her spindle very spitefully, and said she would as soon pity the Devil
+as his children. The thought of her mangled little girl, and of her
+dying son, did seem to overcome her, and she dropped her thread, and
+cried out with an exceeding bitter cry,--"Oh, the bloody heathen! Oh,
+my poor murdered Molly! Oh, my son, my son!"--"Nay, mother," said the
+sick man, reaching out his hand and taking hold of his mother's, with a
+sweet smile on his pale face,--"what does Christ tell us about loving
+our enemies, and doing good to them that do injure us? Let us forgive
+our fellow-creatures, for we have all need of God's forgiveness. I used
+to feel as mother does," he said, turning to us; "for I went into the
+war with a design to spare neither young nor old of the enemy.
+
+"But I thank God that even in that dark season my heart relented at the
+sight of the poor starving women and children, chased from place to
+place like partridges. Even the Indian fighters, I found, had sorrows
+of their own, and grievous wrongs to avenge; and I do believe, if we had
+from the first treated them as poor blinded brethren, and striven as
+hard to give them light and knowledge, as we have to cheat them in
+trade, and to get away their lands, we should have escaped many bloody
+wars, and won many precious souls to Christ."
+
+I inquired of him concerning his captivity. He was wounded, he told me,
+in a fight with the Sokokis Indians two years before. It was a hot
+skirmish in the woods; the English and the Indians now running forward,
+and then falling back, firing at each other from behind the trees. He
+had shot off all his powder, and, being ready to faint by reason of a
+wound in his knee, he was fain to sit down against an oak, from whence
+he did behold, with great sorrow and heaviness of heart, his companions
+overpowered by the number of their enemies, fleeing away and leaving him
+to his fate. The savages soon came to him with dreadful whoopings,
+brandishing their hatchets and their scalping-knives. He thereupon
+closed his eyes, expecting to be knocked in the head, and killed
+outright. But just then a noted chief coming up in great haste, bade
+him be of good cheer, for he was his prisoner, and should not be slain.
+He proved to be the famous Sagamore Squando, the chief man of the
+Sokokis.
+
+"And were you kindly treated by this chief?" asked Rebecca.
+
+"I suffered much in moving with him to the Sebago Lake, owing to my
+wound," he replied; "but the chief did all in his power to give me
+comfort, and he often shared with me his scant fare, choosing rather to
+endure hunger himself, than to see his son, as he called me, in want of
+food. And one night, when I did marvel at this kindness on his part, he
+told me that I had once done him a great service; asking me if I was not
+at Black Point, in a fishing vessel, the summer before? I told him I
+was. He then bade me remember the bad sailors who upset the canoe of a
+squaw, and wellnigh drowned her little child, and that I had threatened
+and beat them for it; and also how I gave the squaw a warm coat to wrap
+up the poor wet papoose. It was his squaw and child that I had
+befriended; and he told me that he had often tried to speak to me, and
+make known his gratitude therefor; and that he came once to the garrison
+at Sheepscot, where he saw me; but being fired at, notwithstanding his
+signs of peace and friendship, he was obliged to flee into the woods.
+He said the child died a few days after its evil treatment, and the
+thought of it made his heart bitter; that he had tried to live peaceably
+with the white men, but they had driven him into the war.
+
+"On one occasion," said the sick soldier, "as we lay side by side in his
+hut, on the shore of the Sebago Lake, Squando, about midnight, began to
+pray to his God very earnestly. And on my querying with him about it,
+he said he was greatly in doubt what to do, and had prayed for some sign
+of the Great Spirit's will concerning him. He then told me that some
+years ago, near the place where we then lay, he left his wigwam at
+night, being unable to sleep, by reason of great heaviness and distemper
+of mind. It was a full moon, and as he did walk to and fro, he saw a
+fair, tall man in a long black dress, standing in the light on the
+lake's shore, who spake to him and called him by name.
+
+"'Squando,' he said, and his voice was deep and solemn, like the wind in
+the hill pines, 'the God of the white man is the God of the Indian, and
+He is angry with his red children. He alone is able to make the corn
+grow before the frost, and to lead the fish up the rivers in the spring,
+and to fill the woods with deer and other game, and the ponds and
+meadows with beavers. Pray to Him always. Do not hunt on His day, nor
+let the squaws hoe the corn. Never taste of the strong fire-water, but
+drink only from the springs. It, is because the Indians do not worship
+Him, that He has brought the white men among them; but if they will pray
+like the white men, they will grow very great and strong, and their
+children born in this moon will live to see the English sail back in
+their great canoes, and leave the Indians all their fishing-places and
+hunting-grounds.'
+
+"When the strange man had thus spoken, Squando told me that he went
+straightway up to him, but found where he had stood only the shadow of
+a broken tree, which lay in the moon across the white sand of the shore.
+Then he knew it was a spirit, and he trembled, but was glad. Ever
+since, he told nee, he had prayed daily to the Great Spirit, had drank
+no rum, nor hunted on the Sabbath.
+
+"He said he did for a long time refuse to dig up his hatchet, and make
+war upon the whites, but that he could not sit idle in his wigwam, while
+his young men were gone upon their war-path. The spirit of his dead
+child did moreover speak to him from the land of souls, and chide him
+for not seeking revenge. Once, he told me, he had in a dream seen the
+child crying and moaning bitterly, and that when he inquired the cause
+of its grief, he was told that the Great Spirit was angry with its
+father, and would destroy him and his people unless he did join with the
+Eastern Indians to cut off the English."
+
+"I remember," said Rebecca, "of hearing my father speak of this
+Squando's kindness to a young maid taken captive some years ago at
+Presumpscot."
+
+"I saw her at Cocheco," said the sick man. "Squando found her in a sad
+plight, and scarcely alive, took her to his wigwam, where his squaw did
+lovingly nurse and comfort her; and when she was able to travel, he
+brought her to Major Waldron's, asking no ransom for her. He might have
+been made the fast friend of the English at that time, but he scarcely
+got civil treatment."
+
+"My father says that many friendly Indians, by the ill conduct of the
+traders, have been made our worst enemies," said Rebecca. "He thought
+the bringing in of the Mohawks to help us a sin comparable to that of
+the Jews, who looked for deliverance from the King of Babylon at the
+hands of the Egyptians."
+
+"They did nothing but mischief," said Elnathan Stone; "they killed our
+friends at Newichawannock, Blind Will and his family."
+
+Rebecca here asked him if he ever heard the verses writ by Mr. Sewall
+concerning the killing of Blind Will. And when he told her he had not,
+and would like to have her repeat them, if she could remember, she did
+recite them thus:--
+
+ "Blind Will of Newiehawannock!
+ He never will whoop again,
+ For his wigwam's burnt above him,
+ And his old, gray scalp is ta'en!
+
+ "Blind Will was the friend of white men,
+ On their errands his young men ran,
+ And he got him a coat and breeches,
+ And looked like a Christian man.
+
+ "Poor Will of Newiehawannock!
+ They slew him unawares,
+ Where he lived among his people,
+ Keeping Sabhath and saying prayers.
+
+ "Now his fields will know no harvest,
+ And his pipe is clean put out,
+ And his fine, brave coat and breeches
+ The Mohog wears about.
+
+ "Woe the day our rulers listened
+ To Sir Edmund's wicked plan,
+ Bringing down the cruel Mohogs
+ Who killed the poor old man.
+
+ "Oh! the Lord He will requite us;
+ For the evil we have done,
+ There'll be many a fair scalp drying
+ In the wind and in the sun!
+
+ "There'll be many a captive sighing,
+ In a bondage long and dire;
+ There'll be blood in many a corn-field,
+ And many a house a-fire.
+
+ "And the Papist priests the tidings
+ Unto all the tribes will send;
+ They'll point to Newiehawannock,--
+ 'So the English treat their friend!'
+
+ "Let the Lord's anointed servants
+ Cry aloud against this wrong,
+ Till Sir Edmund take his Mohogs
+ Back again where they belong.
+
+ "Let the maiden and the mother
+ In the nightly watching share,
+ While the young men guard the block-house,
+ And the old men kneel in prayer.
+
+ "Poor Will of Newiehawannock!
+ For thy sad and cruel fall,
+ And the bringing in of the Mohogs,
+ May the Lord forgive us all!"
+
+A young woman entered the house just as Rebecca finished the verses.
+She bore in her hands a pail of milk and a fowl neatly dressed, which
+she gave to Elnathan's mother, and, seeing strangers by his bedside, was
+about to go out, when he called to her and besought her to stay. As she
+came up and spoke to him, I knew her to be the maid we had met at the
+spring. The young man, with tears in his eyes, acknowledged her great
+kindness to him, at which she seemed troubled and abashed. A pure,
+sweet complexion she hath, and a gentle and loving look, full of
+innocence and sincerity. Rebecca seemed greatly disturbed, for she no
+doubt thought of the warning words of this maiden, when we were at the
+spring. After she had left, Goodwife Stone said she was sure she could
+not tell what brought that Quaker girl to her house so much, unless she
+meant to inveigle Elnathan; but, for her part, she would rather see him
+dead than live to bring reproach upon his family and the Church by
+following after the blasphemers. I ventured to tell her that I did look
+upon it as sheer kindness and love on the young woman's part; at which
+Elnathan seemed pleased, and said he could not doubt it, and that he did
+believe Peggy Brewster to be a good Christian, although sadly led astray
+by the Quakers. His mother said that, with all her meek looks, and kind
+words, she was full of all manner of pestilent heresies, and did remind
+her always of Satan in the shape of an angel of light.
+
+We went away ourselves soon after this, the sick man thanking us for our
+visit, and hoping that he should see us again. "Poor Elnathan," said
+Rebecca, as we walked home, "he will never go abroad again; but he is in
+such a good and loving frame of mind, that he needs not our pity, as one
+who is without hope."
+
+"He reminds me," I said, "of the comforting promise of Scripture, 'Thou
+wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.'"
+
+
+
+June 30, 1678.
+
+Mr. Rawson and Sir Thomas Hale came yesterday from Boston. I was
+rejoiced to see mine uncle, more especially as he brought for me a
+package of letters, and presents and tokens of remembrance from my
+friends on the other side of the water. As soon as I got them, I went
+up to my chamber, and, as I read of the health of those who are very
+dear to me, and who did still regard me with unchanged love, I wept in
+my great joy, and my heart overflowed in thankfulness. I read the 22d
+Psalm, and it did seem to express mine own feelings in view of the great
+mercies and blessings vouchsafed to me. "My head is anointed with oil;
+my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the
+days of my life."
+
+This morning, Sir Thomas and Uncle Rawson rode over to Hampton, where
+they will tarry all night. Last evening, Rebecca had a long talk with
+her father concerning Sir Thomas, who hath asked her of him. She came
+to bed very late, and lay restless and sobbing; whereupon I pressed her
+to know the cause of her grief, when she told me she had consented to
+marry Sir Thomas, but that her heart was sorely troubled and full of
+misgivings. On my querying whether she did really love the young
+gentleman, she said she sometimes feared she did not; and that when her
+fancy had made a fair picture of the life of a great lady in England,
+there did often come a dark cloud over it like the shade of some heavy
+disappointment or sorrow. "Sir Thomas," she said, "was a handsome and
+witty young man, and had demeaned himself to the satisfaction and good
+repute of her father and the principal people of the Colony; and his
+manner towards her had been exceeding delicate and modest, inasmuch as
+he had presumed nothing upon his family or estate, but had sought her
+with much entreaty and humility, although he did well know that some of
+the most admired and wealthy Young women in Boston did esteem him not a
+little, even to the annoying of herself, as one whom he especially
+favored."
+
+"This will be heavy news to Robert Pike," said I; "and I am sorry for
+him, for he is indeed a worthy man."
+
+"That he is," quoth she; "but he hath never spoken to me of aught beyond
+that friendliness which, as neighbors and school companions, we do
+innocently cherish for each other."
+
+"Nay," said I, "my sweet cousin knows full well that he entertaineth so
+strong an affection for her, that there needeth no words to reveal it."
+
+"Alas!" she answered, "it is too true. When I am with him, I sometimes
+wish I had never seen Sir Thomas. But my choice is made, and I pray God
+I may not have reason to repent of it."
+
+We said no more, but I fear she slept little, for on waking about the
+break of day, I saw her sitting in her night-dress by the window.
+Whereupon I entreated her to return to her bed, which she at length did,
+and folding me in her arms, and sobbing as if her heart would break, she
+besought me to pity her, for it was no light thing which she had done,
+and she scarcely knew her own mind, nor whether to rejoice or weep over
+it. I strove to comfort her, and, after a time, she did, to my great
+joy, fall into a quiet sleep.
+
+This afternoon, Robert Pike came in, and had a long talk with Cousin
+Broughton, who told him how matters stood between her sister and Sir
+Thomas, at which he was vehemently troubled, and would fain have gone to
+seek Rebecca at once, and expostulate with her, but was hindered on
+being told that it could only grieve and discomfort her, inasmuch as the
+thing was well settled, and could not be broken off. He said he had
+known and loved her from a child; that for her sake he had toiled hard
+by day and studied by night; and that in all his travels and voyages,
+her sweet image had always gone with him. He would bring no accusation
+against her, for she had all along treated him rather as a brother than
+as a suitor: to which last condition he had indeed not felt himself at
+liberty to venture, after her honored father, some months ago, had given
+him to understand that he did design an alliance of his daughter with a
+gentleman of estate and family. For himself, he would bear himself
+manfully, and endure his sorrow with patience and fortitude. His only
+fear was, that his beloved friend had been too hasty in deciding the
+matter; and that he who was her choice might not be worthy of the great
+gift of her affection. Cousin Broughton, who has hitherto greatly
+favored the pretensions of Sir Thomas, told me that she wellnigh changed
+her mind in view of the manly and noble bearing of Robert Pike; and that
+if her sister were to live in this land, she would rather see her the
+wife of him than of any other man therein.
+
+
+
+July 3.
+
+Sir Thomas took his leave to-day. Robert Pike hath been here to wish
+Rebecca great joy and happiness in her prospect, which he did in so kind
+and gentle a manner, that she was fain to turn away her head to hide her
+tears. When Robert saw this, he turned the discourse, and did endeavor
+to divert her mind in such sort that the shade of melancholy soon left
+her sweet face, and the twain talked together cheerfully as had been
+their wont, and as became their years and conditions.
+
+
+
+July 6.
+
+Yesterday a strange thing happened in the meeting-house. The minister
+had gone on in his discourse, until the sand in the hour-glass on the
+rails before the deacons had wellnigh run out, and Deacon Dole was about
+turning it, when suddenly I saw the congregation all about me give a
+great start, and look back. A young woman, barefooted, and with a
+coarse canvas frock about her, and her long hair hanging loose like a
+periwig, and sprinkled with ashes, came walking up the south aisle.
+Just as she got near Uncle Rawson's seat she stopped, and turning round
+towards the four corners of the house, cried out: "Woe to the
+persecutors! Woe to them who for a pretence make long prayers! Humble
+yourselves, for this is the day of the Lord's power, and I am sent as a
+sign among you!" As she looked towards me I knew her to be the Quaker
+maiden, Margaret Brewster. "Where is the constable?" asked Mr.
+Richardson. "Let the woman be taken out." Thereupon the whole
+congregation arose, and there was a great uproar, men and women climbing
+the seats, and many crying out, some one thing and some another. In the
+midst of the noise, Mr. Sewall, getting up on a bench, begged the people
+to be quiet, and let the constable lead out the poor deluded creature.
+Mr. Richardson spake to the same effect, and, the tumult a little
+subsiding, I saw them taking the young woman out of the door; and, as
+many followed her, I went out also, with my brother, to see what became
+of her.
+
+We found her in the middle of a great crowd of angry people, who
+reproached her for her wickedness in disturbing the worship on the
+Lord's day, calling her all manner of foul names, and threatening her
+with the stocks and the whipping-post. The poor creature stood still
+and quiet; she was deathly pale, and her wild hair and sackcloth frock
+gave her a very strange and pitiable look. The constable was about to
+take her in charge until the morrow, when Robert Pike came forward, and
+said he would answer for her appearance at the court the next day, and
+besought the people to let her go quietly to her home, which, after some
+parley, was agreed to. Robert then went up to her, and taking her hand,
+asked her to go with him. She looked up, and being greatly touched by
+his kindness, began to weep, telling him that it had been a sorrowful
+cross to her to do as she had done; but that it had been long upon her
+mind, and that she did feel a relief now that she had found strength for
+obedience. He, seeing the people still following, hastened her, away,
+and we all went back to the meeting-house. In the afternoon, Mr.
+Richardson gave notice that he should preach, next Lord's day, from the
+12th and 13th verses of Jude, wherein the ranters and disturbers of the
+present day were very plainly spoken of. This morning she hath been had
+before the magistrates, who, considering her youth and good behavior
+hitherto, did not proceed against her so far as many of the people
+desired. A fine was laid upon her, which both she and her father did
+profess they could not in conscience pay, whereupon she was ordered to
+be set in the stocks; but this Mr. Sewall, Robert Pike, and my brother
+would by no means allow, but paid the fine themselves, so that she was
+set at liberty, whereat the boys and rude women were not a little
+disappointed, as they had thought to make sport of her in the stocks.
+Mr. Pike, I hear, did speak openly in her behalf before the magistrates,
+saying that it was all along of the cruel persecution of these people
+that did drive them to such follies and breaches of the peace, Mr.
+Richardson, who hath heretofore been exceeding hard upon the Quakers,
+did, moreover, speak somewhat in excuse of her conduct, believing that
+she was instigated by her elders; and he therefore counselled the court
+that she should not be whipped,
+
+
+
+August 1.
+
+Captain Sewall, R. Pike, and the minister, Mr. Richardson, at our house
+to-day. Captain Sewall, who lives mostly at Boston, says that a small
+vessel loaded with negroes, taken on the Madagascar coast, came last
+week into the harbor, and that the owner thereof had offered the negroes
+for sale as slaves, and that they had all been sold to magistrates,
+ministers, and other people of distinction in Boston and thereabouts.
+He said the negroes were principally women and children, and scarcely
+alive, by reason of their long voyage and hard fare. He thought it a
+great scandal to the Colony, and a reproach to the Church, that they
+should be openly trafficked, like cattle in the market. Uncle Rawson
+said it was not so formerly; for he did remember the case of Captain
+Smith and one Kesar, who brought negroes from Guinea thirty years ago.
+The General Court, urged thereto by Sir Richard Saltonstall and many of
+the ministers, passed an order that, for the purpose of "bearing a
+witness against the heinous sin of man-stealing, justly abhorred of all
+good and just men," the negroes should be taken back to their own
+country at the charge of the Colony; which was soon after done.
+Moreover, the two men, Smith and Kesar, were duly punished.
+
+Mr. Richardson said he did make a distinction between the stealing of
+men from a nation at peace with us, and the taking of captives in war.
+The Scriptures did plainly warrant the holding of such, and especially
+if they be heathen.
+
+Captain Sewall said he did, for himself, look upon all slave-holding as
+contrary to the Gospel and the New Dispensation. The Israelites had a
+special warrant for holding the heathen in servitude; but he had never
+heard any one pretend that he had that authority for enslaving Indians
+and blackamoors.
+
+Hereupon Mr. Richardson asked him if he did not regard Deacon Dole as a
+godly man; and if he had aught to say against him and other pious men
+who held slaves. And he cautioned him to be careful, lest he should be
+counted an accuser of the brethren.
+
+Here Robert Pike said he would tell of a matter which had fallen under
+his notice. "Just after the war was over," said be, "owing to the loss
+of my shallop in the Penobscot Bay, I chanced to be in the neighborhood
+of him they call the Baron of Castine, who hath a strong castle, with
+much cleared land and great fisheries at Byguyduce. I was preparing to
+make a fire and sleep in the woods, with my two men, when a messenger
+came from the Baron, saying that his master, hearing that strangers were
+in the neighborhood, had sent him to offer us food and shelter, as the
+night was cold and rainy. So without ado we went with him, and were
+shown into a comfortable room in a wing of the castle, where we found a
+great fire blazing, and a joint of venison with wheaten loaves on the
+table. After we had refreshed ourselves, the Baron sent for me, and I
+was led into a large, fair room, where he was, with Modockawando, who
+was his father-in-law, and three or four other chiefs of the Indians,
+together with two of his priests. The Baron, who was a man of goodly
+appearance, received me with much courtesy; and when I told him my
+misfortune, he said he was glad it was in his power to afford us a
+shelter. He discoursed about the war, which he said had been a sad
+thing to the whites as well as the Indians, but that he now hoped the
+peace would be lasting. Whereupon, Modockawando, a very grave and
+serious heathen, who had been sitting silent with his friends, got up
+and spoke a load speech to me, which I did not understand, but was told
+that he did complain of the whites for holding as slaves sundry Indian
+captives, declaring that it did provoke another war. His own sister's
+child, he said, was thus held in captivity. He entreated me to see the
+great Chief of our people (meaning the Governor), and tell him that the
+cries of the captives were heard by his young men, and that they were
+talking of digging up the hatchet which the old men had buried at Casco.
+I told the old savage that I did not justify the holding of Indians
+after the peace, and would do what I could to have them set at liberty,
+at which he seemed greatly rejoiced. Since I came back from Castine's
+country, I have urged the giving up of the Indians, and many have been
+released. Slavery is a hard lot, and many do account it worse than
+death. When in the Barbadoes, I was told that on one plantation, in the
+space of five years, a score of slaves had hanged themselves."
+
+"Mr. Atkinson's Indian," said Captain Sewall, "whom he bought of a
+Virginia ship-owner, did, straightway on coming to his house, refuse
+meat; and although persuasions and whippings were tried to make him eat,
+he would not so much as take a sip of drink. I saw him a day or two
+before he died, sitting wrapped up in his blanket, and muttering to
+himself. It was a sad, sight, and I pray God I may never see the like
+again. From that time I have looked upon the holding of men as slaves
+as a great wickedness. The Scriptures themselves do testify, that he
+that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity."
+
+After the company had gone, Rebecca sat silent and thoughtful for a
+time, and then bade her young serving-girl, whom her father had bought,
+about a year before, of the master of a Scotch vessel, and who had been
+sold to pay the cost of her passage, to come to her. She asked her if
+she had aught to complain of in her situation. The poor girl looked
+surprised, but said she had not. "Are you content to live as a
+servant?" asked Rebecca. "Would you leave me if you could?" She here
+fell a-weeping, begging her mistress not to speak of her leaving. "But
+if I should tell you that you are free to go or stay, as you will, would
+you be glad or sorry?" queried her mistress. The poor girl was silent.
+"I do not wish you to leave me, Effie," said Rebecca, "but I wish you to
+know that you are from henceforth free, and that if you serve me
+hereafter, as I trust you will, it will be in love and good will, and
+for suitable wages." The bondswoman did not at the first comprehend the
+design of her mistress, but, on hearing it explained once more, she
+dropped down on her knees, and clasping Rebecca, poured forth her thanks
+after the manner of her people; whereupon Rebecca, greatly moved, bade
+her rise, as she had only done what the Scriptures did require, in
+giving to her servant that which is just and equal.
+
+"How easy it is to make others happy, and ourselves also!" she said,
+turning to me, with the tears shining in her eyes.
+
+
+
+August 8, 1678.
+
+Elnathan Stone, who died two days ago, was buried this afternoon. A
+very solemn funeral, Mr. Richardson preaching a sermon from the 23d
+psalm, 4th verse: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow
+of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy
+staff, they comfort me." Deacon Dole provided the wine and spirits, and
+Uncle Rawson the beer, and bread, and fish for the entertainment, and
+others of the neighbors did, moreover, help the widow to sundry matters
+of clothing suitable for the occasion, for she was very poor, and, owing
+to the long captivity and sickness of her son, she hath been much
+straitened at times. I am told that Margaret Brewster hath been like an
+angel of mercy unto her, watching often with the sick man, and helping
+her in her work, so that the poor woman is now fain to confess that she
+hath a good and kind heart. A little time before Elnathan died, he did
+earnestly commend the said Margaret to the kindness of Cousin Rebecca,
+entreating her to make interest with the magistrates, and others in
+authority, in her behalf, that they might be merciful to her in her
+outgoings, as he did verily think they did come of a sense of duty,
+albeit mistaken. Mr. Richardson, who hath been witness to her gracious
+demeanor and charity, and who saith she does thereby shame many of his
+own people, hath often sought to draw her away from the new doctrines,
+and to set before her the dangerous nature of her errors; but she never
+lacketh answer of some sort, being naturally of good parts, and well
+read in the Scriptures.
+
+
+
+August 10.
+
+I find the summer here greatly unlike that of mine own country. The
+heat is great, the sun shining very strong and bright; and for more than
+a month it hath been exceeding dry, without any considerable fall of
+rain, so that the springs fail in many places, and the watercourses are
+dried up, which doth bring to mind very forcibly the language of Job,
+concerning the brooks which the drouth consumeth: "What time they wax
+warm they vanish; when it is hot they are consumed out of their place.
+The paths of their way are turned aside; they go to nothing and perish."
+The herbage and grass have lost much of the brightness which they did
+wear in the early summer; moreover, there be fewer flowers to be seen.
+The fields and roads are dusty, and all things do seem to faint and wax
+old under the intolerable sun. Great locusts sing sharp in the hedges
+and bushes, and grasshoppers fly up in clouds, as it were, when one
+walks over the dry grass which they feed upon, and at nightfall
+mosquitoes are no small torment. Whenever I do look forth at noonday,
+at which time the air is all aglow, with a certain glimmer and dazzle
+like that from an hot furnace, and see the poor fly-bitten cattle
+whisking their tails to keep off the venomous insects, or standing in
+the water of the low grounds for coolness, and the panting sheep lying
+together under the shade of trees, I must needs call to mind the summer
+season of old England, the cool sea air, the soft-dropping showers, the
+fields so thick with grasses, and skirted with hedge-rows like green
+walls, the trees and shrubs all clean and moist, and the vines and
+creepers hanging over walls and gateways, very plenteous and beautiful
+to behold. Ah me I often in these days do I think of Hilton Grange,
+with its great oaks, and cool breezy hills and meadows green the summer
+long. I shut mine eyes, and lo! it is all before me like a picture; I
+see mine uncle's gray hairs beneath the trees, and my good aunt standeth
+in the doorway, and Cousin Oliver comes up in his field-dress, from the
+croft or the mill; I can hear his merry laugh, and the sound of his
+horse's hoofs ringing along the gravel-way. Our sweet Chaucer telleth
+of a mirror in the which he that looked did see all his past life; that
+magical mirror is no fable, for in the memory of love, old things do
+return and show themselves as features do in the glass, with a perfect
+and most beguiling likeness.
+
+Last night, Deacon Dole's Indian--One-eyed Tom, a surly fellow--broke
+into his master's shop, where he made himself drunk with rum, and,
+coming to the house, did greatly fright the womenfolk by his threatening
+words and gestures. Now, the Deacon coming home late from the church-
+meeting, and seeing him in this way, wherreted him smartly with his
+cane, whereupon he ran off, and came up the road howling and yelling
+like an evil spirit. Uncle Rawson sent his Irish man-servant to see
+what caused the ado; but he straightway came running back, screaming
+"Murther! murther!" at the top of his voice. So uncle himself went to
+the gate, and presently called for a light, which Rebecca and I came
+with, inasmuch as the Irishman and Effie dared not go out. We found Tom
+sitting on the horse-block, the blood running down his face, and much
+bruised and swollen. He was very fierce and angry, saying that if he
+lived a month, he would make him a tobacco-pouch of the Deacon's scalp.
+Rebecca ventured to chide him for his threats, but offered to bind up
+his head for him, which she did with her own kerchief. Uncle Rawson
+then bade him go home and get to bed, and in future let alone strong
+drink, which had been the cause of his beating. This he would not do,
+but went off into the woods, muttering as far as one could hear him.
+
+This morning Deacon Dole came in, and said his servant Tom had behaved
+badly, for which he did moderately correct him, and that he did
+thereupon run away, and he feared he should lose him. He bought him,
+he said, of Captain Davenport, who brought him from the Narragansett
+country, paying ten pounds and six shillings for him, and he could ill
+bear so great a loss. I ventured to tell him that it was wrong to hold
+any man, even an Indian or Guinea black, as a slave. My uncle, who saw
+that my plainness was not well taken, bade me not meddle with matters
+beyond my depth; and Deacon Dole, looking very surly at me, said I was a
+forward one; that he had noted that I did wear a light and idle look in
+the meeting-house; and, pointing with his cane to my hair, he said I did
+render myself liable to presentment by the Grand Jury for a breach of
+the statute of the General Court, made the year before, against "the
+immodest laying out of the hair," &c. He then went on to say that he
+had lived to see strange times, when such as I did venture to oppose
+themselves to sober and grave people, and to despise authority, and
+encourage rebellion and disorder; and bade me take heed lest all such
+be numbered with the cursed children which the Apostle did rebuke: "Who,
+as natural brute beasts, speak evil of things they understand not, and
+shall utterly perish in their corruption." My dear Cousin Rebecca here
+put in a word in my behalf, and told the Deacon that Tom's misbehavior
+did all grow out of the keeping of strong liquors for sale, and that he
+was wrong to beat him so cruelly, seeing that he did himself place the
+temptation before him. Thereupon the Deacon rose up angrily, bidding
+uncle look well to his forward household. "Nay, girls," quoth mine
+uncle, after his neighbor had left the house, "you have angered the good
+man sorely."--"Never heed," said Rebecca, laughing and clapping her
+hands, "he hath got something to think of more profitable, I trow, than
+Cousin Margaret's hair or looks in meeting. He has been tything of mint
+and anise and cummin long enough, and 't is high time for him to look
+after the weightier matters of the law."
+
+The selling of beer and strong liquors, Mr. Ewall says, hath much
+increased since the troubles of the Colony and the great Indian war.
+The General Court do take some care to grant licenses only to discreet
+persons; but much liquor is sold without warrant. For mine own part, I
+think old Chaucer hath it right in his Pardoner's Tale:--
+
+ "A likerous thing is wine, and drunkenness
+ Is full of striving and of wretchedness.
+ O drunken man! disfigured is thy face,
+ Sour is thy breath, foul art then to embrace;
+ Thy tongue is lost, and all thine honest care,
+ For drunkenness is very sepulture
+ Of man's wit and his discretion."
+
+
+
+AGAMENTICUS, August 18.
+
+The weather being clear and the heat great, last week uncle and aunt,
+with Rebecca and myself, and also Leonard and Sir Thomas, thought it a
+fitting time to make a little journey by water to the Isles of Shoals,
+and the Agamenticus, where dwelleth my Uncle Smith, who hath strongly
+pressed me to visit him. One Caleb Powell, a seafaring man, having a
+good new boat, with a small cabin, did undertake to convey us. He is a
+drolling odd fellow, who hath been in all parts of the world, and hath
+seen and read much, and, having a rare memory, is not ill company,
+although uncle saith one must make no small allowance for his desire of
+making his hearers marvel at his stories and conceits. We sailed with a
+good westerly wind down the river, passing by the great salt marshes,
+which stretch a long way by the sea, and in which the town's people be
+now very busy in mowing and gathering the grass for winter's use.
+Leaving on our right hand Plum Island (so called on account of the rare
+plums which do grow upon it), we struck into the open sea, and soon came
+in sight of the Islands of Shoals. There be seven of them in all, lying
+off the town of Hampton on the mainland, about a league. We landed on
+that called the Star, and were hospitably entertained through the day
+and night by Mr. Abbott, an old inhabitant of the islands, and largely
+employed in fisheries and trade, and with whom uncle had some business.
+In the afternoon Mr. Abbott's son rowed us about among the islands, and
+showed us the manner of curing the dun-fish, for which the place is
+famed. They split the fishes, and lay them on the rocks in the sun,
+using little salt, but turning them often. There is a court-house on
+the biggest island, and a famous school, to which many of the planters
+on the main-land do send their children. We noted a great split in the
+rocks, where, when the Indians came to the islands many years ago, and
+killed some and took others captive, one Betty Moody did hide herself,
+and which is hence called Betty Moody's Hole. Also, the pile of rocks
+set up by the noted Captain John Smith, when he did take possession of
+the Isles in the year 1614. We saw our old acquaintance Peckanaminet
+and his wife, in a little birch canoe, fishing a short way off. Mr.
+Abbott says he well recollects the time when the Agawams were wellnigh
+cut off by the Tarratine Indians; for that early one morning, hearing a
+loud yelling and whooping, he went out on the point of the rocks, and
+saw a great fleet of canoes filled with Indians, going back from Agawam,
+and the noise they made he took to be their rejoicing over their
+victory.
+
+In the evening a cold easterly wind began to blow, and it brought in
+from the ocean a damp fog, so that we were glad to get within doors.
+Sir Thomas entertained us by his lively account of things in Boston, and
+of a journey he had made to the Providence plantations. He then asked
+us if it was true, as he had learned from Mr. Mather, of Boston, that
+there was an house in Newbury dolefully beset by Satan's imps, and that
+the family could get no sleep because of the doings of evil spirits.
+Uncle Rawson said he did hear something of it, and that Mr. Richardson
+had been sent for to pray against the mischief. Yet as he did count
+Goody Morse a poor silly woman, he should give small heed to her story;
+but here was her near neighbor, Caleb Powell, who could doubtless tell
+more concerning it. Whereupon, Caleb said it was indeed true that there
+was a very great disturbance in Goodman Morse's house; doors opening and
+shutting, household stuff whisked out of the room, and then falling down
+the chimney, and divers other strange things, many of which he had
+himself seen. Yet he did believe it might be accounted for in a natural
+way, especially as the old couple had a wicked, graceless boy living
+with them, who might be able to do the tricks by his great subtlety and
+cunning. Sir Thomas said it might be the boy; but that Mr. Josselin,
+who had travelled much hereabout, had told him that the Indians did
+practise witchcraft, and that, now they were beaten in war, he feared
+they would betake themselves to it, and so do by their devilish wisdom
+what they could not do by force; and verily this did look much like the
+beginning of their enchantments. "That the Devil helpeth the heathen in
+this matter, I do myself know for a certainty," said Caleb Powell; "for
+when I was at Port Royal, many years ago, I did see with mine eyes the
+burning of an old negro wizard, who had done to death many of the
+whites, as well as his own people, by a charm which he brought with him
+from the Guinea, country." Mr. Hull, the minister of the place, who was
+a lodger in the house, said he had heard one Foxwell, a reputable
+planter at Saco, lately deceased, tell of a strange affair that did
+happen to himself, in a voyage to the eastward. Being in a small
+shallop, and overtaken by the night, he lay at anchor a little way off
+the shore, fearing to land on account of the Indians. Now, it did
+chance that they were waked about midnight by a loud voice from the
+land, crying out, Foxwell, come ashore! three times over; whereupon,
+looking to see from whence the voice did come, they beheld a great
+circle of fire on the beach, and men and women dancing about it in a
+ring. Presently they vanished, and the fire was quenched also. In the
+morning he landed, but found no Indians nor English, only brands' ends
+cast up by the waves; and he did believe, unto the day of his death,
+that it was a piece of Indian sorcery. "There be strange stories told
+of Passaconaway, the chief of the River Indians," he continued. "I have
+heard one say who saw it, that once, at the Patucket Falls, this chief,
+boasting of his skill in magic, picked up a dry skin of a snake, which
+had been cast off, as is the wont of the reptile, and making some
+violent motions of his body, and calling upon his Familiar, or Demon, he
+did presently cast it down upon the rocks, and it became a great black
+serpent, which mine informant saw crawl off into some bushes, very
+nimble. This Passaconaway was accounted by his tribe to be a very
+cunning conjurer, and they do believe that he could brew storms, make
+water burn, and cause green leaves to grow on trees in the winter; and,
+in brief, it may be said of him, that he was not a whit behind the
+magicians of Egypt in the time of Moses."
+
+"There be women in the cold regions about Norway," said Caleb Powell,
+"as I have heard the sailors relate, who do raise storms and sink boats
+at their will."
+
+"It may well be," quoth Mr. Hull, "since Satan is spoken of as the
+prince and power of the air."
+
+"The profane writers of old time do make mention of such sorceries,"
+said Uncle Rawson. "It is long since I have read any of then; but
+Virgil and Apulius do, if I mistake not, speak of this power over the
+elements."
+
+"Do you not remember, father," said Rebecca, "some verses of Tibullus,
+in which he speaketh of a certain enchantress? Some one hath rendered
+them thus:--
+
+ "Her with charms drawing stars from heaven, I,
+ And turning the course of rivers, did espy.
+ She parts the earth, and ghosts from sepulchres
+ Draws up, and fetcheth bones away from fires,
+ And at her pleasure scatters clouds in the air,
+ And makes it snow in summer hot and fair."
+
+Here Sir Thomas laughingly told Rebecca, that he did put more faith in
+what these old writers did tell of the magic arts of the sweet-singing
+sirens, and of Circe and her enchantments, and of the Illyrian maidens,
+so wonderful in their beauty, who did kill with their looks such as they
+were angry with.
+
+"It was, perhaps, for some such reason," said Rebecca, "that, as Mr.
+Abbott tells me; the General Court many years ago did forbid women to
+live on these islands."
+
+"Pray, how was that?" asked Sir Thomas.
+
+"You must know," answered our host, "that in the early settlement of
+the Shoals, vessels coming for fish upon this coast did here make their
+harbor, bringing hither many rude sailors of different nations; and the
+Court judged that it was not a fitting place for women, and so did by
+law forbid their dwelling on the islands belonging to the
+Massachusetts."
+
+He then asked his wife to get the order of the Court concerning her stay
+on the islands, remarking that he did bring her over from the Maine in
+despite of the law. So his wife fetched it, and Uncle Rawson read it,
+it being to this effect,--"That a petition having been sent to the
+Court, praying that the law might be put in force in respect to John
+Abbott his wife, the Court do judge it meet, if no further complaint
+come against her, that she enjoy the company of her husband." Whereat
+we all laughed heartily.
+
+Next morning, the fog breaking away early, we set sail for Agamenticus,
+running along the coast and off the mouth of the Piscataqua River,
+passing near where my lamented Uncle Edward dwelt, whose fame as a
+worthy gentleman and magistrate is still living. We had Mount
+Agamenticus before us all day,--a fair stately hill, rising up as it
+were from the water. Towards night a smart shower came on, with
+thunderings and lightnings such as I did never see or hear before; and
+the wind blowing and a great rain driving upon us, we were for a time in
+much peril; but, through God's mercy, it suddenly cleared up, and we
+went into the Agamenticus River with a bright sun. Before dark we got
+to the house of my honored uncle, where, he not being at home, his wife
+and daughters did receive us kindly.
+
+
+
+September 10.
+
+I do find myself truly comfortable at this place. My two cousins, Polly
+and Thankful, are both young, unmarried women, very kind and pleasant,
+and, since my Newbury friends left, I have been learning of them many
+things pertaining to housekeeping, albeit I am still but a poor scholar.
+Uncle is Marshall of the Province, which takes him much from home; and
+aunt, who is a sickly woman, keeps much in her chamber; so that the
+affairs of the household and of the plantation do mainly rest upon the
+young women. If ever I get back to Hilton Grange again, I shall have
+tales to tell of my baking and brewing, of my pumpkin-pies, and bread
+made of the flour of the Indian corn; yea, more, of gathering of the
+wild fruit in the woods, and cranberries in the meadows, milking the
+cows, and looking after the pigs and barnyard fowls. Then, too, we have
+had many pleasant little journeys by water and on horseback, young
+Mr. Jordan, of Spurwiuk, who hath asked Polly in marriage, going with us.
+A right comely youth he is, but a great Churchman, as might be expected,
+his father being the minister of the Black Point people, and very bitter
+towards the Massachusetts and its clergy and government. My uncle, who
+meddles little with Church' matters, thinks him a hopeful young man, and
+not an ill suitor for his daughter. He hath been in England for his
+learning, and is accounted a scholar; but, although intended for the
+Church service, he inclineth more to the life of a planter, and taketh
+the charge of his father's plantation at Spurwink. Polly is not
+beautiful and graceful like Rebecca Rawson, but she hath freshness of
+youth and health, and a certain good-heartedness of look and voice, and
+a sweetness of temper which do commend her in the eyes of all. Thankful
+is older by some years, and, if not as cheerful and merry as her sister,
+it needs not be marvelled at, since one whom she loved was killed in the
+Narragansett country two years ago. O these bloody wars. There be few
+in these Eastern Provinces who have not been called to mourn the loss of
+some near and dear friend, so that of a truth the land mourns.
+
+
+
+September 18.
+
+Meeting much disturbed yesterday,--a ranting Quaker coming in and
+sitting with his hat on in sermon time, humming and groaning, and
+rocking his body to and fro like one possessed. After a time he got up,
+and pronounced a great woe upon the priests, calling them many hard
+names, and declaring that the whole land stank with their hypocrisy.
+Uncle spake sharply to him, and bid him hold his peace, but he only
+cried out the louder. Some young men then took hold of him, and carried
+him out. They brought him along close to my seat, he hanging like a bag
+of meal, with his eyes shut, as ill-favored a body as I ever beheld.
+The magistrates had him smartly whipped this morning, and sent out of
+the jurisdiction. I was told he was no true Quaker; for, although a
+noisy, brawling hanger-on at their meetings, he is not in fellowship
+with the more sober and discreet of that people.
+
+Rebecca writes me that the witchcraft in William Morse's house is much
+talked of; and that Caleb Powell hath been complained of as the wizard.
+Mr. Jordan the elder says he does in no wise marvel at the Devil's power
+in the Massachusetts, since at his instigation the rulers and ministers
+of the Colony have set themselves, against the true and Gospel order of
+the Church, and do slander and persecute all who will not worship at
+their conventicles.
+
+A Mr. Van Valken, a young gentleman of Dutch descent, and the agent of
+Mr. Edmund Andross, of the Duke of York's Territory, is now in this
+place, being entertained by Mr. Godfrey, the late Deputy-Governor. He
+brought a letter for me from Aunt Rawson, whom he met in Boston. He is
+a learned, serious man, hath travelled a good deal, and hath an air of
+high breeding. The minister here thinks him a Papist, and a Jesuit,
+especially as he hath not called upon him, nor been to the meeting. He
+goes soon to Pemaquid, to take charge of that fort and trading station,
+which have greatly suffered by the war.
+
+
+
+September 30.
+
+Yesterday, Cousin Polly and myself, with young Mr. Jordan, went up to
+the top of the mountain, which is some miles from the harbor. It is not
+hard to climb in respect to steepness, but it is so tangled with bushes
+and vines, that one can scarce break through them. The open places were
+yellow with golden-rods, and the pale asters were plenty in the shade,
+and by the side of the brooks, that with pleasing noise did leap down
+the hill. When we got upon the top, which is bare and rocky, we had a
+fair view of the coast, with its many windings and its islands, from the
+Cape Ann, near Boston, to the Cape Elizabeth, near Casco, the Piscataqua
+and Agamenticus rivers; and away in the northwest we could see the peaks
+of mountains looking like summer clouds or banks of gray fog. These
+mountains lie many leagues off in the wilderness, and are said to be
+exceeding lofty.
+
+But I must needs speak of the color of the woods, which did greatly
+amaze me, as unlike anything I had ever seen in old England. As far as
+mine eyes could look, the mighty wilderness, under the bright westerly
+sun, and stirred by a gentle wind, did seem like a garden in its season
+of flowering; green, dark, and light, orange, and pale yellow, and
+crimson leaves, mingling and interweaving their various hues, in a
+manner truly wonderful to behold. It is owing, I am told, to the sudden
+frosts, which in this climate do smite the vegetation in its full life
+and greenness, so that in the space of a few days the colors of the
+leaves are marvellously changed and brightened. These colors did remind
+me of the stains of the windows of old churches, and of rich tapestry.
+The maples were all aflame with crimson, the walnuts were orange, the
+hemlocks and cedars were wellnigh black; while the slender birches, with
+their pale yellow leaves, seemed painted upon them as pictures are laid
+upon a dark ground. I gazed until mine eyes grew weary, and a sense of
+the wonderful beauty of the visible creation, and of God's great
+goodness to the children of men therein, did rest upon me, and I said in
+mine heart, with one of old: "O Lord! how manifold are thy works in
+wisdom hast thou made them all, and the earth is full of thy riches."
+
+
+
+October 6.
+
+Walked out to the iron mines, a great hole digged in the rocks, many
+years ago, for the finding of iron. Aunt, who was then just settled in
+housekeeping, told me many wonderful stories of the man who caused it to
+be digged, a famous doctor of physic, and, as it seems, a great wizard
+also. He bought a patent of land on the south side of the Saco River,
+four miles by the sea, and eight miles up into the main-land of Mr.
+Vines, the first owner thereof; and being curious in the seeking and
+working of metals, did promise himself great riches in this new country;
+but his labors came to nothing, although it was said that Satan helped
+him, in the shape of a little blackamoor man-servant, who was his
+constant familiar. My aunt says she did often see him, wandering about
+among the hills and woods, and along the banks of streams of water,
+searching for precious ores and stones. He had even been as far as the
+great mountains, beyond Pigwackett, climbing to the top thereof, where
+the snows lie wellnigh all the year, his way thither lying through
+doleful swamps and lonesome woods. He was a great friend of the
+Indians, who held him to be a more famous conjurer than their own
+powahs; and, indeed, he was learned in all curious and occult arts,
+having studied at the great College of Padua, and travelled in all parts
+of the old countries. He sometimes stopped in his travels at my uncle's
+house, the little blackamoor sleeping in the barn, for my aunt feared
+him, as he was reputed to be a wicked imp. Now it so chanced that on
+one occasion my uncle had lost a cow, and had searched the woods many
+days for her to no purpose, when, this noted doctor coming in, he
+besought him to find her out by his skill and learning; but he did
+straightway deny his power to do so, saying he was but a poor scholar,
+and lover of science, and had no greater skill in occult matters than
+any one might attain to by patient study of natural things. But as mine
+uncle would in no wise be so put off, and still pressing him to his art,
+he took a bit of coal, and began to make marks on the floor, in a very
+careless way.
+
+Then he made a black dot in the midst, and bade my uncle take heed that
+his cow was lying dead in that spot; and my uncle looking at it, said he
+Could find her, for he now knew where she was, inasmuch as the doctor
+had made a fair map of the country round about for many miles. So he
+set off, and found the cow lying at the foot of a great tree, close
+beside a brook, she being quite dead, which thing did show that he was a
+magician of no Mean sort.
+
+My aunt further said, that in those days there was great talk of mines
+of gold and precious stones, and many people spent all their substance
+in wandering about over the wilderness country seeking a fortune in this
+way. There was one old man, who, she remembered, did roam about seeking
+for hidden treasures, until he lost his wits, and might be seen filling
+a bag with bright stones and shining sand, muttering and laughing to
+himself. He was at last missed for some little time, when he was found
+lying dead in the woods, still holding fast in his hands his bag of
+pebbles.
+
+On my querying whether any did find treasures hereabout, my aunt
+laughed, and said she never heard of but one man who did so, and that
+was old Peter Preble of Saco, who, growing rich faster than his
+neighbors, was thought to owe his fortune to the finding of a gold or
+silver mine. When he was asked about it, he did by no means deny it,
+but confessed he had found treasures in the sea as well as on the land;
+and, pointing to his loaded fish-flakes and his great cornfields, said,
+"Here are my mines." So that afterwards, when any one prospered greatly
+in his estate, it was said of him by his neighbors, "He has been working
+Peter Preble's mine."
+
+
+
+October 8.
+
+Mr. Van Valken, the Dutchman, had before Mr. Rishworth, one of the
+Commissioners of the Province, charged with being a Papist and a Jesuit.
+He bore himself, I am told, haughtily enough, denying the right to call
+him in question, and threatening the interference of his friend and
+ruler, Sir Edmund, on account of the wrong done him.
+
+My uncle and others did testify that he was a civil and courteous
+gentleman, not intermeddling with matters of a religious nature; and
+that they did regard it as a foul shame to the town that he should be
+molested in this wise. But the minister put them to silence, by
+testifying that he (Van Valken) had given away sundry Papist books; and,
+one of them being handed to the Court, it proved to be a Latin Treatise,
+by a famous Papist, intituled, "The Imitation of Christ." Hereupon, Mr.
+Godfrey asked if there was aught evil in the book. The minister said it
+was written by a monk, and was full of heresy, favoring both the Quakers
+and the Papists; but Mr. Godfrey told him it had been rendered into the
+English tongue, and printed some years before in the Massachusetts Bay;
+and asked him if he did accuse such men as Mr. Cotton and Mr. Wilson,
+and the pious ministers of their day, of heresy. "Nay," quoth the
+minister, "they did see the heresy of the book, and, on their condemning
+it, the General Court did forbid its sale." Mr. Rishworth hereupon said
+he did judge the book to be pernicious, and bade the constable burn it
+in the street, which he did. Mr. Van Valken, after being gravely
+admonished, was set free; and he now saith he is no Papist, but that he
+would not have said that much to the Court to save his life, inasmuch as
+he did deny its right of arraigning him. Mr. Godfrey says the treatment
+whereof he complains is but a sample of what the people hereaway are to
+look for from the Massachusetts jurisdiction. Mr. Jordan, the younger,
+says his father hath a copy of the condemned book, of the Boston
+printing; and I being curious to see it, he offers to get it for me.
+
+Like unto Newbury, this is an old town for so new a country. It was
+made a city in 1642, and took the name of Gorgeana, after that of the
+lord proprietor, Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The government buildings are
+spacious, but now falling into decay somewhat. There be a few stone
+houses, but the major part are framed, or laid up with square logs. The
+look of the land a little out of the town is rude and unpleasing, being
+much covered with stones and stumps; yet the soil is said to be strong,
+and the pear and apple do flourish well here; also they raise rye, oats,
+and barley, and the Indian corn, and abundance of turnips, as well as
+pumpkins, squashes, and melons. The war with the Indians, and the
+troubles and changes of government, have pressed heavily upon this and
+other towns of the Maine, so that I am told that there be now fewer
+wealthy planters here than there were twenty years ago, and little
+increase of sheep or horned cattle. The people do seem to me less sober
+and grave, in their carriage and conversation, than they of the
+Massachusetts,--hunting, fishing, and fowling more, and working on the
+land less. Nor do they keep the Lord's Day so strict; many of the young
+people going abroad, both riding and walking, visiting each other, and
+diverting themselves, especially after the meetings are over.
+
+
+
+October 9.
+
+Goodwife Nowell, an ancient gossip of mine aunt's, looking in this
+morning, and talking of the trial of the Dutchman, Van Valken, spake
+of the coming into these parts many years ago of one Sir Christopher
+Gardiner, who was thought to be a Papist. He sought lodgings at her
+house for one whom he called his cousin, a fair young woman, together
+with her serving girl, who did attend upon her. She tarried about a
+month, seeing no one, and going out only towards the evening,
+accompanied by her servant. She spake little, but did seem melancholy
+and exceeding mournful, often crying very bitterly. Sir Christopher
+came only once to see her, and Good wife Nowell saith she well remembers
+seeing her take leave of him on the roadside, and come back weeping and
+sobbing dolefully; and that a little time after, bearing that he had
+gotten into trouble in Boston as a Papist and man of loose behavior, she
+suddenly took her departure in a vessel sailing for the Massachusetts,
+leaving to her, in pay for house-room and diet, a few coins, a gold
+cross, and some silk stuffs and kerchiefs. The cross being such as the
+Papists do worship, and therefore unlawful, her husband did beat it into
+a solid wedge privately, and kept it from the knowledge of the minister
+and the magistrates. But as the poor man never prospered after, but
+lost his cattle and grain, and two of their children dying of measles
+the next year, and he himself being sickly, and near his end, he spake
+to her of he golden cross, saying that he did believe it was a great sin
+to keep it, as he had done, and that it had wrought evil upon him, even
+as the wedge of gold, and the shekels, and Babylonish garment did upon
+Achan, who was stoned, with all his house, in the valley of Achor; and
+the minister coming in, and being advised concerning it, he judged that
+although it might be a sin to keep it hidden from a love of riches, it
+might, nevertheless, be safely used to support Gospel preaching and
+ordinances, and so did himself take it away. The goodwife says, that
+notwithstanding her husband died soon after, yet herself and household
+did from thenceforth begin to amend their estate and condition.
+
+Seeing me curious concerning this Sir Christopher and his cousin,
+Goodwife Nowell said there was a little parcel of papers which she found
+in her room after the young woman went away, and she thought they might
+yet be in some part of her house, though she had not seen them for a
+score of years. Thereupon, I begged of her to look for them, which she
+promised to do.
+
+
+
+October 14.
+
+A strange and wonderful providence! Last night there was a great
+company of the neighbors at my uncle's, to help him in the husking and
+stripping of the corn, as is the custom in these parts. The barn-floor
+was about half-filled with the corn in its dry leaves; the company
+sitting down on blocks and stools before it, plucking off the leaves,
+and throwing the yellow ears into baskets. A pleasant and merry evening
+we had; and when the corn was nigh stripped, I went into the house with
+Cousin Thankful, to look to the supper and the laying of the tables,
+when we heard a loud noise in the barn, and one of the girls came
+running in, crying out, "O Thankful! Thankful! John Gibbins has
+appeared to us! His spirit is in the barn!" The plates dropt from my
+cousin's hand, and, with a faint cry, she fell back against the wall for
+a little space; when, hearing a man's voice without, speaking her name,
+she ran to the door, with the look of one beside herself; while I,
+trembling to see her in such a plight, followed her. There was a clear
+moon, and a tall man stood in the light close to the door.
+
+"John," said my cousin, in a quick, choking voice, "is it You?"
+
+"Why, Thankful, don't you know me? I'm alive; but the folks in the barn
+will have it that I 'm a ghost," said the man, springing towards her.
+
+With a great cry of joy and wonder, my cousin caught hold of him: "O
+John, you are alive!"
+
+Then she swooned quite away, and we had a deal to do to bring her to
+life again. By this time, the house was full of people, and among the
+rest came John's old mother and his sisters, and we all did weep and
+laugh at the same time. As soon as we got a little quieted, John told
+us that he had indeed been grievously stunned by the blow of a tomahawk,
+and been left for dead by his comrades, but that after a time he did
+come to his senses, and was able to walk; but, falling into the hands of
+the Indians, he was carried off to the French Canadas, where, by reason
+of his great sufferings on the way, he fell sick, and lay for a long
+time at the point of death. That when he did get about again, the
+savage who lodged him, and who had taken him as a son, in the place of
+his own, slain by the Mohawks, would not let him go home, although he
+did confess that the war was at an end. His Indian father, he said, who
+was feeble and old, died not long ago, and he had made his way home by
+the way of Crown Point and Albany. Supper being ready, we all sat down,
+and the minister, who had been sent for, offered thanks for the
+marvellous preserving and restoring of the friend who was lost and now
+was found, as also for the blessings of peace, by reason of which every
+man could now sit under his own vine and fig-tree, with none to molest
+or make him afraid, and for the abundance of the harvest, and the
+treasures of the seas, and the spoil of the woods, so that our land
+might take up the song of the Psalmist: "The Lord doth build up
+Jerusalem; he gathereth the outcasts of Israel; he healeth the broken in
+heart. Praise thy God, O Zion I For he strengtheneth the bars of thy
+gates, he maketh peace in thy borders, and filleth thee with the finest
+of wheat." Oh! a sweet supper we had, albeit little was eaten, for we
+were filled fall of joy, and needed not other food. When the company
+had gone, my dear cousin and her betrothed went a little apart, and
+talked of all that had happened unto them during their long separation.
+I left them sitting lovingly together in the light of the moon, and a
+measure of their unspeakable happiness did go with me to my pillow.
+
+This morning, Thankful came to my bedside to pour out her heart to me.
+The poor girl is like a new creature. The shade of her heavy sorrow,
+which did formerly rest upon her countenance, hath passed off like a
+morning cloud, and her eye hath the light of a deep and quiet joy.
+
+"I now know," said she, "what David meant when he said, 'We are like
+them that dream; our mouth is filled with laughter, and our tongue with
+singing; the Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad!'"
+
+
+
+October 18.
+
+A cloudy wet day. Goody Nowell brought me this morning a little parcel
+of papers, which she found in the corner of a closet. They are much
+stained and smoked, and the mice have eaten them sadly, so that I can
+make little of them. They seem to be letters, and some fragments of
+what did take place in the life of a young woman of quality from the
+North of England. I find frequent mention made of Cousin Christopher,
+who is also spoken of as a soldier in the wars with the Turks, and as a
+Knight of Jerusalem. Poorly as I can make out the meaning of these
+fragments, I have read enough to make my heart sad, for I gather from
+them that the young woman was in early life betrothed to her cousin, and
+that afterwards, owing, as I judge, to the authority of her parents, she
+did part with him, he going abroad, and entering into the wars, in the
+belief that she was to wed another. But it seemed that the heart of the
+young woman did so plead for her cousin, that she could not be brought
+to marry as her family willed her to do; and, after a lapse of years,
+she, by chance hearing that Sir Christopher had gone to the New England,
+where he was acting as an agent of his kinsman, Sir Ferdinando Gorges,
+in respect to the Maine Province, did privately leave her home, and take
+passage in a Boston bound ship. How she did make herself known to Sir
+Christopher, I find no mention made; but, he now being a Knight of the
+Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and vowed to forego marriage, as is the
+rule of that Order, and being, moreover, as was thought, a priest or
+Jesuit, her great love and constancy could meet with but a sorrowful
+return on his part. It does appear, however, that he journeyed to
+Montreal, to take counsel of some of the great Papist priests there,
+touching the obtaining of a dispensation from the Head of the Church,
+so that he might marry the young woman; but, getting no encouragement
+therein, he went to Boston to find a passage for her to England again.
+He was there complained of as a Papist; and the coming over of his
+cousin being moreover known, a great and cruel scandal did arise from
+it, and he was looked upon as a man of evil life, though I find nothing
+to warrant such a notion, but much to the contrary thereof. What became
+of him and the young woman, his cousin, in the end, I do not learn.
+
+One small parcel did affect me even unto tears. It was a paper
+containing some dry, withered leaves of roses, with these words written
+on it "To Anna, from her loving cousin, Christopher Gardiner, being the
+first rose that hath blossomed this season in the College garden. St.
+Omer's, June, 1630." I could but think how many tears had been shed
+over this little token, and how often, through long, weary years, it did
+call to mind the sweet joy of early love, of that fairest blossom of the
+spring of life of which it was an emblem, alike in its beauty and its
+speedy withering.
+
+There be moreover among the papers sundry verses, which do seem to have
+been made by Sir Christopher; they are in the Latin tongue, and
+inscribed to his cousin, bearing date many years before the twain were
+in this country, and when he was yet a scholar at the Jesuits' College
+of St. Omer's, in France. I find nothing of a later time, save the
+verses which I herewith copy, over which there are, in a woman's
+handwriting, these words:
+
+
+"VERSES
+
+"Writ by Sir Christopher when a prisoner among the Turks in Moldavia,
+and expecting death at their hands.
+
+ 1.
+ "Ere down the blue Carpathian hills
+ The sun shall fall again,
+ Farewell this life and all its ills,
+ Farewell to cell and chain
+
+ 2.
+ "These prison shades are dark and cold,
+ But darker far than they
+ The shadow of a sorrow old
+ Is on mine heart alway.
+
+ 3.
+ "For since the day when Warkworth wood
+ Closed o'er my steed and I,--
+ An alien from my name and blood,--
+ A weed cast out to die;
+
+ 4.
+ "When, looking back, in sunset light
+ I saw her turret gleam,
+ And from its window, far and white,
+ Her sign of farewell stream;
+
+ 5.
+ "Like one who from some desert shore
+ Does home's green isles descry,
+ And, vainly longing, gazes o'er
+ The waste of wave and sky,
+
+ 6.
+ "So, from the desert of my fate,
+ Gaze I across the past;
+ And still upon life's dial-plate
+ The shade is backward cast
+
+ 7.
+ "I've wandered wide from shore to shore,
+ I've knelt at many a shrine,
+ And bowed me to the rocky floor
+ Where Bethlehem's tapers shine;
+
+ 8.
+ "And by the Holy Sepulchre
+ I've pledged my knightly sword,
+ To Christ his blessed Church, and her
+ The Mother of our Lord!
+
+ 9.
+ "Oh, vain the vow, and vain the strife
+ How vain do all things seem!
+ My soul is in the past, and life
+ To-day is but a dream.
+
+ 10.
+ "In vain the penance strange and long,
+ And hard for flesh to bear;
+ The prayer, the fasting, and the thong,
+ And sackcloth shirt of hair:
+
+ 11.
+ "The eyes of memory will not sleep,
+ Its ears are open still,
+ And vigils with the past they keep
+ Against or with my will.
+
+ 12.
+ "And still the loves and hopes of old
+ Do evermore uprise;
+ I see the flow of locks of gold,
+ The shine of loving eyes.
+
+ 13.
+ "Ah me! upon another's breast
+ Those golden locks recline;
+ I see upon another rest
+ The glance that once was mine!
+
+ 14.
+ "'O faithless priest! O perjured knight!'
+ I hear the master cry,
+
+ 'Shut out the vision from thy sight,
+ Let earth and nature die.'
+
+ 15.
+ "'The Church of God is now my spouse,
+ And thou the bridegroom art;
+ Then let the burden of thy vows
+ Keep down thy human heart.'
+
+ 16.
+ "In vain!--This heart its grief must know,
+ Till life itself hath ceased,
+ And falls beneath the self-same blow
+ The lover and the priest!
+
+ 17.
+ "O pitying Mother! souls of light,
+ And saints and martyrs old,
+ Pray for a weak and sinful knight,
+ A suffering man uphold.
+
+ 18.
+ "Then let the Paynim work his will,
+ Let death unbind my chain,
+ Ere down yon blue Carpathian hill
+ The sunset falls again!"
+
+
+My heart is heavy with the thought of these unfortunates. Where be they
+now? Did the knight forego his false worship and his vows, and so marry
+his beloved Anna? Or did they part forever,--she going back to her
+kinsfolk, and he to his companions of Malta? Did he perish at the hands
+of the infidels, and does the maiden sleep in the family tomb, under her
+father's oaks? Alas! who can tell? I must needs leave them, and their
+sorrows and trials, to Him who doth not willingly afflict the children
+of men; and whatsoever may have been their sins and their follies, my
+prayer is, that they may be forgiven, for they loved much.
+
+
+
+October 20.
+
+I do purpose to start to-morrow for the Massachusetts, going by boat to
+the Piscataqua River, and thence by horse to Newbury.
+
+Young Mr. Jordan spent yesterday and last night with us. He is a goodly
+youth, of a very sweet and gentle disposition; nor doth he seem to me to
+lack spirit, although his father (who liketh not his quiet ways and easy
+temper, so contrary to his own, and who is sorely disappointed in that
+he hath chosen the life of a farmer to that of a minister, for which he
+did intend him) often accuseth him of that infirmity. Last night we had
+much pleasant discourse touching the choice he hath made; and when I
+told him that perhaps he might have become a great prelate in the
+Church, and dwelt in a palace, and made a great lady of our cousin;
+whereas now I did see no better prospect for him than to raise corn for
+his wife to make pudding of, and chop wood to boil her kettle, he
+laughed right merrily, and said he should never have gotten higher than
+a curate in a poor parish; and as for Polly, he was sure she was more at
+home in making puddings than in playing the fine lady.
+
+"For my part," he continued, in a serious manner, "I have no notion that
+the pulpit is my place; I like the open fields and sky better than the
+grandest churches of man's building; and when the wind sounds in the
+great grove of pines on the hill near our house, I doubt if there be a
+choir in all England so melodious and solemn. These painted autumn
+woods, and this sunset light, and yonder clouds of gold and purple, do
+seem to me better fitted to provoke devotional thoughts, and to awaken a
+becoming reverence and love for the Creator, than the stained windows
+and lofty arched roofs of old minsters. I do know, indeed, that there
+be many of our poor busy planters, who, by reason of ignorance, ill-
+breeding, and lack of quiet for contemplation, do see nothing in these
+things, save as they do affect their crops of grain or grasses, or their
+bodily comforts in one way or another. But to them whose minds have
+been enlightened and made large and free by study and much reflection,
+and whose eyes have been taught to behold the beauty and fitness of
+things, and whose ears have been so opened that they can hear the
+ravishing harmonies of the creation, the life of a planter is very
+desirable even in this wilderness, and notwithstanding the toil and
+privation thereunto appertaining. There be fountains gushing up in the
+hearts of such, sweeter than the springs of water which flow from the
+hillsides, where they sojourn; and therein, also, flowers of the summer
+do blossom all the year long. The brutish man knoweth not this, neither
+doth the fool comprehend it."
+
+"See, now," said Polly to me, "how hard he is upon us poor unlearned
+folk."
+
+"Nay, to tell the truth," said he, turning towards me, "your cousin here
+is to be held not a little accountable for my present inclinations; for
+she it was who did confirm and strengthen them. While I had been busy
+over books, she had been questioning the fields and the woods; and, as
+if the old fables of the poets were indeed true, she did get answers
+from them, as the priestesses and sibyls did formerly from the rustling
+of leaves and trees, and the sounds of running waters; so that she could
+teach me much concerning the uses and virtues of plants and shrubs, and
+of their time of flowering and decay; of the nature and habitudes of
+wild animals and birds, the changes of the air, and of the clouds and
+winds. My science, so called, had given me little more than the names
+of things which to her were familiar and common. It was in her company
+that I learned to read nature as a book always open, and full of
+delectable teachings, until my poor school-lore did seem undesirable and
+tedious, and the very chatter of the noisy blackbirds in the spring
+meadows more profitable and more pleasing than the angry disputes and
+the cavils and subtleties of schoolmen and divines."
+
+My cousin blushed, and, smiling through her moist eyes at this language
+of her beloved friend, said that I must not believe all he said; for,
+indeed, it was along of his studies of the heathen poets that he had
+first thought of becoming a farmer. And she asked him to repeat some of
+the verses which he had at his tongue's end. He laughed, and said he
+did suppose she meant some lines of Horace, which had been thus
+Englished:--
+
+ "I often wished I had a farm,
+ A decent dwelling, snug and warm,
+ A garden, and a spring as pure
+ As crystal flowing by my door,
+ Besides an ancient oaken grove,
+ Where at my leisure I might rove.
+
+ "The gracious gods, to crown my bliss,
+ Have granted this, and more than this,--
+ They promise me a modest spouse,
+ To light my hearth and keep my house.
+ I ask no more than, free from strife,
+ To hold these blessings all my life!"
+
+Tam exceedingly pleased, I must say, with the prospect of my cousin
+Polly. Her suitor is altogether a worthy young man; and, making
+allowances for the uncertainty of all human things, she may well look
+forward to a happy life with him. I shall leave behind on the morrow
+dear friends, who were strangers unto me a few short weeks ago, but in
+whose joys and sorrows I shall henceforth always partake, so far as I do
+come to the knowledge of them, whether or no I behold their faces any
+more in this life.
+
+
+
+HAMPTON, October 24, 1678.
+
+I took leave of my good friends at Agamenticus, or York, as it is now
+called, on the morning after the last date in my journal, going in a
+boat with my uncle to Piscataqua and Strawberry Bank. It was a cloudy
+day, and I was chilled through before we got to the mouth of the river;
+but, as the high wind was much in our favor, we were enabled to make the
+voyage in a shorter time than is common. We stopped a little at the
+house of a Mr. Cutts, a man of some note in these parts; but he being
+from home, and one of the children sick with a quinsy, we went up the
+river to Strawberry Bank, where we tarried over night. The woman who
+entertained us had lost her husband in the war, and having to see to the
+ordering of matters out of doors in this busy season of harvest, it was
+no marvel that she did neglect those within. I made a comfortable
+supper of baked pumpkin and milk, and for lodgings I had a straw bed on
+the floor, in the dark loft, which was piled wellnigh full with corn-
+ears, pumpkins, and beans, besides a great deal of old household
+trumpery, wool, and flax, and the skins of animals. Although tired of
+my journey, it was some little time before I could get asleep; and it so
+fell out, that after the folks of the house were all abed, and still, it
+being, as I judge, nigh midnight, I chanced to touch with my foot a
+pumpkin lying near the bed, which set it a-rolling down the stairs,
+bumping hard on every stair as it went. Thereupon I heard a great stir
+below, the woman and her three daughters crying out that the house was
+haunted. Presently she called to me from the foot of the stairs, and
+asked me if I did hear anything. I laughed so at all this, that it was
+some time before I could speak; when I told her I did hear a thumping on
+the stairs. "Did it seem to go up, or down?" inquired she, anxiously;
+and on my telling her that the sound went downward, she set up a sad
+cry, and they all came fleeing into the corn-loft, the girls bouncing
+upon my bed, and hiding under the blanket, and the old woman praying and
+groaning, and saying that she did believe it was the spirit of her poor
+husband. By this time my uncle, who was lying on the settle in the room
+below, hearing the noise, got up, and stumbling over the pumpkin, called
+to know what was the matter. Thereupon the woman bade him flee up
+stairs, for there was a ghost in the kitchen. "Pshaw!" said my uncle,
+"is that all? I thought to be sure the Indians had come." As soon as I
+could speak for laughing, I told the poor creature what it was that so
+frightened her; at which she was greatly vexed; and, after she went to
+bed again, I could hear her scolding me for playing tricks upon honest
+people.
+
+We were up betimes in the morning, which was bright and pleasant. Uncle
+soon found a friend of his, a Mr. Weare, who, with his wife, was to go
+to his home, at Hampton, that day, and who did kindly engage to see me
+thus far on my way. At about eight of the clock we got upon our horses,
+the woman riding on a pillion behind her husband. Our way was for some
+miles through the woods,--getting at times a view of the sea, and
+passing some good, thriving plantations. The woods in this country are
+by no means like those of England, where the ancient trees are kept
+clear of bushes and undergrowth, and the sward beneath them is shaven
+clean and close; whereas here they be much tangled with vines, and the
+dead boughs and logs which have fallen, from their great age or which
+the storms do beat off, or the winter snows and ices do break down.
+Here, also, through the thick matting of dead leaves, all manner of
+shrubs and bushes, some of them very sweet and fair in their flowering,
+and others greatly prized for their healing virtues, do grow up
+plenteously. In the season of them, many wholesome fruits abound in the
+woods, such as blue and black berries. We passed many trees, well
+loaded with walnuts and oilnuts, seeming all alive, as it were, with
+squirrels, striped, red, and gray, the last having a large, spreading
+tail, which Mr. Weare told me they do use as a sail, to catch the wind,
+that it may blow them over rivers and creeks, on pieces of bark, in some
+sort like that wonderful shell-fish which transformeth itself into a
+boat, and saileth on the waves of the sea. We also found grapes, both
+white and purple, hanging down in clusters from the trees, over which
+the vines did run, nigh upon as large as those which the Jews of old
+plucked at Eschol. The air was sweet and soft, and there was a clear,
+but not a hot sun, and the chirping of squirrels, and the noise of
+birds, and the sound of the waves breaking on the beach a little
+distance off, and the leaves, at every breath of the wind in the tree-
+tops, whirling and fluttering down about me, like so many yellow and
+scarlet-colored birds, made the ride wonderfully pleasant and
+entertaining.
+
+Mr. Weare, on the way, told me that there was a great talk of the
+bewitching of Goodman Morse's house at Newbury, and that the case of
+Caleb Powell was still before the Court, he being vehemently suspected
+of the mischief. I told him I thought the said Caleb was a vain,
+talking man, but nowise of a wizard. The thing most against him, Mr.
+Weare said, was this: that he did deny at the first that the house was
+troubled by evil spirits, and even went so far as to doubt that such
+things could be at all. "Yet many wiser men than Caleb Powell do deny
+the same," I said. "True," answered he; "but, as good Mr. Richardson,
+of Newbury, well saith, there have never lacked Sadducees, who believe
+not in angel or spirit." I told the story of the disturbance at
+Strawberry Bank the night before, and how so silly a thing as a rolling
+pumpkin did greatly terrify a whole household; and said I did not doubt
+this Newbury trouble was something very like it. Hereupon the good
+woman took the matter up, saying she had been over to Newbury, and had
+seen with her own eyes, and heard with her own ears; and that she could
+say of it as the Queen of Sheba did of Solomon's glory, "The half had
+not been told her." She then went on to tell me of many marvellous and
+truly unaccountable things, so that I must needs think there is an
+invisible hand at work there.
+
+We reached Hampton about one hour before noon; and riding up the road
+towards the meeting-house, to my great joy, Uncle Rawson, who had
+business with the Commissioners then sitting, came out to meet me,
+bidding me go on to Mr. Weare's house, whither he would follow me when
+the Court did adjourn. He came thither accordingly, to sup and lodge,
+bringing with him Mr. Pike the elder, one of the magistrates, a grave,
+venerable man, the father of mine old acquaintance, Robert. Went in the
+evening with Mistress Weare and her maiden sister to see a young girl in
+the neighborhood, said to be possessed, or bewitched; but for mine own
+part I did see nothing in her behavior beyond that of a vicious and
+spoiled child, delighting in mischief. Her grandmother, with whom she
+lives, lays the blame on an ill-disposed woman, named Susy Martin,
+living in Salisbury. Mr. Pike, who dwells near this Martin, saith she
+is no witch, although an arrant scold, as was her mother before her; and
+as for the girl, he saith that a birch twig, smartly laid on, would cure
+her sooner than the hanging of all the old women in the Colony.
+Mistress Weare says this is not the first time the Evil Spirit hath been
+at work in Hampton; for they did all remember the case of Goody
+Marston's child, who was, from as fair and promising an infant as one
+would wish to see, changed into the likeness of an ape, to the great
+grief and sore shame of its parents; and, moreover, that when the child
+died, there was seen by more than one person a little old woman in a
+blue cloak, and petticoat of the same color, following on after the
+mourners, and looking very like old Eunice Cole, who was then locked
+fast in Ipswich jail, twenty miles off. Uncle Rawson says he has all
+the papers in his possession touching the trial of this Cole, and will
+let me see them when we get back to Newbury. There was much talk on
+this matter, which so disturbed my fancy that I slept but poorly. This
+afternoon we go over to Newbury, where, indeed, I do greatly long to be
+once more.
+
+
+
+NEWBURY, October 26.
+
+Cousin Rebecca gone to Boston, and not expected home until next week.
+The house seems lonely without her. R. Pike looked in upon us this
+morning, telling us that there was a rumor in Boston, brought by way of
+the New York Colony, that a great Papist Plot had been discovered in
+England, and that it did cause much alarm in London and thereabout.
+R. Pike saith he doubts not the Papists do plot, it being the custom of
+their Jesuits so to do; but that, nevertheless, it would be no strange
+thing if it should be found that the Bishops and the Government did set
+this rumor a-going, for the excuse and occasion of some new persecutions
+of Independents and godly people.
+
+
+
+October 27.
+
+Mr. Richardson preached yesterday, from Deuteronomy xviii. 10th, 11th,
+and 12th verses. An ingenious and solid discourse, in which he showed
+that, as among the heathen nations surrounding the Jews, there were
+sorcerers, charmers, wizards, and consulters with familiar spirits, who
+were an abomination to the Lord, so in our time the heathen nations of
+Indians had also their powahs and panisees and devilish wizards, against
+whom the warning of the text might well be raised by the watchmen on the
+walls of our Zion. He moreover said that the arts of the Adversary were
+now made manifest in this place in a most strange and terrible manner,
+and it did become the duty of all godly persons to pray and wrestle with
+the Lord, that they who have made a covenant with hell may be speedily
+discovered in their wickedness, and cut off from the congregation. An
+awful discourse, which made many tremble and quake, and did quite
+overcome Goodwife Morse, she being a weakly woman, so that she had to be
+carried out of the meeting.
+
+It being cold weather, and a damp easterly wind keeping me within doors,
+I have been looking over with uncle his papers about the Hampton witch,
+Eunice Cole, who was twice tried for her mischiefs; and I incline to
+copy some of them, as I know they will be looked upon as worthy of,
+record by my dear Cousin Oliver and mine other English friends. I find
+that as long ago as the year 1656, this same Eunice Cole was complained
+of, and many witnesses did testify to her wickedness. Here followeth
+some of the evidence on the first trial:--
+
+"The deposition of Goody Marston and Goodwife Susanna Palmer, who, being
+sworn, sayeth, that Goodwife Cole saith that she was sure there was a
+witch in town, and that she knew where he dwelt, and who they are, and
+that thirteen years ago she knew one bewitched as Goodwife Marston's
+child was, and she was sure that party was bewitched, for it told her
+so, and it was changed from a man to an ape, as Goody Marston's child
+was, and she had prayed this thirteen year that God would discover that
+witch. And further the deponent saith not.
+
+"Taken on oath before the Commissioners of Hampton, the 8th of the 2nd
+mo., 1656.
+
+ "WILLIAM FULLER.
+ "HENRY DOW.
+
+ "Vera copea:
+ "THOS. BRADBURY, Recorder.
+
+ "Sworn before, the 4th of September, 1656,
+
+ "EDWARD RAWSON.
+
+
+"Thomas Philbrick testifieth that Goody Cole told him that if any of his
+calves did eat of her grass, she hoped it would poison them; and it fell
+out that one never came home again, and the other coming home died soon
+after.
+
+"Henry Morelton's wife and Goodwife Sleeper depose that, talking about
+Goody Cole and Marston's child, they did hear a great scraping against
+the boards of the window, which was not done by a cat or dog.
+
+"Thomas Coleman's wife testifies that Goody Cole did repeat to another
+the very words which passed between herself and her husband, in their
+own house, in private; and Thomas Ormsby, the constable of Salisbury,
+testifies, that when he did strip Eunice Cole of her shift, to be
+whipped, by the judgment of the Court at Salisbury, he saw a witch's
+mark under her left breast. Moreover, one Abra. Drake doth depose and
+say, that this Goody Cole threatened that the hand of God would be
+against his cattle, and forthwith two of his cattle died, and before the
+end of summer a third also."
+
+
+About five years ago, she was again presented by the Jury for the
+Massachusetts jurisdiction, for having "entered into a covenant with the
+Devil, contrary to the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his crown
+and dignity, the laws of God and this jurisdiction"; and much testimony
+was brought against her, tending to show her to be an arrant witch. For
+it seems she did fix her evil eye upon a little maid named Ann Smith, to
+entice her to her house, appearing unto her in the shape of a little old
+woman, in a blue coat, a blue cap, and a blue apron, and a white
+neckcloth, and presently changing into a dog, and running up a tree, and
+then into an eagle flying in the air, and lastly into a gray cat,
+speaking to her, and troubling her in a grievous manner. Moreover, the
+constable of the town of Hampton testifies, that, having to supply Goody
+Cole with diet, by order of the town, she being poor, she complained
+much of him, and after that his wife could bake no bread in the oven
+which did not speedily rot and become loathsome to the smell, but the
+same meal baked at a neighbor's made good and sweet bread; and, further,
+that one night there did enter into their chamber a smell like that of
+the bewitched bread, only more loathsome, and plainly diabolical in its
+nature, so that, as the constable's wife saith, "she was fain to rise in
+the night and desire her husband to go to prayer to drive away the
+Devil; and he, rising, went to prayer, and after that, the smell was
+gone, so that they were not troubled with it." There is also the
+testimony of Goodwife Perkins, that she did see, on the Lord's day,
+while Mr. Dalton was preaching, an imp in the shape of a mouse, fall out
+the bosom of Eunice Cole down into her lap. For all which, the County
+Court, held at Salisbury, did order her to be sent to the Boston Jail,
+to await her trial at the Court of Assistants. This last Court, I learn
+from mine uncle, did not condemn her, as some of the evidence was old,
+and not reliable. Uncle saith she was a wicked old woman, who had been
+often whipped and set in the ducking-stool, but whether she was a witch
+or no, he knows not for a certainty.
+
+
+
+November 8.
+
+Yesterday, to my great joy, came my beloved Cousin Rebecca from Boston.
+In her company also came the worthy minister and doctor of medicine, Mr.
+Russ, formerly of Wells, but now settled at a plantation near Cocheco.
+He is to make some little tarry in this town, where at this present time
+many complain of sickness. Rebecca saith he is one of the excellent of
+the earth, and, like his blessed Lord and Master, delighteth in going
+about doing good, and comforting both soul and body. He hath a
+cheerful, pleasant countenance, and is very active, albeit he is well
+stricken in years. He is to preach for Mr. Richardson next Sabhath, and
+in the mean time lodgeth at my uncle's house.
+
+This morning the weather is raw and cold, the ground frozen, and some
+snow fell before sunrise. A little time ago, Dr. Russ, who was walking
+in the garden, came in a great haste to the window where Rebecca and I
+were sitting, bidding us come forth. So, we hurrying out, the good man
+bade us look whither he pointed, and to! a flock of wild geese,
+streaming across the sky, in two great files, sending down, as it were,
+from the clouds, their loud and sonorous trumpetings, "Cronk, cronk,
+cronk!" These birds, the Doctor saith, do go northward in March to
+hatch their broods in the great bogs and on the desolate islands, and
+fly back again when the cold season approacheth. Our worthy guest
+improved the occasion to speak of the care and goodness of God towards
+his creation, and how these poor birds are enabled, by their proper
+instincts, to partake of his bounty, and to shun the evils of adverse
+climates. He never looked, he said, upon the flight of these fowls,
+without calling to mind the query which was of old put to Job: "Doth the
+hawk fly by thy wisdom, and stretch her wings toward the south? Doth
+the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high?"
+
+
+
+November 12, 1678.
+
+Dr. Russ preached yesterday, having for his text 1 Corinthians, chap.
+xiii. verse 5: "Charity seeketh not her own." He began by saying that
+mutual benevolence was a law of nature,--no one being a whole of
+himself, nor capable of happily subsisting by himself, but rather a
+member of the great body of mankind, which must dissolve and perish,
+unless held together and compacted in its various parts by the force of
+that common and blessed law. The wise Author of our being hath most
+manifestly framed and fitted us for one another, and ordained that
+mutual charity shall supply our mutual wants and weaknesses, inasmuch
+as no man liveth to himself, but is dependent upon others, as others be
+upon him. It hath been said by ingenious men, that in the outward world
+all things do mutually operate upon and affect each other; and that it
+is by the energy of this principle that our solid earth is supported,
+and the heavenly bodies are made to keep the rhythmic harmonies of their
+creation, and dispense upon us their benign favors; and it may be said,
+that a law akin to this hath been ordained for the moral world,--mutual
+benevolence being the cement and support of families, and churches, and
+states, and of the great community and brotherhood of mankind. It doth
+both make and preserve all the peace, and harmony, and beauty, which
+liken our world in some small degree to heaven, and without it all
+things would rush into confusion and discord, and the earth would become
+a place of horror and torment, and men become as ravening wolves,
+devouring and being devoured by one another.
+
+Charity is the second great commandment, upon which hang all the Law
+and the Prophets; and it is like unto the first, and cannot be separated
+from it; for at the great day of recompense we shall be tried by these
+commandments, and our faithfulness unto the first will be seen and
+manifested by our faithfulness unto the last. Yea, by our love of one
+another the Lord will measure our love of himself. "Inasmuch as ye have
+done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto
+me." The grace of benevolence is therefore no small part of our
+meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light; it is the temper of
+heaven; the air which the angels breathe; an immortal grace,--for when
+faith which supporteth us here, and hope which is as an anchor to the
+tossed soul, are no longer needed, charity remaineth forever, for it is
+native in heaven, and partaketh of the divine nature, for God himself is
+love.
+
+"Oh, my hearers," said the preacher, his venerable face brightening as
+if with a light shining from within, "Doth not the Apostle tell us that
+skill in tongues and gifts of prophecy, and mysteries of knowledge and
+faith, do avail nothing where charity is lacking? What avail great
+talents, if they be not devoted to goodness? On the other hand, where
+charity dwelleth, it maketh the weak strong and the uncomely beautiful;
+it sheddeth a glory about him who possesseth it, like that which did
+shine on the face of Moses, or that which did sit upon the countenance
+of Stephen, when his face was as the face of an angel. Above all, it
+conformeth us to the Son of God; for through love he came among us, and
+went about doing good, adorning his life with miracles of mercy, and at
+last laid it down for the salvation of men. What heart can resist his
+melting entreaty: 'Even as I have loved you, love ye also one another.'
+
+"We do all," he continued, "seek after happiness, but too often blindly
+and foolishly. The selfish man, striving to live for himself, shutteth
+himself up to partake of his single portion, and marvelleth that he
+cannot enjoy it. The good things he hath laid up for himself fail to
+comfort him; and although he hath riches, and wanteth nothing for his
+soul of all that he desireth, yet hath he not power to partake thereof.
+They be as delicates poured upon a mouth shut up, or as meats set upon a
+grave. But he that hath found charity to be the temper of happiness,
+which doth put the soul in a natural and easy condition, and openeth it
+to the solaces of that pure and sublime entertainment which the angels
+do spread for such as obey the will of their Creator, hath discovered a
+more subtle alchemy than any of which the philosophers did dream,--for
+he transmuteth the enjoyments of others into his own, and his large and
+open heart partaketh of the satisfaction of all around him. Are there
+any here who, in the midst of outward abundance, are sorrowful of
+heart,--who go mourning on their way from some inward discomfort,---Who
+long for serenity of spirit, and cheerful happiness, as the servant
+earnestly desireth the shadow? Let such seek out the poor and forsaken,
+they who have no homes nor estates, who are the servants of sin and evil
+habits, who lack food for both the body and the mind. Thus shall they,
+in rememering others, forget themselves; the pleasure they afford to
+their fellow-creatures shall come back larger and fuller unto their own
+bosoms, and they shall know of a truth how much the more blessed it is
+to give than to receive. In love and compassion, God hath made us
+dependent upon each other, to the end that by the use of our affections
+we may find true happiness and rest to our souls. He hath united us so
+closely with our fellows, that they do make, as it were, a part of our
+being, and in comforting them we do most assuredly comfort ourselves.
+Therein doth happiness come to us unawares, and without seeking, as the
+servant who goeth on his master's errand findeth pleasant fruits and
+sweet flowers overhanging him, and cool fountains, which he knew not of,
+gushing up by the wayside, for his solace and refreshing."
+
+The minister then spake of the duty of charity towards even the sinful
+and froward, and of winning them by love and good will, and making even
+their correction and punishment a means of awakening them to repentance,
+and the calling forth of the fruits meet for it. He also spake of self-
+styled prophets and enthusiastic people, who went about to cry against
+the Church and the State, and to teach new doctrines, saying that
+oftentimes such were sent as a judgment upon the professors of the
+truth, who had the form of godliness only, while lacking the power
+thereof; and that he did believe that the zeal which had been manifested
+against such had not always been enough seasoned with charity. It did
+argue a lack of faith in the truth, to fly into a panic and a great rage
+when it was called in question; and to undertake to become God's
+avengers, and to torture and burn heretics, was an error of the Papists,
+which ill became those who had gone out from among them. Moreover, he
+did believe that many of these people, who had so troubled the Colony of
+late, were at heart simple and honest men and women, whose heads might
+indeed be unsound, but who at heart sought to do the will of God; and,
+of a truth, all could testify to the sobriety and strictness of their
+lives, and the justice of their dealings in outward things. He spake
+also somewhat of the Indians, who, he said, were our brethren, and
+concerning whom we would have an account to give at the Great Day. The
+hand of these heathen people had been heavy upon the Colonies, and many
+had suffered from their cruel slaughterings, and the captivity of
+themselves and their families. Here the aged minister wept, for he
+doubtless thought of his son, who was slain in the war; and for a time
+the words did seem to die in his throat, so greatly was he moved. But
+he went on to say, that since God, in his great and undeserved mercy,
+had put an end to the war, all present unkindness and hard dealing
+towards he poor benighted heathen was an offence in the eyes of Him who
+respecteth not the persons of men, but who regardeth with an equal eye
+the white and the red men, both being the workmanship of His hands. It
+is our blessed privilege to labor to bring them to a knowledge of the
+true God, whom, like the Athenians, some of them do ignorantly worship;
+while the greater part, as was said of the heathen formerly, do not,
+out of the good pings that are seen, know Him that is; neither by
+considering the works do they acknowledge the workmaster, but deem the
+fire or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the
+violent water, or the lights of heaven, to be the gods who govern the
+world.
+
+He counselled against mischief-makers and stirrers up of strife, and
+such as do desire occasion against their brethren. He said that it did
+seem as if many thought to atone for their own sins by their great heat
+and zeal to discover wickedness in others; and that he feared such might
+be the case now, when there was much talk of the outward and visible
+doings of Satan in this place; whereas, the enemy was most to be feared
+who did work privily in the heart; it being a small thing for him to
+bewitch a dwelling made of wood and stone, who did so easily possess and
+enchant the precious souls of men.
+
+Finally, he did exhort all to keep watch over their own spirits, and to
+remember that what measure they do mete to others shall be measured to
+them again; to lay aside all wrath, and malice, and evil-speaking; to
+bear one another's burdens, and so make this Church in the wilderness
+beautiful and comely, an example to the world of that peace and good
+will to men, which the angels sang of at the birth of the blessed
+Redeemer.
+
+I have been the more careful to give the substance of Mr. Russ's sermon,
+as nearly as I can remember it, forasmuch as it hath given offence to
+some who did listen to it. Deacon Dole saith it was such a discourse as
+a Socinian or a Papist might have preached, for the great stress it laid
+upon works; and Goodwife Matson, a noisy, talking woman,--such an one,
+no doubt, as those busybodies whom Saint Paul did rebuke for
+forwardness, and command to keep silence in the church,--says the
+preacher did go out of his way to favor Quakers, Indians, and witches;
+and that the Devil in Goody Morse's house was no doubt well pleased with
+the discourse. R. Pike saith he does no wise marvel at her complaints;
+for when she formerly dwelt at the Marblehead fishing-haven, she was one
+of the unruly women who did break into Thompson's garrison-house, and
+barbarously put to death two Saugus Indians, who had given themselves up
+for safe keeping, and who had never harmed any, which thing was a great
+grief and scandal to all well-disposed people. And yet this woman, who
+scrupled not to say that she would as lief stick an Indian as a hog, and
+who walked all the way from Marblehead to Boston to see the Quaker woman
+hung, and did foully jest over her dead body, was allowed to have her
+way in the church, Mr. Richardson being plainly in fear of her ill
+tongue and wicked temper.
+
+
+
+November 13.
+
+The Quaker maid, Margaret Brewster, came this morning, inquiring for the
+Doctor, and desiring him to visit a sick man at her father's house, a
+little way up the river; whereupon he took his staff and went with her.
+On his coming back, he said he must do the Quakers the justice to say,
+that, with all their heresies and pestilent errors of doctrine, they
+were a kind people; for here was Goodman Brewster, whose small estate
+had been wellnigh taken from him in fines, and whose wife was a weak,
+ailing woman, who was at this time kindly lodging and nursing a poor,
+broken-down soldier, by no means likely to repay him, in any sort. As
+for the sick man, he had been hardly treated in the matter of his wages,
+while in the war, and fined, moreover, on the ground that he did profane
+the holy Sabhath; and though he had sent a petition to the Honorable
+Governor and Council, for the remission of the same, it had been to no
+purpose. Mr. Russ said he had taken a copy of this petition, with the
+answer thereto, intending to make another application himself to the
+authorities; for although the petitioner might have been blamable, yet
+his necessity did go far to excuse it. He gave me the papers to copy,
+which are as followeth:--
+
+
+"To the Hon. the Governor and Council, now sitting in Boston, July 30,
+1676. The Petition of Jonathan Atherton humbly showeth:
+
+"That your Petitioner, being a soldier under Captain Henchman, during
+their abode at Concord, Captain H., under pretence of your petitioner's
+profanation of the Sabhath, had sentenced your petitioner to lose a
+fortnight's pay. Now, the thing that was alleged against your
+petitioner was, that he cut a piece of an old hat to put in his shoes,
+and emptied three or four cartridges. Now, there was great occasion and
+necessity for his so doing, for his shoes were grown so big, by walking
+and riding in the wet and dew, that they galled his feet so that he was
+not able to go without pain; and his cartridges, being in a bag,--were
+worn with continual travel, so that they lost the powder out, so that it
+was dangerous to carry them; besides, he did not know how soon he should
+be forced to make use of them, therefore he did account it lawful to do
+the same; yet, if it be deemed a breach of the Sabhath, he desires to be
+humbled before the Lord, and begs the pardon of his people for any
+offence done to them thereby. And doth humbly request the favor of your
+Honors to consider the premises, and to remit the fine imposed upon him,
+and to give order to the committee for the war for the payment of his
+wages. So shall he forever pray. . . . "
+
+11 Aug. 1676.--"The Council sees no cause to grant the petitioner any
+relief."
+
+
+
+NEWBURY, November 18, 1678.
+
+Went yesterday to the haunted house with Mr. Russ and Mr. Richardson,
+Rebecca and Aunt Rawson being in the company. Found the old couple in
+much trouble, sitting by the fire, with the Bible open before them, and
+Goody Morse weeping. Mr. Richardson asked Goodman Morse to tell what he
+had seen and heard in the house; which he did, to this effect: That
+there had been great and strange noises all about the house, a banging
+of doors, and a knocking on the boards, and divers other unaccountable
+sounds; that he had seen his box of tools turn over of itself, and the
+tools fly about the room; baskets dropping down the chimney, and the
+pots hanging over the fire smiting against each other; and, moreover,
+the irons on the hearth jumping into the pots, and dancing on the table.
+Goodwife Morse said that her bread-tray would upset of its own accord,
+and the great woollen wheel would contrive to turn itself upside down,
+and stand on its end; and that when she and the boy did make the beds,
+the blankets would fly off as fast as they put them on, all of which the
+boy did confirm. Mr. Russ asked her if she suspected any one of the
+mischief; whereupon she said she did believe it was done by the seaman
+Powell, a cunning man, who was wont to boast of his knowledge in
+astrology and astronomy, having been brought tip under one Norwood,
+who is said to have studied the Black Art. He had wickedly accused her
+grandson of the mischief, whereas the poor boy had himself suffered
+greatly from the Evil Spirit, having been often struck with stones and
+bits of boards, which were flung upon him, and kept awake o' nights by
+the diabolical noises. Goodman Morse here said that Powell, coming in,
+and pretending to pity their lamentable case, told them that if they
+would let him have the boy for a day or two, they should be free of the
+trouble while he was with him; and that the boy going with him, they had
+no disturbance in that time; which plainly showed that this Powell had
+the wicked spirits in his keeping, and could chain them up, or let them
+out, as he pleased.
+
+Now, while she was speaking, we did all hear a great thumping on the
+ceiling, and presently a piece of a board flew across the room against
+the chair on which Mr. Richardson was sitting; whereat the two old
+people set up a dismal groaning, and the boy cried out, "That's the
+witch!" Goodman Morse begged of Mr. Richardson to fall to praying,
+which he presently did; and, when he had done, he asked Mr. Russ to
+follow him, who sat silent and musing a little while, and then prayed
+that the worker of the disturbance, whether diabolical or human, might
+be discovered and brought to light. After which there was no noise
+while we staid. Mr. Russ talked awhile with the boy, who did stoutly
+deny what Caleb Powell charged upon him, and showed a bruise which he
+got from a stick thrown at him in the cow-house. When we went away,
+Mr. Richardson asked Mr. Russ what he thought of it. Mr. Russ said,
+the matter had indeed a strange look, but that it might be,
+nevertheless, the work of the boy, who was a cunning young rogue, and
+capable beyond his years. Mr. Richardson said he hoped his brother was
+not about to countenance the scoffers and Sadducees, who had all along
+tried to throw doubt upon the matter. For himself, he did look upon it
+as the work of invisible demons, and an awful proof of the existence of
+such, and of the deplorable condition of all who fall into their bands;
+moreover, he did believe that God would overrule this malice of the
+Devil for good, and make it a means of awakening sinners and lukewarm
+church-members to a sense of their danger.
+
+Last night, brother Leonard, who is studying with the learned Mr. Ward,
+the minister at Haverbill, came down, in the company of the worshipful
+Major Saltonstall, who hath business with Esquire Dummer and other
+magistrates of this place. Mr. Saltonstall's lady, who is the daughter
+of Mr. Ward, sent by her husband and my brother a very kind and pressing
+invitation to Rebecca and myself to make a visit to her; and Mr.
+Saltonstall did also urge the matter strongly. So we have agreed to go
+with them the day after to-morrow. Now, to say the truth, I am not
+sorry to leave Newbury at this time, for there is so much talk of the
+bewitched house, and such dismal stories told of the power of invisible
+demons, added to what I did myself hear and see yesterday, that I can
+scarce sleep for the trouble and disquiet this matter causeth. Dr.
+Russ, who left this morning, said, in his opinion, the less that was
+said and done about the witchcraft the better for the honor of the
+Church and the peace of the neighborhood; for it might, after all, turn
+out to be nothing more than an "old wife's fable;" but if it were indeed
+the work of Satan, it could, he did believe, do no harm to sincere and
+godly people, who lived sober and prayerful lives, and kept themselves
+busy in doing good. The doers of the Word seldom fell into the snare of
+the Devil's enchantments. He might be compared to a wild beast, who
+dareth not to meddle with the traveller who goeth straightway on his
+errand, but lieth in wait for such as loiter and fall asleep by the
+wayside. He feared, he said, that some in our day were trying to get a
+great character to themselves, as the old monks did, by their skill in
+discerning witcherafts, and their pretended conflicts with the Devil in
+his bodily shape; and thus, while they were seeking to drive the enemy
+out of their neighbors' houses, they were letting him into their own
+hearts, in the guise of deceit and spiritual pride. Repentance and
+works meet for it were the best exorcism; and the savor of a good life
+driveth off Evil Spirits, even as that of the fish of Tobit, at
+Ecbatana, drove the Devil from the chamber of the bride into the
+uttermost parts of Egypt. "For mine own part," continued the worthy
+man, "I believe the Lord and Master, whom I seek to serve, is over all
+the powers of Satan; therefore do I not heed them, being afraid only of
+mine own accusing conscience and the displeasure of God."
+
+We are all loath to lose the good Doctor's company. An Israelite
+indeed! My aunt, who once tarried for a little time with him for the
+benefit of his skill in physic, on account of sickness, tells me that
+he is as a father to the people about him, advising them in all their
+temporal concerns, and bringing to a timely and wise settlement all
+their disputes, so that there is nowhere a more prosperous and loving
+society. Although accounted a learned man, he doth not perplex his
+hearers, as the manner of some is, with dark and difficult questions,
+and points of doctrine, but insisteth mainly on holiness of life and
+conversation. It is said that on one occasion, a famous schoolman and
+disputer from abroad, coming to talk with him on the matter of the
+damnation of infants, did meet him with a cradle on his shoulder, which
+he was carrying to a young mother in his neighborhood, and when the man
+told him his errand,--the good Doctor bade him wait until he got back,
+"for," said he, "I hold it to be vastly more important to take care of
+the bodies of the little infants which God in his love sends among us,
+than to seek to pry into the mysteries of His will concerning their
+souls." He hath no salary or tithe, save the use of a house and farm,
+choosing rather to labor with his own hands than to burden his
+neighbors; yet, such is their love and good-will, that in the busy
+seasons of the hay and corn harvest, they all join together and help him
+in his fields, counting it a special privilege to do so.
+
+
+
+November 19.
+
+Leonard and Mr. Richardson, talking upon the matter of the ministry,
+disagreed not a little. Mr. Richardson says my brother hath got into
+his head many unscriptural notions, and that he will never be of service
+in the Church until he casts them off. He saith, moreover, that he
+shall write to Mr. Ward concerning the errors of the young man. His
+words troubling me, I straightway discoursed my brother as to the points
+of difference between them; but he, smiling, said it was a long story,
+but that some time he would tell me the substance of the disagreement,
+bidding me have no fear in his behalf, as what had displeasured Mr.
+Richardson had arisen only from tenderness of conscience.
+
+
+
+HAVERHILL, November 22.
+
+Left Newbury day before yesterday. The day cold, but sunshiny, and not
+unpleasant. Mr. Saltonstall's business calling him that way, we crossed
+over the ferry to Salisbury, and after a ride of about an hour, got to
+the Falls of the Powow River, where a great stream of water rushes
+violently down the rocks, into a dark wooded valley, and from thence
+runs into the Merrimac, about a mile to the southeast. A wild sight it
+was, the water swollen by the rains of the season, foaming and dashing
+among the rocks and the trees, which latter were wellnigh stripped of
+their leaves. Leaving this place, we went on towards Haverhill. Just
+before we entered that town, we overtook an Indian, with a fresh wolf's
+skin hanging over his shoulder. As soon as he saw us, he tried to hide
+himself in the bushes; but Mr. Saltonstall, riding up to him, asked him
+if he did expect Haverhill folks to pay him forty shillings for killing
+that Amesbury wolf? "How you know Amesbury wolf?" asked the Indian.
+"Oh," said Mr. Saltonstall, "you can't cheat us again, Simon. You must
+be honest, and tell no more lies, or we will have you whipped for your
+tricks." The Indian thereupon looked sullen enough, but at length he
+begged Mr. Saltonstall not to tell where the wolf was killed, as the
+Amesbury folks did now refuse to pay for any killed in their town; and,
+as he was a poor Indian, and his squaw much sick, and could do no work,
+he did need the money. Mr. Saltonstall told him he would send his wife
+some cornmeal and bacon, when he got home, if he would come for them,
+which he promised to do.
+
+When we had ridden off, and left him, Mr. Saltonstall told us that this
+Simon was a bad Indian, who, when in drink, was apt to be saucy and
+quarrelsome; but that his wife was quite a decent body for a savage,
+having long maintained herself and children and her lazy, cross husband,
+by hard labor in the cornfields and at the fisheries.
+
+Haverhill lieth very pleasantly on the river-side; the land about hilly
+and broken, but of good quality. Mr. Saltonstall liveth in a stately
+house for these parts, not far from that of his father-in-law, the
+learned Mr. Ward. Madam, his wife, is a fair, pleasing young woman,
+not unused to society, their house being frequented by many of the first
+people hereabout, as well as by strangers of distinction from other
+parts of the country. We had hardly got well through our dinner (which
+was abundant and savory, being greatly relished by our hunger), when two
+gentlemen came riding up to the door; and on their coming in, we found
+them to be the young Doctor Clark, of Boston, a son of the old Newbury
+physician, and a Doctor Benjamin Thompson, of Roxbury, who I hear is not
+a little famous for his ingenious poetry and witty pieces on many
+subjects. He was, moreover, an admirer of my cousin Rebecca; and on
+learning of her betrothal to Sir Thomas did write a most despairing
+verse to her, comparing himself to all manner of lonesome things, so
+that when Rebecca showed it to me, I told her I did fear the poor young
+gentleman would put an end to himself, by reason of his great sorrow and
+disquiet; whereat she laughed merrily, bidding me not fear, for she knew
+the writer too well to be troubled thereat, for he loved nobody so well
+as himself, and that under no provocation would he need the Apostle's
+advice to the jailer, "Do thyself no harm." All which I found to be
+true,--he being a gay, witty man, full of a fine conceit of himself,
+which is not so much to be marvelled at, as he hath been greatly
+flattered and sought after.
+
+The excellent Mr. Ward spent the evening with us; a pleasant, social old
+man, much beloved by his people. He told us a great deal about the
+early settlement of the town, and of the grievous hardships which many
+did undergo the first season, from cold, and hunger, and sickness. He
+thought, however, that, with all their ease and worldly prosperity, the
+present generation were less happy and contented than their fathers; for
+there was now a great striving to outdo each other in luxury and gay
+apparel; the Lord's day was not so well kept as formerly; and the
+drinking of spirits and frequenting of ordinaries and places of public
+resort vastly increased. Mr. Saltonstall said the war did not a little
+demoralize the people, and that since the soldiers cause back, there had
+been much trouble in Church and State. The General Court, two years
+ago, had made severe laws against the provoking evils of the times:
+profaneness, Sabbath-breaking, drinking, and revelling to excess, loose
+and sinful conduct on the part of the young and unmarried, pride in
+dress, attending Quakers' meetings, and neglect of attendance upon
+divine worship; but these laws had never been well enforced; and he
+feared too many of the magistrates were in the condition of the Dutch
+Justice in the New York Province, who, when a woman was brought before
+him charged with robbing a henroost, did request his brother on the
+bench to pass sentence upon her; for, said he, if I send her to the
+whipping post, the wench will cry out against me as her accomplice.
+
+Doctor Clark said his friend Doctor Thompson had written a long piece on
+this untoward state of our affairs, which he hoped soon to see in print,
+inasmuch as it did hold the looking-glass to the face of this
+generation, and shame it by a comparison with that of the generation
+which has passed. Mr. Ward said he was glad to hear of it, and hoped
+his ingenious friend had brought the manuscript with him; whereupon, the
+young gentleman said he did take it along with him, in the hope to
+benefit it by Mr. Ward's judgment and learning, and with the leave of
+the company he would read the Prologue thereof. To which we all
+agreeing, he read what follows, which I copy from his book:--
+
+
+ "The times wherein old PUMPKIN was a saint,
+ When men fared hardly, yet without complaint,
+ On vilest cates; the dainty Indian maize
+ Was eat with clam-shells out of wooden trays,
+ Under thatched roofs, without the cry of rent,
+ And the best sauce to every dish, content,--
+ These golden times (too fortunate to hold)
+ Were quickly sinned away for love of gold.
+ 'T was then among the bushes, not the street,
+ If one in place did an inferior meet,
+ 'Good morrow, brother! Is there aught you want?
+ Take freely of me what I have, you ha'n't.'
+ Plain Tom and Dick would pass as current now,
+ As ever since 'Your servant, sir,' and bow.
+ Deep-skirted doublets, puritanic capes,
+ Which now would render men like upright apes,
+ Was comelier wear, our wise old fathers thought,
+ Than the cast fashions from all Europe brought.
+ 'T was in those days an honest grace would hold
+ Till an hot pudding grew at heart a-cold,
+ And men had better stomachs for religion,
+ Than now for capon, turkey-cock, or pigeon;
+ When honest sisters met to pray, not prate,
+ About their own and not their neighbors' state,
+ During Plain Dealing's reign, that worthy stud
+ Of the ancient planter-race before the Flood.
+
+ "These times were good: merchants cared not a rush
+ For other fare than jonakin and mush.
+ And though men fared and lodged very hard,
+ Yet innocence was better than a guard.
+ 'T was long before spiders and worms had drawn
+ Their dingy webs, or hid with cheating lawn
+ New England's beauties, which still seemed to me
+ Illustrious in their own simplicity.
+ 'T was ere the neighboring Virgin Land had broke
+ The hogsheads of her worse than hellish smoke;
+ 'T was ere the Islands sent their presents in,
+ Which but to use was counted next to sin;
+ 'T was ere a barge had made so rich a freight
+ As chocolate, dust-gold, and bits of eight;
+ Ere wines from France and Muscovado too,
+ Without the which the drink will scarcely do.
+ From Western Isles, ere fruits and delicacies
+ Did rot maids' teeth and spoil their handsome faces,
+ Or ere these times did chance the noise of war
+ Was from our tines and hearts removed far,
+ Then had the churches rest: as yet, the coals
+ Were covered up in most contentious souls;
+ Freeness in judgment, union in affection,
+ Dear love, sound truth, they were our grand protection.
+ Then were the times in which our Councils sat,
+ These grave prognostics of our future state;
+ If these be longer lived, our hopes increase,
+ These wars will usher in a longer peace;
+ But if New England's love die in its youth,
+ The grave will open next for blessed truth.
+
+ "This theme is out of date; the peaceful hours
+ When castles needed not, but pleasant bowers,
+ Not ink, but blood and tears now serve the turn
+ To draw the figure of New England's urn.
+ New England's hour of passion is at hand,
+ No power except Divine can it withstand.
+ Scarce hath her glass of fifty years run out,
+ Than her old prosperous steeds turn heads about;
+ Tracking themselves back to their poor beginnings,
+ To fear and fare upon the fruits of sinnings.
+ So that this mirror of the Christian world
+ Lies burnt to heaps in part, her streamers furled.
+ Grief sighs, joys flee, and dismal fears surprise,
+ Not dastard spirits only, but the wise.
+
+ "Thus have the fairest hopes deceived the eye
+ Of the big-swoln expectants standing by
+ So the proud ship, after a little turn,
+ Sinks in the ocean's arms to find its urn:
+ Thus hath the heir to many thousands born
+ Been in an instant from the mother torn;
+ Even thus thy infant cheek begins to pale,
+ And thy supporters through great losses fail.
+ This is the Prologue to thy future woe--
+ The Epilogue no mortal yet can know."
+
+Mr. Ward was much pleased with the verses, saying that they would do
+honor to any writer.
+
+Rebecca thought the lines concerning the long grace at meat happy, and
+said she was minded of the wife of the good Mr. Ames, who prided herself
+on her skill in housewifery and cookery; and on one occasion, seeing a
+nice pair of roasted fowls growing cold under her husband's long grace,
+was fain to jog his elbow, telling him that if he did not stop soon, she
+feared they would have small occasion for thankfulness for their spoiled
+dinner. Mr. Ward said he was once travelling in company with Mr.
+Phillips of Rowley, and Mr. Parker of Newbury, and stopping all night at
+a poor house near the sea-shore, the woman thereof brought into the room
+for their supper a great wooden tray, full of something nicely covered
+up by a clean linen cloth. It proved to be a dish of boiled clams, in
+their shells; and as Mr. Phillips was remarkable in his thanks for aptly
+citing passages of Scripture with regard to whatsoever food was upon the
+table before him, Mr. Parker and himself did greatly wonder what he
+could say of this dish; but he, nothing put to it, offered thanks that
+now, as formerly, the Lord's people were enabled to partake of the
+abundance of the seas, and treasures hid in the sands. "Whereat," said
+Mr. Ward, "we did find it so hard to keep grave countenances, that our
+good hostess was not a little disturbed, thinking we were mocking her
+poor fare; and we were fain to tell her the cause of our mirth, which
+was indeed ill-timed."
+
+Doctor Clark spake of Mr. Ward's father, the renowned minister at
+Ipswich, whose book of "The Simple Cobbler of Agawam," was much admired.
+Mr. Ward said that some of the witty turns therein did give much offence
+at the time of its printing, but that his father could never spoil his
+joke for the sake of friends, albeit he had no malice towards any one,
+and was always ready to do a good, even to his enemies. He once even
+greatly angered his old and true friend, Mr. Cotton of Boston. "It fell
+out in this wise," said Mr. Ward. "When the arch-heretic and fanatic
+Gorton and his crew were in prison in Boston, my father and Mr. Cotton
+went to the jail window to see them; and after some little discourse
+with them, he told Gorton that if he had done or said anything which he
+could with a clear conscience renounce, he would do well to recant the
+same, and the Court, he doubted not, would be merciful; adding, that it
+would be no disparagement for him to do so, as the best of men were
+liable to err: as, for instance, his brother Cotton here generally did
+preach that one year which he publicly repented of before his
+congregation the next year."
+
+Mr. Saltonstall told another story of old Mr. Ward, which made us all
+merry. There was a noted Antinomian, of Boston, who used to go much
+about the country disputing with all who would listen to him, who,
+coming to Ipswich one night, with another of his sort with him, would
+fain have tarried with Mr. Ward; but he told them that he had scarce hay
+and grain enough in his barn for the use of his own cattle, and that
+they would do well to take their horses to the ordinary, where they
+would be better cared for. But the fellow, not wishing to be so put
+off, bade him consider what the Scripture said touching the keeping of
+strangers, as some had thereby entertained angels unawares. "True,
+my friend," said Mr. Ward, "but we don't read that the angels came
+a-horseback!"
+
+The evening passed away in a very pleasant and agreeable manner. We had
+rare nuts, and apples, and pears, of Mr. Saltonstall's raising,
+wonderfully sweet and luscious. Our young gentlemen, moreover, seemed
+to think the wine and ale of good quality; for, long after we had gone
+to our beds, we could hear them talking and laughing in the great hall
+below, notwithstanding that Mr. Ward, when he took leave, bade Doctor
+Thompson take heed to his own hint concerning the:
+
+ "Wines from France and Muscovado too;"
+
+to which the young wit replied, that there was Scripture warrant for his
+drinking, inasmuch as the command was, to give wine to those that be of
+heavy heart. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his
+misery no more; and, for his part, he had been little better than
+miserable ever since he heard of Rebecca's betrothal. A light, careless
+man, but of good parts, and as brave a talker as I have heard since I
+have been in the Colony.
+
+
+
+November 24.
+
+Mr. Ward's negro girl Dinah came for me yesterday, saying that her
+master did desire to see me. So, marvelling greatly what he wanted,
+I went with her, and was shown into the study. Mr. Ward said he had
+sent for me to have some discourse in regard to my brother Leonard, who
+he did greatly fear was likely to make shipwreck of the faith; and that
+Mr. Richardson had written him concerning the young man, telling him
+that he did visit the Quakers when at Newbury, and even went over to
+their conventicle at Hampton, on the Lord's day, in the company of the
+Brewster family, noted Quakers and ranters. He had the last evening had
+some words with the lad, but with small satisfaction. Being sorely
+troubled by this account, I begged him to send for Leonard, which he
+did, and, when he did come into the room, Mr. Ward told him that he
+might see by the plight of his sister (for I was in tears) what a great
+grief he was like to bring upon his family and friends, by running out
+into heresies. Leonard said he was sorry to give trouble to any one,
+least of all to his beloved sister; that he did indeed go to the
+Quakers' meeting, on one occasion, to judge for himself concerning this
+people, who are everywhere spoken against; and that he must say he did
+hear or see nothing in their worship contrary to the Gospel. There was,
+indeed, but little said, but the words were savory and Scriptural. "But
+they deny the Scriptures," cried Mr. Ward, "and set above them what they
+call the Light, which I take to be nothing better than their own
+imaginations." "I do not so understand them," said Leonard; "I think
+they do diligently study the Scripture, and seek to conform their lives
+to its teachings; and for the Light of which they speak, it is borne--
+witness to not only in the Bible, but by the early fathers and devout
+men of all ages. I do not go to excuse the Quakers in all that they
+have done, nor to defend all their doctrines and practices, many of
+which I see no warrant in Scripture for, but believe to be pernicious
+and contrary to good order; yet I must need look upon them as a sober,
+earnest-seeking people, who do verily think themselves persecuted for
+righteousness' sake." Hereupon Mr. Ward struck his cane smartly on the
+floor, and, looking severely at my brother, bade him beware how he did
+justify these canting and false pretenders. "They are," he said,
+"either sad knaves, or silly enthusiasts,--they pretend to Divine
+Revelation, and set up as prophets; like the Rosicrucians and Gnostics,
+they profess to a knowledge of things beyond what plain Scripture
+reveals. The best that can be said of them is, that they are befooled
+by their own fancies, and the victims of distempered brains and ill
+habits of body. Then their ranting against the Gospel order of the
+Church, and against the ministers of Christ, calling us all manner of
+hirelings, wolves, and hypocrites; belching out their blasphemies
+against the ordinances and the wholesome laws of the land for the
+support of a sound ministry and faith, do altogether justify the sharp
+treatment they have met with; so that, if they have not all lost their
+ears, they may thank our clemency rather than their own worthiness to
+wear them. I do not judge of them ignorantly, for I have dipped into
+their books, where, what is not downright blasphemy and heresy, is
+mystical and cabalistic. They affect a cloudy and canting style, as if
+to keep themselves from being confuted by keeping themselves from being
+understood. Their divinity is a riddle, a piece of black art; the
+Scripture they turn into allegory and parabolical conceits, and thus
+obscure and debauch the truth. Argue with them, and they fall to
+divining; reason with them, and they straightway prophesy. Then their
+silent meetings, so called, in the which they do pretend to justify
+themselves by quoting Revelation, 'There was silence in heaven;' whereas
+they might find other authorities,--as, for instance in Psalm 115, where
+hell is expressed by silence, and in the Gospel, where we read of a dumb
+devil. As to persecuting these people, we have been quite too
+charitable to them, especially of late, and they are getting bolder in
+consequence; as, for example, the behavior of that shameless young wench
+in Newbury, who disturbed Brother Richardson's church with her antics
+not long ago. She should have been tied to the cart-tail and whipped
+all the way to Rhode Island."
+
+"Do you speak of Margaret Brewster?" asked Leonard, his face all
+a-crimson, and his lip quivering. "Let me tell you, Mr. Ward, that you
+greatly wrong one of Christ's little ones." And he called me to testify
+to her goodness and charity, and the blamelessness of her life.
+
+"Don't talk to me of the blameless life of such an one," said Mr. Ward,
+in aloud, angry tone; "it is the Devil's varnish for heresy. The
+Manichees, and the Pelagians, and Socinians, all did profess great
+strictness and sanctity of life; and there never was heretic yet, from
+they whom the Apostle makes mention of, who fasted from meats, giving
+heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, down to the Quakers,
+Dippers, and New Lights of this generation who have not, like their
+fathers of old, put on the shape of Angels of Light, and lived severe
+and over-strict lives. I grant that the Quakers are honest in their
+dealings, making great show of sobriety and self-denial, and abhor the
+practice of scandalous vices, being temperate, chaste, and grave in
+their behavior, and thereby they win upon unstable souls, and make
+plausible their damnable heresies. I warn you, young man, to take heed
+of them, lest you be ensnared and drawn into their way."
+
+My brother was about to reply, but, seeing Mr. Ward so moved and vexed,
+I begged of him to say no more; and, company coming in, the matter was
+dropped, to my great joy. I went back much troubled and disquieted for
+my brother's sake.
+
+
+
+November 28, 1678.
+
+Leonard hath left Mr. Ward, and given up the thought of fitting for the
+ministry. This will be a heavy blow for his friends in England. He
+tells me that Mr. Ward spake angrily to him after I left, but that, when
+he come to part with him, the old man wept over him, and prayed that the
+Lord would enable him to see his error, and preserve him from the
+consequences thereof. I have discoursed with my brother touching his
+future course of life, and he tells me he shall start in a day or two to
+visit the Rhode Island, where he hath an acquaintance, one Mr. Easton,
+formerly of Newbury. His design is to purchase a small plantation
+there, and betake himself to fanning, of the which he hath some little
+knowledge, believing that he can be as happy and do as much good to his
+fellow-creatures in that employment as in any other.
+
+Here Cousin Rebecca, who was by, looking up with that sweet archness
+which doth so well become her, queried with him whether he did think to
+live alone on his plantation like a hermit, or whether he had not his
+eye upon a certain fair-haired young woman, as suitable to keep him
+company. Whereat he seemed a little disturbed; but she bade him not
+think her against his prospect, for she had known for some weeks that he
+did favor the Young Brewster woman, who, setting aside her enthusiastic
+notions of religion, was worthy of any man's love; and turning to me,
+she begged of me to look at the matter as she did, and not set myself
+against the choice of my brother, which, in all respects save the one
+she had spoken of, she could approve with all her heart. Leonard goes
+back with us o-morrow to Newbury, so I shall have a chance of knowing
+how matters stand with him. The thought of his marrying a Quaker would
+have been exceedingly grievous to me a few months ago; but this Margaret
+Brewster hath greatly won upon me by her beauty, gentleness, and her
+goodness of heart; and, besides, I know that she is much esteemed by the
+best sort of people in her neighborhood.
+
+Doctor Thompson left this morning, but his friend Doctor Clark goes with
+us to Newbury. Rebecca found in her work-basket, after he had gone,
+some verses, which amused us not a little, and which I here copy.
+
+ "Gone hath the Spring, with all its flowers,
+ And gone the Summer's pomp and show
+ And Autumn in his leafless bowers
+ Is waiting for the Winter's snow.
+
+ "I said to Earth, so cold and gray,
+ 'An emblem of myself thou art:'
+ 'Not so,' the earth did seem to say,
+ 'For Spring shall warm my frozen heart.
+
+ "'I soothe my wintry sleep with dreams
+ Of warmer sun and softer rain,
+ And wait to hear the sound of streams
+ And songs of merry birds again.
+
+ "'But thou, from whom the Spring hath gone,
+ For whom the flowers no longer blow,
+ Who standest, blighted and forlorn,
+ Like Autumn waiting for the snow.
+
+ "'No hope is thine of sunnier hours,
+ Thy winter shall no more depart;
+ No Spring revive thy wasted flowers,
+ Nor Summer warm thy frozen heart.'"
+
+Doctor Clark, on hearing this read, told Rebecca she need not take its
+melancholy to heart, for he could assure her that there was no danger of
+his friend's acting on her account the sad part of the lover in the old
+song of Barbara Allen. As a medical man, he could safely warrant him to
+be heart-whole; and the company could bear him witness, that the poet
+himself seemed very little like the despairing one depicted in his
+verses.
+
+The Indian Simon calling this forenoon, Rebecca and I went into the
+kitchen to see him. He looks fierce and cruel, but he thanked Madain
+Saltonstall for her gifts of food and clothing, and, giving her in
+return a little basket wrought of curiously stained stuff, he told her
+that if there were more like her, his heart would not be so bitter.
+
+I ventured to ask him why he felt thus; whereupon he drew himself up,
+and, sweeping about him with his arms, said: "This all Indian land. The
+Great Spirit made it for Indians. He made the great river for them, and
+birch-trees to make their canoes of. All the fish in the ponds, and all
+the pigeons and deer and squirrels he made for Indians. He made land
+for white men too; but they left it, and took Indian's land, because it
+was better. My father was a chief; he had plenty meat and corn in his
+wigwam. But Simon is a dog. When they fight Eastern Indians, I try to
+live in peace; but they say, Simon, you rogue, you no go into woods to
+hunt; you keep at home. So when squaw like to starve, I shoot one of
+their hogs, and then they whip me. Look!" And he lifted the blanket
+off from his shoulder, and showed the marks of the whip thereon.
+
+"Well, well, Simon," said Mr. Saltonstall, "you do know that our people
+then were much frightened by what the Indians had done in other places,
+and they feared you would join them. But it is all over now, and you
+have all the woods to yourself to range in; and if you would let alone
+strong drink, you would do well."
+
+"Who makes strong drink?" asked the Indian, with an ugly look. "Who
+takes the Indian's beaver-skins and corn for it? Tell me that,
+Captain."
+
+So saying, he put his pack on his back, and calling a poor, lean dog,
+that was poking his hungry nose into Madam's pots and kettles, he went
+off talking to himself.
+
+
+
+NEWBURY, December 6.
+
+We got back from Haverhill last night, Doctor Clark accompanying us,
+he having business in Newbury. When we came up to the door, Effie met
+us with a shy look, and told her mistress that Mrs. Prudence (uncle's
+spinster cousin) had got a braw auld wooer in the east room; and surely
+enough we found our ancient kinswoman and Deacon Dole, a widower of
+three years' standing, sitting at the supper-table. We did take note
+that the Deacon had on a stiff new coat; and as for Aunt Prudence (for
+so she was called in the family), she was clad in her bravest, with a
+fine cap on her head. They both did seem a little disturbed by our
+coming, but plates being laid for us, we sat down with them. After
+supper, Rebecca had a fire kindled in uncle's room, whither we did
+betake ourselves; and being very merry at the thought of Deacon Dole's
+visit, it chanced to enter our silly heads that it would do no harm to
+stop the clock in the entry a while, and let the two old folks make a
+long evening of it. After a time Rebecca made an errand into the east
+room, to see how matters went, and coming back, said the twain were
+sitting on the same settle by the fire, smoking--a pipe of tobacco
+together. Moreover, our foolish trick did work well, for Aunt Prudence
+coming at last into the entry to look at the clock, we heard her tell
+the Deacon that it was only a little past eight, when in truth it was
+near ten. Not long after there was a loud knocking at the door, and as
+Effie had gone to bed, Rebecca did open it, when, whom did she see but
+the Widow Hepsy Barnet, Deacon Dole's housekeeper, and with her the
+Deacon's son, Moses, and the minister, Mr. Richardson, with a lantern in
+his hand! "Dear me," says the woman, looking very dismal, "have you
+seen anything of the Deacon?" By this time we were all at the door, the
+Deacon and Aunt Prudence among the rest, when Moses, like a great lout
+as he is, pulled off his woollen cap and tossed it up in the air, crying
+out, "There, Goody Barnet, did n't I tell ye so! There's father now!"
+And the widow, holding up both her hands, said she never did in all her
+born days see the like of this, a man of the Deacon's years and station
+stealing away without letting folks know where to look for him; and then
+turning upon poor Mrs. Prudence, she said she had long known that some
+folks were sly and artful, and she was glad Mr. Richardson was here to
+see for himself. Whereupon Aunt Prudence, in much amazement, said, it
+was scarce past eight, as they might see by the clock; but Mr.
+Richardson, who could scarce keep a grave face, pulling out his watch,
+said it was past ten, and bade her note that the clock was stopped. He
+told Deacon Dole, that seeing Goody Barnet so troubled about him, he had
+offered to go along with her a little way, and that he was glad to find
+that the fault was in the clock. The Deacon, who had stood like one in
+a maze, here clapped on his hat, and snatched up his cane and went off,
+looking as guilty as if he had been caught a-housebreaking, the widow
+scolding him all the way. Now, as we could scarce refrain from
+laughing, Mr. Richardson, who tarried a moment, shook his head at
+Rebecca, telling her he feared by her looks she was a naughty girl,
+taking pleasure in other folk's trouble. We did both feel ashamed and
+sorry enough for our mischief, after it was all over; and poor Mistress
+Prudence is so sorely mortified, that she told Rebecca this morning not
+to mention Deacon Dole's name to her again, and that Widow Hepsy is
+welcome to him, since he is so mean-spirited as to let her rule him
+as she doth.
+
+
+
+December 8.
+
+Yesterday I did, at my brother's wish, go with him to Goodman Brewster's
+house, where I was kindly welcomed by the young woman and her parents.
+After some little tarry, I found means to speak privily with her
+touching my brother's regard for her, and to assure her that I did truly
+and freely consent thereunto; while I did hope, for his sake as well as
+her own, that she would, as far as might be consistent with her notion
+of duty, forbear to do or say anything which might bring her into
+trouble with the magistrates and those in authority. She said that she
+was very grateful for my kindness towards her, and that what I said was
+a great relief to her mind; for when she first met my brother, she did
+fear that his kindness and sympathy would prove a snare to her; and that
+she had been sorely troubled, moreover, lest by encouraging him she
+should not only do violence to her own conscience, but also bring
+trouble and disgrace upon one who was, she did confess, dear unto her,
+not only as respects outward things, but by reason of what she did
+discern of an innocent and pure inward life in his conversation and
+deportment. She had earnestly sought to conform her conduct in this,
+as in all things, to the mind of her Divine Master; and, as respected my
+caution touching those in authority, she knew not what the Lord might
+require of her, and she could only leave all in His hands, being
+resigned even to deny herself of the sweet solace of human affection,
+and to take up the cross daily, if He did so will. "Thy visit and kind
+words," she continued, "have removed a great weight from me. The way
+seems more open before me. The Lord bless thee for thy kindness."
+
+She said this with so much tenderness of spirit, and withal with such an
+engaging sweetness of look and voice, that I was greatly moved, and,
+pressing her in my arms, I kissed her, and bade her look upon me as her
+dear sister.
+
+The family pressing us, we stayed to supper, and sitting down in silence
+at the table, I was about to speak to my brother, but he made a sign to
+check me, and I held my peace, although not then knowing wherefore. So
+we all sat still for a little space of time, which I afterwards found is
+the manner of these people at their meat. The supper was plain, but of
+exceeding good relish: warm rye loaves with butter and honey, and bowls
+of sweet milk, and roasted apples. Goodwife Brewster, who appeared much
+above her husband (who is a plain, unlearned man) in her carriage and
+discourse, talked with us very pleasantly, and Margaret seemed to grow
+more at ease, the longer we stayed.
+
+On our way back we met Robert Pike, who hath returned from the eastward.
+He said Rebecca Rawson had just told him how matters stood with Leonard,
+and that he was greatly rejoiced to hear of his prospect. He had known
+Margaret Brewster from a child, and there was scarce her equal in these
+parts for sweetness of temper and loveliness of person and mind; and,
+were she ten times a Quaker, he was free to say this in her behalf.
+I am more and more confirmed in the belief that Leonard hath not done
+unwisely in this matter, and do cheerfully accept of his choice,
+believing it to be in the ordering of Him who doeth all things well.
+
+
+
+BOSTON, December 31.
+
+It wanteth but two hours to the midnight, and the end of the year. The
+family are all abed, and I can hear nothing save the crackling of the
+fire now burning low on the hearth, and the ticking of the clock in the
+corner. The weather being sharp with frost, there is no one stirring in
+the streets, and the trees and bushes in the yard, being stripped of
+their leaves, look dismal enough above the white snow with which the
+ground is covered, so that one would think that all things must needs
+die with the year. But, from my window, I can see the stars shining
+with marvellous brightness in the clear sky, and the sight thereof doth
+assure me that God still watcheth over the work of His hands, and that
+in due season He will cause the flowers to appear on the earth, and the
+time of singing-birds to come, and-the voice of the turtle to be heard
+in the land. And I have been led, while alone here, to think of the
+many mercies which have been vouchsafed unto me in my travels and
+sojourn in a strange land, and a sense of the wonderful goodness of God
+towards me, and they who are dear unto me, both here and elsewhere, hath
+filled mine heart with thankfulness; and as of old time they did use to
+set up stones of memorial on the banks of deliverance, so would I at
+this season set up, as it were, in my poor journal, a like pillar of
+thanksgiving to the praise and honor of Him who hath so kindly cared for
+His unworthy handmaid.
+
+
+
+January 16, 1679.
+
+Have just got back from Reading, a small town ten or twelve miles out of
+Boston, whither I went along with mine Uncle and Aunt Rawson, and many
+others, to attend the ordination of Mr. Brock, in the place of the
+worthy Mr. Hough, lately deceased. The weather being clear, and the
+travelling good, a great concourse of people got together. We stopped
+at the ordinary, which we found wellnigh filled; but uncle, by dint of
+scolding and coaxing, got a small room for aunt and myself, with a clean
+bed, which was more than we had reason to hope for. The ministers, of
+whom there were many and of note (Mr. Mather and Mr. Wilson of Boston,
+and Mr. Corbet of Ipswich, being among them), were already together at
+the house of one of the deacons. It was quite a sight the next morning
+to see the people coming in from the neighboring towns, and to note
+their odd dresses, which were indeed of all kinds, from silks and
+velvets to coarsest homespun woollens, dyed with hemlock, or oil-nut
+bark, and fitting so ill that, if they had all cast their clothes into a
+heap, and then each snatched up whatsoever coat or gown came to hand,
+they could not have suited worse. Yet they were all clean and tidy, and
+the young people especially did look exceeding happy, it being with them
+a famous holiday. The young men came with their sisters or their
+sweethearts riding behind them on pillions; and the ordinary and all the
+houses about were soon noisy enough with merry talking and laughter.
+The meeting-house was filled long before the services did begin. There
+was a goodly show of honorable people in the forward seats, and among
+them that venerable magistrate, Simon Broadstreet, who acteth as Deputy-
+Governor since the death of Mr. Leverett; the Honorable Thomas Danforth;
+Mr. William Brown of Salem; and others of note, whose names I do not
+remember, all with their wives and families, bravely apparelled. The
+Sermon was preached by Mr. Higginson of Salem, the Charge was given by
+Mr. Phillips of Rowley, and the Right Hand of Fellowship by Mr. Corbet
+of Ipswich. When we got back to our inn, we found a great crowd of
+young roysterers in the yard, who had got Mr. Corbet's negro man, Sam,
+on the top of a barrel, with a bit of leather, cut in the shape of
+spectacles, astride of his nose, where he stood swinging his arms, and
+preaching, after the manner of his master, mimicking his tone and manner
+very shrewdly, to the great delight and merriment of the young rogues
+who did set him on. We stood in the door a while to hear him, and, to
+say the truth, he did wonderfully well, being a fellow of good parts and
+much humor. But, just as he was describing the Devil, and telling his
+grinning hearers that he was not like a black but a white man, old Mr.
+Corbet, who had come up behind him, gave him a smart blow with his cane,
+whereupon Sam cried,--
+
+"Dare he be now!" at which all fell to laughing.
+
+"You rascal," said Mr. Corbet, "get down with you; I'll teach you to
+compare me to the Devil."
+
+"Beg pardon, massa!" said Sam, getting down from his pulpit, and rubbing
+his shoulder. "How you think Sam know you? He see nothing; he only
+feel de lick."
+
+"You shall feel it again," said his master, striking at him a great
+blow, which Sam dodged.
+
+"Nay, Brother Corbet," said Mr. Phillips, who was with him, "Sam's
+mistake was not so strange after all; for if Satan can transform himself
+into an Angel of Light, why not into the likeness of such unworthy
+ministers as you and I."
+
+This put the old minister in a good humor, and Sam escaped without
+farther punishment than a grave admonition to behave more reverently for
+the future. Mr. Phillips, seeing some of his young people in the crowd,
+did sharply rebuke them for their folly, at which they were not a little
+abashed.
+
+The inn being greatly crowded, and not a little noisy, we were not
+unwilling to accept the invitation of the provider of the ordination-
+dinner, to sit down with the honored guests thereat. I waited, with
+others of the younger class, until the ministers and elderly people had
+made an end of their meal. Among those who sat at the second table was
+a pert, talkative lad, a son of Mr. Increase Mather, who, although but
+sixteen years of age, graduated at the Harvard College last year, and
+hath the reputation of good scholarship and lively wit. He told some
+rare stories concerning Mr. Brock, the minister ordained, and of the
+marvellous efficacy of his prayers. He mentioned, among other things,
+that, when Mr. Brock lived on the Isles of Shoals, he persuaded the
+people there to agree to spend one day in a month, beside the Sabhath,
+in religious worship. Now, it so chanced that there was on one occasion
+a long season of stormy, rough weather, unsuitable for fishing; and when
+the day came which had been set apart, it proved so exceeding fair, that
+his congregation did desire him to put off the meeting, that they might
+fish. Mr. Brock tried in vain to reason with them, and show the duty of
+seeking first the kingdom of God, when all other things should be added
+thereto, but the major part determined to leave the meeting. Thereupon
+he cried out after them: "As for you who will neglect God's worship, go,
+and catch fish if you can." There were thirty men who thus left, and
+only five remained behind, and to these he said: "I will pray the Lord
+for you, that you may catch fish till you are weary." And it so fell
+out, that the thirty toiled all day, and caught only four fishes; while
+the five who stayed at meeting went out, after the worship was over, and
+caught five hundred; and ever afterwards the fishermen attended all the
+meetings of the minister's appointing. At another time, a poor man, who
+had made himself useful in carrying people to meeting in his boat, lost
+the same in a storm, and came lamenting his loss to Mr. Brock. "Go
+home, honest man," said the minister. "I will mention your case to the
+Lord: you will have your boat again to-morrow." And surely enough, the
+very next day, a vessel pulling up its anchor near where the boat sank,
+drew up the poor man's boat, safe and whole, after it.
+
+We went back to Boston after dinner, but it was somewhat of a cold ride,
+especially after the night set in, a keen northerly wind blowing in
+great gusts, which did wellnigh benumb us. A little way from Reading,
+we overtook an old couple in the road; the man had fallen off his horse,
+and his wife was trying to get him up again to no purpose; so young Mr.
+Richards, who was with us, helped him up to the saddle again, telling
+his wife to hold him carefully, as her old man had drank too much flip.
+Thereupon the good wife set upon him with a vile tongue, telling him
+that her old man was none other than Deacon Rogers of Wenham, and as
+good and as pious a saint as there was out of heaven; and it did ill
+become a young, saucy rake and knave to accuse him of drunkenness, and
+it would be no more than his deserts if the bears did eat him before he
+got to Boston. As it was quite clear that the woman herself had had a
+taste of the mug, we left them and rode on, she fairly scolding us out
+of hearing. When we got home, we found Cousin Rebecca, whom we did
+leave ill with a cold, much better in health, sitting up and awaiting
+us.
+
+
+
+January 21, 1679.
+
+Uncle Rawson came home to-day in a great passion, and, calling me to
+him, he asked me if I too was going to turn Quaker, and fall to
+prophesying? Whereat I was not a little amazed; and when I asked him
+what he did mean, he said: "Your brother Leonard hath gone off to them,
+and I dare say you will follow, if one of the ranters should take it
+into his head that you would make him a proper wife, or company-keeper,
+for there's never an honest marriage among them." Then looking sternly
+at me, he asked me why I did keep this matter from him, and thus allow
+the foolish young man to get entangled in the snares of Satan. Whereat
+I was so greatly grieved, that I could answer never a word.
+
+"You may well weep," said my uncle, "for you have done wickedly. As to
+your brother, he will do well to keep where he is in the plantations;
+for if he come hither a theeing and thouing of me, I will spare him
+never a whit; and if I do not chastise him myself, it will be because
+the constable can do it better at the cart-tail. As the Lord lives, I
+had rather he had turned Turk!"
+
+I tried to say a word for my brother, but he cut me straightway short,
+bidding me not to mention his name again in his presence. Poor me! I
+have none here now to whom I can speak freely, Rebecca having gone to
+her sister's at Weymouth. My young cousin Grindall is below, with his
+college friend, Cotton Mather; but I care not to listen to their
+discourse, and aunt is busied with her servants in the kitchen, so that
+I must even sit alone with my thoughts, which be indeed but sad company.
+
+The little book which I brought with me from the Maine, it being the
+gift of young Mr. Jordan, and which I have kept close hidden in my
+trunk, hath been no small consolation to me this day, for it aboundeth
+in sweet and goodly thoughts, although he who did write it was a monk.
+Especially in my low state, have these words been a comfort to me:--
+
+"What thou canst not amend in thyself or others, bear thou with patience
+until God ordaineth otherwise. When comfort is taken away, do not
+presently despair. Stand with an even mind resigned to the will of God,
+whatever shall befall, because after winter cometh the summer; after the
+dark night the day shineth, and after the storm followeth a great calm.
+Seek not for consolation which shall rob thee of the grace of penitence;
+for all that is high is not holy, nor all that is pleasant good; nor
+every desire pure; nor is what is pleasing to us always pleasant in the
+sight of God."
+
+
+
+January 23.
+
+The weather is bitter cold, and a great snow on the ground. By a letter
+from Newbury, brought me by Mr. Sewall, who hath just returned from that
+place, I hear that Goodwife Morse hath been bound for trial as a witch.
+Mr. Sewall tells me the woman is now in the Boston jail. As to Caleb
+Powell, he hath been set at liberty, there being no proof of his evil
+practice. Yet inasmuch as he did give grounds of suspicion by boasting
+of his skill in astrology and astronomy, the Court declared that he
+justly deserves to bear his own shame and the costs of his prosecution
+and lodging in jail.
+
+Mr. Sewall tells me that Deacon Dole has just married his housekeeper,
+Widow Barnet, and that Moses says he never knew before his father to get
+the worst in a bargain.
+
+
+
+January 30.
+
+Robert Pike called this morning, bringing me a letter from my brother,
+and one from Margaret Brewster. He hath been to the Providence
+Plantations and Rhode Island, and reporteth well of the prospects of my
+brother, who hath a goodly farm, and a house nigh upon finished, the
+neighbors, being mostly Quakers, assisting him much therein. My
+brother's letter doth confirm this account of his temporal condition,
+although a great part of it is taken up with a defence of his new
+doctrines, for the which he doth ingeniously bring to mind many passages
+of Scripture. Margaret's letter being short, I here copy it:--
+
+THE PLANTATIONS, 20th of the 1st mo., 1679.
+
+"DEAR FRIEND,--I salute thee with much love from this new country, where
+the Lord hath spread a table for us in the wilderness. Here is a goodly
+company of Friends, who do seek to know the mind of Truth, and to live
+thereby, being held in favor and esteem by the rulers of the land, and
+so left in peace to worship God according to their consciences. The
+whole country being covered with snow, and the weather being extreme
+cold, we can scarce say much of the natural gifts and advantages of our
+new home; but it lieth on a small river, and there be fertile meadows,
+and old corn-fields of the Indians, and good springs of water, so that I
+am told it is a desirable and pleasing place in the warm season. My
+soul is full of thankfulness, and a sweet inward peace is my portion.
+Hard things are made easy to me; this desert place, with its lonely
+woods and wintry snows, is beautiful in mine eyes. For here we be no
+longer gazing-stocks of the rude multitude, we are no longer haled from
+our meetings, and railed upon as witches and possessed people. Oh, how
+often have we been called upon heretofore to repeat the prayer of one
+formerly: 'Let me not fall into the hands of man.' Sweet, beyond the
+power of words to express, hath been the change in this respect; and in
+view of the mercies vouchsafed unto us, what can we do but repeat the
+language of David, 'Praise is comely yea, a joyful and pleasant thing it
+is to be thankful. It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, to
+sing praises unto thy name, O Most High! to show forth thy loving-
+kindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night.'
+
+"Thou hast doubtless heard that thy dear brother hath been favored to
+see the way of truth, according to our persuasion thereof, and hath been
+received into fellowship with us. I fear this hath been a trial to
+thee; but, dear heart, leave it in the hands of the Lord, whose work I
+do indeed count it. Nor needest thou to fear that thy brother's regard
+for thee will be lessened thereby, for the rather shall it be increased
+by a measure of that Divine love which, so far from destroying, doth but
+purify and strengthen the natural affections.
+
+"Think, then, kindly of thy brother, for his love towards thee is very
+great; and of me, also, unworthy as I am, for his sake. And so, with
+salutations of love and peace, in which my dear mother joins, I remain
+thy loving friend, MARGARET BREWSTER.
+
+"The Morse woman, I hear, is in your jail, to be tried for a witch. She
+is a poor, weak creature, but I know no harm of her, and do believe her
+to be more silly than wicked in the matter of the troubles in her house.
+I fear she will suffer much at this cold season in the jail, she being
+old and weakly, and must needs entreat thee to inquire into her
+condition.
+ "M. B."
+
+
+
+February 10.
+
+Speaking of Goody Morse to-day, Uncle Rawson says she will, he thinks,
+be adjudged a witch, as there be many witnesses from Newbury to testify
+against her. Aunt sent the old creature some warm blankets and other
+necessaries, which she stood much in need of, and Rebecca and I altered
+one of aunt's old gowns for her to wear, as she hath nothing seemly of
+her own. Mr. Richardson, her minister, hath visited her twice since she
+hath been in jail; but he saith she is hardened in her sin, and will
+confess nothing thereof.
+
+
+
+February 14.
+The famous Mr. John Eliot, having business with my uncle, spent the last
+night with us, a truly worthy man, who, by reason of his great labors
+among the heathen Indians, may be called the chiefest of our apostles.
+He brought with him a young Indian lad, the son of a man of some note
+among his people, very bright and comely, and handsomely apparelled
+after the fashion of his tribe. This lad hath a ready wit, readeth and
+writeth, and hath some understanding of Scripture; indeed, he did repeat
+the Lord's Prayer in a manner edifying to hear.
+
+The worshipful Major Gookins coming in to sup with us, there was much
+discourse concerning the affairs of the Province: both the Major and his
+friend Eliot being great sticklers for the rights and liberties of the
+people, and exceeding jealous of the rule of the home government, and
+in this matter my uncle did quite agree with them. In a special manner
+Major Gookins did complain of the Acts of Trade, as injurious to the
+interests of the Colony, and which he said ought not to be submitted to,
+as the laws of England were bounded by the four seas, and did not justly
+reach America. He read a letter which he had from Mr. Stoughton, one of
+the agents of the Colony in England, showing how they had been put off
+from time to time, upon one excuse or another, without being able to get
+a hearing; and now the Popish Plot did so occupy all minds there, that
+Plantation matters were sadly neglected; but this much was certain, the
+laws for the regulating of trade must be consented to by the
+Massachusetts, if we would escape a total breach. My uncle struck his
+hand hard on the table at this, and said if all were of his mind they
+would never heed the breach; adding, that he knew his rights as a free-
+born Englishman, under Magna Charta, which did declare it the privilege
+of such to have a voice in the making of laws; whereas the Massachusetts
+had no voice in Parliament, and laws were thrust upon them by strangers.
+
+"For mine own part," said Major Gookins, "I do hold our brother Eliot's
+book on the Christian Commonwealth, which the General Court did make
+haste to condemn on the coming in of the king, to be a sound and
+seasonable treatise, notwithstanding the author himself hath in some
+sort disowned it."
+
+"I did truly condemn and deny the false and seditious doctrines charged
+upon it," said Mr. Eliot, "but for the book itself, rightly taken, and
+making allowance for some little heat of discourse and certain hasty
+and ill-considered words therein, I have never seen cause to repent.
+I quite agree with what my lamented friend and fellow-laborer, Mr.
+Danforth, said, when he was told that the king was to be proclaimed at
+Boston: 'Whatever form of government may be deduced from Scripture, that
+let us yield to for conscience' sake, not forgetting at the same time
+that the Apostle hath said, if thou mayest be free use it rather.'"
+
+My uncle said this was well spoken of Mr. Danforth, who was a worthy
+gentleman and a true friend to the liberties of the Colony; and he asked
+Rebecca to read some ingenious verses writ by him in one of his
+almanacs, which she had copied not long ago, wherein he compareth New
+England to a goodly tree or plant. Whereupon, Rebecca read them as
+followeth:--
+
+ "A skilful husbandman he was, who brought
+ This matchless plant from far, and here hath sought
+ A place to set it in; and for its sake
+ The wilderness a pleasant land doth make.
+
+ "With pleasant aspect, Phoebus smiles upon
+ The tender buds and blooms that hang thereon;
+ At this tree's root Astrea sits and sings,
+ And waters it, whence upright Justice springs,
+ Which yearly shoots forth laws and liberties
+ That no man's will or wit may tyrannize.
+ Those birds of prey that sometime have oppressed
+ And stained the country with their filthy nest,
+ Justice abhors, and one day hopes to find
+ A way, to make all promise-breakers grind.
+ On this tree's top hangs pleasant Liberty,
+ Not seen in Austria, France, Spain, Italy.
+ True Liberty 's there ripe, where all confess
+ They may do what they will, save wickedness.
+ Peace is another fruit which this tree bears,
+ The chiefest garland that the country wears,
+ Which o'er all house-tops, towns, and fields doth spread,
+ And stuffs the pillow for each weary head.
+ It bloomed in Europe once, but now 't is gone,
+ And glad to find a desert mansion.
+ Forsaken Truth, Time's daughter, groweth here,--
+ More precious fruit what tree did ever bear,--
+ Whose pleasant sight aloft hath many fed,
+ And what falls down knocks Error on the head."
+
+After a little time, Rebecca found means to draw the good Mr. Eliot into
+some account of his labors and journeys among the Indians, and of their
+manner of life, ceremonies, and traditions, telling him that I was a
+stranger in these parts, and curious concerning such matters. So he did
+address himself to me very kindly, answering such questions as I
+ventured to put to him. And first, touching the Powahs, of whom I had
+heard much, he said they were manifestly witches, and such as had
+familiar spirits; but that, since the Gospel has been preached here,
+their power had in a great measure gone from them. "My old friend,
+Passaconaway, the Chief of the Merrimac River Indians," said he, "was,
+before his happy and marvellous conversion, a noted Powah and wizard.
+I once queried with him touching his sorceries, when he said he had done
+wickedly, and it was a marvel that the Lord spared his life, and did not
+strike him dead with his lightnings. And when I did press him to tell
+me how he did become a Powah, he said he liked not to speak of it, but
+would nevertheless tell me. His grandmother used to tell him many
+things concerning the good and bad spirits, and in a special manner of
+the Abomako, or Chepian, who had the form of a serpent, and who was the
+cause of sickness and pain, and of all manner of evils. And it so
+chanced that on one occasion, when hunting in the wilderness, three
+days' journey from home, he did lose his way, and wandered for a long
+time without food, and night coming on, he thought he did hear voices of
+men talking; but, on drawing near to the place whence the noise came, he
+could see nothing but the trees and rocks; and then he did see a light,
+as from a wigwam a little way off, but, going towards it, it moved away,
+and, following it, he was led into a dismal swamp, full of water, and
+snakes, and briers; and being in so sad a plight, he bethought him of
+all he had heard of evil demons and of Chepian, who, he doubted not was
+the cause of his trouble. At last, coming to a little knoll in the
+swamp, he lay down under a hemlock-tree, and being sorely tired, fell
+asleep. And he dreamed a dream, which was in this wise:--
+
+"He thought he beheld a great snake crawl up out of the marsh, and stand
+upon his tail under a tall maple-tree; and he thought the snake spake to
+him, and bade him be of good cheer, for he would guide him safe out of
+the swamp, and make of him a great chief and Powah, if he would pray to
+him and own him as his god. All which he did promise to do; and when he
+awoke in the morning, he beheld before him the maple-tree under which he
+had seen the snake in his dream, and, climbing to the top of it, he saw
+a great distance off the smoke of a wigwam, towards which he went, and
+found some of his own people cooking a plentiful meal of venison. When
+he got back to Patucket, he told his dream to his grandmother, who was
+greatly rejoiced, and went about from wigwam to wigwam, telling the
+tribe that Chepian had appeared to her grandson. So they had a great
+feast and dance, and he was thenceforth looked upon as a Powah. Shortly
+after, a woman of the tribe falling sick, he was sent for to heal her,
+which he did by praying to Chepian and laying his hands upon her; and at
+divers other times the Devil helped him in his enchantments and
+witcheries."
+
+I asked Mr. Eliot whether he did know of any women who were Powahs.
+He confessed he knew none; which was the more strange, as in Christian
+countries the Old Serpent did commonly find instruments of his craft
+among the women.
+
+To my query as to what notion the heathen had of God and a future state,
+he said that, when he did discourse them concerning the great and true
+God, who made all things, and of heaven and hell, they would readily
+consent thereto, saying that so their fathers had taught them; but when
+he spake to them of the destruction of the world by fire, and the
+resurrection of the body, they would not hear to it, for they pretend to
+hold that the spirit of the dead man goes forthwith, after death, to the
+happy hunting-grounds made for good Indians, or to the cold and dreary
+swamps and mountains, where the bad Indians do starve and freeze, and
+suffer all manner of hardships.
+
+There was, Mr. Eliot told us, a famous Powah, who, coming to Punkapog,
+while he was at that Indian town, gave out among the people there that a
+little humming-bird did come to him and peck at him when he did aught
+that was wrong, and sing sweetly to him when he did a good thing, or
+spake the right words; which coming to Mr. Eliot's ear, he made him
+confess, in the presence of the congregation, that he did only mean, by
+the figure of the bird, the sense he had of right and wrong in his own
+mind. This fellow was, moreover, exceeding cunning, and did often ask
+questions hard to be answered touching the creation of the Devil, and
+the fall of man.
+
+I said to him that I thought it must be a great satisfaction to him to
+be permitted to witness the fruit of his long labors and sufferings in
+behalf of these people, in the hopeful conversion of so many of them to
+the light and knowledge of the Gospel; to which he replied that his poor
+labors had been indeed greatly blest, but it was all of the Lord's
+doing, and he could truly say he felt, in view of the great wants of
+these wild people, and their darkness and misery, that he had by no
+means done all his duty towards them. He said also, that whenever he
+was in danger of being puffed up with the praise of men, or the vanity
+of his own heart, the Lord had seen meet to abase and humble him, by the
+falling back of some of his people to their old heathenish practices.
+The war, moreover, was a sore evil to the Indian churches, as some few
+of their number were enticed by Philip to join him in his burnings and
+slaughterings, and this did cause even the peaceful and innocent to be
+vehemently suspected and cried out against as deceivers and murderers.
+Poor, unoffending old men, and pious women, had been shot at and killed
+by our soldiers, their wigwams burned, their families scattered, and
+driven to seek shelter with the enemy; yea, many Christian Indians, he
+did believe, had been sold as slaves to the Barbadoes, which he did
+account a great sin, and a reproach to our people. Major Gookins said
+that a better feeling towards the Indians did now prevail among the
+people; the time having been when, because of his friendliness to them,
+and his condemnation of their oppressors, he was cried out against and
+stoned in the streets, to the great hazard of his life.
+
+So, after some further discourse, our guests left us, Mr. Eliot kindly
+inviting me to visit his Indian congregation near Boston, whereby I
+could judge for myself of their condition.
+
+
+
+February 22, 1679.
+
+The weather suddenly changing from a warm rain and mist to sharp, clear
+cold, the trees a little way from the house did last evening so shine
+with a wonderful brightness in the light of the moon, now nigh unto its
+full, that I was fain to go out upon the hill-top to admire them. And
+truly it was no mean sight to behold every small twig becrusted with
+ice, and glittering famously like silver-work or crystal, as the rays of
+the moon did strike upon them. Moreover, the earth was covered with
+frozen snow, smooth and hard like to marble, through which the long
+rushes, the hazels, and mulleins, and the dry blades of the grasses, did
+stand up bravely, bedight with frost. And, looking upward, there were
+the dark tops of the evergreen trees, such as hemlocks, pines, and
+spruces, starred and bespangled, as if wetted with a great rain of
+molten crystal. After admiring and marvelling at this rare
+entertainment and show of Nature, I said it did mind me of what the
+Spaniards and Portuguese relate of the great Incas of Guiana, who had a
+garden of pleasure in the Isle of Puna, whither they were wont to betake
+themselves when they would enjoy the air of the sea, in which they had
+all manner of herbs and flowers, and trees curiously fashioned of gold
+and silver, and so burnished that their exceeding brightness did dazzle
+the eyes of the beholders.
+
+"Nay," said the worthy Mr. Mather, who did go with us, "it should
+rather, methinks, call to mind what the Revelator hath said of the Holy
+City. I never look upon such a wonderful display of the natural world
+without remembering the description of the glory of that city which
+descended out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, and her light
+like unto a stone most precious, even like unto a jasper stone, clear as
+crystal. And the building of the wall of it was of jasper, and the city
+was pure gold like unto clear glass. And the twelve gates were twelve
+pearls, every several gate was of one pearl, and the street of the city
+was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.
+
+"There never was a king's palace lighted up and adorned like this,"
+continued Mr. Mather, as we went homewards. "It seemeth to be Gods
+design to show how that He can glorify himself in the work of His hands,
+even at this season of darkness and death, when all things are sealed
+up, and there be no flowers, nor leaves, nor ruining brooks, to speak of
+His goodness and sing forth His praises. Truly hath it been said, Great
+things doeth He, which we cannot comprehend. For He saith to the snow,
+Be thou on the earth; likewise to the small rain and the great rain of
+His strength. He sealeth up the hand of every man, that all men may
+know His work. Then the beasts go into their dens, and they remain in
+their places. Out of the south cometh the whirlwind, and cold out of
+the north. By the breath of God is the frost given, and the breadth of
+the waters straitened."
+
+
+
+March 10.
+
+I have been now for many days afflicted with a great cold and pleurisy,
+although, by God's blessing on the means used, I am wellnigh free from
+pain, and much relieved, also, from a tedious cough. In this sickness I
+have not missed the company and kind ministering of my dear Cousin
+Rebecca, which was indeed a great comfort. She tells me to-day that the
+time hath been fixed upon for her marriage with Sir Thomas, which did
+not a little rejoice me, as I am to go back to mine own country in their
+company. I long exceedingly to see once again the dear friends from whom
+I have been separated by many months of time and a great ocean.
+
+Cousin Torrey, of Weymouth, coming in yesterday, brought with her a very
+bright and pretty Indian girl, one of Mr. Eliot's flock, of the Natick
+people. She was apparelled after the English manner, save that she wore
+leggings, called moccasins, in the stead of shoes, wrought over daintily
+with the quills of an animal called a porcupine, and hung about with
+small black and white shells. Her hair, which was exceeding long and
+black, hung straight down her back, and was parted from her forehead,
+and held fast by means of a strip of birch back, wrought with quills and
+feathers, which did encircle her head. She speaks the English well, and
+can write somewhat, as well as read. Rebecca, for my amusement, did
+query much with her regarding the praying Indians; and on her desiring
+to know whether they did in no wise return to their old practices and
+worships, Wauwoonemeen (for so she was called by her people) told us
+that they did still hold their Keutikaw, or Dance for the Dead; and
+that the ministers, although they did not fail to discourage it, had not
+forbidden it altogether, inasmuch as it was but a civil custom of the
+people, and not a religious rite. This dance did usually take place at
+the end of twelve moons after the death of one of their number, and
+finished the mourning. The guests invited bring presents to the
+bereaved family, of wampum, beaver-skins, corn, and ground-nuts, and
+venison. These presents are delivered to a speaker, appointed for the
+purpose, who takes them, one by one, and hands them over to the
+mourners, with a speech entreating them to be consoled by these tokens
+of the love of their neighbors, and to forget their sorrows. After
+which, they sit down to eat, and are merry together.
+
+Now it had so chanced that at a Keutikaw held the present winter, two
+men had been taken ill, and had died the next day; and although Mr.
+Eliot, when he was told of it, laid the blame thereof upon their hard
+dancing until they were in a great heat, and then running out into the
+snow and sharp air to cool themselves, it was thought by many that they
+were foully dealt with and poisoned. So two noted old Powahs from
+Wauhktukook, on the great river Connecticut, were sent for to discover
+the murderers. Then these poor heathen got together in a great wigwam,
+where the old wizards undertook, by their spells and incantations, to
+consult the invisible powers in the matter. I asked Wauwoonemeen if she
+knew how they did practise on the occasion; whereupon she said that none
+but men were allowed to be in the wigwam, but that she could hear the
+beating of sticks on the ground, and the groans and howlings and dismal
+mutterings of the Powahs, and that she, with another young woman,
+venturing to peep through a hole in the back of the wigwam, saw a great
+many people sitting on the ground, and the two Powahs before the fire,
+jumping and smiting their breasts, and rolling their eyes very
+frightfully.
+
+"But what came of it?" asked Rebecca. "Did the Evil Spirit whom they
+thus called upon testify against himself, by telling who were his
+instruments in mischief?"
+
+The girl said she had never heard of any discovery of the poisoners, if
+indeed there were such. She told us, moreover, that many of the best
+people in the tribe would have no part in the business, counting it
+sinful; and that the chief actors were much censured by the ministers,
+and so ashamed of it that they drove the Powahs out of the village, the
+women and boys chasing them and beating them with sticks and frozen
+snow, so that they had to take to the woods in a sorry plight.
+
+We gave the girl some small trinkets, and a fair piece of cloth for an
+apron, whereat she was greatly pleased. We were all charmed with her
+good parts, sweetness of countenance, and discourse and ready wit, being
+satisfied thereby that Nature knoweth no difference between Europe and
+America in blood, birth, and bodies, as we read in Acts 17 that God hath
+made of one blood all mankind. I was specially minded of a saying of
+that ingenious but schismatic man, Mr. Roger Williams, in the little
+book which he put forth in England on the Indian tongue:--
+
+ "Boast not, proud English, of thy birth and blood,
+ Thy brother Indian is by birth as good;
+ Of one blood God made him and thee and all,
+ As wise, as fair, as strong, as personal.
+
+ "By nature wrath's his portion, thine, no more,
+ Till grace his soul and thine in Christ restore.
+ Make sure thy second birth, else thou shalt see
+ Heaven ope to Indians wild, but shut to thee!"
+
+
+
+March 15.
+
+One Master O'Shane, an Irish scholar, of whom my cousins here did learn
+the Latin tongue, coming in last evening, and finding Rebecca and I
+alone (uncle and aunt being on a visit to Mr. Atkinson's), was exceeding
+merry, entertaining us rarely with his stories and songs. Rebecca tells
+me he is a learned man, as I can well believe, but that he is too fond
+of strong drink for his good, having thereby lost the favor of many of
+the first families here, who did formerly employ him. There was one
+ballad, which he saith is of his own making, concerning the selling of
+the daughter of a great Irish lord as a slave in this land, which
+greatly pleased me; and on my asking for a copy of it, he brought it to
+me this morning, in a fair hand. I copy it in my Journal, as I know
+that Oliver, who is curious in such things, will like it.
+
+
+KATHLEEN.
+
+ O NORAH, lay your basket down,
+ And rest your weary hand,
+ And come and hear me sing a song
+ Of our old Ireland.
+
+ There was a lord of Galaway,
+ A mighty lord was he;
+ And he did wed a second wife,
+ A maid of low degree.
+
+ But he was old, and she was young,
+ And so, in evil spite,
+ She baked the black bread for his kin,
+ And fed her own with white.
+
+ She whipped the maids and starved the kern,
+ And drove away the poor;
+ "Ah, woe is me!" the old lord said,
+ "I rue my bargain sore!"
+
+ This lord he had a daughter fair,
+ Beloved of old and young,
+ And nightly round the shealing-fires
+ Of her the gleeman sung.
+
+ "As sweet and good is young Kathleen
+ As Eve before her fall;"
+ So sang the harper at the fair,
+ So harped he in the hall.
+
+ "Oh, come to me, my daughter dear!
+ Come sit upon my knee,
+ For looking in your face, Kathleen,
+ Your mother's own I see!"
+
+ He smoothed and smoothed her hair away,
+ He kissed her forehead fair;
+ "It is my darling Mary's brow,
+ It is my darling's hair!"
+
+ Oh, then spake up the angry dame,
+ "Get up, get up," quoth she,
+ "I'll sell ye over Ireland,
+ I'll sell ye o'er the sea!"
+
+ She clipped her glossy hair away,
+ That none her rank might know;
+ She took away her gown of silk,
+ And gave her one of tow,
+
+ And sent her down to Limerick town
+ And to a seaman sold
+ This daughter of an Irish lord
+ For ten good pounds in gold.
+
+ The lord he smote upon his breast,
+ And tore his beard so gray;
+ But he was old, and she was young,
+ And so she had her way.
+
+ Sure that same night the Banshee howled
+ To fright the evil dame,
+ And fairy folks, who loved Kathleen,
+ With funeral torches came.
+
+ She watched them glancing through the trees,
+ And glimmering down the hill;
+ They crept before the dead-vault door,
+ And there they all stood still!
+
+ "Get up, old man! the wake-lights shine!"
+ "Ye murthering witch," quoth he,
+ "So I'm rid of your tongue, I little care
+ If they shine for you or me."
+
+ "Oh, whoso brings my daughter back,
+ My gold and land shall have!"
+ Oh, then spake up his handsome page,
+ "No gold nor land I crave!
+
+ "But give to me your daughter dear,
+ Give sweet Kathleen to me,
+ Be she on sea or be she on land,
+ I'll bring her back to thee."
+
+ "My daughter is a lady born,
+ And you of low degree,
+ But she shall be your bride the day
+ You bring her back to me."
+
+ He sailed east, he sailed west,
+ And far and long sailed he,
+ Until he came to Boston town,
+ Across the great salt sea.
+
+ "Oh, have ye seen the young Kathleen,
+ The flower of Ireland?
+ Ye'll know her by her eyes so blue,
+ And by her snow-white hand!"
+
+ Out spake an ancient man, "I know
+ The maiden whom ye mean;
+ I bought her of a Limerick man,
+ And she is called Kathleen.
+
+ "No skill hath she in household work,
+ Her hands are soft and white,
+ Yet well by loving looks and ways
+ She doth her cost requite."
+
+ So up they walked through Boston town,
+ And met a maiden fair,
+ A little basket on her arm
+ So snowy-white and bare.
+
+ "Come hither, child, and say hast thou
+ This young man ever seen?"
+ They wept within each other's arms,
+ The page and young Kathleen.
+
+ "Oh give to me this darling child,
+ And take my purse of gold."
+ "Nay, not by me," her master said,
+ "Shall sweet Kathleen be sold.
+
+ "We loved her in the place of one
+ The Lord hath early ta'en;
+ But, since her heart's in Ireland,
+ We give her back again!"
+
+ Oh, for that same the saints in heaven
+ For his poor soul shall pray,
+ And Mary Mother wash with tears
+ His heresies away.
+
+ Sure now they dwell in Ireland;
+ As you go up Claremore
+ Ye'll see their castle looking down
+ The pleasant Galway shore.
+
+ And the old lord's wife is dead and gone,
+ And a happy man is he,
+ For he sits beside his own Kathleen,
+ With her darling on his knee.
+
+ 1849.
+
+
+
+March 27, 1679.
+
+Spent the afternoon and evening yesterday at Mr. Mather's, with uncle
+and aunt, Rebecca and Sir Thomas, and Mr. Torrey of Weymouth, and his
+wife; Mr. Thacher, the minister of the South Meeting, and Major Simon
+Willard of Concord, being present also. There was much discourse of
+certain Antinomians, whose loose and scandalous teachings in respect to
+works were strongly condemned, although Mr. Thacher thought there might
+be danger, on the other hand, of falling into the error of the
+Socinians, who lay such stress upon works, that they do not scruple to
+undervalue and make light of faith. Mr. Torrey told of some of the
+Antinomians, who, being guilty of scandalous sins, did nevertheless
+justify themselves, and plead that they were no longer under the law.
+Sir Thomas drew Rebecca and I into a corner of the room, saying he was
+a-weary of so much disputation, and began relating somewhat which befell
+him in a late visit to the New Haven people. Among other things, he
+told us that while he was there, a maid of nineteen years was put upon
+trial for her life, by complaint of her parents of disobedience of their
+commands, and reviling them; that at first the mother of the girl did
+seem to testify strongly against her; but when she had spoken a few
+words, the accused crying out with a bitter lamentation, that she should
+be destroyed in her youth by the words of her own mother, the woman did
+so soften her testimony that the Court, being in doubt upon the matter,
+had a consultation with the ministers present, as to whether the accused
+girl had made herself justly liable to the punishment prescribed for
+stubborn and rebellious children in Deut. xxi. 20, 21. It was thought
+that this law did apply specially unto a rebellious son, according to
+the words of the text, and that a daughter could not be put to death
+under it; to which the Court did assent, and the girl, after being
+admonished, was set free. Thereupon, Sir Thomas told us, she ran
+sobbing into the arms of her mother, who did rejoice over her as one
+raised from the dead, and did moreover mightily blame herself for
+putting her in so great peril, by complaining of her disobedience
+to the magistrates.
+
+Major Willard, a pleasant, talkative man, being asked by Mr. Thacher
+some questions pertaining to his journey into the New Hampshire, in the
+year '52, with the learned and pious Mr. Edward Johnson, in obedience to
+an order of the General Court, for the finding the northernmost part of
+the river Merrimac, gave us a little history of the same, some parts of
+which I deemed noteworthy. The company, consisting of the two
+commissioners, and two surveyors, and some Indians, as guides and
+hunters, started from Concord about the middle of July, and followed the
+river on which Concord lies, until they came to the great Falls of the
+Merrimac, at Patucket, where they were kindly entertained at the wigwam
+of a chief Indian who dwelt there. They then went on to the Falls of
+the Amoskeag, a famous place of resort for the Indians, and encamped at
+the foot of a mountain, under the shade of some great trees, where they
+spent the next day, it being the Sabhath. Mr. Johnson read a portion
+of the Word, and a psalm was sung, the Indians sitting on the ground a
+little way off, in a very reverential manner. They then went to
+Annahookline, where were some Indian cornfields, and thence over a wild,
+hilly country, to the head of the Merrimac, at a place called by the
+Indians Aquedahcan, where they took an observation of the latitude, and
+set their names upon a great rock, with that of the worshipful Governor,
+John Endicott. Here was the great Lake Winnipiseogee, as large over as
+an English county, with many islands upon it, very green with trees and
+vines, and abounding with squirrels and birds. They spent two days at
+the lake's outlet, one of them the Sabhath, a wonderfully still, quiet
+day of the midsummer. "It is strange," said the Major, "but so it is,
+that although a quarter of a century hath passed over me since that day,
+it is still very fresh and sweet in my memory. Many times, in my
+musings, I seem to be once more sitting under the beechen trees of
+Aquedahcan, with my three English friends, and I do verily seem to see
+the Indians squatted on the lake shore, round a fire, cooking their
+dishes, and the smoke thereof curling about among the trees over their
+heads; and beyond them is the great lake and the islands thereof, some
+big and others exceeding small, and the mountains that do rise on the
+other side, and whose woody tops show in the still water as in a glass.
+And, withal, I do seem to have a sense of the smell of flowers, which
+did abound there, and of the strawberries with which the old Indian
+cornfield near unto us was red, they being then ripe and luscious to the
+taste. It seems, also, as if I could hear the bark of my dog, and the
+chatter of squirrels, and the songs of the birds, in the thick woods
+behind us; and, moreover, the voice of my friend Johnson, as he did call
+to mind these words of the 104th Psalm: 'Bless the Lord, O my soul! who
+coverest thyself with light, as with a garment; who stretchest out the
+heavens like a curtain; who layeth the beams of his chambers in the
+waters; who maketh the clouds his chariot; and walketh upon the wings of
+the wind!' Ah me! I shall never truly hear that voice more, unless,
+through God's mercy, I be permitted to join the saints of light in
+praise and thanksgiving beside stiller waters and among greener pastures
+than are those of Aquedahcan."
+
+"He was a shining light, indeed," said Mr. Mather, "and, in view of his
+loss and that of other worthies in Church and State, we may well say, as
+of old, Help, Lord, for the godly man ceaseth!"
+
+Major Willard said that the works of Mr. Johnson did praise him,
+especially that monument of his piety and learning, "The History of New
+England; or, Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's Saviour," wherein he
+did show himself in verse and in prose a workman not to be ashamed.
+There was a piece which Mr. Johnson writ upon birchen bark at the head
+of the Merrimac, during the journey of which he had spoken, which had
+never been printed, but which did more deserve that honor than much of
+the rhymes with which the land now aboundeth. Mr. Mather said he had
+the piece of bark then in his possession, on which Mr. Johnson did
+write; and, on our desiring to see it, he brought it to us, and, as we
+could not well make out the writing thereon, he read it as followeth:--
+
+
+This lonesome lake, like to a sea, among the mountains lies,
+And like a glass doth show their shapes, and eke the clouds and skies.
+God lays His chambers' beams therein, that all His power may know,
+And holdeth in His fist the winds, that else would mar the show.
+
+The Lord hath blest this wilderness with meadows, streams, and springs,
+And like a garden planted it with green and growing things;
+And filled the woods with wholesome meats, and eke with fowls the air,
+And sown the land with flowers and herbs, and fruits of savor rare.
+
+But here the nations know him not, and come and go the days,
+Without a morning prayer to Him, or evening song of praise;
+The heathen fish upon the lake, or hunt the woods for meat,
+And like the brutes do give no thanks for wherewithal to eat.
+
+They dance in shame and nakedness, with horrid yells to hear,
+And like to dogs they make a noise, or screeching owls anear.
+Each tribe, like Micah, doth its priest or cunning Powah keep;
+Yea, wizards who, like them of old, do mutter and do peep.
+
+A cursed and an evil race, whom Satan doth mislead,
+And rob them of Christ's hope, whereby he makes them poor indeed;
+They hold the waters and the hills, and clouds, and stars to be
+Their gods; for, lacking faith, they do believe but what they see.
+
+Yet God on them His sun and rain doth evermore bestow,
+And ripens all their harvest-fields and pleasant fruits also.
+For them He makes the deer and moose, for them the fishes swim,
+And all the fowls in woods and air are goodly gifts from Him.
+
+Yea, more; for them, as for ourselves, hath Christ a ransom paid,
+And on Himself, their sins and ours, a common burden laid.
+By nature vessels of God's wrath, 't is He alone can give
+To English or to Indians wild the grace whereby we live.
+
+Oh, let us pray that in these wilds the Gospel may be preached,
+And these poor Gentiles of the woods may by its truth be reached;
+That ransomed ones the tidings glad may sound with joy abroad,
+And lonesome Aquedahcan hear the praises of the Lord!
+
+
+
+March 18.
+
+My cough still troubling me, an ancient woman, coming in yesterday, did
+so set forth the worth and virtue of a syrup of her making, that Aunt
+Rawson sent Effie over to the woman's house for a bottle of it. The
+woman sat with us a pretty while, being a lively talking body, although
+now wellnigh fourscore years of age. She could tell many things of the
+old people of Boston, for, having been in youth the wife of a man of
+some note and substance, and being herself a notable housewife and of
+good natural parts, she was well looked upon by the better sort of
+people. After she became a widow, she was for a little time in the
+family of Governor Endicott, at Naumkeag, whom she describeth as a just
+and goodly man, but exceeding exact in the ordering of his household,
+and of fiery temper withal. When displeasured, he would pull hard at
+the long tuft of hair which he wore upon his chin; and on one occasion,
+while sitting in the court, he plucked off his velvet cap, and cast it
+in the face of one of the assistants, who did profess conscientious
+scruples against the putting to death of the Quakers.
+
+"I have heard say his hand was heavy upon these people," I said.
+
+"And well it might be," said the old woman, for more pestilent and
+provoking strollers and ranters you shall never find than these same
+Quakers. They were such a sore trouble to the Governor, that I do
+believe his days were shortened by reason of them. For neither the
+jail, nor whipping, nor cropping of ears, did suffice to rid him of
+them. At last, when a law was made by the General Court, banishing them
+on pain of death, the Governor, coming home from Boston, said that he
+now hoped to have peace in the Colony, and that this sharpness would
+keep the land free from these troublers. I remember it well, how the
+next day he did invite the ministers and chief men, and in what a
+pleasant frame he was. In the morning I had mended his best velvet
+breeches for him, and he praised my work not a little, and gave me six
+shillings over and above my wages; and, says he to me: 'Goody Lake,'
+says he, 'you are a worthy woman, and do feel concerned for the good of
+Zion, and the orderly carrying of matters in Church and State, and hence
+I know you will be glad to hear that, after much ado, and in spite of
+the strivings of evil-disposed people, the General Court have agreed
+upon a law for driving the Quakers out of the jurisdiction, on pain of
+death; so that, if any come after this, their blood be upon their own
+heads. It is what I have wrestled with the Lord for this many a month,
+and I do count it a great deliverance and special favor; yea, I may
+truly say, with David: "Thou hast given me my heart's desire, and hast
+not withholden the prayer of my lips. Thy hand shall find out all thine
+enemies; thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine
+anger; the Lord shall wallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall
+devour them." You will find these words, Goody Lake,' says he, 'in the
+21st Psalm, where what is said of the King will serve for such as be in
+authority at this time.' For you must know, young woman, that the
+Governor was mighty in Scripture, more especially in his prayers,
+when you could think that he had it all at his tongue's end.
+
+"There was a famous dinner at the Governor's that day, and many guests,
+and the Governor had ordered from his cellar some wine, which was a gift
+from a Portuguese captain, and of rare quality, as I know of mine own
+tasting, when word was sent to the Governor that a man wished to see
+him, whom he bid wait awhile. After dinner was over, he went into the
+hall, and who should be there but Wharton, the Quaker, who, without
+pulling off his hat, or other salutation, cried out: 'John Endicott,
+hearken to the word of the Lord, in whose fear and dread I am come.
+Thou and thy evil counsellors, the priests, have framed iniquity by law,
+but it shall not avail you. Thus saith the Lord, Evil shall slay the
+wicked, and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate!' Now, when
+the Governor did hear this, he fell, as must needs be, into a rage, and,
+seeing me by the door, he bade me call the servants from the kitchen,
+which I did, and they running up, he bade them lay hands on the fellow,
+and take him away; and then, in a great passion, he called for his
+horse, saying he would not rest until he had seen forty stripes save one
+laid upon that cursed Quaker, and that he should go to the gallows yet
+for his sauciness. So they had him to jail, and the next morning he was
+soundly whipped, and ordered to depart the jurisdiction."
+
+I, being curious to know more concerning the Quakers, asked her if she
+did ever talk with any of them who were dealt with by the authorities,
+and what they said for themselves.
+
+"Oh, they never lacked words," said she, "but cried out for liberty of
+conscience, and against persecution, and prophesied all manner of evil
+upon such as did put in force the law. Some time about the year '56,
+there did come two women of them to Boston, and brought with them
+certain of their blasphemous books, which the constables burnt in the
+street, as I well remember by this token, that, going near the fire, and
+seeing one of the books not yet burnt, I stooped to pick it up, when one
+of the constables gave me a smart rap with his staff, and snatched it
+away. The women being sent to the jail, the Deputy-Governor, Mr.
+Bellingham, and the Council, thinking they might be witches, were for
+having them searched; and Madam Bellingham naming me and another woman
+to her husband, he sent for us, and bade us go to the jail and search
+them, to see if there was any witch-mark on their bodies. So we went,
+and told them our errand, at which they marvelled not a little, and one
+of them, a young, well-favored woman, did entreat that they might not be
+put to such shame, for the jailer stood all the time in the yard,
+looking in at the door; but we told them such was the order, and so,
+without more ado, stripped them of their clothes, but found nothing save
+a mole on the left breast of he younger, into which Goodwife Page thrust
+her needle, at which the woman did give a cry as of pain, and the blood
+flowed; whereas, if it had been witch's mark, she would not have felt
+the prick, for would it have caused blood. So, finding nothing that did
+look like witchcraft, we left them; and on being brought before the
+Court, Deputy-Governor Bellingham asked us what we had to say concerning
+the women. Whereupon Goodwife Page, being the oldest of us, told him
+that we did find no appearance of witches upon their bodies, save the
+mole on the younger woman's breast (which was but natural), but that
+otherwise she was fair as Absalom, who had no blemish from the soles of
+his feet to the crown of his head. Thereupon the Deputy-Governor
+dismissed us, saying that it might be that the Devil did not want them
+for witches, because they could better serve him as Quakers: whereat all
+the Court fell to laughing."
+
+"And what did become of the women?" I asked.
+
+"They kept them in jail awhile," said Nurse Lake, "and then sent them
+back to England. But the others that followed fared harder,--some
+getting whipped at the cart-tail, and others losing their ears. The
+hangman's wife showed me once the ears of three of them, which her
+husband cut off in the jail that very morning."
+
+"This is dreadful!" said I, for I thought of my dear brother and sweet
+Margaret Brewster, and tears filled mine eyes.
+
+"Nay; but they were sturdy knaves and vagabonds," answered Nurse Lake,
+"although one of them was the son of a great officer in the Barbadoes,
+and accounted a gentleman before he did run out into his evil practices.
+But cropping of ears did not stop these headstrong people, and they
+still coming, some were put to death. There were three of them to be
+hanged at one time. I do remember it well, for it was a clear, warm day
+about the last of October, and it was a brave sight to behold. There
+was Marshal Michelson and Captain Oliver, with two hundred soldiers
+afoot, besides many on horse of our chief people, and among them the
+minister, Mr. Wilson, looking like a saint as he was, with a pleasant
+and joyful countenance, and a great multitude of people, men, women, and
+children, not only of Boston, but from he towns round about. I got
+early on to the ground, and when they were going to the gallows I kept
+as near to the condemned ones as I could. There were two young, well-
+favored men, and a woman with gray hairs. As they walked hand in band,
+the woman in the middle, the Marshal, who was riding beside them, and
+who was a merry drolling man, asked her if she was n't ashamed to walk
+hand in hand between two young men; whereupon, looking upon him
+solemnly, she said she was not ashamed, for this was to her an hour of
+great joy, and that no eye could see, no ear hear, no tongue speak, and
+no heart understand, the sweet incomes and refreshings of the Lord's
+spirit, which she did then feel. This she spake aloud, so that all
+about could hear, whereat Captain Oliver bid the drums to beat and drown
+her voice. Now, when they did come to the gallows ladder, on each side
+of which the officers and chief people stood, the two men kept on their
+hats, as is the ill manner of their sort, which so provoked Mr. Wilson,
+the minister, that he cried out to them: 'What! shall such Jacks as you
+come before authority with your hats on?' To which one of them said:
+'Mind you, it is for not putting off our hats that we are put to death.'
+The two men then went up the ladder, and tried to speak; but I could not
+catch a word, being outside of the soldiers, and much fretted and
+worried by the crowd. They were presently turned off, and then the
+woman went up the ladder, and they tied her coats down to her feet, and
+put the halter on her neck, and, lacking a handkerchief to tie over her
+face, the minister lent the hangman his. Just then your Uncle Rawson
+comes a-riding up to the gallows, waving his hand, and crying out,
+'Stop! she is reprieved!' So they took her down, although she said she
+was ready to die as her brethren did, unless they would undo their
+bloody laws. I heard Captain Oliver tell her it was for her son's sake
+that she was spared. So they took her to jail, and after a time sent
+her back to her husband in Rhode Island, which was a favor she did in no
+wise deserve; but good Governor Endicott, much as he did abhor these
+people, sought not their lives, and spared no pains to get them
+peaceably out the country; but they were a stubborn crew, and must needs
+run their necks into the halter, as did this same woman; for, coming
+back again, under pretence of pleading for the repeal of the laws
+against Quakers, she was not long after put to death. The excellent Mr.
+Wilson made a brave ballad on the hanging, which I have heard the boys
+in the street sing many a time."
+
+A great number, both men and women, were--"whipped and put in the
+stocks," continued the woman, "and I once beheld two of them, one a
+young and the other an aged woman, in a cold day in winter, tied to the
+tail of a cart, going through Salem Street, stripped to their waists as
+naked as they were born, and their backs all covered with red whip-
+marks; but there was a more pitiful case of one Hored Gardner, a young
+married woman, with a little child and her nurse, who, coming to
+Weymouth, was laid hold of and sent to Boston, where both were whipped,
+and, as I was often at the jail to see the keeper's wife, it so chanced
+that I was there at the time. The woman, who was young and delicate,
+when they were stripping her, held her little child in her arms; and
+when the jailer plucked it from her bosom, she looked round anxiously,
+and, seeing me, said, 'Good woman, I know thou 't have pity on the
+babe,' and asked me to hold it, which I did. She was then whipped with
+a threefold whip, with knots in the ends, which did tear sadly into her
+flesh; and, after it was over, she kneeled down, with her back all
+bleeding, and prayed for them she called her persecutors. I must say I
+did greatly pity her, and I spoke to the jailer's wife, and we washed
+the poor creature's back, and put on it some famous ointment, so that
+she soon got healed."
+
+Aunt Rawson now coming in, the matter was dropped; but, on my speaking
+to her of it after Nurse Lake had left, she said it was a sore trial to
+many, even those in authority, and who were charged with the putting in
+force of the laws against these people. She furthermore said, that
+Uncle Rawson and Mr. Broadstreet were much cried out against by the
+Quakers and their abettors on both sides of the water, but they did but
+their duty in the matter, and for herself she had always mourned over
+the coming of these people, and was glad when the Court did set any of
+them free. When the woman was hanged, my aunt spent the whole day with
+Madam Broadstreet, who was so wrought upon that she was fain to take to
+her bed, refusing to be comforted, and counting it the heaviest day of
+her life.
+
+"Looking out of her chamber window," said Aunt Rawson, "I saw the people
+who had been to the hanging coming back from the training-field; and
+when Anne Broadstreet did hear the sound of their feet in the road, she
+groaned, and said that it did seem as if every foot fell upon her heart.
+Presently Mr. Broadstreet came home, bringing with him the minister,
+Mr. John Norton. They sat down in the chamber, and for some little time
+there was scarce a word spoken. At length Madam Broadstreet, turning to
+her husband and laying her hand on his arm, as was her loving manner,
+asked him if it was indeed all over. 'The woman is dead,' said he; 'but
+I marvel, Anne, to see you so troubled about her. Her blood is upon her
+own head, for we did by no means seek her life. She hath trodden under
+foot our laws, and misused our great forbearance, so that we could do no
+otherwise than we have done. So under the Devil's delusion was she,
+that she wanted no minister or elder to pray with her at the gallows,
+but seemed to think herself sure of heaven, heeding in no wise the
+warnings of Mr. Norton, and other godly people.'
+
+"'Did she rail at, or cry out against any?' asked his wife. 'Nay, not to
+my hearing,' he said, 'but she carried herself as one who had done no
+harm, and who verily believed that she had obeyed the Lord's will.'
+
+"'This is very dreadful,' said she, 'and I pray that the death of that
+poor misled creature may not rest heavy upon us.'
+
+"Hereupon Mr. Norton lifted up his head, which had been bowed down upon
+his hand; and I shall never forget how his pale and sharp features did
+seem paler than their wont, and his solemn voice seemed deeper and
+sadder. 'Madam!' he said, 'it may well befit your gentleness and
+sweetness of heart to grieve over the sufferings even of the froward and
+ungodly, when they be cut off from the congregation of the Lord, as His
+holy and just law enjoineth, for verily I also could weep for the
+condemned one, as a woman and a mother; and, since her coming, I have
+wrestled with the Lord, in prayer and fasting, that I might be His
+instrument in snatching her as a brand from the burning. But, as a
+watchman on the walls of Zion, when I did see her casting poison into
+the wells of life, and enticing unstable souls into the snares and
+pitfalls of Satan, what should I do but sound an alarm against her? And
+the magistrate, such as your worthy husband, who is also appointed of
+God, and set for the defence of the truth, and the safety of the Church
+and the State, what can he do but faithfully to execute the law of God,
+which is a terror to evil doers? The natural pity which we feel must
+give place unto the duty we do severally owe to God and His Church, and
+the government of His appointment. It is a small matter to be judged of
+man's judgment, for, though certain people have not scrupled to call me
+cruel and hard of heart, yet the Lord knows I have wept in secret places
+over these misguided men and women.
+
+"'But might not life be spared?' asked Madam Broadstreet. 'Death is a
+great thing.'
+
+"'It is appointed unto all to die,' said Mr. Norton, 'and after death
+cometh the judgment. The death of these poor bodies is a bitter thing,
+but the death of the soul is far more dreadful; and it is better that
+these people should suffer than that hundreds of precious souls should
+be lost through their evil communication. The care of the dear souls of
+my flock lieth heavily upon me, as many sleepless nights and days of
+fasting do bear witness. I have not taken counsel of flesh and blood in
+this grave matter, nor yielded unto the natural weakness of my heart.
+And while some were for sparing these workers of iniquity, even as Saul
+spared Agag, I have been strengthened, as it were, to hew them in pieces
+before the Lord in Gilgal. O madam, your honored husband can tell you
+what travail of spirit, what sore trials, these disturbers have cost us;
+and as you do know in his case, so believe also in mine, that what we
+have done hath been urged, not by hardness and cruelty of heart, but
+rather by our love and tenderness towards the Lord's heritage in this
+land. Through care and sorrow I have grown old before my time; few and
+evil have been the days of my pilgrimage, and the end seems not far off;
+and though I have many sins and shortcomings to answer for, I do humbly
+trust that the blood of the souls of the flock committed to me will not
+then be found upon my garments.'
+
+"Ah, me! I shall never forget these words of that godly man," continued
+my aunt, "for, as he said, his end was not far off. He died very
+suddenly, and the Quakers did not scruple to say that it was God's
+judgment upon him for his severe dealing with their people. They even
+go so far as to say that the land about Boston is cursed because of the
+hangings and whippings, inasmuch as wheat will not now grow here, as it
+did formerly, and, indeed, many, not of their way, do believe the same
+thing."
+
+
+
+April 24.
+
+A vessel from London has just come to port, bringing Rebecca's dresses
+for the wedding, which will take place about the middle of June, as I
+hear. Uncle Rawson has brought me a long letter from Aunt Grindall,
+with one also from Oliver, pleasant and lively, like himself. No
+special news from abroad that I hear of. My heart longs for Old England
+more and more.
+
+It is supposed that the freeholders have chosen Mr. Broadstreet for
+their Governor. The vote, uncle says, is exceeding small, very few
+people troubling themselves about it.
+
+
+
+May 2.
+
+Mr. John Easton, a man of some note in the Providence Plantations,
+having occasion to visit Boston yesterday, brought me a message from my
+brother, to the effect that he was now married and settled, and did
+greatly desire me to make the journey to his house in the company of his
+friend, John Easton, and his wife's sister. I feared to break the
+matter to my uncle, but Rebecca hath done so for me, and he hath, to my
+great joy, consented thereto; for, indeed, he refuseth nothing to her.
+My aunt fears for me, that I shall suffer from the cold, as the weather
+is by no means settled, although the season is forward, as compared with
+the last; but I shall take good care as to clothing; and John Easton
+saith we shall be but two nights on the way.
+
+
+
+THE PLANTATIONS, May 10, 1679.
+
+We left Boston on the 4th, at about sunrise, and rode on at a brisk
+trot, until we came to the banks of the river, along which we went near
+a mile before we found a suitable ford, and even there the water was so
+deep that we only did escape a wetting by drawing our feet up to the
+saddle-trees. About noon, we stopped at a farmer's house, in the hope
+of getting a dinner; but the room was dirty as an Indian wigwam, with
+two children in it, sick with the measles, and the woman herself in a
+poor way, and we were glad to leave as soon as possible, and get into
+the fresh air again. Aunt had provided me with some cakes, and Mr.
+Easton, who is an old traveller, had with him a roasted fowl and a good
+loaf of Indian bread; so, coming to a spring of excellent water, we got
+off our horses, and, spreading our napkins on the grass and dry leaves,
+had a comfortable dinner. John's sister is a widow, a lively, merry
+woman, and proved rare company for me. Afterwards we rode until the sun
+was nigh setting, when we came to a little hut on the shore of a broad
+lake at a place called Massapog. It had been dwelt in by a white family
+formerly, but it was now empty, and much decayed in the roof, and as we
+did ride up to it we saw a wild animal of some sort leap out of one of
+its windows, and run into the pines. Here Mr. Easton said we must make
+shift to tarry through the night, as it was many miles to the house of a
+white man. So, getting off our horses, we went into the hut, which had
+but one room, with loose boards for a floor; and as we sat there in the
+twilight, it looked dismal enough; but presently Mr. Easton, coming in
+with a great load of dried boughs, struck a light in the stone
+fireplace, and we soon had a roaring fire. His sister broke off some
+hemlock boughs near the door, and made a broom of them, with which she
+swept up the floor, so that when we sat down on blocks by the hearth,
+eating our poor supper, we thought ourselves quite comfortable and tidy.
+It was a wonderful clear night, the moon rising, as we judged, about
+eight of the clock, over the tops of the hills on the easterly side of
+the lake, and shining brightly on the water in a long line of light, as
+if a silver bridge had been laid across it. Looking out into the
+forest, we could see the beams of the moon, falling here and there
+through the thick tops of the pines and hemlocks, and showing their tall
+trunks, like so many pillars in a church or temple. There was a
+westerly wind blowing, not steadily, but in long gusts, which, sounding
+from a great distance through the pine leaves, did make a solemn and not
+unpleasing music, to which I listened at the door until the cold drove
+me in for shelter. Our horses having been fed with corn, which Mr.
+Easton took with him, were tied at the back of the building, under the
+cover of a thick growth of hemlocks, which served to break off the night
+wind. The widow and I had a comfortable bed in the corner of the room,
+which we made of small hemlock sprigs, having our cloaks to cover us,
+and our saddlebags for pillows. My companions were soon asleep, but the
+exceeding strangeness of my situation did keep me a long time awake.
+For, as I lay there looking upward, I could see the stars shining down a
+great hole in the roof, and the moonlight streaming through the seams of
+the logs, and mingling with the red glow of the coals on the hearth. I
+could hear the horses stamping, just outside, and the sound of the water
+on the lake shore, the cry of wild animals in the depth of the woods,
+and, over all, the long and very wonderful murmur of the pines in the
+wind. At last, being sore weary, I fell asleep, and waked not until I
+felt the warm sun shining in my face, and heard the voice of Mr. Easton
+bidding me rise, as the horses were ready.
+
+After riding about two hours we came upon an Indian camp, in the midst
+of a thick wood of maples. Here were six spacious wigwams; but the men
+were away, except two very old and infirm ones. There were five or six
+women, and perhaps twice as many children, who all came out to see us.
+They brought us some dried meat, as hard nigh upon as chips of wood, and
+which, although hungry, I could feel no stomach for; but I bought of one
+of the squaws two great cakes of sugar, made from the sap of the maples
+which abound there, very pure and sweet, and which served me instead of
+their unsavory meat and cakes of pounded corn, of which Mr. Easton and
+his sister did not scruple to partake. Leaving them, we had a long and
+hard ride to a place called Winnicinnit, where, to my great joy, we
+found a comfortable house and Christian people, with whom we tarried.
+The next day we got to the Plantations; and about noon, from the top of
+a hill, Mr. Easton pointed out the settlement where my brother dwelt,--
+a fair, pleasant valley, through which ran a small river, with the
+houses of the planters on either side. Shortly after, we came to a new
+frame house, with a great oak-tree left standing on each side of the
+gate, and a broad meadow before it, stretching down to the water. Here
+Mr. Easton stopped; and now, who should come hastening down to us but my
+new sister, Margaret, in her plain but comely dress, kindly welcoming
+me; and soon my brother came up from the meadow, where he was busy with
+his men. It was indeed a joyful meeting.
+
+The next day being the Sabhath, I went with my brother and his wife to
+the meeting, which was held in a large house of one of their Quaker
+neighbors. About a score of grave, decent people did meet there,
+sitting still and quiet for a pretty while, when one of their number,
+a venerable man, spake a few words, mostly Scripture; then a young
+woman, who, I did afterwards learn, had been hardly treated by the
+Plymouth people, did offer a few words of encouragement and exhortation
+from this portion of the 34th Psalm: "The angel of the Lord encampeth
+round about them that fear him, and delivereth them." When the meeting
+was over, some of the ancient women came and spake kindly to me,
+inviting me to their houses. In the evening certain of these people
+came to my brother's, and were kind and loving towards me. There was,
+nevertheless, a gravity and a certain staidness of deportment which I
+could but ill conform unto, and I was not sorry when they took leave.
+My Uncle Rawson need not fear my joining with them; for, although I do
+judge them to be a worthy and pious people, I like not their manner of
+worship, and their great gravity and soberness do little accord with my
+natural temper and spirits.
+
+
+
+May 16.
+
+This place is in what is called the Narragansett country, and about
+twenty miles from Mr. Williams's town of Providence, a place of no small
+note. Mr. Williams, who is now an aged man, more than fourscore, was
+the founder of the Province, and is held in great esteem by the people,
+who be of all sects and persuasions, as the Government doth not molest
+any in worshipping according to conscience; and hence you will see in
+the same neighborhood Anabaptists, Quakers, New Lights, Brownists,
+Antinomians, and Socinians,--nay, I am told there be Papists also. Mr.
+Williams is a Baptist, and holdeth mainly with Calvin and Beza, as
+respects the decrees, and hath been a bitter reviler of the Quakers,
+although he hath ofttimes sheltered them from the rigor of the
+Massachusetts Bay magistrates, who he saith have no warrant to deal in
+matters of conscience and religion, as they have done.
+
+Yesterday came the Governor of the Rhode Island, Nicholas Easton, the
+father of John, with his youngest daughter Mary, as fair and as ladylike
+a person as I have seen for many a day. Both her father and herself do
+meet with the "Friends," as they call themselves, at their great house
+on the Island, and the Governor sometimes speaks therein, having, as one
+of the elders here saith of him, "a pretty gift in the ministry." Mary,
+who is about the age of my brother's wife, would fain persuade us to go
+back with them on the morrow to the Island, but Leonard's business will
+not allow it, and I would by no means lose his company while I tarry in
+these parts, as I am so soon to depart for home, where a great ocean
+will separate us, it may be for many years. Margaret, who hath been to
+the Island, saith that the Governor's house is open to all new-comers,
+who are there entertained with rare courtesy, he being a man of
+substance, having a great plantation, with orchards and gardens, and
+a stately house on an hill over-looking the sea on either hand, where,
+six years ago, when the famous George Fox was on the Island, he did
+entertain and lodge no less than fourscore persons, beside his own
+family and servants.
+
+Governor Easton, who is a pleasant talker, told a story of a magistrate
+who had been a great persecutor of his people. On one occasion, after
+he had cast a worthy Friend into jail, he dreamed a dream in this wise:
+He thought he was in a fair, delightsome place, where were sweet springs
+of water and green meadows, and rare fruit-trees and vines with ripe
+clusters thereon, and in the midst thereof flowed a river whose waters
+were clearer than crystal. Moreover, he did behold a great multitude
+walking on the river's bank, or sitting lovingly in the shade of the
+trees which grew thereby. Now, while he stood marvelling at all this,
+he beheld in his dream the man he had cast into prison sitting with his
+hat on, side by side with a minister then dead, whom the magistrate had
+held in great esteem while living; whereat, feeling his anger stirred
+within him, he went straight and bade the man take off his hat in the
+presence of his betters. Howbeit the twain did give no heed to his
+words, but did continue to talk lovingly together as before; whereupon
+he waxed exceeding wroth, and would have laid hands upon the man. But,
+hearing a voice calling upon him to forbear, he did look about him, and
+behold one, with a shining countenance, and clad in raiment so white
+that it did dazzle his eyes to look upon it, stood before him. And the
+shape said, "Dost thou well to be angry?" Then said the magistrate,
+"Yonder is a Quaker with his hat on talking to a godly minister."
+"Nay," quoth the shape, "thou seest but after the manner of the world
+and with the eyes of flesh. Look yonder, and tell me what thou seest."
+So he looked again, and lo! two men in shining raiment, like him who
+talked with him, sat under the tree. "Tell me," said the shape, "if thou
+canst, which of the twain is the Quaker and which is the Priest?" And
+when he could not, but stood in amazement confessing he did see neither
+of them, the shape said, "Thou sayest well, for here be neither Priest
+nor Quaker, Jew nor Gentile, but all are one in the Lord." Then he
+awoke, and pondered long upon his dream, and when it was morning he went
+straightway to the jail, and ordered the man to be set free, and hath
+ever since carried himself lovingly towards the Quakers.
+
+My brother's lines have indeed fallen unto him in a pleasant, place.
+His house is on a warm slope of a hill, looking to the southeast, with a
+great wood of oaks and walnuts behind it, and before it many acres of
+open land, where formerly the Indians did plant their corn, much of
+which is now ploughed and seeded. From the top of the hill one can see
+the waters of the great Bay; at the foot of it runs a small river
+noisily over the rocks, making a continual murmur. Going thither this
+morning, I found a great rock hanging over the water, on which I sat
+down, listening to the noise of the stream and the merriment of the
+birds in the trees, and admiring the green banks, which were besprinkled
+with white and yellow flowers. I call to mind that sweet fancy of the
+lamented Anne Broadstreet, the wife of the new Governor of
+Massachusetts, in a little piece which she nameth "Contemplations,"
+being written on the banks of a stream, like unto the one whereby I was
+then sitting, in which the writer first describeth the beauties of the
+wood, and the flowing water, with the bright fishes therein, and then
+the songs of birds in the boughs over her head, in this sweet and
+pleasing verse, which I have often heard repeated by Cousin Rebecca:--
+
+ "While musing thus, with contemplation fed,
+ And thousand fancies buzzing in my brain,
+ A sweet-tongued songster perched above my head,
+ And chanted forth her most melodious strain;
+ Which rapt me so with wonder and delight,
+ I judged my hearing better than my sight,
+ And wished me wings with her a while to take my flight.
+
+ "O merry bird! said I, that fears no snares,
+ That neither toils nor hoards up in the barn,
+ Feels no sad thoughts, nor cruciating cares,
+ To gain more good, or shun what might thee harm.
+ Thy clothes ne'er wear, thy meat is everywhere,
+ Thy bed a bough, thy drink the water clear,
+ Reminds not what is past, nor what's to come dost fear.
+
+ "The dawning morn with songs thou dost prevent,
+ Sets hundred notes unto thy feathered crew,
+ So each one tunes his pretty instrument,
+ And, warbling out the old, begins the new.
+ And thus they pass their youth in summer season,
+ Then follow thee unto a better region,
+ Where winter's never felt by that sweet airy legion."
+
+Now, while I did ponder these lines, hearing a step in the leaves, I
+looked up, and behold there was an old Indian close beside me; and,
+being much affrighted, I gave a loud cry, and ran towards the house.
+The old man laughed at this, and, calling after me, said he would not
+harm me; and Leonard, hearing my cries, now coming up, bade me never
+fear the Indian, for he was a harmless creature, who was well known to
+him. So he kindly saluted the old man, asking me to shake hands with
+him, which I did, when he struck across the field to a little cleared
+spot on the side of the hill. My brother bidding me note his actions,
+I saw him stoop down on his knees, with his head to the ground, for some
+space of time, and then, getting up, he stretched out his hands towards
+the southwest, as if imploring some one whom I could not see. This he
+repeated for nigh upon half an hour, when he came back to the house,
+where he got some beer and bread to eat, and a great loaf to carry away.
+He said but little until he rose to depart, when he told my brother that
+he had been to see the graves of his father and his mother, and that he
+was glad to find them as he did leave them the last year; for he knew
+that the spirits of the dead would be sore grieved, if the white man's
+hoe touched their bones.
+
+My brother promised him that the burial-place of his people should not
+be disturbed, and that he would find it as now, when he did again visit
+it.
+
+"Me never come again," said the old Indian. "No. Umpachee is very old.
+He has no squaw; he has no young men who call him father. Umpachee is
+like that tree;" and he pointed, as he spoke, to a birch, which stood
+apart in the field, from which the bark had fallen, and which did show
+no leaf nor bud.
+
+My brother hereupon spake to him of the great Father of both white and
+red men, and of his love towards them, and of the measure of light which
+he had given unto all men, whereby they might know good from evil, and
+by living in obedience to which they might be happy in this life and in
+that to come; exhorting him to put his trust in God, who was able to
+comfort and sustain him in his old age, and not to follow after lying
+Powahs, who did deceive and mislead him.
+
+"My young brother's talk is good," said the old man. "The Great Father
+sees that his skin is white, and that mine is red. He sees my young
+brother when he sits in his praying-house, and me when me offer him corn
+and deer's flesh in the woods, and he says good. Umpachee's people have
+all gone to one place. If Umpachee go to a praying-house, the Great
+Father will send him to the white man's place, and his father and his
+mother and his sons will never see him in their hunting-ground. No.
+Umpachee is an old beaver that sits in his own house, and swims in his
+own pond. He will stay where he is, until his Father calls him."
+
+Saying this, the old savage went on his way. As he passed out of the
+valley, and got to the top of the hill on the other side, we, looking
+after him, beheld him standing still a moment, as if bidding farewell to
+the graves of his people.
+
+
+
+May 24.
+
+My brother goes with me to-morrow on my way to Boston. I am not a
+little loath to leave my dear sister Margaret, who hath greatly won upon
+me by her gentleness and loving deportment, and who doth at all times,
+even when at work in ordering her household affairs, and amidst the
+cares and perplexities of her new life, show forth that sweetness of
+temper and that simplicity wherewith I was charmed when I first saw her.
+She hath naturally an ingenious mind, and, since her acquaintance with
+my brother, hath dipped into such of his studies and readings as she had
+leisure and freedom to engage in, so that her conversation is in no wise
+beneath her station. Nor doth she, like some of her people, especially
+the more simple and unlearned, affect a painful and melancholy look and
+a canting tone of discourse, but lacketh not for cheerfulness and a
+certain natural ease and grace of demeanor; and the warmth and goodness
+of her heart doth at times break the usual quiet of her countenance,
+like to sunshine and wind on a still water, and she hath the sweetest
+smile I ever saw. I have often thought, since I have been with her,
+that if Uncle Rawson could see and hear her as I do for a single day,
+he would confess that my brother might have done worse than to take a
+Quaker to wife.
+
+
+
+BOSTON, May 28, 1679.
+
+Through God's mercy, I got here safe and well, saving great weariness,
+and grief at parting with my brother and his wife. The first day we
+went as far as a place they call Rehoboth, where we tarried over night,
+finding but small comfort therein; for the house was so filled, that
+Leonard and a friend who came with us were fain to lie all night in the
+barn, on the mow before their horses; and, for mine own part, I had to
+choose between lying in the large room, where the man of the house and
+his wife and two sons, grown men, did lodge, or to climb into the dark
+loft, where was barely space for a bed,--which last I did make choice
+of, although the woman thought it strange, and marvelled not a little at
+my unwillingness to sleep in the same room with her husband and boys,
+as she called them. In the evening, hearing loud voices in a house near
+by, we inquired what it meant, and were told that some people from
+Providence were holding a meeting there, the owner of the house being
+accounted a Quaker. Whereupon, I went thither with Leonard, and found
+nigh upon a score of people gathered, and a man with loose hair and
+beard speaking to them. My brother whispered to me that he was no
+Friend, but a noted ranter, a noisy, unsettled man. He screamed
+exceeding loud, and stamped with his feet, and foamed at the mouth, like
+one possessed with an evil spirit, crying against all order in State or
+Church, and declaring that the Lord had a controversy with Priests and
+Magistrates, the prophets who prophesy falsely, and the priests who bear
+rule by their means, and the people who love to have it so. He spake of
+the Quakers as a tender and hopeful people in their beginning, and while
+the arm of the wicked was heavy upon them; but now he said that they,
+even as the rest, were settled down into a dead order, and heaping up
+worldly goods, and speaking evil of the Lord's messengers. They were a
+part of Babylon, and would perish with their idols; they should drink of
+the wine of God's wrath; the day of their visitation was at hand. After
+going on thus for a while, up gets a tall, wild-looking woman, as pale
+as a ghost, and trembling from head to foot, who, stretching out her
+long arms towards the man who had spoken, bade the people take notice
+that this was the angel spoken of in Revelation, flying through the
+midst of heaven, and crying, Woe! woe! to the inhabitants of the earth!
+with more of the like wicked rant, whereat I was not a little
+discomposed, and, beckoning my brother, left them to foam out their
+shame to themselves.
+
+The next morning, we got upon our horses at an early hour, and after a
+hard and long ride reached Mr. Torrey's at Weymouth, about an hour after
+dark. Here we found Cousin Torrey in bed with her second child, a boy,
+whereat her husband is not a little rejoiced. My brother here took his
+leave of me, going back to the Plantations. My heart is truly sad and
+heavy with the great grief of parting.
+
+
+
+May 30.
+
+Went to the South meeting to-day, to hear the sermon preached before the
+worshipful Governor, Mr. Broadstreet, and his Majesty's Council, it
+being the election day. It was a long sermon, from Esther x. 3. Had
+much to say concerning the duty of Magistrates to support the Gospel and
+its ministers, and to put an end to schism and heresy. Very pointed,
+also, against time-serving Magistrates.
+
+
+
+June 1.
+
+Mr. Michael Wigglesworth, the Malden minister, at uncle's house last
+night. Mr. Wigglesworth told aunt that he had preached a sermon against
+the wearing of long hair and other like vanities, which he hoped, with
+God's blessing, might do good. It was from Isaiah iii. 16, and so on
+to the end of the chapter. Now, while he was speaking of the sermon,
+I whispered Rebecca that I would like to ask him a question, which he
+overhearing, turned to me, and bade me never heed, but speak out. So I
+told him that I was but a child in years and knowledge, and he a wise
+and learned man; but if he would not deem it forward in me, I would fain
+know whether the Scripture did anywhere lay down the particular fashion
+of wearing the hair.
+
+Mr. Wigglesworth said that there were certain general rules laid down,
+from which we might make a right application to particular cases. The
+wearing of long hair by men is expressly forbidden in 1 Corinthians xi.
+14, 15; and there is a special word for women, also, in 1 Tim. ii. 9.
+
+Hereupon Aunt Rawson told me she thought I was well answered; but I
+(foolish one that I was), being unwilling to give up the matter so,
+ventured further to say that there were the Nazarites, spoken of in
+Numbers vi. 5, upon whose heads, by the appointment of God, no razor
+was to come.
+
+"Nay," said Mr. Wigglesworth, "that was by a special appointment only,
+and proveth the general rule and practice."
+
+Uncle Rawson said that long hair might, he judged, be lawfully worn,
+where the bodily health did require it, to guard the necks of weakly
+people from the cold.
+
+"Where there seems plainly a call of nature for it," said Mr.
+Wigglesworth, "as a matter of bodily comfort, and for the warmth of the
+head and neck, it is nowise unlawful. But for healthy, sturdy young
+people to make this excuse for their sinful vanity doth but add to their
+condemnation. If a man go any whit beyond God's appointment and the
+comfort of nature, I know not where he will stop, until he grows to be
+the veriest ruffian in the world. It is a wanton and shameful thing for
+a man to liken himself to a woman, by suffering his hair to grow, and
+curling and parting it in a seam, as is the manner of too many. It
+betokeneth pride and vanity, and causeth no small offence to godly,
+sober people.
+
+"The time hath been," continued Mr. Wigglesworth, "when God's people
+were ashamed of such vanities, both in the home country and in these
+parts; but since the Bishops and the Papists have had their way, and
+such as feared God are put down from authority, to give place to
+scorners and wantons, there hath been a sad change."
+
+He furthermore spake of the gay apparel of the young women of Boston,
+and their lack of plainness and modesty in the manner of wearing and
+ordering their hair; and said he could in no wise agree with some of his
+brethren in the ministry that this was a light matter, inasmuch as it
+did most plainly appear from Scripture that the pride and haughtiness of
+the daughters of Zion did provoke the judgments of the Lord, not only
+upon them, but upon the men also. Now, the special sin of women is
+pride and haughtiness, and that because they be generally more ignorant,
+being the weaker vessel; and this sin venteth itself in their gesture,
+their hair and apparel. Now, God abhors all pride, especially pride in
+base things; and hence the conduct of the daughters of Zion does greatly
+provoke his wrath, first against themselves, secondly their fathers and
+husbands, and thirdly against the land they do inhabit.
+
+Rebecca here roguishly pinched my arm, saying apart that, after all, we
+weaker vessels did seem to be of great consequence, and nobody could
+tell but that our head-dresses would yet prove the ruin of the country.
+
+
+
+June 4
+
+Robert Pike, coming into the harbor with his sloop, from the Pemaquid
+country, looked in upon us yesterday. Said that since coming to the
+town he had seen a Newbury man, who told him that old Mr. Wheelwright,
+of Salisbury, the famous Boston minister in the time of Sir Harry Vane
+and Madam Hutchinson, was now lying sick, and nigh unto his end. Also,
+that Goodman Morse was so crippled by a fall in his barn, that he cannot
+get to Boston to the trial of his wife, which is a sore affliction to
+him. The trial of the witch is now going on, and uncle saith it looks
+much against her, especially the testimony of the Widow Goodwin about
+her child, and of John Gladding about seeing one half of the body of
+Goody Morse flying about in the sun, as if she had been cut in twain, or
+as if the Devil did hide the lower part of her. Robert Pike said such
+testimony ought not to hang a cat, the widow being little more than a
+fool; and as for the fellow Gladding, he was no doubt in his cups, for
+he had often seen him in such a plight that he could not have told Goody
+Morse from the Queen of Sheba.
+
+
+
+June 8.
+
+The Morse woman having been found guilty by the Court of Assistants,
+she was brought out to the North Meeting, to hear the Thursday Lecture,
+yesterday, before having her sentence. The house was filled with
+people, they being curious to see the witch. The Marshal and the
+constables brought her in, and set her in, front of the pulpit; the old
+creature looking round her wildly, as if wanting her wits, and then
+covering her face with her dark wrinkled hands; a dismal sight! The
+minister took his text in Romans xiii. 3, 4, especially the last clause
+of the 4th verse, relating to rulers: For he beareth not the sword in
+vain, &c. He dwelt upon the power of the ruler as a Minister of God,
+and as a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil; and showeth
+that the punishment of witches and such as covenant with the Devil is
+one of the duties expressly enjoined upon rulers by the Word of God,
+inasmuch as a witch was not to be suffered to live.
+
+He then did solemnly address himself to the condemned woman, quoting 1
+Tim. v. 20: "Them that sin, rebuke before all, that others also may
+fear." The woman was greatly moved, for no doubt the sharp words of the
+preacher did prick her guilty conscience, and the terrors of hell did
+take hold of her, so that she was carried out, looking scarcely alive.
+They took her, when the lecture was over, to the Court, where the
+Governor did pronounce sentence of death upon her. But uncle tells me
+there be many who are stirring to get her respited for a time, at least,
+and he doth himself incline to favor it, especially as Rebecca hath
+labored much with him to that end, as also hath Major Pike and Major
+Saltonstall with the Governor, who himself sent for uncle last night,
+and they had a long talk together, and looked over the testimony against
+the woman, and neither did feel altogether satisfied with it. Mr.
+Norton adviseth for the hanging; but Mr. Willard, who has seen much of
+the woman, and hath prayed with her in the jail, thinks she may be
+innocent in the matter of witchcraft, inasmuch as her conversation was
+such as might become a godly person in affliction, and the reading of
+the Scripture did seem greatly to comfort her.
+
+
+
+June 9.
+
+Uncle Rawson being at the jail to-day, a messenger, who had been sent to
+the daughter of Goody Morse, who is the wife of one Hate Evil Nutter, on
+the Cocheco, to tell her that her mother did greatly desire to see her
+once more before she was hanged, coming in, told the condemned woman
+that her daughter bade him say to her, that inasmuch as she had sold
+herself to the Devil, she did owe her no further love or service, and
+that she could not complain of this, for as she had made her bed, so she
+must lie. Whereat the old creature set up a miserable cry, saying that
+to have her own flesh and blood turn against her was more bitter than
+death itself. And she begged Mr. Willard to pray for her, that her
+trust in the Lord might not be shaken by this new affliction.
+
+
+
+June 10.
+
+The condemned woman hath been reprieved by the Governor and the
+Magistrates until the sitting of the Court in October. Many people,
+both men and women, coming in from the towns about to see the hanging,
+be sore disappointed, and do vehemently condemn the conduct of the
+Governor therein. For mine own part, I do truly rejoice that mercy hath
+been shown to the poor creature; for even if she is guilty, it affordeth
+her a season for repentance; and if she be innocent, it saveth the land
+from a great sin. The sorrowful look of the old creature at the Lecture
+hath troubled me ever since, so forlorn and forsaken did she seem.
+Major Pike (Robert's father), coming in this morning, says, next to the
+sparing of Goody Morse's life, it did please him to see the bloodthirsty
+rabble so cheated out of their diversion; for example, there was Goody
+Matson, who had ridden bare-backed, for lack of a saddle, all the way
+from Newbury, on Deacon Dole's hard-trotting horse, and was so galled
+and lame of it that she could scarce walk. The Major said he met her at
+the head of King Street yesterday, with half a score more of her sort,
+scolding and railing about the reprieve of the witch, and prophesying
+dreadful judgments upon all concerned in it. He said he bade her shut
+her mouth and go home, where she belonged; telling her that if he heard
+any more of her railing, the Magistrates should have notice of it, and
+she would find that laying by the heels in the stocks was worse than
+riding Deacon Dole's horse.
+
+
+
+June 14.
+
+Yesterday the wedding took place. It was an exceeding brave one; most
+of the old and honored families being at it, so that the great house
+wherein my uncle lives was much crowded. Among them were Governor
+Broadstreet and many of the honorable Magistrates, with Mr. Saltonstall
+and his worthy lady; Mr. Richardson, the Newbury minister, joining the
+twain in marriage, in a very solemn and feeling manner. Sir Thomas was
+richly apparelled, as became one of his rank, and Rebecca in her white
+silk looked comely as an angel. She wore the lace collar I wrought for
+her last winter, for my sake, although I fear me she had prettier ones
+of her own working. The day was wet and dark, with an easterly wind
+blowing in great gusts from the bay, exceeding cold for the season.
+
+Rebecca, or Lady Hale, as she is now called, had invited Robert Pike
+to her wedding, but he sent her an excuse for not coming, to the effect
+that urgent business did call him into the eastern country as far as
+Monhegan and Pemaquid. His letter, which was full of good wishes for
+her happiness and prosperity, I noted saddened Rebecca a good deal; and
+she was, moreover, somewhat disturbed by certain things that did happen
+yesterday: the great mirror in the hall being badly broken, and the
+family arms hanging over the fire-place thrown down, so that it was
+burned by the coals kindled on the hearth, on account of the dampness;
+which were looked upon as ill signs by most people. Grindall, a
+thoughtless youth, told his sister of the burning of the arms, and that
+nothing was left save the head of the raven in the crest, at which she
+grew very pale, and said it was strange, indeed, and, turning to me,
+asked me if I did put faith in what was said of signs and prognostics.
+So, seeing her troubled, I laughed at the matter, although I secretly
+did look upon it as an ill omen, especially as I could never greatly
+admire Sir Thomas. My brother's wife, who seemed fully persuaded that
+he is an unworthy person, sent by me a message to Rebecca, to that
+effect; but I had not courage to speak of it, as matters had gone so
+far, and uncle and aunt did seem so fully bent upon making a great lady
+of their daughter.
+
+The vessel in which we are to take our passage is near upon ready for
+the sea. The bark is a London one, called "The Three Brothers," and is
+commanded by an old acquaintance of Uncle Rawson. I am happy with the
+thought of going home, yet, as the time of departure draws nigh, I do
+confess some regrets at leaving this country, where I have been so
+kindly cared for and entertained, and where I have seen so many new and
+strange things. The great solemn woods, as wild and natural as they
+were thousands of years ago, the fierce suns of the summer season and
+the great snows of the winter, and the wild beasts, and the heathen
+Indians,--these be things the memory whereof will over abide with me.
+To-day the weather is again clear and warm, the sky wonderfully bright;
+the green leaves flutter in the wind, and the birds are singing sweetly.
+The waters of the bay, which be yet troubled by the storm of last night,
+are breaking in white foam on the rocks of the main land, and on the
+small islands covered with trees and vines; and many boats and sloops
+going out with the west wind, to their fishing, do show their white
+sails in the offing. How I wish I had skill to paint the picture of all
+this for my English friends! My heart is pained, as I look upon it,
+with the thought that after a few days I shall never see it more.
+
+
+
+June 18.
+
+To-morrow we embark for home. Wrote a long letter to my dear brother
+and sister, and one to my cousins at York. Mr. Richardson hath just
+left us, having come all the way from Newbury to the wedding. The
+excellent Governor Broadstreet hath this morning sent to Lady Hale a
+handsome copy of his first wife's book, entitled "Several Poems by a
+Gentlewoman of New England," with these words on the blank page thereof,
+from Proverbs xxxi. 30, "A woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be
+praised," written in the Governor's own hand. All the great folks
+hereabout have not failed to visit my cousin since her marriage; but I
+do think she is better pleased with some visits she hath had from poor
+widows and others who have been in times past relieved and comforted by
+her charities and kindness, the gratitude of these people affecting her
+unto tears. Truly it may be said of her, as of Job: "When the ear heard
+her then it blessed her, and when the eye saw her it gave witness to
+her: because she delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and
+him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to
+perish came upon her; and she caused the widow's heart to sing for joy."
+
+(Here the diary ends somewhat abruptly. It appears as if some of the
+last pages have been lost. Appended to the manuscript I find a note, in
+another handwriting, signed "R. G.," dated at Malton Rectory, 1747. One
+Rawson Grindall, M. A., was curate of Malton at this date, and the
+initials are undoubtedly his. The sad sequel to the history of the fair
+Rebecca Rawson is confirmed by papers now on file in the State-House at
+Boston, in which she is spoken of as "one of the most beautiful, polite,
+and accomplished young ladies in Boston."--Editor.)
+
+"These papers of my honored and pious grandmother, Margaret Smith, who,
+soon after her return from New England, married her cousin, Oliver
+Grindall, Esq., of Hilton Grange, Crowell, in Oxfordshire (both of whom
+have within the last ten years departed this life, greatly lamented by
+all who knew them), having cone into my possession, I have thought it
+not amiss to add to them a narrative of what happened to her friend and
+cousin, as I have had the story often from her own lips.
+
+"It appears that the brave gallant calling himself Sir Thomas Hale,
+for all his fair seething and handsome address, was but a knave and
+impostor, deceiving with abominable villany Rebecca Rawson and most of
+her friends (although my grandmother was never satisfied with him, as is
+seen in her journal). When they got, to London, being anxious, on
+account of sea-sickness and great weariness, to leave the vessel as soon
+as possible, they went ashore to the house of a kinsman to lodge,
+leaving their trunks and clothing on board. Early on the next morning,
+he that called himself Sir Thomas left his wife, taking with him the
+keys of her trunks, telling her he would send them up from the vessel in
+season for her to dress for dinner. The trunks came, as he said, but
+after waiting impatiently for the keys until near the dinner-hour, and
+her husband not returning, she had them broken open, and, to her grief
+and astonishment, found nothing therein but shavings and other
+combustible matter. Her kinsman forthwith ordered his carriage, and
+went with her to the inn where they first stopped on landing from the
+vessel, where she inquired for Sir Thomas Hale. The landlord told her
+there was such a gentleman, but he had not seen him for some days.
+'But he was at your house last night,' said the astonished young woman.
+'He is my husband, and I was with him.' The landlord then said that one
+Thomas Rumsey was at his house, with a young lady, the night before, but
+she was not his lawful wife, for he had one already in Kent. At this
+astounding news, the unhappy woman swooned outright, and, being taken
+back to her kinsman's, she lay grievously ill for many days, during
+which time, by letters from Kent, it was ascertained that this Rumsey
+was a graceless young spendthrift, who had left his wife and his two
+children three years before, and gone to parts unknown.
+
+"My grandmother, who affectionately watched over her, and comforted her
+in her great affliction, has often told me that, on coming to herself,
+her poor cousin said it was a righteous judgment upon her, for her pride
+and vanity, which had led her to discard worthy men for one of great
+show and pretensions, who had no solid merit to boast of. She had
+sinned against God, and brought disgrace upon her family, in choosing
+him. She begged that his name might never be mentioned again in her
+hearing, and that she might only be known as a poor relative of her
+English kinsfolk, and find a home among them until she could seek out
+some employment for her maintenance, as she could not think of going
+back to Boston, to become the laughing-stock of the thoughtless and the
+reproach of her father's family.
+
+"After the marriage of my grandmother, Rebecca was induced to live with
+her for some years. My great-aunt, Martha Grindall, an ancient
+spinster, now living, remembers her well at that time, describing her as
+a young woman of a sweet and gentle disposition, and much beloved by all
+the members of the family. Her father, hearing of her misfortunes,
+wrote to her, kindly inviting her to return to New England, and live
+with him, and she at last resolved to do so. My great-uncle, Robert,
+having an office under the government at Port Royal, in the island of
+Jamaica, she went out with him, intending to sail from thence to Boston.
+From that place she wrote to my grandmother a letter, which I have also
+in my possession, informing her of her safe arrival, and of her having
+seen an old friend, Captain Robert Pike, whose business concerns had
+called him to the island, who had been very kind and considerate in his
+attention to her, offering to take her home in his vessel, which was to
+sail in a few days. She mentions, in a postscript to her letter, that
+she found Captain Pike to be much improved in his appearance and
+manners,--a true natural gentleman; and she does not forget to notice
+the fact that he was still single. She had, she said, felt unwilling to
+accept his offer of a passage home, holding herself unworthy of such
+civilities at his hands; but he had so pressed the matter that she had,
+not without some misgivings, consented to it.
+
+"But it was not according to the inscrutable wisdom of Providence that
+she should ever be restored to her father's house. Among the victims of
+the great earthquake which destroyed Port Royal a few days after the
+date of her letter, was this unfortunate lady. It was a heavy blow to
+my grandmother, who entertained for her cousin the tenderest affection,
+and, indeed, she seems to have been every way worthy of it,--lovely in
+person, amiable in deportment, and of a generous and noble nature. She
+was, especially after her great trouble, of a somewhat pensive and
+serious habit of mind, contrasting with the playfulness and innocent
+light-heartedness of her early life, as depicted in the diary of my
+grandmother, yet she was ever ready to forget herself in ministering to
+the happiness and pleasures of others. She was not, as I learn, a
+member of the church, having some scruples in respect to the rituals, as
+was natural from her education in New England, among Puritanic
+schismatics; but she lived a devout life, and her quiet and
+unostentatious piety exemplified the truth of the language of one of the
+greatest of our divines, the Bishop of Down and Connor 'Prayer is the
+peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the issue of a quiet
+mind, the daughter of charity, and the sister of meekness.' Optimus
+animus est pulcherrimus Dei cultus.
+
+"R. G."
+
+
+
+
+
+TALES AND SKETCHES
+
+
+
+
+MY SUMMER WITH DR. SINGLETARY.
+
+A FRAGMENT.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. DR. SINGLETARY IS DEAD!
+
+
+Well, what of it? All who live die sooner or later; and pray who was
+Dr. Singletary, that his case should claim particular attention?
+
+Why, in the first place, Dr. Singletary, as a man born to our common
+inheritance of joy and sorrow, earthly instincts and heavenward
+aspirations,--our brother in sin and suffering, wisdom and folly, love,
+and pride, and vanity,--has a claim upon the universal sympathy.
+Besides, whatever the living man may have been, death has now invested
+him with its great solemnity. He is with the immortals. For him the
+dark curtain has been lifted. The weaknesses, the follies, and the
+repulsive mental and personal idiosyncrasies which may have kept him
+without the sphere of our respect and sympathy have now fallen off, and
+he stands radiant with the transfiguration of eternity, God's child, our
+recognized and acknowledged brother.
+
+Dr. Singletary is dead. He was an old man, and seldom, of latter years,
+ventured beyond the precincts of his neighborhood. He was a single man,
+and his departure has broken no circle of family affection. He was
+little known to the public, and is now little missed. The village
+newspaper simply appended to its announcement of his decease the
+customary post mortem compliment, "Greatly respected by all who knew
+him;" and in the annual catalogue of his alma mater an asterisk has been
+added to his name, over which perchance some gray-haired survivor of his
+class may breathe a sigh, as he calls up, the image of the fresh-faced,
+bright-eyed boy, who, aspiring, hopeful, vigorous, started with him on
+the journey of life,--a sigh rather for himself than for its unconscious
+awakener.
+
+But, a few years have passed since he left us; yet already wellnigh all
+the outward manifestations, landmarks, and memorials of the living man
+have passed away or been removed. His house, with its broad, mossy roof
+sloping down on one side almost to the rose-bushes and lilacs, and with
+its comfortable little porch in front, where he used to sit of a
+pleasant summer afternoon, has passed into new hands, and has been sadly
+disfigured by a glaring coat of white paint; and in the place of the
+good Doctor's name, hardly legible on the corner-board, may now be seen,
+in staring letters of black and gold, "VALENTINE ORSON STUBBS, M. D.,
+Indian doctor and dealer in roots and herbs." The good Doctor's old
+horse, as well known as its owner to every man, woman, and child in the
+village, has fallen into the new comer's hands, who (being prepared to
+make the most of him, from the fact that he commenced the practice of
+the healing art in the stable, rising from thence to the parlor) has
+rubbed him into comparative sleekness, cleaned his mane and tail of the
+accumulated burrs of many autumns, and made quite a gay nag of him. The
+wagon, too, in which at least two generations of boys and girls have
+ridden in noisy hilarity whenever they encountered it on their way to
+school, has been so smartly painted and varnished, that if its former
+owner could look down from the hill-slope where he lies, he would
+scarcely know his once familiar vehicle as it whirls glittering along
+the main road to the village. For the rest, all things go on as usual;
+the miller grinds, the blacksmith strikes and blows, the cobbler and
+tailor stitch and mend, old men sit in the autumn sun, old gossips stir
+tea and scandal, revival meetings alternate with apple-bees and
+bushings,--toil, pleasure, family jars, petty neighborhood quarrels,
+courtship, and marriage,--all which make up the daily life of a country
+village continue as before. The little chasm which his death has made
+in the hearts of the people where he lived and labored seems nearly
+closed up. There is only one more grave in the burying-ground,--that is
+all.
+
+Let nobody infer from what I have said that the good man died
+unlamented; for, indeed, it was a sad day with his neighbors when the
+news, long expected, ran at last from house to house and from workshop
+to workshop, "Dr. Singletary is dead!"
+
+He had not any enemy left among them; in one way or another he had been
+the friend and benefactor of all. Some owed to his skill their recovery
+from sickness; others remembered how he had watched with anxious
+solicitude by the bedside of their dying relatives, soothing them, when
+all human aid was vain, with the sweet consolations of that Christian
+hope which alone pierces the great shadow of the grave and shows the
+safe stepping-stones above the dark waters. The old missed a cheerful
+companion and friend, who had taught them much without wounding their
+pride by an offensive display of his superiority, and who, while making
+a jest of his own trials and infirmities, could still listen with real
+sympathy to the querulous and importunate complaints of others. For one
+day, at least, even the sunny faces of childhood were marked with
+unwonted thoughtfulness; the shadow of the common bereavement fell over
+the play-ground and nursery. The little girl remembered, with tears,
+how her broken-limbed doll had taxed the surgical ingenuity of her
+genial old friend; and the boy showed sorrowfully to his playmates the
+top which the good Doctor had given him. If there were few, among the
+many who stood beside his grave, capable of rightly measuring and
+appreciating the high intellectual and spiritual nature which formed the
+background of his simple social life, all could feel that no common loss
+had been sustained, and that the kindly and generous spirit which had
+passed away from them had not lived to himself alone.
+
+As you follow the windings of one of the loveliest rivers of New
+England, a few miles above the sea-mart, at its mouth, you can see on a
+hill, whose grassy slope is checkered with the graceful foliage of the
+locust, and whose top stands relieved against a still higher elevation,
+dark with oaks and walnuts, the white stones of the burying-place. It
+is a quiet spot, but without gloom, as befits "God's Acre." Below is
+the village, with its sloops and fishing-boats at the wharves, and its
+crescent of white houses mirrored in the water. Eastward is the misty
+line of the great sea. Blue peaks of distant mountains roughen the
+horizon of the north. Westward, the broad, clear river winds away into
+a maze of jutting bluffs and picturesque wooded headlands. The tall,
+white stone on the westerly slope of the hill bears the name of
+"Nicholas Singletary, M. D.," and marks the spot which he selected many
+years before his death. When I visited it last spring, the air about it
+was fragrant with the bloom of sweet-brier and blackberry and the
+balsamic aroma of the sweet-fern; birds were singing in the birch-trees
+by the wall; and two little, brown-locked, merry-faced girls were making
+wreaths of the dandelions and grasses which grew upon the old man's
+grave. The sun was setting behind the western river-bluffs, flooding
+the valley with soft light, glorifying every object and fusing all into
+harmony and beauty. I saw and felt nothing to depress or sadden me. I
+could have joined in the laugh of the children. The light whistle of a
+young teamster, driving merrily homeward, did not jar upon my ear; for
+from the transfigured landscape, and from the singing birds, and from
+sportive childhood, and from blossoming sweetbrier, and from the grassy
+mound before me, I heard the whisper of one word only, and that word
+was PEACE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER. II. SOME ACCOUNT OF PEEWAWKIN ON THE TOCKETUCK.
+
+WELL and truly said the wise man of old, "Much study is a weariness to
+the flesh." Hard and close application through the winter had left me
+ill prepared to resist the baleful influences of a New England spring.
+I shrank alike from the storms of March, the capricious changes of
+April, and the sudden alternations of May, from the blandest of
+southwest breezes to the terrible and icy eastern blasts which sweep our
+seaboard like the fabled sanser, or wind of death. The buoyancy and
+vigor, the freshness and beauty of life seemed leaving me. The flesh
+and the spirit were no longer harmonious. I was tormented by a
+nightmare feeling of the necessity of exertion, coupled with a sense of
+utter inability. A thousand plans for my own benefit, or the welfare of
+those dear to me, or of my fellow-men at large, passed before me; but I
+had no strength to lay hold of the good angels and detain them until
+they left their blessing. The trumpet sounded in my ears for the
+tournament of life; but I could not bear the weight of my armor. In the
+midst of duties and responsibilities which I clearly comprehended, I
+found myself yielding to the absorbing egotism of sickness. I could
+work only when the sharp rowels of necessity were in my sides.
+
+It needed not the ominous warnings of my acquaintance to convince me
+that some decisive change was necessary. But what was to be done? A
+voyage to Europe was suggested by my friends; but unhappily I reckoned
+among them no one who was ready, like the honest laird of Dumbiedikes,
+to inquire, purse in hand, "Will siller do it?" In casting about for
+some other expedient, I remembered the pleasant old-fashioned village of
+Peewawkin, on the Tocketuck River. A few weeks of leisure, country air,
+and exercise, I thought might be of essential service to me. So I
+turned my key upon my cares and studies, and my back to the city, and
+one fine evening of early June the mail coach rumbled over Tocketuck
+Bridge, and left me at the house of Dr. Singletary, where I had been
+fortunate enough to secure bed and board.
+
+The little village of Peewawkin at this period was a well-preserved
+specimen of the old, quiet, cozy hamlets of New England. No huge
+factory threw its evil shadow over it; no smoking demon of an engine
+dragged its long train through the streets; no steamboat puffed at its
+wharves, or ploughed up the river, like the enchanted ship of the
+Ancient Mariner,--
+
+ "Against the wind, against the tide,
+ Steadied with upright keel."
+
+The march of mind had not overtaken it. It had neither printing-press
+nor lyceum. As the fathers had done before them, so did its inhabitants
+at the time of my visit. There was little or no competition in their
+business; there were no rich men, and none that seemed over-anxious to
+become so. Two or three small vessels were annually launched from the
+carpenters' yards on the river. It had a blacksmith's shop, with its
+clang of iron and roar of bellows; a pottery, garnished with its coarse
+earthen-ware; a store, where molasses, sugar, and spices were sold on
+one side, and calicoes, tape, and ribbons on the other. Three or four
+small schooners annually left the wharves for the St. George's and
+Labrador fisheries. Just back of the village, a bright, noisy stream,
+gushing out, like a merry laugh, from the walnut and oak woods which
+stretched back far to the north through a narrow break in the hills,
+turned the great wheel of a grist-mill, and went frolicking away, like a
+wicked Undine, under the very windows of the brown, lilac-shaded house
+of Deacon Warner, the miller, as if to tempt the good man's handsome
+daughters to take lessons in dancing. At one end of the little
+crescent-shaped village, at the corner of the main road and the green
+lane to Deacon Warner's mill, stood the school-house,--a small, ill-
+used, Spanish-brown building, its patched windows bearing unmistakable
+evidence of the mischievous character of its inmates. At the other end,
+farther up the river, on a rocky knoll open to all the winds, stood the
+meeting-house,--old, two story, and full of windows,--its gilded
+weathercock glistening in the sun. The bell in its belfry had been
+brought from France by Skipper Evans in the latter part of the last
+century. Solemnly baptized and consecrated to some holy saint, it had
+called to prayer the veiled sisters of a convent, and tolled heavily in
+the masses for the dead. At first some of the church felt misgivings as
+to the propriety of hanging a Popish bell in a Puritan steeple-house;
+but their objections were overruled by the minister, who wisely
+maintained that if Moses could use the borrowed jewels and ornaments of
+the Egyptians to adorn and beautify the ark of the Lord, it could not be
+amiss to make a Catholic bell do service in an Orthodox belfry. The
+space between the school and the meeting-house was occupied by some
+fifteen or twenty dwellings, many-colored and diverse in age and
+appearance. Each one had its green yard in front, its rose-bushes and
+lilacs. Great elms, planted a century ago, stretched and interlocked
+their heavy arms across the street. The mill-stream, which found its
+way into the Tocketuek, near the centre of the village, was spanned by a
+rickety wooden bridge, rendered picturesque by a venerable and gnarled
+white-oak which hung over it, with its great roots half bared by the
+water and twisted among the mossy stones of the crumbling abutment.
+
+The house of Dr. Singletary was situated somewhat apart from the main
+street, just on the slope of Blueberry Will,--a great, green swell of
+land, stretching far down from the north, and terminating in a steep
+bluff at the river side. It overlooked the village and the river a long
+way up and down. It was a brown-looking, antiquated mansion, built by
+the Doctor's grandfather in the earlier days of the settlement. The
+rooms were large and low, with great beams, scaly with whitewash,
+running across them, scarcely above the reach of a tall man's head.
+Great-throated fireplaces, filled with pine-boughs and flower-pots, gave
+promise of winter fires, roaring and crackling in boisterous hilarity,
+as if laughing to scorn the folly and discomfort of our modern stoves.
+In the porch at the frontdoor were two seats, where the Doctor was
+accustomed to sit in fine weather with his pipe and his book, or with
+such friends as might call to spend a half hour with him. The lawn in
+front had scarcely any other ornament than its green grass, cropped
+short by the Doctor's horse. A stone wall separated it from the lane,
+half overrun with wild hop, or clematis, and two noble rock-maples
+arched over with their dense foliage the little red gate. Dark belts of
+woodland, smooth hill pasture, green, broad meadows, and fields of corn
+and rye, the homesteads of the villagers, were seen on one hand; while
+on the other was the bright, clear river, with here and there a white
+sail, relieved against bold, wooded banks, jutting rocks, or tiny
+islands, dark with dwarf evergreens. It was a quiet, rural picture,
+a happy and peaceful contrast to all I had looked upon for weary,
+miserable months. It soothed the nervous excitement of pain and
+suffering. I forgot myself in the pleasing interest which it awakened.
+Nature's healing ministrations came to me through all my senses. I felt
+the medicinal virtues of her sights, and sounds, and aromal breezes.
+From the green turf of her hills and the mossy carpets of her woodlands
+my languid steps derived new vigor and elasticity. I felt, day by day,
+the transfusion of her strong life.
+
+The Doctor's domestic establishment consisted of Widow Matson, his
+housekeeper, and an idle slip of a boy, who, when he was not paddling
+across the river, or hunting in the swamps, or playing ball on the
+"Meetin'-'us-Hill," used to run of errands, milk the cow, and saddle the
+horse. Widow Matson was a notable shrill-tongued woman, from whom two
+long suffering husbands had obtained what might, under the
+circumstances, be well called a comfortable release. She was neat and
+tidy almost to a fault, thrifty and industrious, and, barring her
+scolding propensity, was a pattern housekeeper. For the Doctor she
+entertained so high a regard that nothing could exceed her indignation
+when any one save herself presumed to find fault with him. Her bark was
+worse than her bite; she had a warm, woman's heart, capable of soft
+relentings; and this the roguish errand-boy so well understood that he
+bore the daily infliction of her tongue with a good-natured unconcern
+which would have been greatly to his credit had it not resulted from his
+confident expectation that an extra slice of cake or segment of pie
+would erelong tickle his palate in atonement for the tingling of his
+ears.
+
+It must be confessed that the Doctor had certain little peculiarities
+and ways of his own which might have ruffled the down of a smoother
+temper than that of the Widow Matson. He was careless and absent-
+minded. In spite of her labors and complaints, he scattered his
+superfluous clothing, books, and papers over his rooms in "much-admired
+disorder." He gave the freedom of his house to the boys and girls of
+his neighborhood, who, presuming upon his good nature, laughed at her
+remonstrances and threats as they chased each other up and down the
+nicely-polished stairway. Worse than all, he was proof against the
+vituperations and reproaches with which she indirectly assailed him from
+the recesses of her kitchen. He smoked his pipe and dozed over his
+newspaper as complacently as ever, while his sins of omission and
+commission were arrayed against him.
+
+Peewawkin had always the reputation of a healthy town: and if it had
+been otherwise, Dr. Singletary was the last man in the world to
+transmute the aches and ails of its inhabitants into gold for his own
+pocket. So, at the age of sixty, he was little better off, in point of
+worldly substance, than when he came into possession of the small
+homestead of his father. He cultivated with his own hands his corn-
+field and potato-patch, and trimmed his apple and pear trees, as well
+satisfied with his patrimony as Horace was with his rustic Sabine villa.
+In addition to the care of his homestead and his professional duties,
+he had long been one of the overseers of the poor and a member of the
+school committee in his town; and he was a sort of standing reference in
+all disputes about wages, boundaries, and cattle trespasses in his
+neighborhood. He had, nevertheless, a good deal of leisure for reading,
+errands of charity, and social visits. He loved to talk with his
+friends, Elder Staples, the minister, Deacon Warner, and Skipper Evans.
+He was an expert angler, and knew all the haunts of pickerel and trout
+for many miles around. His favorite place of resort was the hill back
+of his house, which afforded a view of the long valley of the Tocketuck
+and the great sea. Here he would sit, enjoying the calm beauty of the
+landscape, pointing out to me localities interesting from their
+historical or traditional associations, or connected in some way with
+humorous or pathetic passages of his own life experience. Some of these
+autobiographical fragments affected me deeply. In narrating them he
+invested familiar and commonplace facts with something of the
+fascination of romance. "Human life," he would say, "is the same
+everywhere. If we could but get at the truth, we should find that all
+the tragedy and comedy of Shakespeare have been reproduced in this
+little village. God has made all of one blood; what is true of one man
+is in some sort true of another; manifestations may differ, but the
+essential elements and spring of action are the same. On the surface,
+everything about us just now looks prosaic and mechanical; you see only
+a sort of bark-mill grinding over of the same dull, monotonous grist of
+daily trifles. But underneath all this there is an earnest life, rich
+and beautiful with love and hope, or dark with hatred, and sorrow, and
+remorse. That fisherman by the riverside, or that woman at the stream
+below, with her wash-tub,--who knows what lights and shadows checker
+their memories, or what present thoughts of theirs, born of heaven or
+hell, the future shall ripen into deeds of good or evil? Ah, what have
+I not seen and heard? My profession has been to me, in some sort, like
+the vial genie of the Salamanca student; it has unroofed these houses,
+and opened deep, dark chambers to the hearts of their tenants, which no
+eye save that of God had ever looked upon. Where I least expected them,
+I have encountered shapes of evil; while, on the other hand, I have
+found beautiful, heroic love and self-denial in those who had seemed to
+me frivolous and selfish."
+
+So would Dr. Singletary discourse as we strolled over Blueberry Hill, or
+drove along the narrow willow-shaded road which follows the windings of
+the river. He had read and thought much in his retired, solitary life,
+and was evidently well satisfied to find in me a gratified listener. He
+talked well and fluently, with little regard to logical sequence, and
+with something of the dogmatism natural to one whose opinions had seldom
+been subjected to scrutiny. He seemed equally at home in the most
+abstruse questions of theology and metaphysics, and in the more
+practical matters of mackerel-fishing, corn-growing, and cattle-raising.
+It was manifest that to his book lore he had added that patient and
+close observation of the processes of Nature which often places the
+unlettered ploughman and mechanic on a higher level of available
+intelligence than that occupied by professors and school men. To him
+nothing which had its root in the eternal verities of Nature was "common
+or unclean." The blacksmith, subjecting to his will the swart genii of
+the mines of coal and iron; the potter, with his "power over the clay;"
+the skipper, who had tossed in his frail fishing-smack among the
+icebergs of Labrador; the farmer, who had won from Nature the occult
+secrets of her woods and fields; and even the vagabond hunter and
+angler, familiar with the habits of animals and the migration of birds
+and fishes,--had been his instructors; and he was not ashamed to
+acknowledge that they had taught him more than college or library.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE DOCTOR'S MATCH-MAKING.
+
+"GOOD-MORNING, Mrs. Barnet," cried the Doctor, as we drew near a neat
+farm-house during one of our morning drives.
+
+A tall, healthful young woman, in the bloom of matronly beauty, was
+feeding chickens at the door. She uttered an exclamation of delight and
+hurried towards us. Perceiving a stranger in the wagon she paused, with
+a look of embarrassment.
+
+"My friend, who is spending a few weeks with me," explained the Doctor.
+
+She greeted me civilly and pressed the Doctor's hand warmly.
+
+"Oh, it is so long since you have called on us that we have been talking
+of going up to the village to see you, as soon as Robert can get away
+from his cornfield. You don't know how little Lucy has grown. You must
+stop and see her."
+
+"She's coming to see me herself," replied the Doctor, beckoning to a
+sweet blue-eyed child in the door-way.
+
+The delighted mother caught up her darling and held her before the
+Doctor.
+
+"Does n't she look like Robert?" she inquired. "His very eyes and
+forehead! Bless me! here he is now."
+
+A stout, hale young farmer, in a coarse checked frock and broad straw
+hat, came up from the adjoining field.
+
+"Well, Robert," said the Doctor, "how do matters now stand with you?
+Well, I hope."
+
+"All right, Doctor. We've paid off the last cent of the mortgage, and
+the farm is all free and clear. Julia and I have worked hard; but we're
+none the worse for it."
+
+"You look well and happy, I am sure," said the Doctor. "I don't think
+you are sorry you took the advice of the old Doctor, after all."
+
+The young wife's head drooped until her lips touched those of her child.
+
+"Sorry!" exclaimed her husband. "Not we! If there's anybody happier
+than we are within ten miles of us. I don't know them. Doctor, I'll
+tell you what I said to Julia the night I brought home that mortgage.
+'Well,' said I, 'that debt's paid; but there's one debt we can never pay
+as long as we live.' 'I know it,' says she; 'but Dr. Singletary wants
+no better reward for his kindness than to see us live happily together,
+and do for others what he has done for us.'"
+
+"Pshaw!" said the Doctor, catching up his reins and whip. "You owe me
+nothing. But I must not forget my errand. Poor old Widow Osborne needs
+a watcher to-night; and she insists upon having Julia Barnet, and nobody
+else. What shall I tell her?"
+
+"I'll go, certainly. I can leave Lucy now as well as not."
+
+"Good-by, neighbors."
+
+"Good-by, Doctor."
+
+As we drove off I saw the Doctor draw his hand hastily across his eyes,
+and he said nothing for some minutes.
+
+"Public opinion," said he at length, as if pursuing his meditations
+aloud,--"public opinion is, in nine cases out of ten, public folly and
+impertinence. We are slaves to one another. We dare not take counsel
+of our consciences and affections, but must needs suffer popular
+prejudice and custom to decide for us, and at their bidding are
+sacrificed love and friendship and all the best hopes of our lives. We
+do not ask, What is right and best for us? but, What will folks say of
+it? We have no individuality, no self-poised strength, no sense of
+freedom. We are conscious always of the gaze of the many-eyed tyrant.
+We propitiate him with precious offerings; we burn incense perpetually
+to Moloch, and pass through his fire the sacred first-born of our
+hearts. How few dare to seek their own happiness by the lights which
+God has given them, or have strength to defy the false pride and the
+prejudice of the world and stand fast in the liberty of Christians! Can
+anything be more pitiable than the sight of so many, who should be the
+choosers and creators under God of their own spheres of utility and
+happiness, self-degraded into mere slaves of propriety and custom, their
+true natures undeveloped, their hearts cramped and shut up, each afraid
+of his neighbor and his neighbor of him, living a life of unreality,
+deceiving and being deceived, and forever walking in a vain show? Here,
+now, we have just left a married couple who are happy because they have
+taken counsel of their honest affections rather than of the opinions of
+the multitude, and have dared to be true to themselves in defiance of
+impertinent gossip."
+
+"You speak of the young farmer Barnet and his wife, I suppose?" said I.
+
+"Yes. I will give their case as an illustration. Julia Atkins was the
+daughter of Ensign Atkins, who lived on the mill-road, just above Deacon
+Warner's. When she was ten years old her mother died; and in a few
+months afterwards her father married Polly Wiggin, the tailoress, a
+shrewd, selfish, managing woman. Julia, poor girl! had a sorry time of
+it; for the Ensign, although a kind and affectionate man naturally, was
+too weak and yielding to interpose between her and his strong-minded,
+sharp-tongued wife. She had one friend, however, who was always ready
+to sympathize with her. Robert Barnet was the son of her next-door
+neighbor, about two years older than herself; they had grown up together
+as school companions and playmates; and often in my drives I used to
+meet them coming home hand in hand from school, or from the woods with
+berries and nuts, talking and laughing as if there were no scolding
+step-mothers in the world.
+
+"It so fell out that when Julia was in her sixteenth year there came
+a famous writing-master to Peewawkin. He was a showy, dashing fellow,
+with a fashionable dress, a wicked eye, and a tongue like the old
+serpent's when he tempted our great-grandmother. Julia was one of his
+scholars, and perhaps the prettiest of them all. The rascal singled her
+out from the first; and, the better to accomplish his purpose, he left
+the tavern and took lodgings at the Ensign's. He soon saw how matters
+stood in the family, and governed himself accordingly, taking special
+pains to conciliate the ruling authority. The Ensign's wife hated young
+Barnet, and wished to get rid of her step-daughter. The writing-master,
+therefore, had a fair field. He flattered the poor young girl by his
+attentions and praised her beauty. Her moral training had not fitted
+her to withstand this seductive influence; no mother's love, with its
+quick, instinctive sense of danger threatening its object, interposed
+between her and the tempter. Her old friend and playmate--he who could
+alone have saved her--had been rudely repulsed from the house by her
+step-mother; and, indignant and disgusted, he had retired from all
+competition with his formidable rival. Thus abandoned to her own
+undisciplined imagination, with the inexperience of a child and the
+passions of a woman, she was deceived by false promises, bewildered,
+fascinated, and beguiled into sin.
+
+"It is the same old story of woman's confidence and man's duplicity.
+The rascally writing-master, under pretence of visiting a neighboring
+town, left his lodgings and never returned. The last I heard of him,
+he was the tenant of a western penitentiary. Poor Julia, driven in
+disgrace from her father's house, found a refuge in the humble dwelling
+of an old woman of no very creditable character. There I was called to
+visit her; and, although not unused to scenes of suffering and sorrow, I
+had never before witnessed such an utter abandonment to grief, shame,
+and remorse. Alas! what sorrow was like unto her sorrow? The birth
+hour of her infant was also that of its death.
+
+"The agony of her spirit seemed greater than she could bear. Her eyes
+were opened, and she looked upon herself with loathing and horror. She
+would admit of no hope, no consolation; she would listen to no
+palliation or excuse of her guilt. I could only direct her to that
+Source of pardon and peace to which the broken and contrite heart never
+appeals in vain.
+
+"In the mean time Robert Barnet shipped on board a Labrador vessel. The
+night before he left he called on me, and put in my hand a sum of money,
+small indeed, but all he could then command.
+
+"'You will see her often,' he said. 'Do not let her suffer; for she is
+more to be pitied than blamed.'
+
+"I answered him that I would do all in my power for her; and added, that
+I thought far better of her, contrite and penitent as she was, than of
+some who were busy in holding her up to shame and censure.
+
+"'God bless you for these words!' he said, grasping my hand. 'I shall
+think of them often. They will be a comfort to me.'
+
+"As for Julia, God was more merciful to her than man. She rose from her
+sick-bed thoughtful and humbled, but with hopes that transcended the
+world of her suffering and shame. She no longer murmured against her
+sorrowful allotment, but accepted it with quiet and almost cheerful
+resignation as the fitting penalty of God's broken laws and the needed
+discipline of her spirit. She could say with the Psalmist, 'The
+judgments of the Lord are true, justified in themselves. Thou art just,
+O Lord, and thy judgment is right.' Through my exertions she obtained
+employment in a respectable family, to whom she endeared herself by her
+faithfulness, cheerful obedience, and unaffected piety.
+
+"Her trials had made her heart tender with sympathy for all in
+affliction. She seemed inevitably drawn towards the sick and suffering.
+In their presence the burden of her own sorrow seemed to fall off. She
+was the most cheerful and sunny-faced nurse I ever knew; and I always
+felt sure that my own efforts would be well seconded when I found her by
+the bedside of a patient. Beautiful it was to see this poor young girl,
+whom the world still looked upon with scorn and unkindness, cheering the
+desponding, and imparting, as it were, her own strong, healthful life to
+the weak and faint; supporting upon her bosom, through weary nights, the
+heads of those who, in health, would have deemed her touch pollution; or
+to hear her singing for the ear of the dying some sweet hymn of pious
+hope or resignation, or calling to mind the consolations of the gospel
+and the great love of Christ."
+
+"I trust," said I, "that the feelings of the community were softened
+towards her."
+
+"You know what human nature is," returned the Doctor, "and with what
+hearty satisfaction we abhor and censure sin and folly in others. It is
+a luxury which we cannot easily forego, although our own experience
+tells us that the consequences of vice and error are evil and bitter
+enough without the aggravation of ridicule and reproach from without.
+So you need not be surprised to learn that, in poor Julia's case, the
+charity of sinners like herself did not keep pace with the mercy and
+forgiveness of Him who is infinite in purity. Nevertheless, I will do
+our people the justice to say that her blameless and self-sacrificing
+life was not without its proper effect upon them."
+
+"What became of Robert Barnet?" I inquired.
+
+"He came back after an absence of several months, and called on me
+before he had even seen his father and mother. He did not mention
+Julia; but I saw that his errand with me concerned her. I spoke of her
+excellent deportment and her useful life, dwelt upon the extenuating
+circumstances of her error and of her sincere and hearty repentance.
+
+"'Doctor,' said he, at length, with a hesitating and embarrassed manner,
+'what should you think if I should tell you that, after all that has
+passed, I have half made up my mind to ask her to become my wife?'
+
+"'I should think better of it if you had wholly made up your mind,' said
+I; 'and if you were my own son, I wouldn't ask for you a better wife
+than Julia Atkins. Don't hesitate, Robert, on account of what some ill-
+natured people may say. Consult your own heart first of all.'
+
+"'I don't care for the talk of all the busybodies in town,' said he;
+'but I wish father and mother could feel as you do about her.'
+
+"'Leave that to me,' said I. 'They are kindhearted and reasonable, and
+I dare say will be disposed to make the best of the matter when they
+find you are decided in your purpose.'
+
+"I did not see him again; but a few days after I learned from his
+parents that he had gone on another voyage. It was now autumn, and the
+most sickly season I had ever known in Peewawkin. Ensign Atkins and his
+wife both fell sick; and Julia embraced with alacrity this providential
+opportunity to return to her father's house and fulfil the duties of a
+daughter. Under her careful nursing the Ensign soon got upon his feet;
+but his wife, whose constitution was weaker, sunk under the fever. She
+died better than she had lived,--penitent and loving, asking forgiveness
+of Julia for her neglect and unkindness, and invoking blessings on her
+head. Julia had now, for the first time since the death of her mother,
+a comfortable home and a father's love and protection. Her sweetness of
+temper, patient endurance, and forgetfulness of herself in her labors
+for others, gradually overcame the scruples and hard feelings of her
+neighbors. They began to question whether, after all, it was
+meritorious in them to treat one like her as a sinner beyond
+forgiveness. Elder Staples and Deacon Warner were her fast friends.
+The Deacon's daughters--the tall, blue-eyed, brown-locked girls you
+noticed in meeting the other day--set the example among the young people
+of treating her as their equal and companion. The dear good girls!
+They reminded me of the maidens of Naxos cheering and comforting the
+unhappy Ariadne.
+
+"One mid-winter evening I took Julia with me to a poor sick patient of
+mine, who was suffering for lack of attendance. The house where she
+lived was in a lonely and desolate place, some two or three miles below
+us, on a sandy level, just elevated above the great salt marshes,
+stretching far away to the sea. The night set in dark and stormy; a
+fierce northeasterly wind swept over the level waste, driving thick
+snow-clouds before it, shaking the doors and windows of the old house,
+and roaring in its vast chimney. The woman was dying when we arrived,
+and her drunken husband was sitting in stupid unconcern in the corner of
+the fireplace. A little after midnight she breathed her last.
+
+"In the mean time the storm had grown more violent; there was a blinding
+snow-fall in the air; and we could feel the jar of the great waves as
+they broke upon the beach.
+
+"'It is a terrible night for sailors on the coast,' I said, breaking our
+long silence with the dead. 'God grant them sea-room!'
+
+"Julia shuddered as I spoke, and by the dim-flashing firelight I saw she
+was weeping. Her thoughts, I knew, were with her old friend and
+playmate on the wild waters.
+
+"'Julia,' said I, 'do you know that Robert Barnet loves you with all the
+strength of an honest and true heart?'
+
+"She trembled, and her voice faltered as she confessed that when Robert
+was at home he had asked her to become his wife.
+
+"'And, like a fool, you refused him, I suppose?--the brave, generous
+fellow!'
+
+"'O Doctor!' she exclaimed. 'How can you talk so? It is just because
+Robert is so good, and noble, and generous, that I dared not take him at
+his word. You yourself, Doctor, would have despised me if I had taken
+advantage of his pity or his kind remembrance of the old days when we
+were children together. I have already brought too much disgrace upon
+those dear to me.'
+
+"I was endeavoring to convince her, in reply, that she was doing
+injustice to herself and wronging her best friend, whose happiness
+depended in a great measure upon her, when, borne on the strong blast,
+we both heard a faint cry as of a human being in distress. I threw up
+the window which opened seaward, and we leaned out into the wild night,
+listening breathlessly for a repetition of the sound.
+
+"Once more, and once only, we heard it,--a low, smothered, despairing
+cry.
+
+"'Some one is lost, and perishing in the snow,' said Julia. 'The sound
+conies in the direction of the beach plum-bushes on the side of the
+marsh. Let us go at once.'
+
+"She snatched up her hood and shawl, and was already at the door. I
+found and lighted a lantern and soon overtook her. The snow was already
+deep and badly drifted, and it was with extreme difficulty that we could
+force our way against the storm. We stopped often to take breath and
+listen; but the roaring of the wind and waves was alone audible. At
+last we reached a slightly elevated spot, overgrown with dwarf plum-
+trees, whose branches were dimly visible above the snow.
+
+"'Here, bring the lantern here!' cried Julia, who had strayed a few
+yards from me. I hastened to her, and found her lifting up the body of
+a man who was apparently insensible. The rays of the lantern fell full
+upon his face, and we both, at the same instant, recognized Robert
+Barnet. Julia did not shriek nor faint; but, kneeling in the snow, and
+still supporting the body, she turned towards me a look of earnest and
+fearful inquiry.
+
+"'Courage!' said I. 'He still lives. He is only overcome with fatigue
+and cold.'
+
+"With much difficulty-partly carrying and partly dragging him through
+the snow--we succeeded in getting him to the house, where, in a short
+time, he so far recovered as to be able to speak. Julia, who had been
+my prompt and efficient assistant in his restoration, retired into the
+shadow of the room as soon as he began to rouse himself and look about
+him. He asked where he was and who was with me, saying that his head
+was so confused that he thought he saw Julia Atkins by the bedside.
+'You were not mistaken,' said I; 'Julia is here, and you owe your life
+to her.' He started up and gazed round the room. I beckoned Julia to
+the bedside; and I shall never forget the grateful earnestness with
+which he grasped her hand and called upon God to bless her. Some folks
+think me a tough-hearted old fellow, and so I am; but that scene was
+more than I could bear without shedding tears.
+
+"Robert told us that his vessel had been thrown upon the beach a mile or
+two below, and that he feared all the crew had perished save himself.
+Assured of his safety, I went out once more, in the faint hope of
+hearing the voice of some survivor of the disaster; but I listened only
+to the heavy thunder of the surf rolling along the horizon of the east.
+The storm had in a great measure ceased; the gray light of dawn was just
+visible; and I was gratified to see two of the nearest neighbors
+approaching the house. On being informed of the wreck they immediately
+started for the beach, where several dead bodies, half buried in snow,
+confirmed the fears of the solitary survivor.
+
+"The result of all this you can easily conjecture. Robert Barnet
+abandoned the sea, and, with the aid of some of his friends, purchased
+the farm where he now lives, and the anniversary of his shipwreck found
+him the husband of Julia. I can assure you I have had every reason to
+congratulate myself on my share in the match-making. Nobody ventured to
+find fault with it except two or three sour old busybodies, who, as
+Elder Staples well says, 'would have cursed her whom Christ had
+forgiven, and spurned the weeping Magdalen from the feet of her Lord.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. BY THE SPRING.
+
+IT was one of the very brightest and breeziest of summer mornings that
+the Doctor and myself walked homeward from the town poor-house, where
+he had always one or more patients, and where his coming was always
+welcomed by the poor, diseased, and age-stricken inmates. Dark,
+miserable faces of lonely and unreverenced age, written over with the
+grim records of sorrow and sin, seemed to brighten at his approach as
+with an inward light, as if the good man's presence had power to call
+the better natures of the poor unfortunates into temporary ascendency.
+Weary, fretful women--happy mothers in happy homes, perchance, half a
+century before--felt their hearts warm and expand under the influence of
+his kind salutations and the ever-patient good-nature with which he
+listened to their reiterated complaints of real or imaginary suffering.
+However it might be with others, he never forgot the man or the woman in
+the pauper. There was nothing like condescension or consciousness in
+his charitable ministrations; for he was one of the few men I have ever
+known in whom the milk of human kindness was never soured by contempt
+for humanity in whatever form it presented itself. Thus it was that his
+faithful performance of the duties of his profession, however repulsive
+and disagreeable, had the effect of Murillo's picture of St. Elizabeth
+of Hungary binding up the ulcered limbs of the beggars. The moral
+beauty transcended the loathsomeness of physical evil and deformity.
+
+Our nearest route home lay across the pastures and over Blueberry Hill,
+just at the foot of which we encountered Elder Staples and Skipper
+Evans, who had been driving their cows to pasture, and were now
+leisurely strolling back to the village. We toiled together up the hill
+in the hot sunshine, and, just on its eastern declivity, were glad to
+find a white-oak tree, leaning heavily over a little ravine, from the
+bottom of which a clear spring of water bubbled up and fed a small
+rivulet, whose track of darker green might be traced far down the hill
+to the meadow at its foot.
+
+A broad shelf of rock by the side of the spring, cushioned with mosses,
+afforded us a comfortable resting-place. Elder Staples, in his faded
+black coat and white neck-cloth, leaned his quiet, contemplative head on
+his silver-mounted cane: right opposite him sat the Doctor, with his
+sturdy, rotund figure, and broad, seamed face, surmounted by a coarse
+stubble of iron-gray hair, the sharp and almost severe expression of his
+keen gray eyes, flashing under their dark penthouse, happily relieved by
+the softer lines of his mouth, indicative of his really genial and
+generous nature. A small, sinewy figure, half doubled up, with his chin
+resting on his rough palms, Skipper Evans sat on a lower projection of
+the rock just beneath him, in an attentive attitude, as at the feet of
+Gatnaliel. Dark and dry as one of his own dunfish on a Labrador flake,
+or a seal-skin in an Esquimaux hut, he seemed entirely exempt from one
+of the great trinity of temptations; and, granting him a safe
+deliverance from the world and the devil, he had very little to fear
+from the flesh.
+
+We were now in the Doctor's favorite place of resort, green, cool,
+quiet, and sightly withal. The keen light revealed every object in the
+long valley below us; the fresh west wind fluttered the oakleaves above;
+and the low voice of the water, coaxing or scolding its way over bare
+roots or mossy stones, was just audible.
+
+"Doctor," said I, "this spring, with the oak hanging over it, is, I
+suppose, your Fountain of Bandusia. You remember what Horace says of
+his spring, which yielded such cool refreshment when the dog-star had
+set the day on fire. What a fine picture he gives us of this charming
+feature of his little farm!"
+
+The Doctor's eye kindled. "I'm glad to see you like Horace; not merely
+as a clever satirist and writer of amatory odes, but as a true lover of
+Nature. How pleasant are his simple and beautiful descriptions of his
+yellow, flowing Tiber, the herds and herdsmen, the harvesters, the grape
+vintage, the varied aspects of his Sabine retreat in the fierce summer
+heats, or when the snowy forehead of Soracte purpled in winter sunsets!
+Scattered through his odes and the occasional poems which he addresses
+to his city friends, you find these graceful and inimitable touches of
+rural beauty, each a picture in itself."
+
+"It is long since I have looked at my old school-day companions, the
+classics," said Elder Staples; "but I remember Horace only as a light,
+witty, careless epicurean, famous for his lyrics in praise of Falernian
+wine and questionable women."
+
+"Somewhat too much of that, doubtless," said the Doctor; "but to me
+Horace is serious and profoundly suggestive, nevertheless. Had I laid
+him aside on quitting college, as you did, I should perhaps have only
+remembered such of his epicurean lyrics as recommended themselves to the
+warns fancy of boyhood. Ah, Elder Staples, there was a time when the
+Lyces and Glyceras of the poet were no fiction to us. They played
+blindman's buff with us in the farmer's kitchen, sang with us in the
+meeting-house, and romped and laughed with us at huskings and quilting-
+parties. Grandmothers and sober spinsters as they now are, the change
+in us is perhaps greater than in them."
+
+"Too true," replied the Elder, the smile which had just played over his
+pale face fading into something sadder than its habitual melancholy.
+"The living companions of our youth, whom we daily meet, are more
+strange to us than the dead in yonder graveyard. They alone remain
+unchanged!"
+
+"Speaking of Horace," continued the Doctor, in a voice slightly husky
+with feeling, "he gives us glowing descriptions of his winter circles of
+friends, where mirth and wine, music and beauty, charm away the hours,
+and of summer-day recreations beneath the vine-wedded elms of the Tiber
+or on the breezy slopes of Soracte; yet I seldom read them without a
+feeling of sadness. A low wail of inappeasable sorrow, an undertone of
+dirges, mingles with his gay melodies. His immediate horizon is bright
+with sunshine; but beyond is a land of darkness, the light whereof is
+darkness. It is walled about by the everlasting night. The skeleton
+sits at his table; a shadow of the inevitable terror rests upon all his
+pleasant pictures. He was without God in the world; he had no clear
+abiding hope of a life beyond that which was hastening to a close. Eat
+and drink, he tells us; enjoy present health and competence; alleviate
+present evils, or forget them, in social intercourse, in wine, music,
+and sensual indulgence; for to-morrow we must die. Death was in his
+view no mere change of condition and relation; it was the black end of
+all. It is evident that he placed no reliance on the mythology of his
+time, and that he regarded the fables of the Elysian Fields and their
+dim and wandering ghosts simply in the light of convenient poetic
+fictions for illustration and imagery. Nothing can, in my view, be
+sadder than his attempts at consolation for the loss of friends.
+Witness his Ode to Virgil on the death of Quintilius. He tells his
+illustrious friend simply that his calamity is without hope,
+irretrievable and eternal; that it is idle to implore the gods to
+restore the dead; and that, although his lyre may be more sweet than
+that of Orpheus, he cannot reanimate the shadow of his friend nor
+persuade 'the ghost-compelling god' to unbar the gates of death. He
+urges patience as the sole resource. He alludes not unfrequently to his
+own death in the same despairing tone. In the Ode to Torquatus,--one of
+the most beautiful and touching of all he has written,--he sets before
+his friend, in melancholy contrast, the return of the seasons, and of
+the moon renewed in brightness, with the end of man, who sinks into the
+endless dark, leaving nothing save ashes and shadows. He then, in the
+true spirit of his philosophy, urges Torquatus to give his present hour
+and wealth to pleasures and delights, as he had no assurance of
+to-morrow."
+
+"In something of the same strain," said I, "Moschus moralizes on the
+death of Bion:--
+
+ Our trees and plants revive; the rose
+ In annual youth of beauty glows;
+ But when the pride of Nature dies,
+ Man, who alone is great and wise,
+ No more he rises into light,
+ The wakeless sleeper of eternal night.'"
+
+"It reminds me," said Elder Staples, "of the sad burden of
+Ecclesiastes, the mournfulest book of Scripture; because, while the
+preacher dwells with earnestness upon the vanity and uncertainty of the
+things of time and sense, he has no apparent hope of immortality to
+relieve the dark picture. Like Horace, he sees nothing better than to
+eat his bread with joy and drink his wine with a merry heart. It seems
+to me the wise man might have gone farther in his enumeration of the
+folly and emptiness of life, and pronounced his own prescription for the
+evil vanity also. What is it but plucking flowers on the banks of the
+stream which hurries us over the cataract, or feasting on the thin crust
+of a volcano upon delicate meats prepared over the fires which are soon
+to ingulf us? Oh, what a glorious contrast to this is the gospel of Him
+who brought to light life and immortality! The transition from the
+Koheleth to the Epistles of Paul is like passing from a cavern, where
+the artificial light falls indeed upon gems and crystals, but is
+everywhere circumscribed and overshadowed by unknown and unexplored
+darkness, into the warm light and free atmosphere of day."
+
+"Yet," I asked, "are there not times when we all wish for some clearer
+evidence of immortal life than has been afforded us; when we even turn
+away unsatisfied from the pages of the holy book, with all the
+mysterious problems of life pressing about us and clamoring for
+solution, till, perplexed and darkened, we look up to the still heavens,
+as if we sought thence an answer, visible or audible, to their
+questionings? We want something beyond the bare announcement of the
+momentous fact of a future life; we long for a miracle to confirm our
+weak faith and silence forever the doubts which torment us."
+
+"And what would a miracle avail us at such times of darkness and strong
+temptation?" said the Elder. "Have we not been told that they whom
+Moses and the prophets have failed to convince would not believe
+although one rose from the dead? That God has revealed no more to
+us is to my mind sufficient evidence that He has revealed enough."
+
+"May it not be," queried the Doctor, "that Infinite Wisdom sees that a
+clearer and fuller revelation of the future life would render us less
+willing or able to perform our appropriate duties in the present
+condition? Enchanted by a clear view of the heavenly hills, and of our
+loved ones beckoning us from the pearl gates of the city of God, could
+we patiently work out our life-task here, or make the necessary
+exertions to provide for the wants of these bodies whose encumbrance
+alone can prevent us from rising to a higher plane of existence?"
+
+"I reckon," said the Skipper, who had been an attentive, although at
+times evidently a puzzled, listener, "that it would be with us pretty
+much as it was with a crew of French sailors that I once shipped at the
+Isle of France for the port of Marseilles. I never had better hands
+until we hove in sight of their native country, which they had n't seen
+for years. The first look of the land set 'em all crazy; they danced,
+laughed, shouted, put on their best clothes; and I had to get new hands
+to help me bring the vessel to her moorings."
+
+"Your story is quite to the point, Skipper," said the Doctor. "If
+things had been ordered differently, we should all, I fear, be disposed
+to quit work and fall into absurdities, like your French sailors, and so
+fail of bringing the world fairly into port."
+
+"God's ways are best," said the Elder; "and I don't see as we can do
+better than to submit with reverence to the very small part of them
+which He has made known to us, and to trust Him like loving and dutiful
+children for the rest."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE HILLSIDE.
+
+THE pause which naturally followed the observation of the Elder was
+broken abruptly by the Skipper.
+
+"Hillo!" he cried, pointing with the glazed hat with which he had been
+fanning himself. "Here away in the northeast. Going down the coast for
+better fishing, I guess."
+
+"An eagle, as I live!" exclaimed the Doctor, following with his cane the
+direction of the Skipper's hat. "Just see how royally he wheels upward
+and onward, his sail-broad wings stretched motionless, save an
+occasional flap to keep up his impetus! Look! the circle in which he
+moves grows narrower; he is a gray cloud in the sky, a point, a mere
+speck or dust-mote. And now he is clean swallowed up in the distance.
+The wise man of old did well to confess his ignorance of 'the way of an
+eagle in the air.'"
+
+"The eagle," said Elder Staples, "seems to have been a favorite
+illustration of the sacred penman. 'They that wait upon the Lord shall
+renew their strength; they shall mount upward as on the wings of an
+eagle.'"
+
+"What think you of this passage?" said the Doctor. "'As when a bird
+hath flown through the air, there is no token of her way to be found;
+but the light air, beaten with the stroke of her wings and parted by the
+violent noise and motion thereof, is passed through, and therein
+afterward no sign of her path can be found.'
+
+"I don't remember the passage," said the Elder.
+
+"I dare say not," quoth the Doctor. "You clergymen take it for granted
+that no good thing can come home from the Nazareth of the Apocrypha.
+But where will you find anything more beautiful and cheering than these
+verses in connection with that which I just cited?--'The hope of the
+ungodly is like dust that is blown away by the wind; like the thin foam
+which is driven by the storm; like the smoke which is scattered here and
+there by the whirlwind; it passeth away like the remembrance of a guest
+that tarrieth but a day. But the righteous live forevermore; their
+reward also is with the Lord, and the care of them with the Most High.
+Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom and a beautiful crown
+from the Lord's hand; for with his right hand shall He cover them, and
+with his arm shall He protect them.'"
+
+"That, if I mistake not, is from the Wisdom of Solomon," said the Elder.
+"It is a striking passage; and there are many such in the uncanonical
+books."
+
+"Canonical or not," answered the Doctor, "it is God's truth, and stands
+in no need of the endorsement of a set of well-meaning but purblind
+bigots and pedants, who presumed to set metes and bounds to Divine
+inspiration, and decide by vote what is God's truth and what is the
+Devil's falsehood. But, speaking of eagles, I never see one of these
+spiteful old sea-robbers without fancying that he may be the soul of a
+mad Viking of the middle centuries. Depend upon it, that Italian
+philosopher was not far out of the way in his ingenious speculations
+upon the affinities and sympathies existing between certain men and
+certain animals, and in fancying that he saw feline or canine traits and
+similitudes in the countenances of his acquaintance."
+
+"Swedenborg tells us," said I, "that lost human souls in the spiritual
+world, as seen by the angels, frequently wear the outward shapes of the
+lower animals,--for instance, the gross and sensual look like swine, and
+the cruel and obscene like foul birds of prey, such as hawks and
+vultures,--and that they are entirely unconscious of the metamorphosis,
+imagining themselves marvellous proper men,' and are quite well
+satisfied with their company and condition."
+
+"Swedenborg," said the Elder, "was an insane man, or worse."
+
+"Perhaps so," said the Doctor; "but there is a great deal of 'method in
+his madness,' and plain common sense too. There is one grand and
+beautiful idea underlying all his revelations or speculations about the
+future life. It is this: that each spirit chooses its own society, and
+naturally finds its fitting place and sphere of action,--following in
+the new life, as in the present, the leading of its prevailing loves and
+desires,--and that hence none are arbitrarily compelled to be good or
+evil, happy or miserable. A great law of attraction and gravitation
+governs the spiritual as well as the material universe; but, in obeying
+it, the spirit retains in the new life whatever freedom of will it
+possessed in its first stage of being. But I see the Elder shakes his
+head, as much as to say, I am 'wise above what is written,' or, at any
+rate, meddling with matters beyond my comprehension. Our young friend
+here," he continued, turning to me, "has the appearance of a listener;
+but I suspect he is busy with his own reveries, or enjoying the fresh
+sights and sounds of this fine morning. I doubt whether our discourse
+has edified him."
+
+"Pardon me," said I; "I was, indeed, listening to another and older
+oracle."
+
+"Well, tell us what you hear," said the Doctor.
+
+"A faint, low murmur, rising and falling on the wind. Now it comes
+rolling in upon me, wave after wave of sweet, solemn music. There was a
+grand organ swell; and now it dies away as into the infinite distance;
+but I still hear it,--whether with ear or spirit I know not,--the very
+ghost of sound."
+
+"Ah, yes," said the Doctor; "I understand it is the voice of the pines
+yonder,--a sort of morning song of praise to the Giver of life and Maker
+of beauty. My ear is dull now, and I cannot hear it; but I know it is
+sounding on as it did when I first climbed up here in the bright June
+mornings of boyhood, and it will sound on just the same when the
+deafness of the grave shall settle upon my failing senses. Did it never
+occur to you that this deafness and blindness to accustomed beauty and
+harmony is one of the saddest thoughts connected with the great change
+which awaits us? Have you not felt at times that our ordinary
+conceptions of heaven itself, derived from the vague hints and Oriental
+imagery of the Scriptures, are sadly inadequate to our human wants and
+hopes? How gladly would we forego the golden streets and gates of
+pearl, the thrones, temples, and harps, for the sunset lights of our
+native valleys; the woodpaths, whose moss carpets are woven with violets
+and wild flowers; the songs of birds, the low of cattle, the hum of bees
+in the apple-blossom,--the sweet, familiar voices of human life and
+nature! In the place of strange splendors and unknown music, should we
+not welcome rather whatever reminded us of the common sights and sounds
+of our old home?"
+
+"You touch a sad chord, Doctor," said I. "Would that we could feel
+assured of the eternity of all we love!"
+
+"And have I not an assurance of it at this very moment?" returned the
+Doctor. "My outward ear fails me; yet I seem to hear as formerly the
+sound of the wind in the pines. I close my eyes; and the picture of my
+home is still before me. I see the green hill slope and meadows; the
+white shaft of the village steeple springing up from the midst of maples
+and elms; the river all afire with sunshine; the broad, dark belt of
+woodland; and, away beyond, all the blue level of the ocean. And now,
+by a single effort of will, I can call before me a winter picture of the
+same scene. It is morning as now; but how different! All night has the
+white meteor fallen, in broad flake or minutest crystal, the sport and
+plaything of winds that have wrought it into a thousand shapes of wild
+beauty. Hill and valley, tree and fence, woodshed and well-sweep, barn
+and pigsty, fishing-smacks frozen tip at the wharf, ribbed monsters of
+dismantled hulks scattered along the river-side,--all lie transfigured
+in the white glory and sunshine. The eye, wherever it turns, aches with
+the cold brilliance, unrelieved save where. The blue smoke of morning
+fires curls lazily up from the Parian roofs, or where the main channel
+of the river, as yet unfrozen, shows its long winding line of dark water
+glistening like a snake in the sun. Thus you perceive that the spirit
+sees and hears without the aid of bodily organs; and why may it not be
+so hereafter? Grant but memory to us, and we can lose nothing by death.
+The scenes now passing before us will live in eternal reproduction,
+created anew at will. We assuredly shall not love heaven the less that
+it is separated by no impassable gulf from this fair and goodly earth,
+and that the pleasant pictures of time linger like sunset clouds along
+the horizon of eternity. When I was younger, I used to be greatly
+troubled by the insecure tenure by which my senses held the beauty and
+harmony of the outward world. When I looked at the moonlight on the
+water, or the cloud-shadows on the hills, or the sunset sky, with the
+tall, black tree-boles and waving foliage relieved against it, or when I
+heard a mellow gush of music from the brown-breasted fife-bird in the
+summer woods, or the merry quaver of the bobolink in the corn land, the
+thought of an eternal loss of these familiar sights and sounds would
+sometimes thrill through me with a sharp and bitter pain. I have reason
+to thank God that this fear no longer troubles me. Nothing that is
+really valuable and necessary for us can ever be lost. The present will
+live hereafter; memory will bridge over the gulf between the two worlds;
+for only on the condition of their intimate union can we preserve our
+identity and personal consciousness. Blot out the memory of this world,
+and what would heaven or hell be to us? Nothing whatever. Death would
+be simple annihilation of our actual selves, and the substitution
+therefor of a new creation, in which we should have no more interest
+than in an inhabitant of Jupiter or the fixed stars."
+
+The Elder, who had listened silently thus far, not without an occasional
+and apparently involuntary manifestation of dissent, here interposed.
+
+"Pardon me, my dear friend," said he; "but I must needs say that I look
+upon speculations of this kind, however ingenious or plausible, as
+unprofitable, and well-nigh presumptuous. For myself, I only know that
+I am a weak, sinful man, accountable to and cared for by a just and
+merciful God. What He has in reserve for me hereafter I know not, nor
+have I any warrant to pry into His secrets. I do not know what it is to
+pass from one life to another; but I humbly hope that, when I am sinking
+in the dark waters, I may hear His voice of compassion and
+encouragement, 'It is I; be not afraid.'"
+
+"Amen," said the Skipper, solemnly.
+
+"I dare say the Parson is right, in the main," said the Doctor. "Poor
+creatures at the best, it is safer for us to trust, like children, in
+the goodness of our Heavenly Father than to speculate too curiously in
+respect to the things of a future life; and, notwithstanding all I have
+said, I quite agree with good old Bishop Hall: 'It is enough for me to
+rest in the hope that I shall one day see them; in the mean time, let me
+be learnedly ignorant and incuriously devout, silently blessing the
+power and wisdom of my infinite Creator, who knows how to honor himself
+by all those unrevealed and glorious subordinations.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. THE SKIPPER'S STORY.
+
+"WELL, what's the news below?" asked the Doctor of his housekeeper,
+as she came home from a gossiping visit to the landing one afternoon.
+"What new piece of scandal is afloat now?"
+
+"Nothing, except what concerns yourself," answered Widow Matson, tartly.
+"Mrs. Nugeon says that you've been to see her neighbor Wait's girl--she
+that 's sick with the measles--half a dozen times, and never so much as
+left a spoonful of medicine; and she should like to know what a doctor's
+good for without physic. Besides, she says Lieutenant Brown would have
+got well if you'd minded her, and let him have plenty of thoroughwort
+tea, and put a split fowl at the pit of his stomach."
+
+"A split stick on her own tongue would be better," said the Doctor,
+with a wicked grimace.
+
+"The Jezebel! Let her look out for herself the next time she gets the
+rheumatism; I'll blister her from head to heel. But what else is
+going?"
+
+"The schooner Polly Pike is at the landing."
+
+"What, from Labrador? The one Tom Osborne went in?"
+
+"I suppose so; I met Tom down street."
+
+"Good!" said the Doctor, with emphasis. "Poor Widow Osborne's prayers
+are answered, and she will see her son before she dies."
+
+"And precious little good will it do her," said the housekeeper.
+"There's not a more drunken, swearing rakeshame in town than Tom
+Osborne."
+
+"It's too true," responded the Doctor. "But he's her only son; and you
+know, Mrs. Matson, the heart of a mother."
+
+The widow's hard face softened; a tender shadow passed over it; the
+memory of some old bereavement melted her; and as she passed into the
+house I saw her put her checked apron to her eyes.
+
+By this time Skipper Evans, who had been slowly working his way up
+street for some minutes, had reached the gate.
+
+"Look here!" said he. "Here's a letter that I've got by the Polly Pike
+from one of your old patients that you gave over for a dead man long
+ago."
+
+"From the other world, of course," said the Doctor.
+
+"No, not exactly, though it's from Labrador, which is about the last
+place the Lord made, I reckon."
+
+"What, from Dick Wilson?"
+
+"Sartin," said the Skipper.
+
+"And how is he?"
+
+"Alive and hearty. I tell you what, Doctor, physicking and blistering
+are all well enough, may be; but if you want to set a fellow up when
+he's kinder run down, there's nothing like a fishing trip to Labrador,
+'specially if he's been bothering himself with studying, and writing,
+and such like. There's nothing like fish chowders, hard bunks, and sea
+fog to take that nonsense out of him. Now, this chap," (the Skipper
+here gave me a thrust in the ribs by way of designation,) "if I could
+have him down with me beyond sunset for two or three months, would come
+back as hearty as a Bay o' Fundy porpoise."
+
+Assuring him that I would like to try the experiment, with him as
+skipper, I begged to know the history of the case he had spoken of.
+
+The old fisherman smiled complacently, hitched up his pantaloons, took a
+seat beside us, and, after extracting a jack-knife from one pocket, and
+a hand of tobacco from the other, and deliberately supplying himself
+with a fresh quid, he mentioned, apologetically, that he supposed the
+Doctor had heard it all before.
+
+"Yes, twenty times," said the Doctor; "but never mind; it's a good story
+yet. Go ahead, Skipper."
+
+"Well, you see," said the Skipper, "this young Wilson comes down here
+from Hanover College, in the spring, as lean as a shad in dog-days. He
+had studied himself half blind, and all his blood had got into brains.
+So the Doctor tried to help him with his poticary stuff, and the women
+with their herbs; but all did no good. At last somebody advised him to
+try a fishing cruise down East; and so he persuaded me to take him
+aboard my schooner. I knew he'd be right in the way, and poor company
+at the best, for all his Greek and Latin; for, as a general thing, I've
+noticed that your college chaps swop away their common sense for their
+larning, and make a mighty poor bargain of it. Well, he brought his
+books with him, and stuck to them so close that I was afraid we should
+have to slide him off the plank before we got half way to Labrador. So
+I just told him plainly that it would n't do, and that if he 'd a mind
+to kill himself ashore I 'd no objection, but he should n't do it aboard
+my schooner. 'I'm e'en just a mind,' says I, 'to pitch your books
+overboard. A fishing vessel's no place for 'em; they'll spoil all our
+luck. Don't go to making a Jonah of yourself down here in your bunk,
+but get upon deck, and let your books alone, and go to watching the sea,
+and the clouds, and the islands, and the fog-banks, and the fishes, and
+the birds; for Natur,' says I, don't lie nor give hearsays, but is
+always as true as the Gospels.'
+
+"But 't was no use talking. There he'd lay in his bunk with his books
+about him, and I had e'en a'most to drag him on deck to snuff the sea-
+air. Howsomever, one day,--it was the hottest of the whole season,--
+after we left the Magdalenes, and were running down the Gut of Canso, we
+hove in sight of the Gannet Rocks. Thinks I to myself, I'll show him
+something now that he can't find in his books. So I goes right down
+after him; and when we got on deck he looked towards the northeast, and
+if ever I saw a chap wonder-struck, he was. Right ahead of us was a
+bold, rocky island, with what looked like a great snow bank on its
+southern slope; while the air was full overhead, and all about, of what
+seemed a heavy fall of snow. The day was blazing hot, and there was n't
+a cloud to be seen.
+
+"'What in the world, Skipper, does this mean?' says he. 'We're sailing
+right into a snow-storm in dog-days and in a clear sky.'
+
+"By this time we had got near enough to hear a great rushing noise in
+the air, every moment growing louder and louder.
+
+"'It's only a storm of gannets,' says I.
+
+"'Sure enough!' says he; 'but I wouldn't have believed it possible.'
+
+"When we got fairly off against the island I fired a gun at it: and such
+a fluttering and screaming you can't imagine. The great snow-banks
+shook, trembled, loosened, and became all alive, whirling away into the
+air like drifts in a nor'wester. Millions of birds went up, wheeling
+and zigzagging about, their white bodies and blacktipped wings crossing
+and recrossing and mixing together into a thick grayish-white haze above
+us.
+
+"'You're right, Skipper,' says Wilson to me;
+
+ Nature is better than books.'
+
+"And from that time he was on deck as much as his health would allow of,
+and took a deal of notice of everything new and uncommon. But, for all
+that, the poor fellow was so sick, and pale, and peaking, that we all
+thought we should have to heave him overboard some day or bury him in
+Labrador moss."
+
+"But he did n't die after all, did he?" said I.
+
+"Die? No!" cried the Skipper; "not he!"
+
+"And so your fishing voyage really cured him?"
+
+"I can't say as it did, exactly," returned the Skipper, shifting his
+quid from one cheek to the other, with a sly wink at the Doctor. "The
+fact is, after the doctors and the old herb-women had given him up at
+home, he got cured by a little black-eyed French girl on the Labrador
+coast."
+
+"A very agreeable prescription, no doubt," quoth the Doctor, turning to
+me. "How do you think it would suit your case?"
+
+"It does n't become the patient to choose his own nostrums," said I,
+laughing. "But I wonder, Doctor, that you have n't long ago tested the
+value of this by an experiment upon yourself."
+
+"Physicians are proverbially shy of their own medicines," said he.
+
+"Well, you see," continued the Skipper, "we had a rough run down the
+Labrador shore; rainstorms and fogs so thick you could cut 'em up into
+junks with your jack-knife. At last we reached a small fishing station
+away down where the sun does n't sleep in summer, but just takes a bit
+of a nap at midnight. Here Wilson went ashore, more dead than alive,
+and found comfortable lodgings with a little, dingy French oil merchant,
+who had a snug, warm house, and a garden patch, where he raised a few
+potatoes and turnips in the short summers, and a tolerable field of
+grass, which kept his two cows alive through the winter. The country
+all about was dismal enough; as far as you could see there was nothing
+but moss, and rocks, and bare hills, and ponds of shallow water, with
+now and then a patch of stunted firs. But it doubtless looked pleasant
+to our poor sick passenger, who for some days had been longing for land.
+The Frenchman gave him a neat little room looking out on the harbor, all
+alive with fishermen and Indians hunting seals; and to my notion no
+place is very dull where you can see the salt-water and the ships at
+anchor on it, or scudding over it with sails set in a stiff breeze, and
+where you can watch its changes of lights and colors in fair and foul
+weather, morning and night. The family was made up of the Frenchman,
+his wife, and his daughter,--a little witch of a girl, with bright black
+eyes lighting up her brown, good-natured face like lamps in a binnacle.
+They all took a mighty liking to young Wilson, and were ready to do
+anything for him. He was soon able to walk about; and we used to see
+him with the Frenchman's daughter strolling along the shore and among
+the mosses, talking with her in her own language. Many and many a time,
+as we sat in our boats under the rocks, we could hear her merry laugh
+ringing down to us.
+
+"We stayed at the station about three weeks; and when we got ready to
+sail I called at the Frenchman's to let Wilson know when to come aboard.
+He really seemed sorry to leave; for the two old people urged him to
+remain with them, and poor little Lucille would n't hear a word of his
+going. She said he would be sick and die on board the vessel, but that
+if he stayed with them he would soon be well and strong; that they
+should have plenty of milk and eggs for him in the winter; and he should
+ride in the dog-sledge with her, and she would take care of him as if he
+was her brother. She hid his cap and great-coat; and what with crying,
+and scolding, and coaxing, she fairly carried her point.
+
+"'You see I 'm a prisoner,' says he; 'they won't let me go.'
+
+"'Well,' says I, 'you don't seem to be troubled about it. I tell you
+what, young man,' says I, 'it's mighty pretty now to stroll round here,
+and pick mosses, and hunt birds' eggs with that gal; but wait till
+November comes, and everything freezes up stiff and dead except white
+bears And Ingens, and there's no daylight left to speak of, and you 'll
+be sick enough of your choice. You won't live the winter out; and it 's
+an awful place to die in, where the ground freezes so hard that they
+can't bury you.'
+
+"'Lucille says,' says he, 'that God is as near us in the winter as in
+the summer. The fact is, Skipper, I've no nearer relative left in the
+States than a married brother, who thinks more of his family and
+business than of me; and if it is God's will that I shall die, I may as
+well wait His call here as anywhere. I have found kind friends here;
+they will do all they can for me; and for the rest I trust Providence.'
+
+"Lucille begged that I would let him stay; for she said God would hear
+her prayers, and he would get well. I told her I would n't urge him any
+more; for if I was as young as he was, and had such a pretty nurse to
+take care of me, I should be willing to winter at the North Pole.
+Wilson gave me a letter for his brother; and we shook hands, and I left
+him. When we were getting under way he and Lucille stood on the
+landing-place, and I hailed him for the last time, and made signs of
+sending the boat for him. The little French girl understood me; she
+shook her head, and pointed to her father's house; and then they both
+turned back, now and then stopping to wave their handkerchiefs to us. I
+felt sorry to leave him there; but for the life of me I could n't blame
+him."
+
+"I'm sure I don't," said the Doctor.
+
+"Well, next year I was at Nitisquam Harbor; and, although I was doing
+pretty well in the way of fishing, I could n't feel easy without running
+away north to 'Brador to see what had become of my sick passenger. It
+was rather early in the season, and there was ice still in the harbor;
+but we managed to work in at last; when who should I see on shore but
+young Wilson, so stout and hearty that I should scarcely have known,
+him. He took me up to his lodgings and told me that he had never spent
+a happier winter; that he was well and strong, and could fish and hunt
+like a native; that he was now a partner with the Frenchman in trade,
+and only waited the coming of the priest from the Magdalenes, on his
+yearly visit to the settlements, to marry his daughter. Lucille was as
+pretty, merry, and happy as ever; and the old Frenchman and his wife
+seemed to love Wilson as if he was their son. I've never seen him
+since; but he now writes me that he is married, and has prospered in
+health and property, and thinks Labrador would be the finest country in
+the world if it only had heavy timber-trees."
+
+"One cannot but admire," said the Doctor, "that wise and beneficent
+ordination of Providence whereby the spirit of man asserts its power
+over circumstances, moulding the rough forms of matter to its fine
+ideal, bringing harmony out of discord,--coloring, warming, and lighting
+up everything within the circle of its horizon. A loving heart carries
+with it, under every parallel of latitude, the warmth and light of the
+tropics. It plants its Eden in the wilderness and solitary place, and
+sows with flowers the gray desolation of rocks and mosses. Wherever
+love goes, there springs the true heart's-ease, rooting itself even in
+the polar ices. To the young invalid of the Skipper's story, the dreary
+waste of what Moore calls, as you remember,
+
+ 'the dismal shore
+ Of cold and pitiless Labrador,'
+
+looked beautiful and inviting; for he saw it softened and irradiated in
+an atmosphere of love. Its bare hills, bleak rocks, and misty sky were
+but the setting and background of the sweetest picture in the gallery of
+life. Apart from this, however, in Labrador, as in every conceivable
+locality, the evils of soil and climate have their compensations and
+alleviations. The long nights of winter are brilliant with moonlight,
+and the changing colors of the northern lights are reflected on the
+snow. The summer of Labrador has a beauty of its own, far unlike that
+of more genial climates, but which its inhabitants would not forego for
+the warm life and lavish luxuriance of tropical landscapes. The dwarf
+fir-trees throw from the ends of their branches yellow tufts of stamina,
+like small lamps decorating green pyramids for the festival of spring;
+and if green grass is in a great measure wanting, its place is supplied
+by delicate mosses of the most brilliant colors. The truth is, every
+season and climate has its peculiar beauties and comforts; the
+footprints of the good and merciful God are found everywhere; and we
+should be willing thankfully to own that 'He has made all things
+beautiful in their time' if we were not a race of envious, selfish,
+ungrateful grumblers."
+
+"Doctor! Doctor!" cried a ragged, dirty-faced boy, running breathless
+into the yard.
+
+"What's the matter, my lad?" said the Doctor.
+
+"Mother wants you to come right over to our house. Father's tumbled off
+the hay-cart; and when they got him up he didn't know nothing; but they
+gin him some rum, and that kinder brought him to."
+
+"No doubt, no doubt," said the Doctor, rising to go. "Similia similibus
+curantur. Nothing like hair of the dog that bites you."
+
+"The Doctor talks well," said the Skipper, who had listened rather
+dubiously to his friend's commentaries on his story; "but he carries too
+much sail for me sometimes, and I can't exactly keep alongside of him.
+I told Elder. Staples once that I did n't see but that the Doctor could
+beat him at preaching. 'Very likely,' says the Elder, says he; 'for you
+know, Skipper, I must stick to my text; but the Doctor's Bible is all
+creation.'"
+
+"Yes," said the Elder, who had joined us a few moments before, "the
+Doctor takes a wide range, or, as the farmers say, carries a wide swath,
+and has some notions of things which in my view have as little
+foundation in true philosophy as they have warrant in Scripture; but,
+if he sometimes speculates falsely, he lives truly, which is by far
+the most important matter. The mere dead letter of a creed, however
+carefully preserved and reverently cherished, may be of no more
+spiritual or moral efficacy than an African fetish or an Indian
+medicine-bag. What we want is, orthodoxy in practice,--the dry bones
+clothed with warm, generous, holy life. It is one thing to hold fast
+the robust faith of our fathers,--the creed of the freedom-loving
+Puritan and Huguenot,--and quite another to set up the five points of
+Calvinism, like so many thunder-rods, over a bad life, in the insane
+hope of averting the Divine displeasure from sin."
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE IRON SOLDIER
+
+OR, WHAT AMINADAB IVISON DREAMED ABOUT.
+
+
+AMINADAB IVISON started up in his bed. The great clock at the head of
+the staircase, an old and respected heirloom of the family, struck one.
+
+"Ah," said he, heaving up a great sigh from the depths of his inner man,
+"I've had a tried time of it."
+
+"And so have I," said the wife. "Thee's been kicking and threshing
+about all night. I do wonder what ails thee."
+
+And well she might; for her husband, a well-to-do, portly, middle-aged
+gentleman, being blessed with an easy conscience, a genial temper, and a
+comfortable digestion, was able to bear a great deal of sleep, and
+seldom varied a note in the gamut of his snore from one year's end to
+another.
+
+"A very remarkable exercise," soliloquized Aminadab; "very."
+
+"Dear me! what was it?" inquired his wife.
+
+"It must have been a dream," said Aminadab.
+
+"Oh, is that all?" returned the good woman. "I'm glad it's nothing
+worse. But what has thee been dreaming about?"
+
+"It's the strangest thing, Hannah, that thee ever heard of," said
+Aminadab, settling himself slowly back into his bed. Thee recollects
+Jones sent me yesterday a sample of castings from the foundry. Well, I
+thought I opened the box and found in it a little iron man, in
+regimentals; with his sword by his side and a cocked hat on, looking
+very much like the picture in the transparency over neighbor O'Neal's
+oyster-cellar across the way. I thought it rather out of place for
+Jones to furnish me with such a sample, as I should not feel easy to
+show it to my customers, on account of its warlike appearance. However,
+as the work was well done, I took the little image and set him up on the
+table, against the wall; and, sitting down opposite, I began to think
+over my business concerns, calculating how much they would increase in
+profit in case a tariff man should be chosen our ruler for the next four
+years. Thee knows I am not in favor of choosing men of blood and strife
+to bear rule in the land: but it nevertheless seems proper to consider
+all the circumstances in this case, and, as one or the other of the
+candidates of the two great parties must be chosen, to take the least of
+two evils. All at once I heard a smart, quick tapping on the table;
+and, looking up, there stood the little iron man close at my elbow,
+winking and chuckling. 'That's right, Aminadab!' said he, clapping his
+little metal hands together till he rang over like a bell, 'take the
+least of two evils.' His voice had a sharp, clear, jingling sound, like
+that of silver dollars falling into a till. It startled me so that I
+woke up, but finding it only a dream presently fell asleep again. Then
+I thought I was down in the Exchange, talking with neighbor Simkins
+about the election and the tariff. 'I want a change in the
+administration, but I can't vote for a military chieftain,' said
+neighbor Simkins, 'as I look upon it unbecoming a Christian people to
+elect men of blood for their rulers.' 'I don't know,' said I, 'what
+objection thee can have to a fighting man; for thee 's no Friend, and
+has n't any conscientious scruples against military matters. For my own
+part, I do not take much interest in politics, and never attended a
+caucus in my life, believing it best to keep very much in the quiet, and
+avoid, as far as possible, all letting and hindering things; but there
+may be cases where a military man may be voted for as a choice of evils,
+and as a means of promoting the prosperity of the country in business
+matters.' 'What!' said neighbor Simkins, 'are you going to vote for a
+man whose whole life has been spent in killing people?' This vexed me a
+little, and I told him there was such a thing as carrying a good
+principle too far, and that he night live to be sorry that he had thrown
+away his vote, instead of using it discreetly. 'Why, there's the iron
+business,' said I; but just then I heard a clatter beside me, and,
+looking round, there was the little iron soldier clapping his hands in
+great glee. 'That's it, Aminadab!' said he; 'business first, conscience
+afterwards! Keep up the price of iron with peace if you can, but keep
+it up at any rate.' This waked me again in a good deal of trouble; but,
+remembering that it is said that 'dreams come of the multitude of
+business,' I once more composed myself to sleep."
+
+"Well, what happened next?" asked his wife.
+
+"Why, I thought I was in the meeting-house, sitting on the facing-seat
+as usual. I tried hard to settle my mind down into a quiet and humble
+state; but somehow the cares of the world got uppermost, and, before I
+was well aware of it, I was far gone in a calculation of the chances of
+the election, and the probable rise in the price of iron in the event of
+the choice of a President favorable to a high tariff. Rap, tap, went
+something on the floor. I opened my eyes, and there was the little
+image, red-hot, as if just out of the furnace, dancing, and chuckling,
+and clapping his hands. 'That's right, Aminadab!' said he; 'go on as
+you have begun; take care of yourself in this world, and I'll promise
+you you'll be taken care of in the next. Peace and poverty, or war and
+money. It's a choice of evils at best; and here's Scripture to decide
+the matter: "Be not righteous overmuch."' Then the wicked-looking
+little image twisted his hot lips, and leered at me with his blazing
+eyes, and chuckled and laughed with a noise exactly as if a bag of
+dollars had been poured out upon the meeting-house floor. This waked me
+just now in such a fright. I wish thee would tell me, Hannah, what thee
+can make of these three dreams?"
+
+"It don't need a Daniel to interpret them," answered Hannah. "Thee 's
+been thinking of voting for a wicked old soldier, because thee cares
+more for thy iron business than for thy testimony against wars and
+fightings. I don't a bit wonder at thy seeing the iron soldier thee
+tells of; and if thee votes to-morrow for a man of blood, it wouldn't be
+strange if he should haunt thee all thy life."
+
+Aminadab Ivison was silent, for his conscience spoke in the words of his
+wife. He slept no more that night, and rose up in the morning a wiser
+and better man.
+
+When he went forth to his place of business he saw the crowds hurrying
+to and fro; there were banners flying across the streets, huge placards
+were on the walls, and he heard all about him the bustle of the great
+election.
+
+"Friend Ivison," said a red-faced lawyer, almost breathless with his
+hurry, "more money is needed in the second ward; our committees are
+doing a great work there. What shall I put you down for? Fifty
+dollars? If we carry the election, your property will rise twenty per
+cent. Let me see; you are in the iron business, I think?"
+
+Aminadab thought of the little iron soldier of his dream, and excused
+himself. Presently a bank director came tearing into his office.
+
+"Have you voted yet, Mr. Ivison? It 's time to get your vote in. I
+wonder you should be in your office now. No business has so much at
+stake in this election as yours."
+
+"I don't think I should feel entirely easy to vote for the candidate,"
+said Aminadab.
+
+"Mr. Ivison," said the bank director, "I always took you to be a shrewd,
+sensible man, taking men and things as they are. The candidate may not
+be all you could wish for; but when the question is between him and a
+worse man, the best you can do is to choose the least of the two evils."
+
+"Just so the little iron man said," thought Aminadab. "'Get thee behind
+me, Satan!' No, neighbor Discount," said he, "I've made up my mind. I
+see no warrant for choosing evil at all. I can't vote for that man."
+
+"Very well," said the director, starting to leave the room; "you can do
+as you please; but if we are defeated through the ill-timed scruples of
+yourself and others, and your business pinches in consequence, you need
+n't expect us to help men who won't help themselves. Good day, sir."
+
+Aminadab sighed heavily, and his heart sank within him; but he thought
+of his dream, and remained steadfast. Presently he heard heavy steps
+and the tapping of a cane on the stairs; and as the door opened he saw
+the drab surtout of the worthy and much-esteemed friend who sat beside
+him at the head of the meeting.
+
+"How's thee do, Aminadab?" said he. "Thee's voted, I suppose?"
+
+"No, Jacob," said he; "I don't like the candidate. I can't see my way
+clear to vote for a warrior."
+
+"Well, but thee does n't vote for him because he is a warrior,
+Aminadab," argued the other; "thee votes for him as a tariff man and an
+encourager of home industry. I don't like his wars and fightings better
+than thee does; but I'm told he's an honest man, and that he disapproves
+of war in the abstract, although he has been brought up to the business.
+If thee feels tender about the matter, I don't like to urge thee; but it
+really seems to me thee had better vote. Times have been rather hard,
+thou knows; and if by voting at this election we can make business
+matters easier, I don't see how we can justify ourselves in staying at
+home. Thou knows we have a command to be diligent in business as well
+as fervent in spirit, and that the Apostle accounted him who provided
+not for his own household worse than an infidel. I think it important
+to maintain on all proper occasions our Gospel testimony against wars
+and fightings; but there is such a thing as going to extremes, thou
+knows, and becoming over-scrupulous, as I think thou art in this case.
+It is said, thou knows, in Ecclesiastes, 'Be not righteous overmuch: why
+shouldst thou destroy thyself?'"
+
+"Ah," said Aminadab to himself, "that's what the little iron soldier
+said in meeting." So he was strengthened in his resolution, and the
+persuasions of his friend were lost upon him.
+
+At night Aminadab sat by his parlor fire, comfortable alike in his inner
+and his outer man. "Well, Hannah," said he, "I've taken thy advice. I
+did n't vote for the great fighter to-day."
+
+"I'm glad of it," said the good woman, "and I dare say thee feels the
+better for it."
+
+Aminadab Ivison slept soundly that night, and saw no more of the little
+iron soldier.
+
+
+
+
+PASSACONAWAY. (1833.)
+
+ I know not, I ask not, what guilt's in thy heart, But I feel
+ that I love thee, whatever thou art.
+ Moor.
+
+THE township of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, contained, in the autumn of
+1641, the second year of its settlement, but six dwelling-houses,
+situated near each other, on the site of the present village. They were
+hastily constructed of rude logs, small and inconvenient, but one remove
+from the habitations of the native dwellers of the wilderness. Around
+each a small opening had been made through the thick forest, down to the
+margin of the river, where, amidst the charred and frequent stumps and
+fragments of fallen trees, the first attempts at cultivation had been
+made. A few small patches of Indian corn, which had now nearly reached
+maturity, exhibited their thick ears and tasselled stalks, bleached by
+the frost and sunshine; and, here and there a spot of yellow stubble,
+still lingering among the rough incumbrances of the soil, told where a
+scanty crop of common English grain had been recently gathered. Traces
+of some of the earlier vegetables were perceptible, the melon, the pea,
+and the bean. The pumpkin lay ripening on its frosted vines, its sunny
+side already changed to a bright golden color; and the turnip spread out
+its green mat of leaves in defiance of the season. Everything around
+realized the vivid picture of Bryant's Emigrant, who:
+
+ "Hewed the dark old woods away,
+ And gave the virgin fields to the day
+ And the pea and the bean beside the door
+ Bloomed where such flowers ne'er bloomed before;
+ And the maize stood up, and the bearded rye
+ Bent low in the breath of an unknown sky."
+
+Beyond, extended the great forest, vast, limitless, unexplored, whose
+venerable trees had hitherto bowed only to the presence of the storm,
+the beaver's tooth, and the axe of Time, working in the melancholy
+silence of natural decay. Before the dwellings of the white
+adventurers, the broad Merrimac rolled quietly onward the piled-up
+foliage of its shores, rich with the hues of a New England autumn.
+The first sharp frosts, the avant couriers of approaching winter, had
+fallen, and the whole wilderness was in blossom. It was like some vivid
+picture of Claude Lorraine, crowded with his sunsets and rainbows, a
+natural kaleidoscope of a thousand colors. The oak upon the hillside
+stood robed in summer's greenness, in strong contrast with the topaz-
+colored walnut. The hemlock brooded gloomily in the lowlands, forming,
+with its unbroken mass of shadow, a dark background for the light maple
+beside it, bright with its peculiar beauty. The solemn shadows of the
+pine rose high in the hazy atmosphere, checkered, here and there, with
+the pale yellow of the birch.
+
+"Truly, Alice, this is one of God's great marvels in the wilderness,"
+said John Ward, the minister, and the original projector of the
+settlement, to his young wife, as they stood in the door of their humble
+dwelling. "This would be a rare sight for our friends in old Haverhill.
+The wood all about us hath, to my sight, the hues of the rainbow, when,
+in the words of the wise man, it compasseth the heavens as with a
+circle, and the hands of the Most High have bended it. Very beautifully
+hath He indeed garnished the excellent works of His wisdom."
+
+"Yea, John," answered Alice, in her soft womanly tone; "the Lord is,
+indeed, no respecter of persons. He hath given the wild savages a more
+goodly show than any in Old England. Yet, John, I am sometimes very
+sorrowful, when I think of our old home, of the little parlor where you
+and I used to sit of a Sunday evening. The Lord hath been very
+bountiful to this land, and it may be said of us, as it was said of
+Israel of old, 'How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! and thy tabernacles,
+O Israel!' But the people sit in darkness, and the Gentiles know not
+the God of our fathers."
+
+"Nay," answered her husband, "the heathen may be visited and redeemed,
+the spirit of the Lord may turn unto the Gentiles; but a more sure evil
+hath arisen among us. I tell thee, Alice, it shall be more tolerable in
+the day of the Lord, for the Tyre and Sidon, the Sodom and Gomorrah of
+the heathen, than for the schemers, the ranters, the Familists, and the
+Quakers, who, like Satan of old, are coming among the sons of God."
+
+"I thought," said Alice, "that our godly governor had banished these out
+of the colony."
+
+"Truly he hath," answered Mr. Ward, "but the evil seed they have sown
+here continues to spring up and multiply. The Quakers have, indeed,
+nearly ceased to molest us; but another set of fanatics, headed by
+Samuel Gorton, have of late been very troublesome. Their family has
+been broken up, and the ring-leaders have been sentenced to be kept at
+hard labor for the colony's benefit; one being allotted to each of the
+old towns, where they are forbidden to speak on matters of religion.
+But there are said to be many still at large, who, under the
+encouragement of the arch-heretic, Williams, of the Providence
+plantation, are even now zealously doing the evil work of their master.
+But, Alice," he continued, as he saw his few neighbors gathering around
+a venerable oak which had been spared in the centre of the clearing, "it
+is now near our time of worship. Let us join our friends."
+
+And the minister and his wife entered into the little circle of their
+neighbors. No house of worship, with spire and tower, and decorated
+pulpit, had as yet been reared on the banks of the Merrimac. The stern
+settlers came together under the open heavens, or beneath the shadow of
+the old trees, to kneel before that God, whose works and manifestations
+were around them.
+
+The exercises of the Sabhath commenced. A psalm of the old and homely
+version was sung, with true feeling, if not with a perfect regard to
+musical effect and harmony. The brief but fervent prayer was offered,
+and the good man had just announced the text for his sermon, when a
+sudden tramp of feet, and a confused murmur of human voices, fell on the
+ears of the assembly.
+
+The minister closed his Bible; and the whole group crowded closer
+together. "It is surely a war party of the heathen," said Mr. Ward, as
+he listened intently to the approaching sound. "God grant they mean us
+no evil!"
+
+The sounds drew nearer. The swarthy figure of an Indian came gliding
+through the brush-wood into the clearing, followed closely by several
+Englishmen. In answer to the eager inquiries of Mr. Ward, Captain
+Eaton, the leader of the party, stated that he had left Boston at
+the command of Governor Winthrop, to secure and disarm the sachem,
+Passaconaway, who was suspected of hostile intentions towards the
+whites. They had missed of the old chief, but had captured his son,
+and were taking him to the governor as a hostage for the good faith of
+his father. He then proceeded to inform Mr. Ward, that letters had been
+received from the governor of the settlements of Good Hoop and Piquag,
+in Connecticut, giving timely warning of a most diabolical plot of the
+Indians to cut off their white neighbors, root and branch. He pointed
+out to the notice of the minister a member of his party as one of the
+messengers who had brought this alarming intelligence.
+
+He was a tall, lean man, with straight, lank, sandy hair, cut evenly all
+around his narrow forehead, and hanging down so as to remind one of
+Smollett's apt similitude of "a pound of candles."
+
+"What news do you bring us of the savages?" inquired Mr. Ward.
+
+"The people have sinned, and the heathen are the instruments whereby the
+Lord hath willed to chastise them," said the messenger, with that
+peculiar nasal inflection of voice, so characteristic of the "unco'
+guid." "The great sachem, Miantonimo, chief of the Narragansetts, hath
+plotted to cut off the Lord's people, just after the time of harvest, to
+slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children."
+
+"How have ye known this?" asked the minister.
+
+"Even as Paul knew of those who had bound themselves together with a
+grievous oath to destroy him. The Lord hath done it. One of the bloody
+heathens was dreadfully gored by the oxen of our people, and, being in
+great bodily pain and tribulation thereat, he sent for Governor Haines,
+and told him that the Englishman's god was angry with him for concealing
+the plot to kill his people, and had sent the Englishman's cow to kill
+him."
+
+"Truly a marvellous providence," said Mr. Ward; "but what has been done
+in your settlements in consequence of it?"
+
+"We have fasted many days," returned the other, in a tone of great
+solemnity, "and our godly men have besought the Lord that he might now,
+as of old, rebuke Satan. They have, moreover, diligently and earnestly
+inquired, Whence cometh this evil? Who is the Achan in the camp of our
+Israel? It hath been greatly feared that the Quakers and the Papists
+have been sowing tares in the garden of the true worship. We have
+therefore banished these on pain of death; and have made it highly penal
+for any man to furnish either food or lodging to any of these heretics
+and idolaters. We have ordered a more strict observance of the Sabbath
+of the Lord, no, one being permitted to walk or run on that day, except
+to and from public worship, and then, only in a reverent and becoming
+manner; and no one is allowed to cook food, sweep the house, shave or
+pare the nails, or kiss a child, on the day which is to be kept holy.
+We have also framed many wholesome laws, against the vanity and
+licentiousness of the age, in respect to apparel and deportment, and
+have forbidden any young man to kiss a maid during the time of
+courtship, as, to their shame be it said, is the manner of many in the
+old lands."
+
+"Ye have, indeed, done well for the spiritual," said Mr. Ward; "what
+have you done for your temporal defence?"
+
+"We have our garrisons and our captains, and a goodly store of carnal
+weapons," answered the other. "And, besides, we have the good chief
+Uncas, of the Mohegans, to help us against the bloody Narragansetts."
+
+"But, my friend," said the minister, addressing Captain Eaton, "there
+must be surely some mistake about Passaconaway. I verily believe him to
+be the friend of the white men. And this is his son Wonolanset? I saw
+him last year, and remember that he was the pride of the old savage, his
+father. I will speak to him, for I know something of his barbarous
+tongue."
+
+"Wonolanset!"
+
+The young savage started suddenly at the word, and rolled his keen
+bright eye upon the speaker.
+
+"Why is the son of the great chief bound by my brothers?"
+
+The Indian looked one instant upon the cords which confined his arms,
+and then glanced fiercely upon his conductors.
+
+"Has the great chief forgotten his white friends? Will he send his
+young men to take their scalps when the Narragansett bids him?"
+
+The growl of the young bear when roused from his hiding-place is not
+more fierce and threatening than were the harsh tones of Wonolanset as
+he uttered through his clenched teeth:--
+
+"Nummus quantum."
+
+"Nay, nay," said Mr. Ward, turning away from the savage, "his heart is
+full of bitterness; he says he is angry, and, verily, I like not his
+bearing. I fear me there is evil on foot. But ye have travelled far,
+and must needs be weary rest yourselves awhile, and haply, while ye
+refresh your bodies, I may also refresh your spirits with wholesome and
+comfortable doctrines."
+
+The party having acquiesced in this proposal, their captive was secured
+by fastening one end of his rope to a projecting branch of the tree.
+The minister again named his text, but had only proceeded to the minuter
+divisions of his sermon, when he was again interrupted by a loud, clear
+whistle from the river, and a sudden exclamation of surprise from those
+around him. A single glance sufficed to show him the Indian, disengaged
+from his rope, and in full retreat.
+
+Eaton raised his rifle to his eye, and called out to the young sachem,
+in his own language, to stop, or he would fire upon him. The Indian
+evidently understood the full extent of his danger. He turned suddenly
+about, and, pointing, up the river towards the dwelling of his father,
+pronounced with a threatening gesture:--
+
+"Nosh, Passaconaway!"
+
+"Hold!" exclaimed Mr. Ward, grasping the arm of Eaton. "He threatens us
+with his father's vengeance. For God's sake keep your fire!" It was too
+late. The report of the rifle broke sharply upon the Sabbath stillness.
+It was answered by a shout from the river, and a small canoe, rowed by
+an Indian and a white man, was seen darting along the shore. Wonolanset
+bounded on unharmed, and, plunging into the river, he soon reached the
+canoe, which was hastily paddled to the opposite bank. Captain Eaton
+and his party finding it impossible to retake their prisoner, after
+listening to the sermon of Mr. Ward, and partaking of some bodily
+refreshment, took their leave of the settlers of Pentucket, and departed
+for Boston.
+
+The evening, which followed the day whose events we have narrated, was
+one of those peculiar seasons of beauty when the climate of New England
+seems preferable to that of Italy. The sun went down in the soft haze
+of the horizon, while the full moon was rising at the same time in the
+east. Its mellow silver mingled with the deep gold of the sunset. The
+south-west wind, as warm as that of summer, but softer, was heard, at
+long intervals, faintly harping amidst the pines, and blending its low
+sighing with the lulling murmurs of the river. The inhabitants of
+Pentucket had taken the precaution, as night came on, to load their
+muskets carefully, and place them in readiness for instant use, in the
+event of an attack from the savages. Such an occurrence, was, indeed,
+not unlikely, after the rude treatment which the son of old Passaconaway
+had received at the settlement. It was well known that the old chief
+was able, at a word, to send every warrior from Pennacook to Naumkeag
+upon the war-path of Miantonimo; the vengeful character of the Indians
+was also understood; and, in the event of an out-breaking of their
+resentment, the settlement of Pentucket was, of all others, the most
+exposed to danger.
+
+"Don't go to neighbor Clements's to-night, Mary," said Alice Ward to her
+young, unmarried sister; "I'm afraid some of the tawny Indians may be
+lurking hereabout. Mr. Ward says he thinks they will be dangerous
+neighbors for us."
+
+Mary had thrown her shawl over her head, and was just stepping out.
+"It is but a step, as it were, and I promised good-wife Clements that I
+would certainly come. I am not afraid of the Indians. There's none of
+them about here except Red Sam, who wanted to buy me of Mr. Ward for his
+squaw; and I shall not be afraid of my old spark."
+
+The girl tripped lightly from the threshold towards the dwelling of her
+neighbor. She had passed nearly half the distance when the pathway,
+before open to the moonlight, began to wind along the margin of the
+river, overhung with young sycamores and hemlocks. With a beating heart
+and a quickened step she was stealing through the shadow, when the
+boughs on the river-side were suddenly parted, and a tall man sprang
+into the path before her. Shrinking back with terror, she uttered a
+faint scream.
+
+"Mary Edmands!" said the stranger, "do not fear me."
+
+A thousand thoughts wildly chased each other through the mind of the
+astonished girl. That familiar voice--that knowledge of her name--that
+tall and well-remembered form! She leaned eagerly forward, and looked
+into the stranger's face. A straggling gleam of moonshine fell across
+its dark features of manly beauty.
+
+"Richard Martin! can it be possible!"
+
+"Yea, Mary," answered the other, "I have followed thee to the new world,
+in that love which neither sea nor land can abate. For many weary
+months I have waited earnestly for such a meeting as this, and, in that
+time, I have been in many and grievous perils by the flood and the
+wilderness, and by the heathen Indians and more heathen persecutors
+among my own people. But I may not tarry, nor delay to tell my errand.
+Mary, thou knowest my love; wilt thou be my wife?"
+
+Mary hesitated.
+
+"I ask thee again, if thou wilt share the fortunes of one who hath loved
+thee ever since thou wast but a child, playing under the cottage trees
+in old Haverhill, and who hath sacrificed his worldly estate, and
+perilled his soul's salvation for thy sake. Mary, dear Mary, for of a
+truth thou art very dear to me; wilt thou go with me and be my wife?"
+
+The tones of Richard Martin, usually harsh and forbidding, now fell soft
+and musical on the ear of Mary. He was her first love, her only one.
+What marvel that she consented?
+
+"Let us hasten to depart," said Martin, "this is no place for me. We
+will go to the Providence plantations. Passaconaway will assist us in
+our journey."
+
+The bright flush of hope and joy faded from the face of the young girl.
+She started back from the embrace of her lover.
+
+"What mean you, Richard? What was 't you said about our going to that
+sink of wickedness at Providence? Why don't you go back with me to
+sister Ward's?"
+
+"Mary Edmands!" said Martin, in a tone of solemn sternness, "it is
+fitting that I should tell thee all. I have renounced the evil
+doctrines of thy brother-in-law, and his brethren in false prophecy. It
+was a hard struggle, Mary; the spirit was indeed willing, but the flesh
+was weak, exceeding weak, for I thought of thee, Mary, and of thy
+friends. But I had a measure of strength given me, whereby I have been
+enabled to do the work which was appointed me."
+
+"Oh, Richard!" said Mary, bursting into tears, "I'm afraid you have
+become a Williamsite, one of them, who, Mr. Ward says, have nothing to
+hope for in this world or in that to come."
+
+"The Lord rebuke him!" said Martin, with a loud voice. "Woe to such as
+speak evil of the witnesses of the truth. I have seen the utter
+nakedness of the land of carnal professors, and I have obeyed the call
+to come out from among them and be separate. I belong to that
+persecuted family whom the proud priests and rulers of this colony have
+driven from their borders. I was brought, with many others, before the
+wicked magistrates of Boston, and sentenced to labor, without hire, for
+the ungodly. But I have escaped from my bonds; and the Lord has raised
+up a friend for his servant, even the Indian Passaconaway, whose son I
+assisted, but a little time ago, to escape from his captors."
+
+"Can it be?" sobbed Mary, "can it be? Richard, our own Richard,
+following the tribe of Gorton, the Familist! Oh, Richard, if you love
+me, if you love God's people and his true worship, do come away from
+those wicked fanatics."
+
+"Thou art in the very gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity,"
+answered Martin. "Listen, Mary Edmands, to the creed of those whom thou
+callest fanatics. We believe in Christ, but not in man-worship. The
+Christ we reverence is the shadow or image of God in man; he was
+crucified in Adam of old, and hath been crucified in all men since; his
+birth, his passion, and his death, were but manifestations or figures of
+his sufferings in Adam and his descendants. Faith and Christ are the
+same, the spiritual image of God in the heart. We acknowledge no rule
+but this Christ, this faith within us, either in temporal or spiritual
+things. And the Lord hath blessed us, and will bless us, and truth
+shall be magnified and exalted in us; and the children of the heathen
+shall be brought to know and partake of this great redemption whereof we
+testify. But woe to the false teachers, and to them who prophesy for
+hire and make gain of their soothsaying. Their churches are the devices
+of Satan, the pride and vanity of the natural Adam. Their baptism is
+blasphemy; and their sacrament is an abomination, yea, an incantation
+and a spell. Woe to them who take the shadow for the substance, that
+bow down to the altars of human device and cunning workmanship, that
+make idols of their ceremonies! Woe to the high priests and the
+Pharisees, and the captains and the rulers; woe to them who love the
+wages of unrighteousness!"
+
+The Familist paused from utter exhaustion, so vehemently had he poured
+forth the abundance of his zeal. Mary Edmands, overwhelmed by his
+eloquence, but still unconvinced, could only urge the disgrace and
+danger attending his adherence to such pernicious doctrines. She
+concluded by telling him, in a voice choked by tears, that she could
+never marry him while a follower of Gorton.
+
+"Stay then," said Martin, fiercely dashing her hand from his, "stay and
+partake of the curse of the ungodly, even of the curse of Meroz, who
+come not up to the help of the Lord, against the mighty Stay, till the
+Lord hath made a threshing instrument of the heathen, whereby the pride
+of the rulers, and the chief priests, and the captains of this land
+shall be humbled. Stay, till the vials of His wrath are poured out upon
+ye, and the blood of the strong man, and the maid, and the little child
+is mingled together!"
+
+The wild language, the fierce tones and gestures of her lover, terrified
+the unhappy girl. She looked wildly around her, all was dark and
+shadowy, an undefined fear of violence came over her; and, bursting into
+tears, she turned to fly. "Stay yet a moment," said Martin, in a hoarse
+and subdued voice. He caught hold of her arm. She shrieked as if in
+mortal jeopardy.
+
+"Let go the gal, let her go!" said old Job Clements, thrusting the long
+barrel of his gun through the bushes within a few feet of the head of
+the Familist. "A white man, as sure as I live! I thought, sartin, 't
+was a tarnal In-in." Martin relinquished his hold, and, the next
+instant, found himself surrounded by the settlers.
+
+After a brief explanation had taken place between Mr. Ward and his
+sister-in-law, the former came forward and accosted the Familist.
+"Richard Martin!" he said, "I little thought to see thee so soon in the
+new world, still less to see thee such as thou art. I am exceeding
+sorry that I cannot greet thee here as a brother, either in a temporal
+or a spiritual nature. My sister tells me that you are a follower of
+that servant of Satan, Samuel Gorton, and that you have sought to entice
+her away with you to the colony of fanatics at Rhode Island, which may
+be fitly compared to that city which Philip of Macedonia peopled with
+rogues and vagabonds, and the offscouring of the whole earth."
+
+"John Ward, I know thee," said the unshrinking Familist; "I know thee
+for a man wise above what is written, a man vain, uncharitable, and
+given to evil speaking. I value neither thy taunts nor thy wit; for the
+one hath its rise in the bitterness, and the other in the vanity, of the
+natural Adam. Those who walk in the true light, and who have given over
+crucifying Christ in their hearts, heed not a jot of the reproaches and
+despiteful doings of the high and mighty in iniquity. For of us it hath
+been written: 'I have given them thy word and the world hath hated them
+because they are not of the world. If the world hate you, ye know that
+it hated me before it hated you. If they have hated me they will hate
+you also; if they have persecuted me they will persecute you.' And, of
+the scoffers and the scorners, the wise ones of this world, whose wisdom
+and knowledge have perverted them, and who have said in their hearts,
+There is none beside them, it hath been written, yea, and will be
+fulfilled: The day of the Lord of Hosts shall be upon every one that is
+proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up, and he shall be
+brought low; and the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the
+haughtiness of man shall be brought low; and the Lord alone shall be
+exalted in that day; and the idols shall he utterly abolish.' Of thee,
+John Ward, and of thy priestly brotherhood, I ask nothing; and for the
+much evil I have received, and may yet receive at your hands, may ye be
+rewarded like Alexander the coppersmith, every man according to his
+works."
+
+"Such damnable heresy," said Mr. Ward, addressing his neighbors, "must
+not be permitted to spread among the people. My friends, we must send
+this man to the magistrates."
+
+The Familist placed his hands to his month, and gave a whistle, similar
+to that which was heard in the morning, and which preceded the escape of
+Wonolanset. It was answered by a shout from the river; and a score of
+Indians came struggling up through the brush-wood.
+
+"Vile heretic!" exclaimed Mr. Ward, snatching a musket from the hands of
+his neighbor, and levelling it full at the head of Martin; "you have
+betrayed us into this jeopardy."
+
+"Wagh! down um gun," said a powerful Indian, as he laid his rough hand
+on the shoulder of the minister. "You catch Wonolanset, tie um, shoot
+um, scare squaw. Old sachem come now, me tie white man, shoot um, roast
+um;" and the old savage smiled grimly and fiercely in the indistinct
+moonlight, as he witnessed the alarm and terror of his prisoner.
+
+"Hold, Passaconaway!" said Martin, in the Indian tongue. "Will the
+great chief forget his promise?"
+
+The sachem dropped his hold on Mr. Ward's arm. "My brother is good," he
+said; "me no kill um, me make um walk woods like Wonolanset." Martin
+spoke a few words in the chief's ear. The countenance of the old
+warrior for an instant seemed to express dissatisfaction; but, yielding
+to the powerful influence which the Familist had acquired over him, he
+said, with some reluctance, "My brother is wise, me do so."
+
+"John Ward," said the Familist, approaching the minister, "thou hast
+devised evil against one who hath never injured thee. But I seek not
+carnal revenge. I have even now restrained the anger of this heathen
+chief whom thou and thine have wronged deeply. Let us part in peace,
+for we may never more meet in this world." And he extended his hand and
+shook that of the minister.
+
+"For thee, Mary," he said, "I had hoped to pluck thee from the evil
+which is to come, even as a brand from the burning. I had hoped to lead
+thee to the manna of true righteousness, but thou last chosen the flesh-
+pots of Egypt. I had hoped to cherish thee always, but thou hast
+forgotten me and my love, which brought me over the great waters for thy
+sake. I will go among the Gentiles, and if it be the Lord's will,
+peradventure I may turn away their wrath from my people. When my
+wearisome pilgrimage is ended, none shall know the grave of Richard
+Martin; and none but the heathen shall mourn for him. Mary! I forgive
+thee; may the God of all mercies bless thee! I shall never see thee
+more."
+
+Hot and fast fell the tears of that stern man upon the hand of Mary.
+The eyes of the young woman glanced hurriedly over the faces of her
+neighbors, and fixed tearfully upon that of her lover. A thousand
+recollections of young affection, of vows and meetings in another land,
+came vividly before her. Her sister's home, her brother's instructions,
+her own strong faith, and her bitter hatred of her lover's heresy were
+all forgotten.
+
+"Richard, dear Richard, I am your Mary as much as ever I was. I'll go
+with you to the ends of the earth. Your God shall be my God, and where
+you are buried there will I be also."
+
+Silent in the ecstasy of joyful surprise, the Familist pressed her to
+his bosom. Passaconaway, who had hitherto been an unmoved spectator of
+the scene, relaxed the Indian gravity of his features, and murmured, in
+an undertone, "Good, good."
+
+"Will my brother go?" he inquired, touching Martin's shoulder; "my
+squaws have fine mat, big wigwam, soft samp, for his young woman."
+
+"Mary," said Martin, "the sachem is impatient; and we must needs go with
+him." Mary did not answer, but her head was reclined upon his bosom,
+and the Familist knew that she resigned herself wholly to his direction.
+He folded the shawl more carefully around her, and supported her down
+the precipitous and ragged bank of the river, followed closely by
+Passaconaway and his companions.
+
+"Come back, Mary Edmands!" shouted Mr. Ward. "In God's name come back."
+
+Half a dozen canoes shot out into the clear moonlight from the shadow of
+the shore. "It is too late!" said the minister, as he struggled down to
+the water's edge. "Satan hath laid his hands upon her; but I will
+contend for her, even as did Michael of old for the body of Moses.
+Mary, sister Mary, for the love of Christ, answer me."
+
+No sound came back from the canoes, which glided like phantoms,
+noiselessly and swiftly, through the still waters of the river.
+"The enemy hath prevailed," said Mr. Ward; "two women were grinding at
+my mill, the one is taken and the other is left. Let us go home, my
+friends, and wrestle in prayer against the Tempter."
+
+The heretic and his orthodox bride departed into the thick wilderness,
+under the guidance of Passaconaway, and in a few days reached the
+Eldorado of the heretic and the persecuted, the colony of Roger
+Williams. Passaconaway, ever after, remained friendly to the white men.
+As civilization advanced he retired before it, to Pennacook, now
+Concord, on the Merrimac, where the tribes of the Naumkeags,
+Piscataquas, Accomentas, and Agawams acknowledged his authority.
+
+
+
+
+THE OPIUM EATER. (1833.)
+
+ Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving from its lowest depths
+ of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me!
+ Here was a panacea, a pharmakon nepenthes for all human woes; here
+ was the secret of happiness about which philosophers had disputed
+ for so many ages: happiness might be bought for a penny, and
+ carried in the waistcoat pocket.--DEQUINCEY's "Confessions of an
+ Opium Eater."
+
+
+HE was a tall, thin personage, with a marked brow and a sunken eye.
+
+He stepped towards a closet of his apartment, and poured out a few drops
+of a dark liquid. His hand shook, as he raised the glass which
+contained them to his lips; and with a strange shuddering, a nervous
+tremor, as if all the delicate chords of his system were unloosed and
+trembling, he turned away from his fearful draught.
+
+He saw that my eye was upon him; and I could perceive that his mind
+struggled desperately with the infirmity of his nature, as if ashamed of
+the utter weakness of its tabernacle. He passed hastily up and down the
+room. "You seem somewhat ill," I said, in the undecided tone of partial
+interrogatory.
+
+He paused, and passed his long thin fingers over his forehead. "I am
+indeed ill," he said, slowly, and with that quavering, deep-drawn
+breathing, which is so indicative of anguish, mental and physical.
+"I am weak as a child, weak alike in mind and body, even when I am under
+the immediate influence of yonder drug." And he pointed, as he spoke,
+to a phial, labelled "Laudanum," upon a table in the corner of the room.
+
+"My dear sir," said I, "for God's sake abandon your desperate practice:
+I know not, indeed, the nature of your afflictions, but I feel assured
+that you have yet the power to be happy. You have, at least, warm
+friends to sympathize with you. But forego, if possible, your
+pernicious stimulant of laudanum. It is hurrying you to your grave."
+
+"It may be so," he replied, while another shudder ran along his nerves;
+"but why should I fear it? I, who have become worthless to myself and
+annoying to my friends; exquisitely sensible of my true condition, yet
+wanting the power to change it; cursed with a lively apprehension of all
+that I ought now to be, yet totally incapable of even making an effort
+to be so! My dear sir, I feel deeply the kindness of your motives, but
+it is too late for me to hope to profit by your advice."
+
+I was shocked at his answer. "But can it be possible," said I, "that
+the influence of such an excessive use of opium can produce any
+alleviation of mental suffering? any real relief to the harassed mind?
+Is it not rather an aggravation?"
+
+"I know not," he said, seating himself with considerable calmness,--"I
+know not. If it has not removed the evil, it has at least changed its
+character. It has diverted my mind from its original grief; and has
+broken up and rendered divergent the concentrated agony which oppressed
+me. It has, in a measure, substituted imaginary afflictions for real
+ones. I cannot but confess, however, that the relief which it has
+afforded has been produced by the counteraction of one pain by another;
+very much like that of the Russian criminal, who gnaws his own flesh
+while undergoing the punishment of the knout.'"
+
+"For Heaven's sake," said I, "try to dispossess your mind of such horrid
+images. There are many, very many resources yet left you. Try the
+effect of society; and let it call into exercise those fine talents
+which all admit are so well calculated to be its ornament and pride.
+At least, leave this hypochondriacal atmosphere, and look out more
+frequently upon nature. Your opium, if it be an alleviator, is, by your
+own confession, a most melancholy one. It exorcises one demon to give
+place to a dozen others.
+
+ 'With other ministrations, thou, O Nature!
+ Healest thy wandering and distempered child.'"
+
+He smiled bitterly; it was a heartless, melancholy relaxation of
+features, a mere muscular movement, with which the eye had no sympathy;
+for its wild and dreamy expression, the preternatural lustre, without
+transparency, remained unaltered, as if rebuking, with its cold, strange
+glare, the mockery around it. He sat before me like a statue, whose eye
+alone retained its stony and stolid rigidity, while the other features
+were moved by some secret machinery into "a ghastly smile."
+
+"I am not desirous, even were it practicable," he said, "to defend the
+use of opium, or rather the abuse of it. I can only say, that the
+substitutes you propose are not suited to my condition. The world has
+now no enticements for me; society no charms. Love, fame, wealth,
+honor, may engross the attention of the multitude; to me they are all
+shadows; and why should I grasp at them? In the solitude of my own
+thoughts, looking on but not mingling in them, I have taken the full
+gauge of their hollow vanities. No, leave me to myself, or rather to
+that new existence which I have entered upon, to the strange world to
+which my daily opiate invites me. In society I am alone, fearfully
+solitary; for my mind broods gloomily over its besetting sorrow, and I
+make myself doubly miserable by contrasting my own darkness with the
+light and joy of all about me; nay, you cannot imagine what a very hard
+thing it is, at such times, to overcome some savage feelings of
+misanthropy which will present themselves. But when I am alone, and
+under the influence of opium, I lose for a season my chief source of
+misery, myself; my mind takes a new and unnatural channel; and I have
+often thought that any one, even that of insanity, would be preferable
+to its natural one. It is drawn, as it were, out of itself; and I
+realize in my own experience the fable of Pythagoras, of two distinct
+existences, enjoyed by the same intellectual being.
+
+"My first use of opium was the consequence of an early and very bitter
+disappointment. I dislike to think of it, much more to speak of it. I
+recollect, on a former occasion, you expressed some curiosity concerning
+it. I then repelled that curiosity, for my mind was not in a situation
+to gratify it. But now, since I have been talking of myself, I think I
+can go on with my story with a very decent composure. In complying with
+your request, I cannot say that my own experience warrants, in any
+degree, the old and commonly received idea that sorrow loses half its
+poignancy by its revelation to others. It was a humorous opinion of
+Sterne, that a blessing which ties up the tongue, and a mishap which
+unlooses it, are to be considered equal; and, indeed, I have known some
+people happy under all the changes of fortune, when they could find
+patient auditors. Tully wept over his dead daughter, but when he
+chanced to think of the excellent things he could say on the subject,
+he considered it, on the whole, a happy circumstance. But, for my own
+part, I cannot say with the Mariner in Coleridge's ballad, that
+
+ "'At an uncertain hour My agony returns;
+
+ And, till my ghastly tale is told,
+ This heart within me burns.'"
+
+He paused a moment, and rested his head upon his hand. "You have seen
+Mrs. H------, of -------?" he inquired, somewhat abruptly. I replied in
+the affirmative.
+
+"Do you not think her a fine woman?"
+
+"Yes, certainly, a fine woman. She was once, I am told, very
+beautiful."
+
+"Once? is she not so now?" he asked. "Well, I have heard the same
+before. I sometimes think I should like to see her now, now that the
+mildew of years and perhaps of accusing recollections are upon her; and
+see her toss her gray curls as she used to do her dark ones, and act
+over again her old stratagem of smiles upon a face of wrinkles. Just
+Heavens! were I revengeful to the full extent of my wrongs, I could wish
+her no worse punishment.
+
+"They told you truly, my dear sir,--she was beautiful, nay, externally,
+faultless. Her figure was that of womanhood, just touching upon the
+meridian of perfection, from which nothing could be taken, and to which
+nothing could be added. There was a very witchery in her smile,
+trembling, as it did, over her fine Grecian features, like the play of
+moonlight upon a shifting and beautiful cloud.
+
+"Her voice was music, low, sweet, bewildering. I have heard it a
+thousand times in my dreams. It floated around me, like the tones of
+some rare instrument, unseen by the hearer; for, beautiful as she was,
+you could not think of her, or of her loveliness, while she was
+speaking; it was that sweetly wonderful voice, seemingly abstracted from
+herself, pouring forth the soft current of its exquisite cadence, which
+alone absorbed the attention. Like that one of Coleridge's heroines,
+you could half feel, half fancy, that it had a separate being of its
+own, a spiritual presence manifested to but one of the senses; a living
+something, whose mode of existence was for the ear alone.--(See Memoirs
+of Maria Eleonora Schoning.)
+
+"But what shall I say of the mind? What of the spirit, the resident
+divinity of so fair a temple? Vanity, vanity, all was vanity;
+a miserable, personal vanity, too, unrelieved by one noble aspiration,
+one generous feeling; the whited sepulchre spoken of of old, beautiful
+without, but dark and unseemly within.
+
+"I look back with wonder and astonishment to that period of my life,
+when such a being claimed and received the entire devotion of my heart.
+Her idea blended with or predominated over all others. It was the
+common centre in my mind from which all the radii of thought had their
+direction; the nucleus around which I had gathered all that my ardent
+imagination could conceive, or a memory stored with all the delicious
+dreams of poetry and romances could embody, of female excellence and
+purity and constancy.
+
+"It is idle to talk of the superior attractions of intellectual beauty,
+when compared with mere external loveliness. The mind, invisible and
+complicated and indefinite, does not address itself directly to the
+senses. It is comprehended only by its similitude in others. It
+reveals itself, even then, but slowly and imperfectly. But the beauty
+of form and color, the grace of motion, the harmony of tone, are seen
+and felt and appreciated at once. The image of substantial and material
+loveliness once seen leaves an impression as distinct and perfect upon
+the retina of memory as upon that of the eyes. It does not rise before
+us in detached and disconnected proportions, like that of spiritual
+loveliness, but in crowds, and in solitude, and in all the throngful
+varieties of thought and feeling and action, the symmetrical whole, the
+beautiful perfection comes up in the vision of memory, and stands, like
+a bright angel, between us and all other impressions of outward or
+immaterial beauty.
+
+"I saw her, and could not forget her; I sought her society, and was
+gratified with it. It is true, I sometimes (in the first stages of my
+attachment) had my misgivings in relation to her character. I sometimes
+feared that her ideas were too much limited to the perishing beauty of
+her person. But to look upon her graceful figure yielding to the dance,
+or reclining in its indolent symmetry; to watch the beautiful play of
+coloring upon her cheek, and the moonlight transit of her smile; to
+study her faultless features in their delicate and even thoughtful
+repose, or when lighted up into conversational vivacity, was to forget
+everything, save the exceeding and bewildering fascination before me.
+Like the silver veil of Khorassan it shut out from my view the mental
+deformity beneath it. I could not reason with myself about her; I had
+no power of ratiocination which could overcome the blinding dazzle of
+her beauty. The master-passion, which had wrestled down all others,
+gave to every sentiment of the mind something of its own peculiar
+character.
+
+"I will not trouble you with a connected history of my first love, my
+boyish love, you may perhaps call it. Suffice it to say, that on the
+revelation of that love, it was answered by its object warmly and
+sympathizingly. I had hardly dared to hope for her favor; for I had
+magnified her into something far beyond mortal desert; and to hear from
+her own lips an avowal of affection seemed more like the condescension
+of a pitying angel than the sympathy of a creature of passion and
+frailty like myself. I was miserably self-deceived; and self-deception
+is of a nature most repugnant to the healthy operation of truth. We
+suspect others, but seldom ourselves. The deception becomes a part of
+our self-love; we hold back the error even when Reason would pluck it
+away from us.
+
+"Our whole life may be considered as made up of earnest yearnings after
+objects whose value increases with the difficulties of obtaining them,
+and which seem greater and more desirable, from our imperfect knowledge
+of their nature, just as the objects of the outward vision are magnified
+and exalted when seen through a natural telescope of mist. Imagination
+fills up and supplies the picture, of which we can only catch the
+outlines, with colors brighter, and forms more perfect, than those of
+reality. Yet, you may perhaps wonder why, after my earnest desire had
+been gratified, after my love had found sympathy in its object, I did
+not analyze more closely the inherent and actual qualities of her heart
+and intellect. But living, as I did, at a considerable distance from
+her, and seeing her only under circumstances calculated to confirm
+previous impressions, I had few advantages, even had I desired to do so,
+of studying her true character. The world had not yet taught me its
+ungenerous lesson. I had not yet learned to apply the rack of
+philosophical analysis to the objects around me, and test, by a cold
+process of reasoning, deduced from jealous observation, the reality of
+all which wore the outward semblance of innocence and beauty. And it
+may be, too, that the belief, nay, the assurance, from her own lips, and
+from the thousand voiceless but eloquent signs which marked our
+interviews, that I was beloved, made me anxious to deceive even myself,
+by investing her with those gifts of the intellect and the heart,
+without which her very love would have degraded its object. It is not
+in human nature, at least it was not in mine, to embitter the delicious
+aliment which is offered to our vanity, by admitting any uncomfortable
+doubts of the source from which it is derived.
+
+"And thus it was that I came on, careless and secure, dreaming over and
+over the same bright dream; without any doubt, without fear, and in the
+perfect confidence of an unlimited trust, until the mask fell off, all
+at once; without giving me time for preparation, without warning or
+interlude; and the features of cold, heartless, systematic treachery
+glared full upon me.
+
+"I saw her wedded to another. It was a beautiful morning; and never had
+the sun shone down on a gayer assemblage than that which gathered
+together at the village church. I witnessed the imposing ceremony which
+united the only one being I had ever truly loved to a happy and favored,
+because more wealthy, rival. As the grayhaired man pronounced the
+inquiring challenge, 'If any man can show just cause why they may not
+lawfully be joined together, let him now speak or else forever after
+hold his peace,' I struggled forward, and would have cried out, but the
+words died away in my throat. And the ceremony went on, and the death-
+like trance into which I had fallen was broken by the voice of the
+priest: 'I require and charge ye both, as ye will answer at the dreadful
+day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that
+if either of you know of any impediment why ye may not lawfully be
+joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well
+assured, that if any persons are joined together otherwise than as God's
+word doth allow, their marriage is not lawful.' As the solemn tones of
+the old man died away in the church aisles, I almost expected to hear a
+supernatural voice calling upon him to forbear. But there was no sound.
+For an instant my eyes met those of the bride; the blood boiled rapidly
+to her forehead, and then sank back, and she was as pale as if death had
+been in the glance I had given her. And I could see the folds of her
+rich dress tremble, and her beautiful lips quiver; and she turned away
+her eyes, and the solemn rites were concluded.
+
+"I returned to my lodgings. I heeded not the gay smiles and free
+merriment of those around me. I hurried along like one who wanders
+abroad in a dark dream; for I could hardly think of the events of the
+morning as things of reality. But, when I spurred my horse aside, as
+the carriage which contained the newly married swept by me, the terrible
+truth came upon me like a tangible substance, and one black and evil
+thought passed over my mind, like the whispered suggestion of Satan. It
+was a feeling of blood, a sensation like that of grasping the strangling
+throat of an enemy. I started from it with horror. For the first time
+a thought of murder had risen up in my bosom; and I quenched it with the
+natural abhorrence of a nature prone to mildness and peace.
+
+"I reached my chamber, and, exhausted alike in mind and body, I threw
+myself upon my bed, but not to sleep. A sense of my utter desolation
+and loneliness came over me, blended with a feeling of bitter and
+unmerited wrong. I recollected the many manifestations of affection
+which I had received from her who had that day given herself, in the
+presence of Heaven, to another; and I called to mind the thousand
+sacrifices I had made to her lightest caprices, to every shade and
+variation of her temper; and then came the maddening consciousness of
+the black ingratitude which had requited such tenderness. Then, too,
+came the thought, bitter to a pride like mine, that the cold world had a
+knowledge of my misfortunes; that I should be pointed out as a
+disappointed man, a subject for the pity of some, and the scorn and
+jestings of others. Rage and shame mingled with the keen agony of
+outraged feeling. 'I will not endure it,' I said, mentally, springing
+from my bed and crossing the chamber with a flushed brow and a strong
+step; 'never!' And I ground my teeth upon each other, while a fierce
+light seemed to break in upon my brain; it was the light of the
+Tempter's smile, and I almost laughed aloud as the horrible thought of
+suicide started before me. I felt that I might escape the ordeal of
+public scorn and pity; that I might bid the world and its falsehood
+defiance, and end, by one manly effort, the agony of an existence whose
+every breath was torment.
+
+"My resolution was fixed. 'I will never see another morrow!' I said,
+sternly, but with a calmness which almost astonished me. Indeed, I
+seemed gifted with a supernatural firmness, as I made my arrangements
+for the last day of suffering which I was to endure. A few friends had
+been invited to dine with me, and I prepared to meet them. They came at
+the hour appointed with smiling faces and warm and friendly greetings;
+and I received them as if nothing had happened, with even a more
+enthusiastic welcome than was my wont.
+
+"Oh! it is terrible to smile when the heart is breaking! to talk
+lightly and freely and mirthfully, when every feeling of the mind is
+wrung with unutterable agony; to mingle in the laugh and in the gay
+volleys of convivial fellowship,
+
+ 'With the difficult utterance of one
+ Whose heart is with an iron nerve put down.'
+
+"Yet all this I endured, hour after hour, until my friends departed and I
+had pressed their hands as at a common parting, while my heart whispered
+an everlasting farewell!
+
+"It was late when they left me. I walked out to look for the last time
+upon Nature in her exceeding beauty. I hardly acknowledged to myself
+that such was my purpose; but yet I did feel that it was so; and that I
+was taking an everlasting farewell of the beautiful things around me.
+The sun was just setting; and the hills, that rose like pillars of the
+blue horizon, were glowing with a light which was fast deserting the
+valleys. It was an evening of summer; everything was still; not a leaf
+stirred in the dark, overshadowing foliage; but, silent and beautiful as
+a picture, the wide scenery of rock and hill and woodland, stretched
+away before me; and, beautiful as it was, it seemed to possess a newness
+and depth of beauty beyond its ordinary appearance, as if to aggravate
+the pangs of the last, long farewell.
+
+"They do not err who believe that man has a sympathy with even inanimate
+Nature, deduced from a common origin; a chain of co-existence and
+affinity connecting the outward forms of natural objects with his own
+fearful and wonderful machinery; something, in short, manifested in his
+love of flowing waters, and soft green shadows, and pleasant blowing
+flowers, and in his admiration of the mountain, stretching away into
+heaven, sublimed and awful in its cloudy distance; the heave and swell
+of the infinite ocean; the thunder of the leaping cataract; and the
+onward rush of mighty rivers, which tells of its original source, and
+bears evidence of its kindred affinities. Nor was the dream of the
+ancient Chaldean 'all a dream.' The stars of heaven, the beauty and the
+glory above us, have their influences and their power, not evil and
+malignant and partial and irrevocable, but holy and tranquillizing and
+benignant, a moral influence, by which all may profit if they will do
+so. And I have often marvelled at the hard depravity of that human
+heart which could sanction a deed of violence and crime in the calm
+solitudes of Nature, and surrounded by the enduring evidences of an
+overruling Intelligence. I could conceive of crime, growing up rank and
+monstrous in the unwholesome atmosphere of the thronged city, amidst the
+taint of moral as well as physical pestilence, and surrounded only by
+man and the works of man. But there is something in the harmony and
+quiet of the natural world which presents a reproving antagonism to the
+fiercer passions of the human heart; an eye of solemn reprehension looks
+out from the still places of Nature, as if the Great Soul of the
+Universe had chosen the mute creations of his power to be the witnesses
+of the deeds done in the body, the researchers of the bosoms of men.
+
+"And then, even at that awful moment, I could feel the bland and gentle
+ministrations of Nature; I could feel the fever of my heart cooling, and
+a softer haze of melancholy stealing over the blackness of my despair;
+and the fierce passions which had distracted me giving place to the calm
+of a settled anguish, a profound sorrow, the quiet gloom of an
+overshadowing woe, in which love and hatred and wrong were swallowed up
+and lost. I no longer hated the world; but I felt that it had nothing
+for me; that I was no longer a part and portion of its harmonious
+elements; affliction had shut me out forever from the pale of human
+happiness and sympathy, and hope pointed only to the resting-place of
+the grave!
+
+"I stood steadily gazing at the setting sun. It touched and sat upon
+the hill-top like a great circle of fire. I had never before fully
+comprehended the feeling of the amiable but misguided Rousseau, who at
+his death-hour desired to be brought into the open air, that the last
+glance of his failing eye might drink in the glory of the sunset
+heavens, and the light of his great intellect and that of Nature go out
+together. For surely never did the Mexican idolater mark with deeper
+emotion the God of his worship, for the last time veiling his awful
+countenance, than did I, untainted by superstition, yet full of perfect
+love for the works of Infinite Wisdom, watch over the departure of the
+most glorious of them all. I felt, even to agony, the truth of these
+exquisite lines of the Milesian poet:
+
+ 'Blest power of sunshine, genial day!
+ What joy, what life is in thy ray!
+ To feel thee is such real bliss,
+ That, had the world no joy but this,
+ To sit in sunshine, calm and sweet,
+ It were a world too exquisite
+ For man to leave it for the gloom,
+ The dull, cold shadow of the tomb!'
+
+"Never shall I forget my sensations when the sun went down utterly from
+my sight. It was like receiving the last look of a dying friend. To
+others he might bring life and health and joy, on the morrow; but tome
+he would never rise. As this thought came over me, I felt a stifling
+sensation in my throat, tears started in my eyes, and my heart almost
+wavered from its purpose. But the bent bow had only relaxed for a
+single instant; it returned again to its strong and abiding tension.
+
+"I was alone in my chamber once more. A single lamp burned gloomily
+before me; and on the table at my side stood a glass of laudanum. I had
+prepared everything. I had written my last letter, and had now only to
+drink the fatal draught, and lie down to my last sleep. I heard the old
+village clock strike eleven. 'I may as well do it now as ever,' I said
+mentally, and my hand moved towards the glass. But my courage failed
+me; my hand shook, and some moments elapsed before I could sufficiently
+quiet my nerves to lift the glass containing the fatal liquid. The
+blood ran cold upon my heart, and my brain reeled, as again and again
+I lifted the poison to my closed lips. 'It must be done,' thought I,
+'I must drink it.' With a desperate effort I unlocked my clenched teeth
+and the deed was done!
+
+"'O God, have mercy upon me!' I murmured, as the empty glass fell from
+my hand. I threw myself upon the bed, and awaited the awful
+termination. An age of unutterable misery seemed crowded into a brief
+moment. All the events of my past life, a life, as it then seemed to
+me, made up of folly and crime, rose distinct before me, like accusing
+witnesses, as if the recording angel had unrolled to my view the full
+and black catalogue of my unnumbered sins:--
+
+ 'O'er the soul Winters of memory seemed to roll,
+ And gather, in that drop of time,
+ A life of pain, an age of crime.'
+
+"I felt that what I had done was beyond recall; and the Phantom of Death,
+as it drew nearer, wore an aspect darker and more terrible. I thought
+of the coffin, the shroud, and the still and narrow grave, into whose
+dumb and frozen solitude none but the gnawing worm intrudes. And then
+my thoughts wandered away into the vagueness and mystery of eternity, I
+was rushing uncalled for into the presence of a just and pure God, with
+a spirit unrepenting, unannealed! And I tried to pray and could not;
+for a heaviness, a dull strange torpor crept over me. Consciousness
+went out slowly. 'This is death,' thought I; yet I felt no pain,
+nothing save a weary drowsiness, against which I struggled in vain.
+
+"My next sensations were those of calmness, deep, ineffable, an
+unearthly quiet; a suspension or rather oblivion of every mental
+affliction; a condition of the mind betwixt the thoughts of wakefulness
+and the dreams of sleep. It seemed to me that the gulf between mind and
+matter had been passed over, and that I had entered upon a new
+existence. I had no memory, no hope, no sorrow; nothing but a dim
+consciousness of a pleasurable and tranquil being. Gradually, however,
+the delusion vanished. I was sensible of still wearing the fetters of
+the flesh, yet they galled no longer; the burden was lifted from my
+heart, it beat happily and calmly, as in childhood. As the stronger
+influences of my opiate (for I had really swallowed nothing more, as the
+druggist, suspecting from the incoherence of my language, that I was
+meditating some fearful purpose, furnished me with a harmless, though
+not ineffective draught) passed off, the events of the past came back to
+me. It was like the slow lifting of a curtain from a picture of which I
+was a mere spectator, about which I could reason calmly, and trace
+dispassionately its light and shadow. Having satisfied myself that I
+had been deceived in the quantity of opium I had taken, I became also
+convinced that I had at last discovered the great antidote for which
+philosophy had exhausted its resources, the fabled Lethe, the oblivion
+of human sorrow. The strong necessity of suicide had passed away; life,
+even for me, might be rendered tolerable by the sovereign panacea of
+opium, the only true minister to a mind diseased, the sought 'kalon'
+found.
+
+"From that day I have been habitually an opium eater. I am perfectly
+sensible that the constant use of the pernicious drug has impaired my
+health; but I cannot relinquish it. Some time since I formed a
+resolution to abandon it, totally and at once; but had not strength
+enough to carry it into practice. The very attempt to do so nearly
+drove me to madness. The great load of mental agony which had been
+lifted up and held aloof by the daily applied power of opium sank back
+upon my heart like a crushing weight. Then, too, my physical sufferings
+were extreme; an indescribable irritation, a general uneasiness
+tormented me incessantly. I can only think of it as a total
+disarrangement of the whole nervous system, the jarring of all the
+thousand chords of sensitiveness, each nerve having its own particular
+pain.--( Essay on the Effects of Opium, London, 1763.)
+
+"De Quincey, in his wild, metaphysical, and eloquent, yet, in many
+respects, fancy sketch, considers the great evil resulting from the use
+of opium to be the effect produced upon the mind during the hours of
+sleep, the fearful inquietude of unnatural dreams. My own dreams have
+been certainly of a different order from those which haunted me previous
+to my experience in opium eating. But I cannot easily believe that
+opium necessarily introduces a greater change in the mind's sleeping
+operations, than in those of its wakefulness.
+
+"At one period, indeed, while suffering under a general, nervous
+debility, from which I am even now but partially relieved, my troubled
+and broken sleep was overshadowed by what I can only express as
+'a horror of thick darkness.' There was nothing distinct or certain in
+my visions, all was clouded, vague, hideous; sounds faint and awful, yet
+unknown; the sweep of heavy wings, the hollow sound of innumerable
+footsteps, the glimpse of countless apparitions, and darkness falling
+like a great cloud from heaven.
+
+"I can scarcely give you an adequate idea of my situation in these
+dreams, without comparing it with that of the ancient Egyptians while
+suffering under the plague of darkness. I never read the awful
+description of this curse, without associating many of its horrors with
+those of my own experience.
+
+"'But they, sleeping the same sleep that night, which was indeed
+intolerable, and which came upon them out of the bottoms of inevitable
+hell,
+
+"'Were partly vexed with monstrous apparitions, and partly fainted; for
+a sudden fear and not looked for, came upon them.'
+
+"'For neither might the corner which held them keep them from fear; but
+noises, as of waters falling down, sounded about them, and sad visions
+appeared unto them, with heavy countenances.
+
+"'Whether it were a whistling wind, or a melodious voice of birds among
+the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of water running violently;
+
+"'Or, a terrible sound of stones cast down, or, a running that could not
+be seen, of skipping beasts, or a roaring voice of most savage wild
+beasts, or a rebounding echo from the hollow mountains: these things
+made them to swoon for fear.'--(Wisdom of Solomon, chapter xvii.)
+
+"That creative faculty of the eye, upon which Mr. De Quincey dwells so
+strongly, I have myself experienced. Indeed, it has been the principal
+cause of suffering which has connected itself with my habit of opium
+eating. It developed itself at first in a recurrence of the childish
+faculty of painting upon the darkness whatever suggested itself to the
+mind; anon, those figures which had before been called up only at will
+became the cause, instead of the effect, of the mind's employment; in
+other words, they came before me in the night-time, like real images,
+and independent of any previous volition of thought. I have often,
+after retiring to my bed, seen, looking through the thick wall of
+darkness round about me, the faces of those whom I had not known for
+years, nay, since childhood; faces, too, of the dead, called up, as it
+were, from the church-yard and the wilderness and the deep waters, and
+betraying nothing of the grave's terrible secrets. And in the same way,
+some of the more important personages I had read of, in history and
+romance, glided often before me, like an assembly of apparitions, each
+preserving, amidst the multitudinous combinations of my visions, his own
+individuality and peculiar characteristics.--(Vide Emanuel Count
+Swedenborg, Nicolai of Berlin's Account of Spectral Illusion, Edinburgh
+Phrenological Journal.)
+
+"These images were, as you may suppose, sufficiently annoying, yet they
+came and went without exciting any emotions of terror. But a change at
+length came over them, an awful distinctness and a semblance of reality,
+which, operating upon nerves weakened and diseased, shook the very
+depths of my spirit with a superstitious awe, and against which reason
+and philosophy, for a time, struggled in vain.
+
+"My mind had for some days been dwelling with considerable solicitude
+upon an intimate friend, residing in a distant city. I had heard that
+he was extremely ill, indeed, that his life was despaired of; and I may
+mention that at this period all my mind's operations were dilatory;
+there were no sudden emotions; passion seemed exhausted; and when once
+any new train of thought had been suggested, it gradually incorporated
+itself with those which had preceded it, until it finally became sole
+and predominant, just as certain plants of the tropical islands wind
+about and blend with and finally take the place of those of another
+species. And perhaps to this peculiarity of the mental economy, the
+gradual concentring of the mind in a channel, narrowing to that point of
+condensation where thought becomes sensible to sight as well as feeling,
+may be mainly attributed the vision I am about to describe.
+
+"I was lying in my bed, listless and inert; it was broad day, for the
+easterly light fell in strongly through the parted curtains. I felt,
+all at once, a strong curiosity, blended with an unaccountable dread, to
+look upon a small table which stood near the bedside. I felt certain of
+seeing something fearful, and yet I knew not what; there was an awe and
+a fascination upon me, more dreadful from their very vagueness. I lay
+for some time hesitating and actually trembling, until the agony of
+suspense became too strong for endurance. I opened my eyes and fixed
+them upon the dreaded object. Upon the table lay what seemed to me a
+corpse, wrapped about in the wintry habiliments of the grave, the corpse
+of my friend.
+
+ (William Hone, celebrated for his antiquarian researches, has given
+ a distinct and highly interesting account of spectral illusion, in
+ his own experience, in his Every Day Book. The artist Cellini has
+ made a similar statement.)
+
+"For a moment, the circumstances of time and place were forgotten; and
+the spectre seemed to me a natural reality, at which I might sorrow, but
+not wonder. The utter fallacy of this idea was speedily detected; and
+then I endeavored to consider the present vision, like those which had
+preceded it, a mere delusion, a part of the phenomena of opium eating.
+I accordingly closed my eyes for an instant, and then looked again in
+full expectation that the frightful object would no longer be visible.
+It was still there; the body lay upon its side; the countenance turned
+full towards me,--calm, quiet, even beautiful, but certainly that of
+death:
+
+ 'Ere yet Decay's effacing fingers
+ Had swept the lines where Beauty lingers'
+
+and the white brow, and its light shadowy hair, and the cold, still
+familiar features lay evident and manifest to the influx of the
+strengthening twilight. A cold agony crept over me; I buried my head in
+the bed-clothes, in a child-like fear, and when I again ventured to look
+up, the spectre had vanished. The event made a strong impression on my
+mind; and I can scarcely express the feeling of relief which was
+afforded, a few days after, by a letter from the identical friend in
+question, informing me of his recovery of health.
+
+"It would be a weary task, and one which you would no doubt thank me for
+declining, to detail the circumstances of a hundred similar visitations,
+most of which were, in fact, but different combinations of the same
+illusion. One striking exception I will mention, as it relates to some
+passages of my early history which you have already heard.
+
+"I have never seen Mrs. H since her marriage. Time, and the continued
+action of opium, deadening the old sensibilities of the heart and
+awakening new ones, have effected a wonderful change in my feelings
+towards her. Little as the confession may argue in favor of my early
+passion, I seldom think of her, save with a feeling very closely allied
+to indifference. Yet I have often seen her in my spectral illusions,
+young and beautiful as ever, but always under circumstances which formed
+a wide contrast between her spectral appearance and all my recollections
+of the real person. The spectral face, which I often saw looking in
+upon me, in my study, when the door was ajar, and visible only in the
+uncertain lamplight, or peering over me in the moonlight solitude of my
+bed-chamber, when I was just waking from sleep, was uniformly subject
+to, and expressive of, some terrible hate, or yet more terrible anguish.
+Its first appearance was startling in the extreme. It was the face of
+one of the fabled furies: the demon glared in the eye, the nostril was
+dilated, the pale lip compressed, and the brow bent and darkened; yet
+above all, and mingled with all, the supremacy of human beauty was
+manifest, as if the dream of Eastern superstition had been realized, and
+a fierce and foul spirit had sought out and animated into a fiendish
+existence some beautiful sleeper of the grave. The other expression of
+the countenance of the apparition, that of agony, I accounted for on
+rational principles. Some years ago I saw, and was deeply affected by,
+a series of paintings representing the tortures of a Jew in the Holy
+Inquisition; and the expression of pain in the countenance of the victim
+I at once recognized in that of the apparition, rendered yet more
+distressing by the feminine and beautiful features upon which it rested.
+
+"I am not naturally superstitious; but, shaken and clouded as my mind
+had been by the use of opium, I could not wholly divest it of fear when
+these phantoms beset me. Yet, on all other occasions, save that of
+their immediate presence, I found no difficulty in assigning their
+existence to a diseased state of the bodily organs, and a corresponding
+sympathy of the mind, rendering it capable of receiving and reflecting
+the false, fantastic, and unnatural images presented to it.
+
+ (One of our most celebrated medical writers considers spectral
+ illusion a disease, in which false perceptions take place in some
+ of the senses; thus, when the excitement of motion is produced in a
+ particular organ, that organ does not vibrate with the impression
+ made upon it, but communicates it to another part on which a
+ similar impression was formerly made. Nicolai states that he made
+ his illusion a source of philosophical amusement. The spectres
+ which haunted him came in the day time as well as the night, and
+ frequently when he was surrounded by his friends; the ideal images
+ mingling with the real ones, and visible only to himself. Bernard
+ Barton, the celebrated Quaker poet, describes an illusion of this
+ nature in a manner peculiarly striking:--
+
+ "I only knew thee as thou wert,
+ A being not of earth!
+ "I marvelled much they could not see
+ Thou comest from above
+ And often to myself I said,
+ 'How can they thus approach the dead?'
+
+ "But though all these, with fondness warm,
+ Said welcome o'er and o'er,
+ Still that expressive shade or form
+ Was silent, as before!
+ And yet its stillness never brought
+ To them one hesitating thought."
+
+"I recollected that the mode of exorcism which was successfully adopted
+by Nicolai of Berlin, when haunted by similar fantasies, was a resort to
+the simple process of blood-letting. I accordingly made trial of it,
+but without the desired effect. Fearful, from the representations of my
+physicians, and from some of my own sensations, that the almost daily
+recurrence of my visions might ultimately lead to insanity, I came to
+the resolution of reducing my daily allowance of opium; and, confining
+myself, with the most rigid pertinacity, to a quantity not exceeding one
+third of what I had formerly taken, I became speedily sensible of a most
+essential change in my condition. A state of comparative health, mental
+and physical with calmer sleep and a more natural exercise of the organs
+of vision, succeeded. I have made many attempts at a further reduction,
+but have been uniformly unsuccessful, owing to the extreme and almost
+unendurable agony occasioned thereby.
+
+"The peculiar creative faculty of the eye, the fearful gift of a
+diseased vision, still remains, but materially weakened and divested of
+its former terrors. My mind has recovered in some degree its shaken and
+suspended faculties. But happiness, the buoyant and elastic happiness
+of earlier days, has departed forever. Although, apparently, a
+practical disciple of Behmen, I am no believer in his visionary creed.
+Quiet is not happiness; nor can the absence of all strong and painful
+emotion compensate for the weary heaviness of inert existence,
+passionless, dreamless, changeless. The mind requires the excitement of
+active and changeful thought; the intellectual fountain, like the pool
+of Bethesda, has a more healthful influence when its deep waters are
+troubled. There may, indeed, be happiness in those occasional 'sabbaths
+of the soul,' when calmness, like a canopy, overshadows it, and the
+mind, for a brief season, eddies quietly round and round, instead of
+sweeping onward; but none can exist in the long and weary stagnation of
+feeling, the silent, the monotonous, neverending calm, broken by neither
+hope nor fear."
+
+
+
+
+THE PROSELYTES. (1833)
+
+THE student sat at his books. All the day he had been poring over an
+old and time-worn volume; and the evening found him still absorbed in
+its contents. It was one of that interminable series of controversial
+volumes, containing the theological speculations of the ancient fathers
+of the Church. With the patient perseverance so characteristic of his
+countrymen, he was endeavoring to detect truth amidst the numberless
+inconsistencies of heated controversy; to reconcile jarring
+propositions; to search out the thread of scholastic argument amidst
+the rant of prejudice and the sallies of passion, and the coarse
+vituperations of a spirit of personal bitterness, but little in
+accordance with the awful gravity of the question at issue.
+
+Wearied and baffled in his researches, he at length closed the volume,
+and rested his care-worn forehead upon his hand. "What avail," he said,
+"these long and painful endeavors, these midnight vigils, these weary
+studies, before which heart and flesh are failing? What have I gained?
+I have pushed my researches wide and far; my life has been one long and
+weary lesson; I have shut out from me the busy and beautiful world; I
+have chastened every youthful impulse; and at an age when the heart
+should be lightest and the pulse the freest, I am grave and silent and
+sorrowful,' and the frost of a premature age is gathering around my
+heart. Amidst these ponderous tomes, surrounded by the venerable
+receptacles of old wisdom, breathing, instead of the free air of heaven,
+the sepulchral dust of antiquity, I have become assimilated to the
+objects around me; my very nature has undergone a metamorphosis of which
+Pythagoras never dreamed. I am no longer a reasoning creature, looking
+at everything within the circle of human investigation with a clear and
+self-sustained vision, but the cheated follower of metaphysical
+absurdities, a mere echo of scholastic subtilty. God knows that my aim
+has been a lofty and pure one, that I have buried myself in this living
+tomb, and counted the health of this His feeble and outward image as
+nothing in comparison with that of the immortal and inward
+representation and shadow of His own Infinite Mind; that I have toiled
+through what the world calls wisdom, the lore of the old fathers and
+time-honored philosophy, not for the dream of power and gratified
+ambition, not for the alchemist's gold or life-giving elixir, but with
+an eye single to that which I conceived to be the most fitting object of
+a godlike spirit, the discovery of Truth,--truth perfect and unclouded,
+truth in its severe and perfect beauty, truth as it sits in awe and
+holiness in the presence of its Original and Source!
+
+"Was my aim too lofty? It cannot be; for my Creator has given me a
+spirit which would spurn a meaner one. I have studied to act in
+accordance with His will; yet have I felt all along like one walking in
+blindness. I have listened to the living champions of the Church; I
+have pored over the remains of the dead; but doubt and heavy darkness
+still rest upon my pathway. I find contradiction where I had looked for
+harmony; ambiguity where I had expected clearness; zeal taking the place
+of reason; anger, intolerance, personal feuds and sectarian bitterness,
+interminable discussions and weary controversies; while infinite Truth,
+for which I have been seeking, lies still beyond, or seen, if at all,
+only by transient and unsatisfying glimpses, obscured and darkened by
+miserable subtilties and cabalistic mysteries."
+
+He was interrupted by the entrance of a servant with a letter. The
+student broke its well-known seal, and read, in a delicate chirography,
+the following words:--
+
+"DEAR ERNEST,--A stranger from the English Kingdom, of gentle birth and
+education, hath visited me at the request of the good Princess Elizabeth
+of the Palatine. He is a preacher of the new faith, a zealous and
+earnest believer in the gifts of the Spirit, but not like John de
+Labadie or the lady Schurmans.
+
+ (J. de Labadie, Anna Maria Schurmans, and others, dissenters from
+ the French Protestants, established themselves in Holland, 1670.)
+
+"He speaks like one sent on a message from heaven, a message of wisdom
+and salvation. Come, Ernest, and see him; for he hath but a brief hour
+to tarry with us. Who knoweth but that this stranger may be
+commissioned to lead us to that which we have so long and anxiously
+sought for,--the truth as it is in God.
+ "LEONORA."
+
+"Now may Heaven bless the sweet enthusiast for this interruption of my
+bitter reflections!" said the student, in the earnest tenderness of
+impassioned feeling. "She knows how gladly I shall obey her summons;
+she knows how readily I shall forsake the dogmas of our wisest
+schoolmen, to obey the slightest wishes of a heart pure and generous as
+hers."
+
+He passed hastily through one of the principal streets of the city to
+the dwelling of the lady, Eleonora.
+
+In a large and gorgeous apartment sat the Englishman, his plain and
+simple garb contrasting strongly with the richness and luxury around
+him. He was apparently quite young, and of a tall and commanding
+figure. His countenance was calm and benevolent; it bore no traces of
+passion; care had not marked it; there was a holy serenity in its
+expression, which seemed a token of that inward "peace which passeth all
+understanding."
+
+"And this is thy friend, Eleonora?" said the stranger, as he offered his
+hand to Ernest. "I hear," he said, addressing the latter, "thou hast
+been a hard student and a lover of philosophy."
+
+"I am but a humble inquirer after Truth," replied Ernest.
+
+"From whence hast thou sought it?"
+
+"From the sacred volume, from the lore of the old fathers, from the
+fountains of philosophy, and from my own brief experience of human
+life."
+
+"And hast thou attained thy object?"
+
+"Alas, no!" replied the student; "I have thus far toiled in vain."
+
+"Ah! thus must the children of this world ever toil, wearily, wearily,
+but in vain. We grasp at shadows, we grapple with the fashionless air,
+we walk in the blindness of our own vain imaginations, we compass heaven
+and earth for our objects, and marvel that we find them not. The truth
+which is of God, the crown of wisdom, the pearl of exceeding price,
+demands not this vain-glorious research; easily to be entreated, it
+lieth within the reach of all. The eye of the humblest spirit may
+discern it. For He who respecteth not the persons of His children hath
+not set it afar off, unapproachable save to the proud and lofty; but
+hath made its refreshing fountains to murmur, as it were, at the very
+door of our hearts. But in the encumbering hurry of the world we
+perceive it not; in the noise of our daily vanities we hear not the
+waters of Siloah which go softly. We look widely abroad; we lose
+ourselves in vain speculation; we wander in the crooked paths of those
+who have gone before us; yea, in the language of one of the old fathers,
+we ask the earth and it replieth not, we question the sea and its
+inhabitants, we turn to the sun, and the moon, and the stars of heaven,
+and they may not satisfy us; we ask our eyes, and they cannot see, and
+our ears, and they cannot hear; we turn to books, and they delude us; we
+seek philosophy, and no response cometh from its dead and silent
+learning.
+
+ (August. Soliloq. Cap. XXXI. "Interrogavi Terram," etc.)
+
+"It is not in the sky above, nor in the air around, nor in the earth
+beneath; it is in our own spirits, it lives within us; and if we would
+find it, like the lost silver of the woman of the parable, we must look
+at home, to the inward temple, which the inward eye discovereth, and
+wherein the spirit of all truth is manifested. The voice of that spirit
+is still and small, and the light about it shineth in darkness. But
+truth is there; and if we seek it in low humility, in a patient waiting
+upon its author, with a giving up of our natural pride of knowledge, a
+seducing of self, a quiet from all outward endeavor, it will assuredly
+be revealed and fully made known. For as the angel rose of old from the
+altar of Manoah even so shall truth arise from the humbling sacrifice of
+self-knowledge and human vanity, in all its eternal and ineffable
+beauty.
+
+"Seekest thou, like Pilate, after truth? Look thou within. The holy
+principle is there; that in whose light the pure hearts of all time have
+rejoiced. It is 'the great light of ages' of which Pythagoras speaks,
+the 'good spirit' of Socrates; the 'divine mind' of Anaxagoras; the
+'perfect principle' of Plato; the 'infallible and immortal law, and
+divine power of reason' of Philo. It is the 'unbegotten principle and
+source of all light,' whereof Timmus testifieth; the 'interior guide of
+the soul and everlasting foundation of virtue,' spoken of by Plutarch.
+Yea, it was the hope and guide of those virtuous Gentiles, who, doing by
+nature the things contained in the law, became a law unto themselves.
+
+"Look to thyself. Turn thine eye inward. Heed not the opinion of the
+world. Lean not upon the broken reed of thy philosophy, thy verbal
+orthodoxy, thy skill in tongues, thy knowledge of the Fathers. Remember
+that truth was seen by the humble fishermen of Galilee, and overlooked
+by the High Priest of the Temple, by the Rabbi and the Pharisee. Thou
+canst not hope to reach it by the metaphysics of Fathers, Councils,
+Schoolmen, and Universities. It lies not in the high places of human
+learning; it is in the silent sanctuary of thy own heart; for He, who
+gave thee an immortal soul, hath filled it with a portion of that truth
+which is the image of His own unapproachable light. The voice of that
+truth is within thee; heed thou its whisper. A light is kindled in thy
+soul, which, if thou carefully heedest it, shall shine more and more
+even unto the perfect day."
+
+The stranger paused, and the student melted into tears. "Stranger!" he
+said, "thou hast taken a weary weight from my heart, and a heavy veil
+from my eyes. I feel that thou hast revealed a wisdom which is not of
+this world."
+
+"Nay, I am but a humble instrument in the hand of Him who is the
+fountain of all truth, and the beginning and the end of all wisdom. May
+the message which I have borne thee be sanctified to thy well-being."
+
+"Oh, heed him, Ernest!" said the lady. "It is the holy truth which has
+been spoken. Let us rejoice in this truth, and, forgetting the world,
+live only for it."
+
+"Oh, may He who watcheth over all His children keep thee in faith of thy
+resolution!" said the Preacher, fervently. "Humble yourselves to
+receive instruction, and it shall be given you. Turn away now in your
+youth from the corrupting pleasures of the world, heed not its hollow
+vanities, and that peace which is not such as the world giveth, the
+peace of God which passeth all understanding, shall be yours. Yet, let
+not yours be the world's righteousness, the world's peace, which shuts
+itself up in solitude. Encloister not the body, but rather shut up the
+soul from sin. Live in the world, but overcome it: lead a life of
+purity in the face of its allurements: learn, from the holy principle of
+truth within you, to do justly in the sight of its Author, to meet
+reproach without anger, to live without offence, to love those that
+offend you, to visit the widow and the fatherless, and keep yourselves
+unspotted from the world."
+
+"Eleonora!" said the humbled student, "truth is plain before us; can we
+follow its teachings? Alas! canst thou, the daughter of a noble house,
+forget the glory of thy birth, and, in the beauty of thy years, tread in
+that lowly path, which the wisdom of the world accounteth foolishness?"
+
+"Yes, Ernest, rejoicingly can I do it!" said the lady; and the bright
+glow of a lofty purpose gave a spiritual expression to her majestic
+beauty. "Glory to God in the highest, that He hath visited us in
+mercy!"
+
+"Lady!" said the Preacher, "the day-star of truth has arisen in thy
+heart; follow thou its light even unto salvation. Live an harmonious
+life to the curious make and frame of thy creation; and let the beauty
+of thy person teach thee to beautify thy mind with holiness, the
+ornament of the beloved of God. Remember that the King of Zion's
+daughter is all-glorious within; and if thy soul excel, thy body will
+only set off the lustre of thy mind. Let not the spirit of this world,
+its cares and its many vanities, its fashions and discourse, prevail
+over the civility of thy nature. Remember that sin brought the first
+coat, and thou wilt have little reason to be proud of dress or the
+adorning of thy body. Seek rather the enduring ornament of a meek and
+quiet spirit, the beauty and the purity of the altar of God's temple,
+rather than the decoration of its outward walls. For, as the Spartan
+monarch said of old to his daughter, when he restrained her from wearing
+the rich dresses of Sicily, 'Thou wilt seem more lovely to me without
+them,' so shalt thou seem, in thy lowliness and humility, more lovely in
+the sight of Heaven and in the eyes of the pure of earth. Oh, preserve
+in their freshness thy present feelings, wait in humble resignation and
+in patience, even if it be all thy days, for the manifestations of Him
+who as a father careth for all His children."
+
+"I will endeavor, I will endeavor!" said the lady, humbled in spirit,
+and in tears.
+
+The stranger took the hand of each. "Farewell!" he said, "I must needs
+depart, for I have much work before me. God's peace be with you; and
+that love be around you, which has been to me as the green pasture and
+the still water, the shadow in a weary land."
+
+And the stranger went his way; but the lady and her lover, in all their
+after life, and amidst the trials and persecutions which they were
+called to suffer in the cause of truth, remembered with joy and
+gratitude the instructions of the pure-hearted and eloquent William
+Penn.
+
+
+
+
+DAVID MATSON.
+
+ Published originally in Our Young Folks, 1865.
+
+WHO of my young friends have read the sorrowful story of "Enoch Arden,"
+so sweetly and simply told by the great English poet? It is the story
+of a man who went to sea, leaving behind a sweet young wife and little
+daughter. He was cast away on a desert island, where he remained
+several years, when he was discovered and taken off by a passing vessel.
+Coming back to his native town, he found his wife married to an old
+playmate, a good man, rich and honored, and with whom she was living
+happily. The poor man, unwilling to cause her pain and perplexity,
+resolved not to make himself known to her, and lived and died alone.
+The poem has reminded me of a very similar story of my own New England
+neighborhood, which I have often heard, and which I will try to tell,
+not in poetry, like Alfred Tennyson's, but in my own poor prose. I can
+assure my readers that in its main particulars it is a true tale.
+
+One bright summer morning, not more than fourscore years ago, David
+Matson, with his young wife and his two healthy, barefooted boys, stood
+on the bank of the river near their dwelling. They were waiting for
+Pelatiah Curtis to come round the point with his wherry, and take the
+husband and father to the port, a few miles below. The Lively Turtle
+was about to sail on a voyage to Spain, and David was to go in her as
+mate. They stood there in the level morning sunshine talking
+cheerfully; but had you been near enough, you could have seen tears in
+Anna Matson's blue eyes, for she loved her husband and knew there was
+always danger on the sea. And David's bluff, cheery voice trembled a
+little now and then, for the honest sailor loved his snug home on the
+Merrimac, with the dear wife and her pretty boys. But presently the
+wherry came alongside, and David was just stepping into it, when he
+turned back to kiss his wife and children once more.
+
+"In with you, man," said Pelatiah Curtis. "There is no time for kissing
+and such fooleries when the tide serves."
+
+And so they parted. Anna and the boys went back to their home, and
+David to the Port, whence he sailed off in the Lively Turtle. And
+months passed, autumn followed summer, and winter the autumn, and then
+spring came, and anon it was summer on the river-side, and he did not
+come back. And another year passed, and then the old sailors and
+fishermen shook their heads solemnly, and, said that the Lively Turtle
+was a lost ship, and would never come back to port. And poor Anna had
+her bombazine gown dyed black, and her straw bonnet trimmed in mourning
+ribbons, and thenceforth she was known only as the Widow Matson.
+
+And how was it all this time with David himself?
+
+Now you must know that the Mohammedan people of Algiers and Tripoli, and
+Mogadore and Sallee, on the Barbary coast, had been for a long time in
+the habit of fitting out galleys and armed boats to seize upon the
+merchant vessels of Christian nations, and make slaves of their crews
+and passengers, just as men calling themselves Christians in America
+were sending vessels to Africa to catch black slaves for their
+plantations. The Lively Turtle fell into the hands of one of these sea-
+robbers, and the crew were taken to Algiers, and sold in the market
+place as slaves, poor David Matson among the rest.
+
+When a boy he had learned the trade of ship-carpenter with his father on
+the Merrimac; and now he was set to work in the dock-yards. His master,
+who was naturally a kind man, did not overwork him. He had daily his
+three loaves of bread, and when his clothing was worn out, its place was
+supplied by the coarse cloth of wool and camel's hair woven by the
+Berber women. Three hours before sunset he was released from work, and
+Friday, which is the Mohammedan Sabhath, was a day of entire rest. Once
+a year, at the season called Ramadan, he was left at leisure for a whole
+week. So time went on,--days, weeks, months, and years. His dark hair
+became gray. He still dreamed of his old home on the Merrimac, and of
+his good Anna and the boys. He wondered whether they yet lived, what
+they thought of him, and what they were doing. The hope of ever seeing
+them again grew fainter and fainter, and at last nearly died out; and he
+resigned himself to his fate as a slave for life.
+
+But one day a handsome middle-aged gentleman, in the dress of one of his
+own countrymen, attended by a great officer of the Dey, entered the
+ship-yard, and called up before him the American captives. The stranger
+was none other than Joel Barlow, Commissioner of the United States to
+procure the liberation of slaves belonging to that government. He took
+the men by the hand as they came up, and told them that they were free.
+As you might expect, the poor fellows were very grateful; some laughed,
+some wept for joy, some shouted and sang, and threw up their caps, while
+others, with David Matson among them, knelt down on the chips, and
+thanked God for the great deliverance.
+
+"This is a very affecting scene," said the commissioner, wiping his
+eyes. "I must keep the impression of it for my 'Columbiad';" and
+drawing out his tablet, he proceeded to write on the spot an apostrophe
+to Freedom, which afterwards found a place in his great epic.
+
+David Matson had saved a little money during his captivity by odd jobs
+and work on holidays. He got a passage to Malaga, where he bought a
+nice shawl for his wife and a watch for each of his boys. He then went
+to the quay, where an American ship was lying just ready to sail for
+Boston.
+
+Almost the first man he saw on board was Pelatiah Curtis, who had rowed
+him down to the port seven years before. He found that his old neighbor
+did not know him, so changed was he with his long beard and Moorish
+dress, whereupon, without telling his name, he began to put questions
+about his old home, and finally asked him if he knew a Mrs. Matson.
+
+"I rather think I do," said Pelatiah; "she's my wife."
+
+"Your wife!" cried the other. "She is mine before God and man. I am
+David Matson, and she is the mother of my children."
+
+"And mine too!" said Pelatiah. "I left her with a baby in her arms.
+If you are David Matson, your right to her is outlawed; at any rate she
+is mine, and I am not the man to give her up."
+
+"God is great!" said poor David Matson, unconsciously repeating the
+familiar words of Moslem submission. "His will be done. I loved her,
+but I shall never see her again. Give these, with my blessing, to the
+good woman and the boys," and he handed over, with a sigh, the little
+bundle containing the gifts for his wife and children.
+
+He shook hands with his rival. "Pelatiah," he said, looking back as he
+left the ship, "be kind to Anna and my boys."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir!" responded the sailor in a careless tone. He watched the
+poor man passing slowly up the narrow street until out of sight. "It's
+a hard case for old David," he said, helping himself to a fresh quid of
+tobacco, "but I 'm glad I 've seen the last of him."
+
+When Pelatiah Curtis reached home he told Anna the story of her husband
+and laid his gifts in her lap. She did not shriek nor faint, for she
+was a healthy woman with strong nerves; but she stole away by herself
+and wept bitterly. She lived many years after, but could never be
+persuaded to wear the pretty shawl which the husband of her youth had
+sent as his farewell gift. There is, however, a tradition that, in
+accordance with her dying wish, it was wrapped about her poor old
+shoulders in the coffin, and buried with her.
+
+The little old bull's-eye watch, which is still in the possession of one
+of her grandchildren, is now all that remains to tell of David Matson,--
+the lost man.
+
+
+
+
+THE FISH I DID N'T CATCH.
+
+ Published originally in The Little Pilgrim, Philadelphia, 1843.
+
+OUR old homestead (the house was very old for a new country, having been
+built about the time that the Prince of, Orange drove out James the
+Second) nestled under a long range of hills which stretched off to the
+west. It was surrounded by woods in all directions save to the
+southeast, where a break in the leafy wall revealed a vista of low green
+meadows, picturesque with wooded islands and jutting capes of upland.
+Through these, a small brook, noisy enough as it foamed, rippled, and
+laughed down its rocky falls by our gardenside, wound, silently and
+scarcely visible, to a still larger stream, known as the Country Brook.
+This brook in its turn, after doing duty at two or three saw and grist
+mills, the clack of which we could hear in still days across the
+intervening woodlands, found its way to the great river, and the river
+took it up and bore it down to the great sea.
+
+I have not much reason for speaking well of these meadows, or rather
+bogs, for they were wet most of the year; but in the early days they
+were highly prized by the settlers, as they furnished natural mowing
+before the uplands could be cleared of wood and stones and laid down to
+grass. There is a tradition that the hay-harvesters of two adjoining
+towns quarrelled about a boundary question, and fought a hard battle one
+summer morning in that old time, not altogether bloodless, but by no
+means as fatal as the fight between the rival Highland clans, described
+by Scott in "The Fair Maid of Perth." I used to wonder at their folly,
+when I was stumbling over the rough hassocks, and sinking knee-deep in
+the black mire, raking the sharp sickle-edged grass which we used to
+feed out to the young cattle in midwinter when the bitter cold gave them
+appetite for even such fodder. I had an almost Irish hatred of snakes,
+and these meadows were full of them,--striped, green, dingy water-
+snakes, and now and then an ugly spotted adder by no means pleasant to
+touch with bare feet. There were great black snakes, too, in the ledges
+of the neighboring knolls; and on one occasion in early spring I found
+myself in the midst of a score at least of them,--holding their wicked
+meeting of a Sabbath morning on the margin of a deep spring in the
+meadows. One glimpse at their fierce shining beads in the sunshine, as
+they roused themselves at my approach, was sufficient to send me at full
+speed towards the nearest upland. The snakes, equally scared, fled in
+the same direction; and, looking back, I saw the dark monsters following
+close at my heels, terrible as the Black Horse rebel regiment at Bull
+Run. I had, happily, sense enough left to step aside and let the ugly
+troop glide into the bushes.
+
+Nevertheless, the meadows had their redeeming points. In spring
+mornings the blackbirds and bobolinks made them musical with songs; and
+in the evenings great bullfrogs croaked and clamored; and on summer
+nights we loved to watch the white wreaths of fog rising and drifting in
+the moonlight like troops of ghosts, with the fireflies throwing up ever
+and anon signals of their coming. But the Brook was far more
+attractive, for it had sheltered bathing-places, clear and white sanded,
+and weedy stretches, where the shy pickerel loved to linger, and deep
+pools, where the stupid sucker stirred the black mud with his fins. I
+had followed it all the way from its birthplace among the pleasant New
+Hampshire hills, through the sunshine of broad, open meadows, and under
+the shadow of thick woods. It was, for the most part, a sober, quiet
+little river; but at intervals it broke into a low, rippling laugh over
+rocks and trunks of fallen trees. There had, so tradition said, once
+been a witch-meeting on its banks, of six little old women in short,
+sky-blue cloaks; and if a drunken teamster could be credited, a ghost
+was once seen bobbing for eels under Country Bridge. It ground our corn
+and rye for us, at its two grist-mills; and we drove our sheep to it for
+their spring washing, an anniversary which was looked forward to with
+intense delight, for it was always rare fun for the youngsters.
+Macaulay has sung,--
+
+ "That year young lads in Umbro
+ Shall plunge the struggling sheep;"
+
+and his picture of the Roman sheep-washing recalled, when we read it,
+similar scenes in the Country Brook. On its banks we could always find
+the earliest and the latest wild flowers, from the pale blue, three-
+lobed hepatica, and small, delicate wood-anemone, to the yellow bloom of
+the witch-hazel burning in the leafless October woods.
+
+Yet, after all, I think the chief attraction of the Brook to my brother
+and myself was the fine fishing it afforded us. Our bachelor uncle who
+lived with us (there has always been one of that unfortunate class in
+every generation of our family) was a quiet, genial man, much given to
+hunting and fishing; and it was one of the great pleasures of our young
+life to accompany him on his expeditions to Great Hill, Brandy-brow
+Woods, the Pond, and, best of all, to the Country Brook. We were quite
+willing to work hard in the cornfield or the haying-lot to finish the
+necessary day's labor in season for an afternoon stroll through the
+woods and along the brookside. I remember my first fishing excursion as
+if it were but yesterday. I have been happy many times in my life, but
+never more intensely so than when I received that first fishing-pole
+from my uncle's hand, and trudged off with him through the woods and
+meadows. It was a still sweet day of early summer; the long afternoon
+shadows of the trees lay cool across our path; the leaves seemed
+greener, the flowers brighter, the birds merrier, than ever before.
+My uncle, who knew by long experience where were the best haunts of
+pickerel, considerately placed me at the most favorable point. I threw
+out my line as I had so often seen others, and waited anxiously for a
+bite, moving the bait in rapid jerks on the surface of the water in
+imitation of the leap of a frog. Nothing came of it. "Try again," said
+my uncle. Suddenly the bait sank out of sight. "Now for it," thought
+I; "here is a fish at last." I made a strong pull, and brought up a
+tangle of weeds. Again and again I cast out my line with aching arms,
+and drew it back empty. I looked to my uncle appealingly. "Try once
+more," he said. "We fishermen must have patience."
+
+Suddenly something tugged at my line and swept off with it into deep
+water. Jerking it up, I saw a fine pickerel wriggling in the sun.
+"Uncle!" I cried, looking back in uncontrollable excitement, "I've got a
+fish!" "Not yet," said my uncle. As he spoke there was a plash in the
+water; I caught the arrowy gleam of a scared fish shooting into the
+middle of the stream; my hook hung empty from the line. I had lost my
+prize.
+
+We are apt to speak of the sorrows of childhood as trifles in comparison
+with those of grown-up people; but we may depend upon it the young folks
+don't agree with us. Our griefs, modified and restrained by reason,
+experience, and self-respect, keep the proprieties, and, if possible,
+avoid a scene; but the sorrow of childhood, unreasoning and all-
+absorbing, is a complete abandonment to the passion. The doll's nose is
+broken, and the world breaks up with it; the marble rolls out of sight,
+and the solid globe rolls off with the marble.
+
+So, overcome by my great and bitter disappointment, I sat down on the
+nearest hassock, and for a time refused to be comforted, even by my
+uncle's assurance that there were more fish in the brook. He refitted
+my bait, and, putting the pole again in my hands, told me to try my luck
+once more.
+
+"But remember, boy," he said, with his shrewd smile, "never brag of
+catching a fish until he is on dry ground. I've seen older folks doing
+that in more ways than one, and so making fools of themselves. It 's no
+use to boast of anything until it 's done, nor then either, for it
+speaks for itself."
+
+How often since I have been reminded of the fish that I did not catch!
+When I hear people boasting of a work as yet undone, and trying to
+anticipate the credit which belongs only to actual achievement, I call
+to mind that scene by the brookside, and the wise caution of my uncle in
+that particular instance takes the form of a proverb of universal
+application: "Never brag of your fish before you catch him."
+
+
+
+
+YANKEE GYPSIES.
+
+ "Here's to budgets, packs, and wallets; Here's to all the wandering
+ train."
+ BURNS.
+
+I CONFESS it, I am keenly sensitive to "skyey influences." I profess no
+indifference to the movements of that capricious old gentleman known as
+the clerk of the weather. I cannot conceal my interest in the behavior
+of that patriarchal bird whose wooden similitude gyrates on the church
+spire. Winter proper is well enough. Let the thermometer go to zero if
+it will; so much the better, if thereby the very winds are frozen and
+unable to flap their stiff wings. Sounds of bells in the keen air,
+clear, musical, heart-inspiring; quick tripping of fair moccasined feet
+on glittering ice pavements; bright eyes glancing above the uplifted
+muff like a sultana's behind the folds of her _yashmac_; schoolboys
+coasting down street like mad Greenlanders; the cold brilliance of
+oblique sunbeams flashing back from wide surfaces of glittering snow or
+blazing upon ice jewelry of tree and roof. There is nothing in all this
+to complain of. A storm of summer has its redeeming sublimities,--its
+slow, upheaving mountains of cloud glooming in the western horizon like
+new-created volcanoes, veined with fire, shattered by exploding
+thunders. Even the wild gales of the equinox have their varieties,
+--sounds of wind-shaken woods and waters, creak and clatter of sign and
+casement, hurricane puffs and down-rushing rain-spouts. But this dull,
+dark autumn day of thaw and rain, when the very clouds seem too
+spiritless and languid to storm outright or take themselves out of the
+way of fair weather; wet beneath and above; reminding one of that
+rayless atmosphere of Dante's Third Circle, where the infernal
+Priessnitz administers his hydropathic torment,--
+
+ "A heavy, cursed, and relentless drench,--
+ The land it soaks is putrid;"
+
+or rather, as everything animate and inanimate is seething in warm mist,
+suggesting the idea that Nature, grown old and rheumatic, is trying the
+efficacy of a Thompsonian steam-box on a grand scale; no sounds save the
+heavy plash of muddy feet on the pavements; the monotonous melancholy
+drip from trees and roofs; the distressful gurgling of waterducts,
+swallowing the dirty amalgam of the gutters; a dim, leaden-colored
+horizon of only a few yards in diameter, shutting down about one, beyond
+which nothing is visible save in faint line or dark projection; the
+ghost of a church spire or the eidolon of a chimney-pot. He who can
+extract pleasurable emotions from the alembic of such a day has a trick
+of alchemy with which I am wholly unacquainted.
+
+Hark! a rap at my door. Welcome anybody just now. One gains nothing by
+attempting to shut out the sprites of the weather. They come in at the
+keyhole; they peer through the dripping panes; they insinuate themselves
+through the crevices of the casement, or plump down chimney astride of
+the rain-drops.
+
+I rise and throw open the door. A tall, shambling, loose-jointed
+figure; a pinched, shrewd face, sun-browned and wind-dried; small,
+quick-winking black eyes. There he stands, the water dripping from his
+pulpy hat and ragged elbows.
+
+I speak to him, but he returns no answer. With a dumb show of misery,
+quite touching, he hands me a soiled piece of parchment, whereon I read
+what purports to be a melancholy account of shipwreck and disaster, to
+the particular detriment, loss, and damnification of one Pietro Frugoni,
+who is, in consequence, sorely in want of the alms of all charitable
+Christian persons, and who is, in short, the bearer of this veracious
+document, duly certified and indorsed by an Italian consul in one of our
+Atlantic cities, of a high-sounding, but to Yankee organs
+unpronounceable name.
+
+Here commences a struggle. Every man, the Mohammedans tell us, has two
+attendant angels,--the good one on his right shoulder, the bad on his
+left. "Give," says Benevolence, as with some difficulty I fish up a
+small coin from the depths of my pocket. "Not a cent," says selfish
+Prudence; and I drop it from my fingers. "Think," says the good angel,
+"of the poor stranger in a strange land, just escaped from the terrors
+of the sea-storm, in which his little property has perished, thrown
+half-naked and helpless on our shores, ignorant of our language, and
+unable to find employment suited to his capacity." "A vile impostor!"
+replies the lefthand sentinel. "His paper, purchased from one of those
+ready-writers in New York who manufacture beggar-credentials at the low
+price of one dollar per copy, with earthquakes, fires, or shipwrecks, to
+suit customers."
+
+Amidst this confusion of tongues I take another survey of my visitant.
+Ha! a light dawns upon me. That shrewd old face, with its sharp,
+winking eyes, is no stranger to me. Pietro Frugoni, I have seen thee
+before. Si, signor, that face of thine has looked at me over a dirty
+white neckcloth, with the corners of that cunning mouth drawn downwards,
+and those small eyes turned up in sanctimonious gravity, while thou wast
+offering to a crowd of halfgrown boys an extemporaneous exhortation in
+the capacity of a travelling preacher. Have I not seen it peering out
+from under a blanket, as that of a poor Penobscot Indian, who had lost
+the use of his hands while trapping on the Madawaska? Is it not the
+face of the forlorn father of six small children, whom the "marcury
+doctors" had "pisened" and crippled? Did it not belong to that down-
+East unfortunate who had been out to the "Genesee country" and got the
+"fevern-nager," and whose hand shook so pitifully when held out to
+receive my poor gift? The same, under all disguises,--Stephen Leathers,
+of Barrington,--him, and none other! Let me conjure him into his own
+likeness:--
+
+"Well, Stephen, what news from old Barrington?"
+
+"Oh, well, I thought I knew ye," he answers, not the least disconcerted.
+"How do you do? and how's your folks? All well, I hope. I took this
+'ere paper, you see, to help a poor furriner, who couldn't make himself
+understood any more than a wild goose. I thought I 'd just start him
+for'ard a little. It seemed a marcy to do it."
+
+Well and shiftily answered, thou ragged Proteus. One cannot be angry
+with such a fellow. I will just inquire into the present state of his
+Gospel mission and about the condition of his tribe on the Penobscot;
+and it may be not amiss to congratulate him on the success of the steam-
+doctors in sweating the "pisen" of the regular faculty out of him. But
+he evidently has no'wish to enter into idle conversation. Intent upon
+his benevolent errand, he is already clattering down stairs.
+Involuntarily I glance out of the window just in season to catch a
+single glimpse of him ere he is swallowed up in the mist.
+
+He has gone; and, knave as he is, I can hardly help exclaiming, "Luck go
+with him!" He has broken in upon the sombre train of my thoughts and
+called up before me pleasant and grateful recollections. The old farm-
+house nestling in its valley; hills stretching off to the south and
+green meadows to the east; the small stream which came noisily down its
+ravine, washing the old garden-wall and softly lapping on fallen stones
+and mossy roots of beeches and hemlocks; the tall sentinel poplars at
+the gateway; the oak-forest, sweeping unbroken to the northern horizon;
+the grass-grown carriage-path, with its rude and crazy bridge,--the dear
+old landscape of my boyhood lies outstretched before me like a
+daguerreotype from that picture within which I have borne with me in all
+my wanderings. I am a boy again, once more conscious of the feeling,
+half terror, half exultation, with which I used to announce the approach
+of this very vagabond and his "kindred after the flesh."
+
+The advent of wandering beggars, or "old stragglers," as we were wont
+to call them, was an event of no ordinary interest in the generally
+monotonous quietude of our farm-life. Many of them were well known;
+they had their periodical revolutions and transits; we could calculate
+them like eclipses or new moons. Some were sturdy knaves, fat and
+saucy; and, whenever they ascertained that the "men folks" were absent,
+would order provisions and cider like men who expected to pay for them,
+seating themselves at the hearth or table with the air of Falstaff,--
+"Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" Others, poor, pale, patient,
+like Sterne's monk, came creeping up to the door, hat in hand, standing
+there in their gray wretchedness with a look of heartbreak and
+forlornness which was never without its effect on our juvenile
+sensibilities. At times, however, we experienced a slight revulsion of
+feeling when even these humblest children of sorrow somewhat petulantly
+rejected our proffered bread and cheese, and demanded instead a glass of
+cider. Whatever the temperance society might in such cases have done,
+it was not in our hearts to refuse the poor creatures a draught of their
+favorite beverage; and was n't it a satisfaction to see their sad,
+melancholy faces light up as we handed them the full pitcher, and, on
+receiving it back empty from their brown, wrinkled hands, to hear them,
+half breathless from their long, delicious draught, thanking us for the
+favor, as "dear, good children!" Not unfrequently these wandering tests
+of our benevolence made their appearance in interesting groups of man,
+woman, and child, picturesque in their squalidness, and manifesting a
+maudlin affection which would have done honor to the revellers at
+Poosie-Nansie's, immortal in the cantata of Burns. I remember some who
+were evidently the victims of monomania,--haunted and hunted by some
+dark thought,--possessed by a fixed idea. One, a black-eyed, wild-
+haired woman, with a whole tragedy of sin, shame, and suffering written
+in her countenance, used often to visit us, warm herself by our winter
+fire, and supply herself with a stock of cakes and cold meat; but was
+never known to answer a question or to ask one. She never smiled; the
+cold, stony look of her eye never changed; a silent, impassive face,
+frozen rigid by some great wrong or sin. We used to look with awe upon
+the "still woman," and think of the demoniac of Scripture who had a
+"dumb spirit."
+
+One--I think I see him now, grim, gaunt, and ghastly, working his slow
+way up to our door--used to gather herbs by the wayside and call himself
+doctor. He was bearded like a he goat and used to counterfeit lameness,
+yet, when he supposed himself alone, would travel on lustily as if
+walking for a wager. At length, as if in punishment of his deceit, he
+met with an accident in his rambles and became lame in earnest, hobbling
+ever after with difficulty on his gnarled crutches. Another used to go
+stooping, like Bunyan's pilgrim, under a pack made of an old bed-
+sacking, stuffed out into most plethoric dimensions, tottering on a pair
+of small, meagre legs, and peering out with his wild, hairy face from
+under his burden like a big-bodied spider. That "man with the pack"
+always inspired me with awe and reverence. Huge, almost sublime, in its
+tense rotundity, the father of all packs, never laid aside and never
+opened, what might there not be within it? With what flesh-creeping
+curiosity I used to walk round about it at a safe distance, half
+expecting to see its striped covering stirred by the motions of a
+mysterious life, or that some evil monster would leap out of it, like
+robbers from Ali Baba's jars or armed men from the Trojan horse!
+
+There was another class of peripatetic philosophers--half pedler, half
+mendicant--who were in the habit of visiting us. One we recollect, a
+lame, unshaven, sinister-eyed, unwholesome fellow, with his basket of
+old newspapers and pamphlets, and his tattered blue umbrella, serving
+rather as a walking staff than as a protection from the rain. He told
+us on one occasion, in answer to our inquiring into the cause of his
+lameness, that when a young man he was employed on the farm of the chief
+magistrate of a neighboring State; where, as his ill-luck would have it,
+the governor's handsome daughter fell in love with him. He was caught
+one day in the young lady's room by her father; whereupon the irascible
+old gentleman pitched him unceremoniously out of the window, laming him
+for life, on the brick pavement below, like Vulcan on the rocks of
+Lemnos. As for the lady, he assured us "she took on dreadfully about
+it." "Did she die?" we inquired anxiously. There was a cun-ing
+twinkle in the old rogue's eye as he responded, "Well, no, she did n't.
+She got married."
+
+Twice a year, usually in the spring and autumn, we were honored with a
+call from Jonathan Plummer, maker of verses, pedler and poet, physician
+and parson,--a Yankee troubadour,--first and last minstrel of the valley
+of the Merrimac, encircled, to my wondering young eyes, with the very
+nimbus of immortality. He brought with him pins, needles, tape, and
+cotton-thread for my mother; jack-knives, razors, and soap for my
+father; and verses of his own composing, coarsely printed and
+illustrated with rude wood-cuts, for the delectation of the younger
+branches of the family. No lovesick youth could drown himself, no
+deserted maiden bewail the moon, no rogue mount the gallows, without
+fitting memorial in Plummer's verses. Earthquakes, fires, fevers, and
+shipwrecks he regarded as personal favors from Providence, furnishing
+the raw material of song and ballad. Welcome to us in our country
+seclusion as Autolycus to the clown in Winter's Tale, we listened with
+infinite satisfaction to his readings of his own verses, or to his ready
+improvisation upon some domestic incident or topic suggested by his
+auditors. When once fairly over the difficulties at the outset of a new
+subject, his rhymes flowed freely, "as if he had eaten ballads and all
+men's ears grew to his tunes." His productions answered, as nearly as I
+can remember, to Shakespeare's description of a proper ballad,--"doleful
+matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant theme sung lamentably." He
+was scrupulously conscientious, devout, inclined to theological
+disquisitions, and withal mighty in Scripture. He was thoroughly
+independent; flattered nobody, cared for nobody, trusted nobody. When
+invited to sit down at our dinner-table, he invariably took the
+precaution to place his basket of valuables between his legs for safe
+keeping. "Never mind thy basket, Jonathan," said my father; "we
+sha'n't steal thy verses."--"I'm not sure of that," returned the
+suspicious guest. "It is written, 'Trust ye not in any brother.'"
+
+Thou too, O Parson B------, with thy pale student's brow and rubicund
+nose, with thy rusty and tattered black coat overswept by white flowing
+locks, with thy professional white neckcloth scrupulously preserved when
+even a shirt to thy back was problematical,--art by no means to be
+overlooked in the muster-roll of vagrant gentlemen possessing the entree
+of our farm-house. Well do we remember with what grave and dignified
+courtesy he used to step over its threshold, saluting its inmates with
+the same air of gracious condescension and patronage with which in
+better days he had delighted the hearts of his parishioners. Poor old
+man! He had once been the admired and almost worshipped minister of the
+largest church in the town where he afterwards found support in the
+winter season as a pauper. He had early fallen into intemperate habits;
+and at the age of threescore and ten, when I remember him, he was only
+sober when he lacked the means of being otherwise. Drunk or sober,
+however, he never altogether forgot the proprieties of his profession;
+he was always grave, decorous, and gentlemanly; he held fast the form of
+sound words, and the weakness of the flesh abated nothing of the rigor
+of his stringent theology. He had been a favorite pupil of the learned
+and astute Emmons, and was to the last a sturdy defender of the peculiar
+dogmas of his school. The last time we saw him he was holding a meeting
+in our district school-house, with a vagabond pedler for deacon and
+travelling companion. The tie which united the ill-assorted couple was
+doubtless the same which endeared Tam O'Shanter to the souter:--
+
+ "They had been fou for weeks thegither."
+
+He took for his text the first seven verses of the concluding chapter of
+Ecclesiastes, furnishing in himself its fitting illustration. The evil
+days had come; the keepers of the house trembled; the windows of life
+were darkened. A few months later the silver cord was loosened, the
+golden bowl was broken, and between the poor old man and the temptations
+which beset him fell the thick curtains of the grave.
+
+One day we had a call from a "pawky auld carle" of a wandering
+Scotchman. To him I owe my first introduction to the songs of Burns.
+After eating his bread and cheese and drinking his mug of cider he gave
+us Bonny Doon, Highland Mary, and Auld Lang Syne. He had a rich, full
+voice, and entered heartily into the spirit of his lyrics. I have since
+listened to the same melodies from the lips of Dempster, than whom the
+Scottish bard has had no sweeter or truer interpreter; but the skilful
+performance of the artist lacked the novel charm of the gaberlunzie's
+singing in the old farmhouse kitchen. Another wanderer made us
+acquainted with the humorous old ballad of "Our gude man cam hame at
+e'en." He applied for supper and lodging, and the next morning was set
+at work splitting stones in the pasture. While thus engaged the village
+doctor came riding along the highway on his fine, spirited horse, and
+stopped to talk with my father. The fellow eyed the animal attentively,
+as if familiar with all his good points, and hummed over a stanza of the
+old poem:--
+
+ "Our gude man cam hame at e'en,
+ And hame cam be;
+ And there he saw a saddle horse
+ Where nae horse should be.
+ 'How cam this horse here?
+ How can it be?
+ How cam this horse here
+ Without the leave of me?'
+ 'A horse?' quo she.
+ 'Ay, a horse,' quo he.
+ 'Ye auld fool, ye blind fool,--
+ And blinder might ye be,--
+ 'T is naething but a milking cow
+ My mamma sent to me.'
+ A milch cow?' quo he.
+ 'Ay, a milch cow,' quo she.
+ 'Weel, far hae I ridden,
+ And muckle hae I seen;
+ But milking cows wi' saddles on
+ Saw I never nane.'"
+
+That very night the rascal decamped, taking with him the doctor's horse,
+and was never after heard of.
+
+Often, in the gray of the morning, we used to see one or more
+"gaberlunzie men," pack on shoulder and staff in hand, emerging from the
+barn or other outbuildings where they had passed the night. I was once
+sent to the barn to fodder the cattle late in the evening, and, climbing
+into the mow to pitch down hay for that purpose, I was startled by the
+sudden apparition of a man rising up before me, just discernible in the
+dim moonlight streaming through the seams of the boards. I made a rapid
+retreat down the ladder; and was only reassured by hearing the object of
+my terror calling after me, and recognizing his voice as that of a
+harmless old pilgrim whom I had known before. Our farm-house was
+situated in a lonely valley, half surrounded with woods, with no
+neighbors in sight. One dark, cloudy night, when our parents chanced to
+be absent, we were sitting with our aged grandmother in the fading light
+of the kitchen-fire, working ourselves into a very satisfactory state of
+excitement and terror by recounting to each other all the dismal stories
+we could remember of ghosts, witches, haunted houses and robbers, when
+we were suddenly startled by a loud rap at the door. A stripling of
+fourteen, I was very naturally regarded as the head of the household;
+so,--with many misgivings, I advanced to the door, which I slowly
+opened, holding the candle tremulously above my head and peering out
+into the darkness. The feeble glimmer played upon the apparition of a
+gigantic horseman, mounted on a steed of a size worthy of such a rider--
+colossal, motionless, like images cut out of the solid night. The
+strange visitant gruffly saluted me; and, after making several
+ineffectual efforts to urge his horse in at the door, dismounted and
+followed me into the room, evidently enjoying the terror which his huge
+presence excited. Announcing himself as the great Indian doctor, he
+drew himself up before the fire, stretched his arms, clenched his fists,
+struck his broad chest, and invited our attention to what he called his
+"mortal frame." He demanded in succession all kinds of intoxicating
+liquors; and, on being assured that we had none to give him, he grew
+angry, threatened to swallow my younger brother alive, and, seizing me
+by the hair of my head as the angel did the prophet at Babylon, led me
+about from room to room. After an ineffectual search, in the course of
+which he mistook a jug of oil for one of brandy, and, contrary to my
+explanations and remonstrances, insisted upon swallowing a portion of
+its contents, he released me, fell to crying and sobbing, and confessed
+that he was so drunk already that his horse was ashamed of him. After
+bemoaning and pitying himself to his satisfaction he wiped his eyes, and
+sat down by the side of my grandmother, giving her to understand that he
+was very much pleased with her appearance; adding, that if agreeable to
+her, he should like the privilege of paying his addresses to her. While
+vainly endeavoring to make the excellent old lady comprehend his very
+flattering proposition, he was interrupted by the return of my father,
+who, at once understanding the matter, turned him out of doors without
+ceremony.
+
+On one occasion, a few years ago, on my return from the field at
+evening, I was told that a foreigner had asked for lodgings during the
+night, but that, influenced by his dark, repulsive appearance, my mother
+had very reluctantly refused his request. I found her by no means
+satisfied with her decision. "What if a son of mine was in a strange
+land?" she inquired, self-reproachfully. Greatly to her relief, I
+volunteered to go in pursuit of the wanderer, and, taking a cross-path
+over the fields, soon overtook him. He had just been rejected at the
+house of our nearest neighbor, and was standing in a state of dubious
+perplexity in the street. His looks quite justified my mother's
+suspicions. He was an olive-complexioned, black-bearded Italian, with
+an eye like a live coal, such a face as perchance looks out on the
+traveller in the passes of the Abruzzi,--one of those bandit visages
+which Salvator has painted. With some difficulty I gave him to
+understand my errand, when he overwhelmed me with thanks, and joyfully
+followed me back. He took his seat with us at the supper-table; and,
+when we were all gathered around the hearth that cold autumnal evening,
+he told us, partly by words and, partly by gestures, the story of his
+life and misfortunes, amused us with descriptions of the grape-
+gatherings and festivals of his sunny clime, edified my mother with a
+recipe for making bread of chestnuts; and in the morning, when, after
+breakfast, his dark, sullen face lighted up and his fierce eye moistened
+with grateful emotion as in his own silvery Tuscan accent he poured out
+his thanks, we marvelled at the fears which had so nearly closed our
+door against him; and, as he departed, we all felt that he had left with
+us the blessing of the poor.
+
+It was not often that, as in the above instance, my mother's prudence
+got the better of her charity. The regular "old stragglers" regarded
+her as an unfailing friend; and the sight of her plain cap was to them
+an assurance of forthcoming creature-comforts. There was indeed a tribe
+of lazy strollers, having their place of rendezvous in the town of
+Barrington, New Hampshire, whose low vices had placed them beyond even
+the pale of her benevolence. They were not unconscious of their evil
+reputation; and experience had taught them the necessity of concealing,
+under well-contrived disguises, their true character. They came to us
+in all shapes and with all appearances save the true one, with most
+miserable stories of mishap and sickness and all "the ills which flesh
+is heir to." It was particularly vexatious to discover, when too late,
+that our sympathies and charities had been expended upon such graceless
+vagabonds as the "Barrington beggars." An old withered hag, known by
+the appellation of Hopping Pat,--the wise woman of her tribe,--was in
+the habit of visiting us, with her hopeful grandson, who had "a gift for
+preaching" as well as for many other things not exactly compatible with
+holy orders. He sometimes brought with him a tame crow, a shrewd,
+knavish-looking bird, who, when in the humor for it, could talk like
+Barnaby Rudge's raven. He used to say he could "do nothin' at exhortin'
+without a white handkercher on his neck and money in his pocket,"--a
+fact going far to confirm the opinions of the Bishop of Exeter and the
+Puseyites generally, that there can be no priest without tithes and
+surplice.
+
+These people have for several generations lived distinct from the great
+mass of the community, like the gypsies of Europe, whom in many respects
+they closely resemble. They have the same settled aversion to labor and
+the same disposition to avail themselves of the fruits of the industry
+of others. They love a wild, out-of-door life, sing songs, tell
+fortunes, and have an instinctive hatred of "missionaries and cold
+water." It has been said--I know not upon what grounds--that their
+ancestors were indeed a veritable importation of English gypsyhood; but
+if so, they have undoubtedly lost a good deal of the picturesque charm
+of its unhoused and free condition. I very much fear that my friend
+Mary Russell Mitford,--sweetest of England's rural painters,--who has a
+poet's eye for the fine points in gypsy character, would scarcely allow
+their claims to fraternity with her own vagrant friends, whose camp-
+fires welcomed her to her new home at Swallowfield.
+
+"The proper study of mankind is man," and, according to my view, no
+phase of our common humanity is altogether unworthy of investigation.
+Acting upon this belief two or three summers ago, when making, in
+company with my sister, a little excursion into the hill-country of New
+Hampshire, I turned my horse's head towards Barrington for the purpose
+of seeing these semi-civilized strollers in their own home, and
+returning, once for all, their numerous visits. Taking leave of our
+hospitable cousins in old Lee with about as much solemnity as we may
+suppose Major Laing parted with his friends when he set out in search of
+desert-girdled Timbuctoo, we drove several miles over a rough road,
+passed the Devil's Den unmolested, crossed a fretful little streamlet
+noisily working its way into a valley, where it turned a lonely, half-
+ruinous mill, and climbing a steep hill beyond, saw before us a wide
+sandy level, skirted on the west and north by low, scraggy hills, and
+dotted here and there with dwarf pitch-pines. In the centre of this
+desolate region were some twenty or thirty small dwellings, grouped
+together as irregularly as a Hottentot kraal. Unfenced, unguarded, open
+to all comers and goers, stood that city of the beggars,--no wall or
+paling between the ragged cabins to remind one of the jealous
+distinctions of property. The great idea of its founders seemed visible
+in its unappropriated freedom. Was not the whole round world their own?
+and should they haggle about boundaries and title-deeds? For them, on
+distant plains, ripened golden harvests; for them, in far-off workshops,
+busy hands were toiling; for them, if they had but the grace to note it,
+the broad earth put on her garniture of beauty, and over them hung the
+silent mystery of heaven and its stars. That comfortable philosophy
+which modern transcendentalism has but dimly shadowed forth--that poetic
+agrarianism, which gives all to each and each to all--is the real life
+of this city of unwork. To each of its dingy dwellers might be not
+unaptly applied the language of one who, I trust, will pardon me for
+quoting her beautiful poem in this connection:--
+
+ "Other hands may grasp the field or forest,
+ Proud proprietors in pomp may shine;
+ Thou art wealthier,--all the world is thine."
+
+
+But look! the clouds are breaking. "Fair weather cometh out of the
+north." The wind has blown away the mists; on the gilded spire of John
+Street glimmers a beam of sunshine; and there is the sky again, hard,
+blue, and cold in its eternal purity, not a whit the worse for the
+storm. In the beautiful present the past is no longer needed.
+Reverently and gratefully let its volume be laid aside; and when again
+the shadows of the outward world fall upon the spirit, may I not lack a
+good angel to remind me of its solace, even if he comes in the shape of
+a Barrington beggar.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRAINING.
+
+ "Send for the milingtary."
+ NOAH CLAYPOLE in Oliver Twist.
+
+WHAT'S now in the wind? Sounds of distant music float in at my window
+on this still October air. Hurrying drum-beat, shrill fife-tones,
+wailing bugle-notes, and, by way of accompaniment, hurrahs from the
+urchins on the crowded sidewalks. Here come the citizen-soldiers, each
+martial foot beating up the mud of yesterday's storm with the slow,
+regular, up-and-down movement of an old-fashioned churn-dasher. Keeping
+time with the feet below, some threescore of plumed heads bob solemnly
+beneath me. Slant sunshine glitters on polished gun-barrels and
+tinselled uniform. Gravely and soberly they pass on, as if duly
+impressed with a sense of the deep responsibility of their position as
+self-constituted defenders of the world's last hope,--the United States
+of America, and possibly Texas. They look out with honest, citizen
+faces under their leathern visors (their ferocity being mostly the work
+of the tailor and tinker), and, I doubt not, are at this moment as
+innocent of bloodthirstiness as yonder worthy tiller of the Tewksbury
+Hills, who sits quietly in his wagon dispensing apples and turnips
+without so much as giving a glance at the procession. Probably there is
+not one of them who would hesitate to divide his last tobacco-quid with
+his worst enemy. Social, kind-hearted, psalm-singing, sermon-hearing,
+Sabhath-keeping Christians; and yet, if we look at the fact of the
+matter, these very men have been out the whole afternoon of this
+beautiful day, under God's holy sunshine, as busily at work as Satan
+himself could wish in learning how to butcher their fellow-creatures and
+acquire the true scientific method of impaling a forlorn Mexican on a
+bayonet, or of sinking a leaden missile in the brain of some unfortunate
+Briton, urged within its range by the double incentive of sixpence per
+day in his pocket and the cat-o'-nine-tails on his back!
+
+Without intending any disparagement of my peaceable ancestry for many
+generations, I have still strong suspicions that somewhat of the old
+Norman blood, something of the grins Berserker spirit, has been
+bequeathed to me. How else can I account for the intense childish
+eagerness with which I listened to the stories of old campaigners who
+sometimes fought their battles over again in my hearing? Why did I,
+in my young fancy, go up with Jonathan, the son of Saul, to smite the
+garrisoned Philistines of Michmash, or with the fierce son of Nun
+against the cities of Canaan? Why was Mr. Greatheart, in Pilgrim's
+Progress, my favorite character? What gave such fascination to the
+narrative of the grand Homeric encounter between Christian and Apollyon
+in the valley? Why did I follow Ossian over Morven's battle-fields,
+exulting in the vulture-screams of the blind scald over his fallen
+enemies? Still later, why did the newspapers furnish me with subjects
+for hero-worship in the half-demented Sir Gregor McGregor, and Ypsilanti
+at the head of his knavish Greeks? I can account for it only in the
+supposition that the mischief was inhered,--an heirloom from the old
+sea-kings of the ninth century.
+
+Education and reflection have, indeed, since wrought a change in my
+feelings. The trumpet of the Cid, or Ziska's drum even, could not now
+waken that old martial spirit. The bull-dog ferocity of a half-
+intoxicated Anglo-Saxon, pushing his blind way against the converging
+cannon-fire from the shattered walls of Ciudad Rodrigo, commends itself
+neither to my reason nor my fancy. I now regard the accounts of the
+bloody passage of the Bridge of Lodi, and of French cuirassiers madly
+transfixing themselves upon the bayonets of Wellington's squares, with
+very much the same feeling of horror and loathing which is excited by a
+detail of the exploits of an Indian Thug, or those of a mad Malay
+running a-muck, creese in hand, through the streets of Pulo Penang.
+Your Waterloo, and battles of the Nile and Baltic,--what are they, in
+sober fact, but gladiatorial murder-games on a great scale,--human
+imitations of bull-fights, at which Satan sits as grand alguazil and
+master of ceremonies? It is only when a great thought incarnates itself
+in action, desperately striving to find utterance even in sabre-clash
+and gun-fire, or when Truth and Freedom, in their mistaken zeal and
+distrustful of their own powers, put on battle-harness, that I can feel
+any sympathy with merely physical daring. The brawny butcher-work of
+men whose wits, like those of Ajax, lie in their sinews, and who are
+"yoked like draught-oxen and made to plough up the wars," is no
+realization of my ideal of true courage.
+
+Yet I am not conscious of having lost in any degree my early admiration
+of heroic achievement. The feeling remains; but it has found new and
+better objects. I have learned to appreciate what Milton calls the
+martyr's "unresistible might of meekness,"--the calm, uncomplaining
+endurance of those who can bear up against persecution uncheered by
+sympathy or applause, and, with a full and keen appreciation of the
+value of all which they are called to sacrifice, confront danger and
+death in unselfish devotion to duty. Fox, preaching through his prison-
+gates or rebuking Oliver Cromwell in the midst of his soldier-court
+Henry Vane beneath the axe of the headsman; Mary Dyer on the scaffold at
+Boston; Luther closing his speech at Worms with the sublime emphasis of
+his "Here stand I; I cannot otherwise; God help me;" William Penn
+defending the rights of Englishmen from the baledock of the Fleet
+prison; Clarkson climbing the decks of Liverpool slaveships; Howard
+penetrating to infected dungeons; meek Sisters of Charity breathing
+contagion in thronged hospitals,--all these, and such as these, now help
+me to form the loftier ideal of Christian heroism.
+
+Blind Milton approaches nearly to my conception of a true hero. What a
+picture have we of that sublime old man, as sick, poor, blind, and
+abandoned of friends, he still held fast his heroic integrity, rebuking
+with his unbending republicanism the treachery, cowardice, and servility
+of his old associates! He had outlived the hopes and beatific visions
+of his youth; he had seen the loudmouthed advocates of liberty throwing
+down a nation's freedom at the feet of the shameless, debauched, and
+perjured Charles II., crouching to the harlot-thronged court of the
+tyrant, and forswearing at once their religion and their republicanism.
+The executioner's axe had been busy among his friends. Vane and Hampden
+slept in their bloody graves. Cromwell's ashes had been dragged from
+their resting-place; for even in death the effeminate monarch hated and
+feared the conquerer of Naseby and Marston Moor. He was left alone, in
+age, and penury, and blindness, oppressed with the knowledge that all
+which his free soul abhorred had returned upon his beloved country. Yet
+the spirit of the stern old republican remained to the last unbroken,
+realizing the truth of the language of his own Samson Agonistes:--
+
+ "But patience is more oft the exercise
+ Of saints, the trial of their fortitude,
+ Making them each his own deliverer
+ And victor over all
+ That tyranny or fortune can inflict."
+
+The curse of religious and political apostasy lay heavy on the land.
+Harlotry and atheism sat in the high places; and the "caresses of
+wantons and the jests of buffoons regulated the measures of a government
+which had just ability enough to deceive, just religion enough to
+persecute." But, while Milton mourned over this disastrous change,
+no self-reproach mingled with his sorrow. To the last he had striven
+against the oppressor; and when confined to his narrow alley, a prisoner
+in his own mean dwelling, like another Prometheus on his rock, he still
+turned upon him an eye of unsubdued defiance. Who, that has read his
+powerful appeal to his countrymen when they were on the eve of welcoming
+back the tyranny and misrule which, at the expense of so much blood and
+treasure had been thrown off, can ever forget it? How nobly does
+Liberty speak through him! "If," said he, "ye welcome back a monarchy,
+it will be the triumph of all tyrants hereafter over any people who
+shall resist oppression; and their song shall then be to others, 'How
+sped the rebellious English?' but to our posterity, 'How sped the
+rebels, your fathers?'" How solemn and awful is his closing paragraph!
+"What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called amiss
+'the good old cause.' If it seem strange to any, it will not, I hope,
+seem more strange than convincing to backsliders. This much I should
+have said though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and
+stones, and had none to cry to but with the prophet, 'O earth, earth,
+earth!' to tell the very soil itself what its perverse inhabitants are
+deaf to; nay, though what I have spoken should prove (which Thou suffer
+not, who didst make mankind free; nor Thou next, who didst redeem us
+from being servants of sin) to be the last words of our expiring
+liberties."
+
+
+
+
+THE CITY OF A DAY.
+
+The writer, when residing in Lowell, in 1843 contributed this and the
+companion pieces to 'The Stranger' in Lowell.
+
+This, then, is Lowell,--a city springing up, like the enchanted palaces
+of the Arabian tales, as it were in a single night, stretching far and
+wide its chaos of brick masonry and painted shingles, filling the angle
+of the confluence of the Concord and the Merrimac with the sights and
+sounds of trade and industry. Marvellously here have art and labor
+wrought their modern miracles. I can scarcely realize the fact that a
+few years ago these rivers, now tamed and subdued to the purposes of man
+and charmed into slavish subjection to the wizard of mechanism, rolled
+unchecked towards the ocean the waters of the Winnipesaukee and the
+rock-rimmed springs of the White Mountains, and rippled down their falls
+in the wild freedom of Nature. A stranger, in view of all this
+wonderful change, feels himself, as it were, thrust forward into a new
+century; he seems treading on the outer circle of the millennium of
+steam engines and cotton mills. Work is here the patron saint.
+Everything bears his image and superscription. Here is no place for
+that respectable class of citizens called gentlemen, and their much
+vilified brethren, familiarly known as loafers. Over the gateways of
+this new world Manchester glares the inscription, "Work, or die".
+Here
+
+ "Every worm beneath the moon
+ Draws different threads, and late or soon
+ Spins, toiling out his own cocoon."
+
+The founders of this city probably never dreamed of the theory of
+Charles Lamb in respect to the origin of labor:--
+
+ "Who first invented work, and thereby bound
+ The holiday rejoicing spirit down
+ To the never-ceasing importunity
+ Of business in the green fields and the town?
+
+ "Sabbathless Satan,--he who his unglad
+ Task ever plies midst rotatory burnings
+ For wrath divine has made him like a wheel
+ In that red realm from whence are no returnings."
+
+Rather, of course, would they adopt Carlyle's apostrophe of "Divine
+labor, noble, ever fruitful,--the grand, sole miracle of man;" for this
+is indeed a city consecrated to thrift,--dedicated, every square rod of
+it, to the divinity of work; the gospel of industry preached daily and
+hourly from some thirty temples, each huger than the Milan Cathedral or
+the Temple of Jeddo, the Mosque of St. Sophia or the Chinese pagoda of a
+hundred bells; its mighty sermons uttered by steam and water-power; its
+music the everlasting jar of mechanism and the organ-swell of many
+waters; scattering the cotton and woollen leaves of its evangel from the
+wings of steamboats and rail-cars throughout the land; its thousand
+priests and its thousands of priestesses ministering around their
+spinning-jenny and powerloom altars, or thronging the long, unshaded
+streets in the level light of sunset. After all, it may well be
+questioned whether this gospel, according to Poor Richard's Almanac, is
+precisely calculated for the redemption of humanity. Labor, graduated
+to man's simple wants, necessities, and unperverted tastes, is doubtless
+well; but all beyond this is weariness to flesh and spirit. Every web
+which falls from these restless looms has a history more or less
+connected with sin and suffering, beginning with slavery and ending
+with overwork and premature death.
+
+A few years ago, while travelling in Pennsylvania, I encountered a
+small, dusky-browed German of the name of Etzler. He was possessed by a
+belief that the world was to be restored to its paradisiacal state by
+the sole agency of mechanics, and that he had himself discovered the
+means of bringing about this very desirable consummation. His whole
+mental atmosphere was thronged with spectral enginery; wheel within
+wheel; plans of hugest mechanism; Brobdignagian steam-engines; Niagaras
+of water-power; wind-mills with "sail-broad vans," like those of Satan
+in chaos, by the proper application of which every valley was to be
+exalted and every hill laid low; old forests seized by their shaggy tops
+and uprooted; old morasses drained; the tropics made cool; the eternal
+ices melted around the poles; the ocean itself covered with artificial
+islands, blossoming gardens of the blessed, rocking gently on the bosom
+of the deep. Give him "three hundred thousand dollars and ten years'
+time," and he would undertake to do the work.
+
+Wrong, pain, and sin, being in his view but the results of our physical
+necessities, ill-gratified desires, and natural yearnings for a better
+state, were to vanish before the millennium of mechanism. "It would
+be," said he, "as ridiculous then to dispute and quarrel about the means
+of life as it would be now about water to drink by the side of mighty
+rivers, or about permission to breathe the common air." To his mind the
+great forces of Nature took the shape of mighty and benignant spirits,
+sent hitherward to be the servants of man in restoring to him his lost
+paradise; waiting only for his word of command to apply their giant
+energies to the task, but as yet struggling blindly and aimlessly,
+giving ever and anon gentle hints, in the way of earthquake, fire, and
+flood, that they are weary of idleness, and would fain be set at work.
+Looking down, as I now do, upon these huge brick workshops, I have
+thought of poor Etzler, and wondered whether he would admit, were he
+with me, that his mechanical forces have here found their proper
+employment of millennium making. Grinding on, each in his iron harness,
+invisible, yet shaking, by his regulated and repressed power, his huge
+prison-house from basement to capstone, is it true that the genii of
+mechanism are really at work here, raising us, by wheel and pulley,
+steam and waterpower, slowly up that inclined plane from whose top
+stretches the broad table-land of promise?
+
+Many of the streets of Lowell present a lively and neat aspect, and are
+adorned with handsome public and private buildings; but they lack one
+pleasant feature of older towns,--broad, spreading shade-trees. One
+feels disposed to quarrel with the characteristic utilitarianism of the
+first settlers, which swept so entirely away the green beauty of Nature.
+For the last few days it has been as hot here as Nebuchadnezzar's
+furnace or Monsieur Chabert's oven, the sun glaring down from a copper
+sky upon these naked, treeless streets, in traversing which one is
+tempted to adopt the language of a warm-weather poet:
+
+ "The lean, like walking skeletons, go stalking pale and gloomy;
+ The fat, like red-hot warming-pans, send hotter fancies through me;
+ I wake from dreams of polar ice, on which I've been a slider,
+ Like fishes dreaming of the sea and waking in the spider."
+
+How unlike the elm-lined avenues of New Haven, upon whose cool and
+graceful panorama the stranger looks down upon the Judge's Cave, or the
+vine-hung pinnacles of West Rock, its tall spires rising white and clear
+above the level greenness! or the breezy leafiness of Portland, with its
+wooded islands in the distance, and itself overhung with verdant beauty,
+rippling and waving in the same cool breeze which stirs the waters of
+the beautiful Bay of Casco! But time will remedy all this; and, when
+Lowell shall have numbered half the years of her sister cities, her
+newly planted elms and maples, which now only cause us to contrast their
+shadeless stems with the leafy glory of their parents of the forest,
+will stretch out to the future visitor arms of welcome and repose.
+
+There is one beautiful grove in Lowell,--that on Chapel Hill,--where a
+cluster of fine old oaks lift their sturdy stems and green branches, in
+close proximity to the crowded city, blending the cool rustle of their
+leaves with the din of machinery. As I look at them in this gray
+twilight they seem lonely and isolated, as if wondering what has become
+of their old forest companions, and vainly endeavoring to recognize in
+the thronged and dusty streets before them those old, graceful
+colonnades of maple and thick-shaded oaken vistas, stretching from river
+to river, carpeted with the flowers and grasses of spring, or ankle deep
+with leaves of autumn, through whose leafy canopy the sunlight melted in
+upon wild birds, shy deer, and red Indians. Long may these oaks remain
+to remind us that, if there be utility in the new, there was beauty in
+the old, leafy Puseyites of Nature, calling us back to the past, but,
+like their Oxford brethren, calling in vain; for neither in polemics nor
+in art can we go backward in an age whose motto is ever "Onward."
+
+The population of Lowell is constituted mainly of New Englanders; but
+there are representatives here of almost every part of the civilized
+world. The good-humored face of the Milesian meets one at almost every
+turn; the shrewdly solemn Scotchman, the transatlantic Yankee, blending
+the crafty thrift of Bryce Snailsfoot with the stern religious heroism
+of Cameron; the blue-eyed, fair-haired German from the towered hills
+which overlook the Rhine,--slow, heavy, and unpromising in his exterior,
+yet of the same mould and mettle of the men who rallied for "fatherland"
+at the Tyrtean call of Korner and beat back the chivalry of France from
+the banks of the Katzback,--the countrymen of Richter, and Goethe, and
+our own Follen. Here, too, are pedlers from Hamburg, and Bavaria, and
+Poland, with their sharp Jewish faces, and black, keen eyes. At this
+moment, beneath my window are two sturdy, sunbrowned Swiss maidens
+grinding music for a livelihood, rehearsing in a strange Yankee land the
+simple songs of their old mountain home, reminding me, by their foreign
+garb and language, of
+
+ "Lauterbrunnen's peasant girl."
+
+Poor wanderers, I cannot say that I love their music; but now, as the
+notes die away, and, to use the words of Dr. Holmes, "silence comes like
+a poultice to heal the wounded ear," I feel grateful for their
+visitation. Away from crowded thoroughfares, from brick walls and dusty
+avenues, at the sight of these poor peasants I have gone in thought to
+the vale of Chamouny, and seen, with Coleridge, the morning star pausing
+on the "bald, awful head of sovereign Blanc," and the sun rise and set
+upon snowy-crested mountains, down in whose valleys the night still
+lingers; and, following in the track of Byron and Rousseau, have watched
+the lengthening shadows of the hills on the beautiful waters of the
+Genevan lake. Blessings, then, upon these young wayfarers, for they
+have "blessed me unawares." In an hour of sickness and lassitude they
+have wrought for me the miracle of Loretto's Chapel, and, borne me away
+from the scenes around me and the sense of personal suffering to that
+wonderful land where Nature seems still uttering, from lake and valley,
+and from mountains whose eternal snows lean on the hard, blue heaven,
+the echoes of that mighty hymn of a new-created world, when "the morning
+stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."
+
+But of all classes of foreigners the Irish are by far the most numerous.
+Light-hearted, wrongheaded, impulsive, uncalculating, with an Oriental
+love of hyperbole, and too often a common dislike of cold water and of
+that gem which the fable tells us rests at the bottom of the well, the
+Celtic elements of their character do not readily accommodate themselves
+to those of the hard, cool, self-relying Anglo-Saxon. I am free to
+confess to a very thorough dislike of their religious intolerance and
+bigotry, but am content to wait for the change that time and the
+attrition of new circumstances and ideas must necessarily make in this
+respect. Meanwhile I would strive to reverence man as man, irrespective
+of his birthplace. A stranger in a strange land is always to me an
+object of sympathy and interest. Amidst all his apparent gayety of
+heart and national drollery and wit, the poor Irish emigrant has sad
+thoughts of the "ould mother of him," sitting lonely in her solitary
+cabin by the bog-side; recollections of a father's blessing and a
+sister's farewell are haunting him; a grave mound in a distant
+churchyard far beyond the "wide wathers" has an eternal greenness in his
+memory; for there, perhaps, lies a "darlint child" or a "swate crather"
+who once loved him. The new world is forgotten for the moment; blue
+Killarney and the Liffey sparkle before him, and Glendalough stretches
+beneath him its dark, still mirror; he sees the same evening sunshine
+rest upon and hallow alike with Nature's blessing the ruins of the Seven
+Churches of Ireland's apostolic age, the broken mound of the Druids, and
+the round towers of the Phoenician sun-worshippers; pleasant and
+mournful recollections of his home waken within him; and the rough and
+seemingly careless and light-hearted laborer melts into tears. It is no
+light thing to abandon one's own country and household gods. Touching
+and beautiful was the injunction of the prophet of the Hebrews:
+
+"Ye shall not oppress the stranger; for ye know the heart of the
+stranger, seeing that ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."
+
+
+
+
+PATUCKET FALLS.
+
+MANY years ago I read, in some old chronicle of the early history of New
+England, a paragraph which has ever since haunted my memory, calling up
+romantic associations of wild Nature and wilder man:--
+
+"The Sachem Wonolanset, who lived by the Groat Falls of Patucket, on the
+Merrimac."
+
+It was with this passage in my mind that I visited for the first time
+the Rapids of the Merrimac, above Lowell.
+
+Passing up the street by the Hospital, a large and elegant mansion
+surrounded by trees and shrubbery and climbing vines, I found myself,
+after walking a few rods farther, in full view of the Merrimac. A deep
+and rocky channel stretched between me and the Dracut shore, along which
+rushed the shallow water,--a feeble, broken, and tortuous current,
+winding its way among splintered rocks, rising sharp and jagged in all
+directions. Drained above the falls by the canal, it resembled some
+mountain streamlet of old Spain, or some Arabian wady, exhausted by a
+year's drought. Higher up, the arches of the bridge spanned the quick,
+troubled water; and, higher still, the dam, so irregular in its outline
+as to seem less a work of Art than of Nature, crossed the bed of the
+river, a lakelike placidity above contrasting with the foam and murmur
+of the falls below. And this was all which modern improvements had left
+of "the great Patucket Falls" of the olden time. The wild river had
+been tamed; the spirit of the falls, whose hoarse voice the Indian once
+heard in the dashing of the great water down the rocks, had become the
+slave of the arch conjurer, Art; and, like a shorn and blinded giant,
+was grinding in the prison-house of his taskmaster.
+
+One would like to know how this spot must have seemed to the "twenty
+goodlie persons from Concord and Woburn" who first visited it in 1652,
+as, worn with fatigue, and wet from the passage of the sluggish Concord,
+"where ford there was none," they wound their slow way through the
+forest, following the growing murmur of the falls, until at length the
+broad, swift river stretched before them, its white spray flashing in
+the sun. What cared these sturdy old Puritans for the wild beauty of
+the landscape thus revealed before them? I think I see them standing
+there in the golden light of a closing October day, with their sombre
+brown doublets and slouched hats, and their heavy matchlocks,--such men
+as Ireton fronted death with on the battle-field of Naseby, or those who
+stalked with Cromwell over the broken wall of Drogheda, smiting, "in the
+name of the Lord," old and young, "both maid, and little children."
+Methinks I see the sunset light flooding the river valley, the western
+hills stretching to the horizon, overhung with trees gorgeous and
+glowing with the tints of autumn,--a mighty flower-garden, blossoming
+under the spell of the enchanter, Frost; the rushing river, with its
+graceful water-curves and white foam; and a steady murmur, low, deep
+voices of water, the softest, sweetest sound of Nature, blends with the
+sigh of the south wind in the pine-tops. But these hard-featured saints
+of the New Canaan "care for none of these things." The stout hearts
+which beat under their leathern doublets are proof against the sweet
+influences of Nature. They see only "a great and howling wilderness,
+where be many Indians, but where fish may be taken, and where be meadows
+for ye subsistence of cattle," and which, on the whole, "is a
+comfortable place to accommodate a company of God's people upon, who
+may, with God's blessing, do good in that place for both church and
+state." (Vide petition to the General Court, 1653.)
+
+In reading the journals and narratives of the early settlers of New
+England nothing is more remarkable than the entire silence of the worthy
+writers in respect to the natural beauty or grandeur of the scenery amid
+which their lot was cast. They designated the grand and glorious
+forest, broken by lakes and crossed by great rivers, intersected by a
+thousand streams more beautiful than those which the Old World has given
+to song and romance, as "a desert and frightful wilderness." The wildly
+picturesque Indian, darting his birch canoe down the Falls of the
+Amoskeag or gliding in the deer-track of the forest, was, in their view,
+nothing but a "dirty tawnie," a "salvage heathen," and "devil's imp."
+Many of them were well educated,--men of varied and profound erudition,
+and familiar with the best specimens of Greek and Roman literature; yet
+they seem to have been utterly devoid of that poetic feeling or fancy
+whose subtle alchemy detects the beautiful in the familiar. Their very
+hymns and spiritual songs seem to have been expressly calculated, like
+"the music-grinders" of Holmes,--
+
+ "To pluck the eyes of sentiment,
+ And dock the tail of rhyme,
+ To crack the voice of melody,
+ And break the legs of time."
+
+They were sworn enemies of the Muses; haters of stage-play literature,
+profane songs, and wanton sonnets; of everything, in brief, which
+reminded them of the days of the roistering cavaliers and bedizened
+beauties of the court of "the man Charles," whose head had fallen
+beneath the sword of Puritan justice. Hard, harsh, unlovely, yet with
+many virtues and noble points of character, they were fitted, doubtless,
+for their work of pioneers in the wilderness. Sternly faithful to duty,
+in peril, and suffering, and self-denial, they wrought out the noblest
+of historical epics on the rough soil of New England. They lived a
+truer poetry than Homer or Virgil wrote.
+
+The Patuckets, once a powerful native tribe, had their principal
+settlements around the falls at the time of the visit of the white men
+of Concord and Woburn in 1652. Gookin, the Indian historian, states
+that this tribe was almost wholly destroyed by the great pestilence of
+1612. In 1674 they had but two hundred and fifty males in the whole
+tribe. Their chief sachem lived opposite the falls; and it was in his
+wigwam that the historian, in company with John Eliot, the Indian
+missionary, held a "meeting for worshippe on ye 5th of May, 1676," where
+Mr. Eliot preached from "ye twenty-second of Matthew."
+
+The white visitants from Concord and Woburn, pleased with the appearance
+of the place and the prospect it afforded for planting and fishing,
+petitioned the General Court for a grant of the entire tract of land now
+embraced in the limits of Lowell and Chelmsford. They made no account
+whatever of the rights of the poor Patuckets; but, considering it
+"a comfortable place to accommodate God's people upon," were doubtless
+prepared to deal with the heathen inhabitants as Joshua the son of Nun
+did with the Jebusites and Perizzites, the Hivites and the Hittites, of
+old. The Indians, however, found a friend in the apostle Eliot, who
+presented a petition in their behalf that the lands lying around the
+Patucket and Wamesit Falls should be appropriated exclusively for their
+benefit and use. The Court granted the petition of the whites, with the
+exception of the tract in the angle of the two rivers on which the
+Patuckets were settled. The Indian title to this tract was not finally
+extinguished until 1726, when the beautiful name of Wamesit was lost in
+that of Chelmsford, and the last of the Patuckets turned his back upon
+the graves of his fathers and sought a new home among the strange
+Indians of the North.
+
+But what has all this to do with the falls? When the rail-cars came
+thundering through his lake country, Wordsworth attempted to exorcise
+them by a sonnet; and, were I not a very decided Yankee, I might
+possibly follow his example, and utter in this connection my protest
+against the desecration of Patucket Falls, and battle with objurgatory
+stanzas these dams and mills, as Balmawapple shot off his horse-pistol
+at Stirling Castle. Rocks and trees, rapids, cascades, and other water-
+works are doubtless all very well; but on the whole, considering our
+seven months of frost, are not cotton shirts and woollen coats still
+better? As for the spirits of the river, the Merrimac Naiads, or
+whatever may be their name in Indian vocabulary, they have no good
+reason for complaint; inasmuch as Nature, in marking and scooping out
+the channel of their stream, seems to have had an eye to the useful
+rather than the picturesque. After a few preliminary antics and
+youthful vagaries up among the White Hills, the Merrimac comes down to
+the seaboard, a clear, cheerful, hard-working Yankee river. Its
+numerous falls and rapids are such as seem to invite the engineer's
+level rather than the pencil of the tourist; and the mason who piles up
+the huge brick fabrics at their feet is seldom, I suspect, troubled with
+sentimental remorse or poetical misgivings. Staid and matter of fact as
+the Merrimac is, it has, nevertheless, certain capricious and eccentric
+tributaries; the Powow, for instance, with its eighty feet fall in a few
+rods, and that wild, Indian-haunted Spicket, taking its wellnigh
+perpendicular leap of thirty feet, within sight of the village meeting-
+house, kicking up its Pagan heels, Sundays and all, in sheer contempt of
+Puritan tithing-men. This latter waterfall is now somewhat modified by
+the hand of Art, but is still, as Professor Hitchcock's "Scenographical
+Geology" says of it, "an object of no little interest." My friend T.,
+favorably known as the translator of "Undine" and as a writer of fine
+and delicate imagination, visited Spicket Falls before the sound of a
+hammer or the click of a trowel had been heard beside them. His journal
+of "A Day on the Merrimac" gives a pleasing and vivid description of
+their original appearance as viewed through the telescope of a poetic
+fancy. The readers of "Undine" will thank me for a passage or two from
+this sketch:--
+
+"The sound of the waters swells more deeply. Something supernatural in
+their confused murmur; it makes me better understand and sympathize with
+the writer of the Apocalypse when he speaks of the voice of many waters,
+heaping image upon image, to impart the vigor of his conception.
+
+"Through yonder elm-branches I catch a few snowy glimpses of foam in the
+air. See that spray and vapor rolling up the evergreen on my left The
+two side precipices, one hundred feet apart and excluding objects of
+inferior moment, darken and concentrate the view. The waters between
+pour over the right-hand and left-hand summit, rushing down and uniting
+among the craggiest and abruptest of rocks. Oh for a whole mountain-
+side of that living foam! The sun impresses a faint prismatic hue.
+These falls, compared with those of the Missouri, are nothing,--nothing
+but the merest miniature; and yet they assist me in forming some
+conception of that glorious expanse.
+
+"A fragment of an oak, struck off by lightning, struggles with the
+current midway down; while the shattered trunk frowns above the
+desolation, majestic in ruin. This is near the southern cliff. Farther
+north a crag rises out of the stream, its upper surface covered with
+green clover of the most vivid freshness. Not only all night, but all
+day, has the dew lain upon its purity. With my eye attaining the
+uppermost margin, where the waters shoot over, I look away into the
+western sky, and discern there (what you least expect) a cow chewing her
+cud with admirable composure, and higher up several sheep and lambs
+browsing celestial buds. They stand on the eminence that forms the
+background of my present view. The illusion is extremely picturesque,--
+such as Allston himself would despair of producing. 'Who can paint like
+Nature'?"
+
+To a population like that of Lowell, the weekly respite from monotonous
+in-door toil afforded by the first day of the week is particularly
+grateful. Sabbath comes to the weary and overworked operative
+emphatically as a day of rest. It opens upon him somewhat as it did
+upon George Herbert, as he describes it in his exquisite little poem:--
+
+ "Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
+ The bridal of the earth and sky!"
+
+Apart from its soothing religious associations, it brings with it the
+assurance of physical comfort and freedom. It is something to be able
+to doze out the morning from daybreak to breakfast in that luxurious
+state between sleeping and waking in which the mind eddies slowly and
+peacefully round and round instead of rushing onward,--the future a
+blank, the past annihilated, the present but a dim consciousness of
+pleasurable existence. Then, too, the satisfaction is by no means
+inconsiderable of throwing aside the worn and soiled habiliments of
+labor and appearing in neat and comfortable attire. The moral influence
+of dress has not been overrated even by Carlyle's Professor in his
+Sartor Resartus. William Penn says that cleanliness is akin to
+godliness. A well-dressed man, all other things being equal, is not
+half as likely to compromise his character as one who approximates to
+shabbiness. Lawrence Sterne used to say that when he felt himself
+giving way to low spirits and a sense of depression and worthlessness,--
+a sort of predisposition for all sorts of little meannesses,--he
+forthwith shaved himself, brushed his wig, donned his best dress and his
+gold rings, and thus put to flight the azure demons of his unfortunate
+temperament. There is somehow a close affinity between moral purity and
+clean linen; and the sprites of our daily temptation, who seem to find
+easy access to us through a broken hat or a rent in the elbow, are
+manifestly baffled by the "complete mail" of a clean and decent dress.
+I recollect on one occasion hearing my mother tell our family physician
+that a woman in the neighborhood, not remarkable for her tidiness, had
+become a church-member. "Humph!" said the doctor, in his quick,
+sarcastic way, "What of that? Don't you know that no unclean thing can
+enter the kingdom of heaven?"
+
+"If you would see" Lowell "aright," as Walter Scott says of Melrose
+Abbey, one must be here of a pleasant First day at the close of what is
+called the "afternoon service." The streets are then blossoming like a
+peripatetic flower-garden; as if the tulips and lilies and roses of my
+friend W.'s nursery, in the vale of Nonantum, should take it into their
+heads to promenade for exercise. Thousands swarm forth who during week-
+days are confined to the mills. Gay colors alternate with snowy
+whiteness; extremest fashion elbows the plain demureness of old-
+fashioned Methodism.
+
+Fair pale faces catch a warmer tint from the free sunshine and fresh
+air. The languid step becomes elastic with that "springy motion of the
+gait" which Charles Lamb admired. Yet the general appearance of the
+city is that of quietude; the youthful multitude passes on calmly, its
+voices subdued to a lower and softened tone, as if fearful of breaking
+the repose of the day of rest. A stranger fresh from the gayly spent
+Sabbaths of the continent of Europe would be undoubtedly amazed at the
+decorum and sobriety of these crowded streets.
+
+I am not over-precise in outward observances; but I nevertheless welcome
+with joy unfeigned this first day of the week,--sweetest pause in our
+hard life-march, greenest resting-place in the hot desert we are
+treading. The errors of those who mistake its benignant rest for the
+iron rule of the Jewish Sabbath, and who consequently hedge it about
+with penalties and bow down before it in slavish terror, should not
+render us less grateful for the real blessing it brings us. As a day
+wrested in some degree from the god of this world, as an opportunity
+afforded for thoughtful self-communing, let us receive it as a good gift
+of our heavenly Parent in love rather than fear.
+
+In passing along Central Street this morning my attention was directed
+by the friend who accompanied me to a group of laborers, with coats off
+and sleeves rolled up, heaving at levers, smiting with sledge-hammers,
+in full view of the street, on the margin of the canal, just above
+Central Street Bridge. I rubbed my eyes, half expecting that I was the
+subject of mere optical illusion; but a second look only confirmed the
+first. Around me were solemn, go-to-meeting faces,--smileless and
+awful; and close at hand were the delving, toiling, mud-begrimed
+laborers. Nobody seemed surprised at it; nobody noticed it as a thing
+out of the common course of events. And this, too, in a city where the
+Sabbath proprieties are sternly insisted upon; where some twenty pulpits
+deal out anathemas upon all who "desecrate the Lord's day;" where simple
+notices of meetings for moral purposes even can scarcely be read; where
+many count it wrong to speak on that day for the slave, who knows no
+Sabbath of rest, or for the drunkard, who, imbruted by his appetites,
+cannot enjoy it. Verily there are strange contradictions in our
+conventional morality. Eyes which, looking across the Atlantic on the
+gay Sabbath dances of French peasants are turned upward with horror, are
+somehow blind to matters close at home. What would be sin past
+repentance in an individual becomes quite proper in a corporation.
+True, the Sabbath is holy; but the canals must be repaired. Everybody
+ought to go to meeting; but the dividends must not be diminished.
+Church indulgences are not, after all, confined to Rome.
+
+To a close observer of human nature there is nothing surprising in the
+fact that a class of persons, who wink at this sacrifice of Sabhath
+sanctities to the demon of gain, look at the same time with stern
+disapprobation upon everything partaking of the character of amusement,
+however innocent and healthful, on this day. But for myself, looking
+down through the light of a golden evening upon these quietly passing
+groups, I cannot find it in my heart to condemn them for seeking on this
+their sole day of leisure the needful influences of social enjoyment,
+unrestrained exercise, and fresh air. I cannot think any essential
+service to religion or humanity would result from the conversion of
+their day of rest into a Jewish Sabbath, and their consequent
+confinement, like so many pining prisoners, in close and crowded
+boarding-houses. Is not cheerfulness a duty, a better expression of our
+gratitude for God's blessings than mere words? And even under the old
+law of rituals, what answer had the Pharisees to the question, "Is it
+not lawful to do good on the Sabbath day?"
+
+I am naturally of a sober temperament, and am, besides, a member of that
+sect which Dr. More has called, mistakenly indeed, "the most melancholy
+of all;" but I confess a special dislike of disfigured faces,
+ostentatious displays of piety, pride aping humility. Asceticism,
+moroseness, self-torture, ingratitude in view of down-showering
+blessings, and painful restraint of the better feelings of our nature
+may befit a Hindoo fakir, or a Mandan medicine man with buffalo skulls
+strung to his lacerated muscles; but they look to me sadly out of place
+in a believer of the glad evangel of the New Testament. The life of the
+divine Teacher affords no countenance to this sullen and gloomy
+saintliness, shutting up the heart against the sweet influences of human
+sympathy and the blessed ministrations of Nature. To the horror and
+clothes-rending astonishment of blind Pharisees He uttered the
+significant truth, that "the Sabhath was made for man, and not man for
+the Sabhath." From the close air of crowded cities, from thronged
+temples and synagogues,--where priest and Levite kept up a show of
+worship, drumming upon hollow ceremonials the more loudly for their
+emptiness of life, as the husk rustles the more when the grain is gone,
+--He led His disciples out into the country stillness, under clear
+Eastern heavens, on the breezy tops of mountains, in the shade of fruit-
+trees, by the side of fountains, and through yellow harvest-fields,
+enforcing the lessons of His divine morality by comparisons and parables
+suggested by the objects around Him or the cheerful incidents of social
+humanity,--the vineyard, the field-lily, the sparrow in the air, the
+sower in the seed-field, the feast and the marriage. Thus gently, thus
+sweetly kind and cheerful, fell from His lips the gospel of humanity;
+love the fulfilling of every law; our love for one another measuring and
+manifesting our love of Him. The baptism wherewith He was baptized was
+that of divine fulness in the wants of our humanity; the deep waters of
+our sorrows went over Him; ineffable purity sounding for our sakes the
+dark abysm of sin; yet how like a river of light runs that serene and
+beautiful life through the narratives of the evangelists! He broke
+bread with the poor despised publican; He sat down with the fishermen by
+the Sea of Galilee; He spoke compassionate words to sin-sick Magdalen;
+He sanctified by His presence the social enjoyments of home and
+friendship in the family of Bethany; He laid His hand of blessing on the
+sunny brows of children; He had regard even to the merely animal wants
+of the multitude in the wilderness; He frowned upon none of life's
+simple and natural pleasures. The burden of His Gospel was love; and in
+life and word He taught evermore the divided and scattered children of
+one great family that only as they drew near each other could they
+approach Him who was their common centre; and that while no ostentation
+of prayer nor rigid observance of ceremonies could elevate man to
+heaven, the simple exercise of love, in thought and action, could bring
+heaven down to man. To weary and restless spirits He taught the great
+truth, that happiness consists in making others happy. No cloister for
+idle genuflections and bead counting, no hair-cloth for the loins nor
+scourge for the limbs, but works of love and usefulness under the
+cheerful sunshine, making the waste places of humanity glad and causing
+the heart's desert to blossom. Why, then, should we go searching after
+the cast-off sackcloth of the Pharisee? Are we Jews, or Christians?
+Must even our gratitude for "glad tidings of great joy" be desponding?
+Must the hymn of our thanksgiving for countless mercies and the
+unspeakable gift of His life have evermore an undertone of funeral
+wailing? What! shall we go murmuring and lamenting, looking coldly on
+one another, seeing no beauty, nor light, nor gladness in this good
+world, wherein we have the glorious privilege of laboring in God's
+harvest-field, with angels for our task companions, blessing and being
+blessed?
+
+To him who, neglecting the revelations of immediate duty, looks
+regretfully behind and fearfully before him, life may well seem a solemn
+mystery, for, whichever way he turns, a wall of darkness rises before
+him; but down upon the present, as through a skylight between the
+shadows, falls a clear, still radiance, like beams from an eye of
+blessing; and, within the circle of that divine illumination, beauty and
+goodness, truth and love, purity and cheerfulness blend like primal
+colors into the clear harmony of light. The author of Proverbial
+Philosophy has a passage not unworthy of note in this connection, when
+he speaks of the train which attends the just in heaven:--
+
+"Also in the lengthening troop see I some clad in robes of triumph,
+Whose fair and sunny faces I have known and loved on earth.
+Welcome, ye glorified Loves, Graces, Sciences, and Muses,
+That, like Sisters of Charity, tended in this world's hospital;
+Welcome, for verily I knew ye could not but be children of the light;
+Welcome, chiefly welcome, for I find I have friends in heaven,
+And some I have scarcely looked for; as thou, light-hearted Mirth;
+Thou, also, star-robed Urania; and thou with the curious glass,
+That rejoicest in tracking beauty where the eye was too dull to note it.
+And art thou, too, among the blessed, mild, much-injured Poetry?
+That quickenest with light and beauty the leaden face of matter,
+That not unheard, though silent, fillest earth's gardens with music,
+And not unseen, though a spirit, dost look down upon us from the stars."
+
+
+
+
+THE LIGHTING UP.
+
+ "He spak to the spynnsters to spynnen it oute."
+ PIERS PLOUGHMAN.
+
+THIS evening, the 20th of the ninth month, is the time fixed upon for
+lighting the mills for night-labor; and I have just returned from
+witnessing for the first time the effect of the new illumination.
+
+Passing over the bridge, nearly to the Dracut shore, I had a fine view
+of the long line of mills, the city beyond, and the broad sweep of the
+river from the falls. The light of a tranquil and gorgeous sunset was
+slowly fading from river and sky, and the shadows of the trees on the
+Dracut slopes were blending in dusky indistinctness with the great
+shadow of night. Suddenly gleams of light broke from the black masses
+of masonry on the Lowell bank, at first feeble and scattered, flitting
+from window to window, appearing and disappearing, like will-o'-wisps in
+a forest or fireflies in a summer's night. Anon tier after tier of
+windows became radiant, until the whole vast wall, stretching far up the
+river, from basement to roof, became checkered with light reflected with
+the starbeams from the still water beneath. With a little effort of
+fancy, one could readily transform the huge mills, thus illuminated,
+into palaces lighted up for festival occasions, and the figures of the
+workers, passing to and fro before the windows, into forms of beauty and
+fashion, moving in graceful dances.
+
+Alas! this music of the shuttle and the daylong dance to it are not
+altogether of the kind which Milton speaks of when he invokes the "soft
+Lydian airs" of voluptuous leisure. From this time henceforward for
+half a weary year, from the bell-call of morning twilight to half-past
+seven in the evening, with brief intermissions for two hasty meals, the
+operatives will be confined to their tasks. The proverbial facility of
+the Yankees in despatching their dinners in the least possible time
+seems to have been taken advantage of and reduced to a system on the
+Lowell corporations. Strange as it may seem to the uninitiated, the
+working-men and women here contrive to repair to their lodgings, make
+the necessary preliminary ablutions, devour their beef and pudding, and
+hurry back to their looms and jacks in the brief space of half an hour.
+In this way the working-day in Lowell is eked out to an average
+throughout the year of twelve and a half hours. This is a serious evil,
+demanding the earnest consideration of the humane and philanthropic.
+Both classes--the employer and the employed--would in the end be greatly
+benefited by the general adoption of the "ten-hour system," although the
+one might suffer a slight diminution in daily wages and the other in
+yearly profits. Yet it is difficult to see how this most desirable
+change is to be effected. The stronger and healthier portion of the
+operatives might themselves object to it as strenuously as the distant
+stockholder who looks only to his semi-annual dividends. Health is too
+often a matter of secondary consideration. Gain is the great,
+all-absorbing object. Very few, comparatively, regard Lowell as their
+"continuing city." They look longingly back to green valleys of
+Vermont, to quiet farm-houses on the head-waters of the Connecticut and
+Merrimac, and to old familiar homes along the breezy seaboard of New
+England, whence they have been urged by the knowledge that here they can
+earn a larger amount of money in a given time than in any other place or
+employment. They come here for gain, not for pleasure; for high wages,
+not for the comforts that cluster about home. Here are poor widows
+toiling to educate their children; daughters hoarding their wages to
+redeem mortgaged paternal homesteads or to defray the expenses of sick
+and infirm parents; young betrothed girls, about to add their savings to
+those of their country lovers. Others there are, of maturer age, lonely
+and poor, impelled hither by a proud unwillingness to test to its extent
+the charity of friends and relatives, and a strong yearning for the
+"glorious privilege of being independent." All honor to them! Whatever
+may have closed against them the gates of matrimony, whether their own
+obduracy or the faithlessness or indifference of others, instead of
+shutting themselves up in a nunnery or taxing the good nature of their
+friends by perpetual demands for sympathy and support, like weak vines,
+putting out their feelers in every direction for something to twine
+upon, is it not better and wiser for them to go quietly at work, to show
+that woman has a self-sustaining power; that she is something in and of
+herself; that she, too, has a part to bear in life, and, in common with
+the self-elected "lords of creation," has a direct relation to absolute
+being? To such the factory presents the opportunity of taking the first
+and essential step of securing, within a reasonable space of time, a
+comfortable competency.
+
+There are undoubtedly many evils connected with the working of these
+mills; yet they are partly compensated by the fact that here, more than
+in any other mechanical employment, the labor of woman is placed
+essentially upon an equality with that of man. Here, at least, one of
+the many social disabilities under which woman as a distinct individual,
+unconnected with the other sex, has labored in all time is removed; the
+work of her hands is adequately rewarded; and she goes to her daily task
+with the consciousness that she is not "spending her strength for
+naught."
+
+'The Lowell Offering', which has been for the last four years published
+monthly in this city, consisting entirely of articles written by females
+employed in the mills, has attracted much attention and obtained a wide
+circulation. This may be in part owing to the novel circumstances of
+its publication; but it is something more and better than a mere
+novelty. In its volumes may be found sprightly delineations of home
+scenes and characters, highly wrought imaginative pieces, tales of
+genuine pathos and humor, and pleasing fairy stories and fables.
+'The Offering' originated in a reading society of the mill girls, which,
+under the name of the 'Improvement Circle' was convened once in a month.
+At its meetings, pieces written by its members and dropped secretly into
+a sort of "lion's mouth," provided for the purpose of insuring the
+authors from detection, were read for the amusement and criticism of
+the company. This circle is still in existence; and I owe to my
+introduction to it some of the most pleasant hours I have passed in
+Lowell.
+
+The manner in which the 'Offering' has been generally noticed in this
+country has not, to my thinking, been altogether in accordance with good
+taste or self-respect. It is hardly excusable for men, who, whatever
+may be their present position, have, in common with all of us, brothers,
+sisters, or other relations busy in workshop and dairy, and who have
+scarcely washed from their own professional hands the soil of labor, to
+make very marked demonstrations of astonishment at the appearance of a
+magazine whose papers are written by factory girls. As if the
+compatibility of mental cultivation with bodily labor and the equality
+and brotherhood of the human family were still open questions, depending
+for their decision very much on the production of positive proof that
+essays may be written and carpets woven by the same set of fingers!
+
+The truth is, our democracy lacks calmness and solidity, the repose and
+self-reliance which come of long habitude and settled conviction. We
+have not yet learned to wear its simple truths with the graceful ease
+and quiet air of unsolicitous assurance with which the titled European
+does his social fictions. As a people, we do not feel and live out our
+great Declaration. We lack faith in man,--confidence in simple
+humanity, apart from its environments.
+
+ "The age shows, to my thinking, more infidels to Adam,
+ Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God."
+
+ Elizabeth B. Browning.
+
+
+
+
+TAKING COMFORT.
+
+For the last few days the fine weather has lured me away from books and
+papers and the close air of dwellings into the open fields, and under
+the soft, warm sunshine, and the softer light of a full moon. The
+loveliest season of the whole year--that transient but delightful
+interval between the storms of the "wild equinox, with all their wet,"
+and the dark, short, dismal days which precede the rigor of winter--is
+now with us. The sun rises through a soft and hazy atmosphere; the
+light mist-clouds melt gradually away before him; and his noontide light
+rests warm and clear on still woods, tranquil waters, and grasses green
+with the late autumnal rains. The rough-wooded slopes of Dracut,
+overlooking the falls of the river; Fort Hill, across the Concord, where
+the red man made his last stand, and where may still be seen the trench
+which he dug around his rude fortress; the beautiful woodlands on the
+Lowell and Tewksbury shores of the Concord; the cemetery; the Patucket
+Falls,--all within the reach of a moderate walk,--offer at this season
+their latest and loveliest attractions.
+
+One fine morning, not long ago, I strolled down the Merrimac, on the
+Tewksbury shore. I know of no walk in the vicinity of Lowell so
+inviting as that along the margin of the river for nearly a mile from
+the village of Belvidere. The path winds, green and flower-skirted,
+among beeches and oaks, through whose boughs you catch glimpses of
+waters sparkling and dashing below. Rocks, huge and picturesque,
+jut out into the stream, affording beautiful views of the river and
+the distant city.
+
+Half fatigued with my walk, I threw myself down upon the rocky slope
+of the bank, where the panorama of earth, sky, and water lay clear and
+distinct about me. Far above, silent and dim as a picture, was the
+city, with its huge mill-masonry, confused chimney-tops, and church-
+spires; nearer rose the height of Belvidere, with its deserted burial-
+place and neglected gravestones sharply defined on its bleak, bare
+summit against the sky; before me the river went dashing down its rugged
+channel, sending up its everlasting murmur; above me the birch-tree hung
+its tassels; and the last wild flowers of autumn profusely fringed the
+rocky rim of the water. Right opposite, the Dracut woods stretched
+upwards from the shore, beautiful with the hues of frost, glowing with
+tints richer and deeper than those which Claude or Poussin mingled, as
+if the rainbows of a summer shower had fallen among them. At a little
+distance to the right a group of cattle stood mid-leg deep in the river;
+and a troop of children, bright-eyed and mirthful, were casting pebbles
+at them from a projecting shelf of rock. Over all a warm but softened
+sunshine melted down from a slumberous autumnal sky.
+
+My revery was disagreeably broken. A low, grunting sound, half bestial,
+half human, attracted my attention. I was not alone. Close beside me,
+half hidden by a tuft of bushes, lay a human being, stretched out at
+full length, with his face literally rooted into the gravel. A little
+boy, five or six years of age, clean and healthful, with his fair brown
+locks and blue eyes, stood on the bank above, gazing down upon him with
+an expression of childhood's simple and unaffected pity.
+
+"What ails you?" asked the boy at length. "What makes you lie there?"
+
+The prostrate groveller struggled half-way up, exhibiting the bloated
+and filthy countenance of a drunkard. He made two or three efforts to
+get upon his feet, lost his balance, and tumbled forward upon his face.
+
+"What are you doing there?" inquired the boy.
+
+"I'm taking comfort," he muttered, with his mouth in the dirt.
+
+Taking his comfort! There he lay,--squalid and loathsome under the
+bright heaven,--an imbruted man. The holy harmonies of Nature, the
+sounds of gushing waters, the rustle of the leaves above him, the wild
+flowers, the frost-bloom of the woods,--what were they to him?
+Insensible, deaf, and blind, in the stupor of a living death, he lay
+there, literally realizing that most bitterly significant Eastern
+malediction, "May you eat dirt!"
+
+In contrasting the exceeding beauty and harmony of inanimate Nature with
+the human degradation and deformity before me, I felt, as I confess I
+had never done before, the truth of a remark of a rare thinker, that
+"Nature is loved as the city of God, although, or rather because, it has
+no citizen. The beauty of Nature must ever be universal and mocking
+until the landscape has human figures as good as itself. Man is fallen;
+Nature is erect."--(Emerson.) As I turned once more to the calm blue
+sky, the hazy autumnal hills, and the slumberous water, dream-tinted by
+the foliage of its shores, it seemed as if a shadow of shame and sorrow
+fell over the pleasant picture; and even the west wind which stirred the
+tree-tops above me had a mournful murmur, as if Nature felt the
+desecration of her sanctities and the discord of sin and folly which
+marred her sweet harmonies.
+
+God bless the temperance movement! And He will bless it; for it is His
+work. It is one of the great miracles of our times. Not Father Mathew
+in Ireland, nor Hawkins and his little band in Baltimore, but He whose
+care is over all the works of His hand, and who in His divine love and
+compassion "turneth the hearts of men as the rivers of waters are
+turned," hath done it. To Him be all the glory.
+
+
+
+
+CHARMS AND FAIRY FAITH
+
+ "Up the airy mountain,
+ Down the rushy glen,
+ We dare n't go a-hunting
+ For fear of little men.
+ Wee folk, good folk,
+ Trooping all together;
+ Green jacket, red cap,
+ Gray cock's feather."
+ ALLINGHAM.
+
+IT was from a profound knowledge of human nature that Lord Bacon, in
+discoursing upon truth, remarked that a mixture of a lie doth ever add
+pleasure. "Doth any man doubt," he asks, "that if there were taken out
+of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, and
+imaginations, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor,
+shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to
+themselves?" This admitted tendency of our nature, this love of the
+pleasing intoxication of unveracity, exaggeration, and imagination, may
+perhaps account for the high relish which children and nations yet in
+the childhood of civilization find in fabulous legends and tales of
+wonder. The Arab at the present day listens with eager interest to the
+same tales of genii and afrits, sorcerers and enchanted princesses,
+which delighted his ancestors in the times of Haroun al Raschid. The
+gentle, church-going Icelander of our time beguiles the long night of
+his winter with the very sagas and runes which thrilled with not
+unpleasing horror the hearts of the old Norse sea-robbers. What child,
+although Anglo-Saxon born, escapes a temporary sojourn in fairy-land?
+Who of us does not remember the intense satisfaction of throwing aside
+primer and spelling-book for stolen ethnographical studies of dwarfs,
+and giants? Even in our own country and time old superstitions and
+credulities still cling to life with feline tenacity. Here and there,
+oftenest in our fixed, valley-sheltered, inland villages,--slumberous
+Rip Van Winkles, unprogressive and seldom visited,--may be found the
+same old beliefs in omens, warnings, witchcraft, and supernatural charms
+which our ancestors brought with them two centuries ago from Europe.
+
+The practice of charms, or what is popularly called "trying projects,"
+is still, to some extent, continued in New England. The inimitable
+description which Burns gives of similar practices in his Halloween may
+not in all respects apply to these domestic conjurations; but the
+following needs only the substitution of apple-seeds for nuts:--
+
+ "The auld gude wife's wheel-hoordet nits
+ Are round an' round divided;
+ An' mony lads and lassies' fates
+ Are there that night decided.
+ Some kindle couthie side by side
+ An' burn thegither trimly;
+ Some start awa wi' saucy pride
+ And jump out owre the chimlie."
+
+One of the most common of these "projects" is as follows: A young woman
+goes down into the cellar, or into a dark room, with a mirror in her
+hand, and looking in it, sees the face of her future husband peering at
+her through the darkness,--the mirror being, for the time, as potent as
+the famous Cambuscan glass of which Chaucer discourses. A neighbor of
+mine, in speaking of this conjuration, adduces a case in point. One of
+her schoolmates made the experiment and saw the face of a strange man in
+the glass; and many years afterwards she saw the very man pass her
+father's door. He proved to be an English emigrant just landed, and in
+due time became her husband. Burns alludes to something like the spell
+above described:--
+
+ "Wee Jenny to her grannie says,
+ 'will ye go wi' me, grannie,
+ To eat an apple at the glass
+ I got from Uncle Johnnie?'
+ She fuff't her pipe wi' sic a lunt,
+ In wrath she was so vaporin',
+ She noticed na an' azle brunt
+ Her bran new worset apron.
+
+ "Ye little skelpan-limmer's face,
+ How dare ye try sic sportin',
+ An' seek the foul thief ony place
+ For him to try your fortune?
+ Nae doubt but ye may get a sight;
+ Great cause ye hae to fear it;
+ For mony a one has gotten a fright,
+ An' lived and died delecrit."
+
+It is not to be denied, and for truth's sake not to be regretted, that
+this amusing juvenile glammary has seen its best days in New England.
+The schoolmaster has been abroad to some purpose. Not without results
+have our lyceum lecturers and travels of Peter Parley brought everything
+in heaven above and in the earth below to the level of childhood's
+capacities. In our cities and large towns children nowadays pass
+through the opening acts of life's marvellous drama with as little
+manifestation of wonder and surprise as the Indian does through the
+streets of a civilized city which he has entered for the first time.
+Yet Nature, sooner or later, vindicates her mysteries; voices from the
+unseen penetrate the din of civilization. The child philosopher and
+materialist often becomes the visionary of riper years, running into
+illuminism, magnetism, and transcendentalism, with its inspired priests
+and priestesses, its revelations and oracular responses.
+
+But in many a green valley of rural New England there are children yet;
+boys and girls are still to be found not quite overtaken by the march of
+mind. There, too, are huskings, and apple-bees, and quilting parties,
+and huge old-fashioned fireplaces piled with crackling walnut, flinging
+its rosy light over happy countenances of youth and scarcely less happy
+age. If it be true that, according to Cornelius Agrippa, "a wood fire
+doth drive away dark spirits," it is, nevertheless, also true that
+around it the simple superstitions of our ancestors still love to
+linger; and there the half-sportful, half-serious charms of which I have
+spoken are oftenest resorted to. It would be altogether out of place to
+think of them by our black, unsightly stoves, or in the dull and dark
+monotony of our furnace-heated rooms. Within the circle of the light of
+the open fire safely might the young conjurers question destiny; for
+none but kindly and gentle messengers from wonderland could venture
+among them. And who of us, looking back to those long autumnal evenings
+of childhood when the glow of the kitchen-fire rested on the beloved
+faces of home, does not feel that there is truth and beauty in what the
+quaint old author just quoted affirms? "As the spirits of darkness grow
+stronger in the dark, so good spirits, which are angels of light, are
+multiplied and strengthened, not only by the divine light of the sun and
+stars, but also by the light of our common wood-fires." Even Lord
+Bacon, in condemning the superstitious beliefs of his day, admits that
+they might serve for winter talk around the fireside.
+
+Fairy faith is, we may safely say, now dead everywhere,--buried,
+indeed,--for the mad painter Blake saw the funeral of the last of the
+little people, and an irreverent English bishop has sung their requiem.
+It never had much hold upon the Yankee mind, our superstitions being
+mostly of a sterner and less poetical kind. The Irish Presbyterians who
+settled in New Hampshire about the year 1720 brought indeed with them,
+among other strange matters, potatoes and fairies; but while the former
+took root and flourished among us, the latter died out, after lingering
+a few years in a very melancholy and disconsolate way, looking
+regretfully back to their green turf dances, moonlight revels, and
+cheerful nestling around the shealing fires of Ireland. The last that
+has been heard of them was some forty or fifty years ago in a tavern
+house in S-------, New Hampshire. The landlord was a spiteful little
+man, whose sour, pinched look was a standing libel upon the state of his
+larder. He made his house so uncomfortable by his moroseness that
+travellers even at nightfall pushed by his door and drove to the next
+town. Teamsters and drovers, who in those days were apt to be very
+thirsty, learned, even before temperance societies were thought of, to
+practice total abstinence on that road, and cracked their whips and
+goaded on their teams in full view of a most tempting array of bottles
+and glasses, from behind which the surly little landlord glared out upon
+them with a look which seemed expressive of all sorts of evil wishes,
+broken legs, overturned carriages, spavined horses, sprained oxen,
+unsavory poultry, damaged butter, and bad markets. And if, as a matter
+of necessity, to "keep the cold out of his stomach," occasionally a
+wayfarer stopped his team and ventured to call for "somethin' warmin',"
+the testy publican stirred up the beverage in such a spiteful way, that,
+on receiving it foaming from his hand, the poor customer was half afraid
+to open his mouth, lest the red-hot flip iron should be plunged down his
+gullet.
+
+As a matter of course, poverty came upon the house and its tenants like
+an armed man. Loose clapboards rattled in the wind; rags fluttered from
+the broken windows; within doors were tattered children and scanty fare.
+The landlord's wife was a stout, buxom woman, of Irish lineage, and,
+what with scolding her husband and liberally patronizing his bar in his
+absence, managed to keep, as she said, her "own heart whole," although
+the same could scarcely be said of her children's trousers and her own
+frock of homespun. She confidently predicted that "a betther day was
+coming," being, in fact, the only thing hopeful about the premises. And
+it did come, sure enough. Not only all the regular travellers on the
+road made a point of stopping at the tavern, but guests from all the
+adjacent towns filled its long-deserted rooms,--the secret of which was,
+that it had somehow got abroad that a company of fairies had taken up
+their abode in the hostelry and daily held conversation with each other
+in the capacious parlor. I have heard those who at the time visited the
+tavern say that it was literally thronged for several weeks. Small,
+squeaking voices spoke in a sort of Yankee-Irish dialect, in the haunted
+room, to the astonishment and admiration of hundreds. The inn, of
+course, was blessed by this fairy visitation; the clapboards ceased
+their racket, clear panes took the place of rags in the sashes, and the
+little till under the bar grew daily heavy with coin. The magical
+influence extended even farther; for it was observable that the landlord
+wore a good-natured face, and that the landlady's visits to the gin-
+bottle were less and less frequent. But the thing could not, in the
+nature of the case, continue long. It was too late in the day and on
+the wrong side of the water. As the novelty wore off, people began to
+doubt and reason about it. Had the place been traversed by a ghost or
+disturbed by a witch they could have acquiesced in it very quietly; but
+this outlandish belief in fairies was altogether an overtask for Yankee
+credulity. As might have been expected, the little strangers, unable to
+breathe in an atmosphere of doubt and suspicion, soon took their leave,
+shaking off the dust of their elfin feet as a testimony against an
+unbelieving generation. It was, indeed, said that certain rude fellows
+from the Bay State pulled away a board from the ceiling and disclosed to
+view the fairies in the shape of the landlady's three slatternly
+daughters. But the reader who has any degree of that charity which
+thinks no evil will rather credit the statement of the fairies
+themselves, as reported by the mistress of the house, "that they were
+tired of the new country, and had no pace of their lives among the
+Yankees, and were going back to Ould Ireland."
+
+It is a curious fact that the Indians had some notion of a race of
+beings corresponding in many respects to the English fairies.
+Schoolcraft describes them as small creatures in human shape, inhabiting
+rocks, crags, and romantic dells, and delighting especially in points of
+land jutting into lakes and rivers and which were covered with
+pinetrees. They were called Puckweedjinees,--little vanishers.
+
+In a poetical point of view it is to be regretted that our ancestors did
+not think it worth their while to hand down to us more of the simple and
+beautiful traditions and beliefs of the "heathen round about" them.
+Some hints of them we glean from the writings of the missionary Mayhew
+and the curious little book of Roger Williams. Especially would one
+like to know more of that domestic demon, Wetuomanit, who presided over
+household affairs, assisted the young squaw in her first essay at
+wigwam-keeping, gave timely note of danger, and kept evil spirits at a
+distance,--a kind of new-world brownie, gentle and useful.
+
+Very suggestive, too, is the story of Pumoolah,--a mighty spirit, whose
+home is on the great Katahdin Mountain, sitting there with his earthly
+bride (a beautiful daughter of the Penobscots transformed into an
+immortal by her love), in serenest sunshine, above the storm which
+crouches and growls at his feet. None but the perfectly pure and good
+can reach his abode. Many have from time to time attempted it in vain;
+some, after almost reaching the summit, have been driven back by
+thunderbolts or sleety whirlwinds.
+
+Not far from my place of residence are the ruins of a mill, in a narrow
+ravine fringed with trees. Some forty years ago the mill was supposed
+to be haunted; and horse-shoes, in consequence, were nailed over its
+doors. One worthy man, whose business lay beyond the mill, was afraid
+to pass it alone; and his wife, who was less fearful of supernatural
+annoyance, used to accompany him. The little old white-coated miller,
+who there ground corn and wheat for his neighbors, whenever he made a
+particularly early visit to his mill, used to hear it in full
+operation,--the water-wheel dashing bravely, and the old rickety
+building clattering to the jar of the stones. Yet the moment his hand
+touched the latch or his foot the threshold all was hushed save the
+melancholy drip of water from the dam or the low gurgle of the small
+stream eddying amidst willow roots and mossy stones in the ravine below.
+
+This haunted mill has always reminded me of that most beautiful of
+Scottish ballads, the Song of the Elfin Miller, in which fairies are
+represented as grinding the poor man's grist without toil:--
+
+ "Full merrily rings the mill-stone round;
+ Full merrily rings the wheel;
+ Full merrily gushes out the grist;
+ Come, taste my fragrant meal.
+ The miller he's a warldly man,
+ And maun hae double fee;
+ So draw the sluice in the churl's dam
+ And let the stream gae free!"
+
+Brainerd, who truly deserves the name of an American poet, has left
+behind him a ballad on the Indian legend of the black fox which haunted
+Salmon River, a tributary of the Connecticut. Its wild and picturesque
+beauty causes us to regret that more of the still lingering traditions
+of the red men have not been made the themes of his verse:--
+
+
+
+
+THE BLACK FOX.
+
+ "How cold, how beautiful, how bright
+ The cloudless heaven above us shines!
+ But 't is a howling winter's night;
+ 'T would freeze the very forest pines.
+
+ "The winds are up while mortals sleep;
+ The stars look forth while eyes are shut;
+ The bolted snow lies drifted deep
+ Around our poor and lonely hut.
+
+ "With silent step and listening ear,
+ With bow and arrow, dog and gun,
+ We'll mark his track,--his prowl we hear:
+ Now is our time! Come on! come on!
+
+ "O'er many a fence, through many a wood,
+ Following the dog's bewildered scent,
+ In anxious haste and earnest mood,
+ The white man and the Indian went.
+
+ "The gun is cocked; the bow is bent;
+ The dog stands with uplifted paw;
+ And ball and arrow both are sent,
+ Aimed at the prowler's very jaw.
+
+ "The ball to kill that fox is run
+ Not in a mould by mortals made;
+ The arrow which that fox should shun
+ Was never shaped from earthly reed.
+
+ "The Indian Druids of the wood
+ Know where the fatal arrows grow;
+ They spring not by the summer flood;
+ They pierce not through the winter's snow.
+
+ "Why cowers the dog, whose snuffing nose
+ Was never once deceived till now?
+ And why amidst the chilling snows
+ Does either hunter wipe his brow?
+
+ "For once they see his fearful den;
+ 'T is a dark cloud that slowly moves
+ By night around the homes of men,
+ By day along the stream it loves.
+
+ "Again the dog is on the track,
+ The hunters chase o'er dale and hill;
+ They may not, though they would, look back;
+ They must go forward, forward still.
+
+ "Onward they go, and never turn,
+ Amidst a night which knows no day;
+ For nevermore shall morning sun
+ Light them upon their endless way.
+
+ "The hut is desolate; and there
+ The famished dog alone returns;
+ On the cold steps he makes his lair;
+ By the shut door he lays his bones.
+
+ "Now the tired sportsman leans his gun
+ Against the ruins on its site,
+ And ponders on the hunting done
+ By the lost wanderers of the night.
+
+ "And there the little country girls
+ Will stop to whisper, listen, and look,
+ And tell, while dressing their sunny curls,
+ Of the Black Fox of Salmon Brook."
+
+The same writer has happily versified a pleasant superstition of the
+valley of the Connecticut. It is supposed that shad are led from the
+Gulf of Mexico to the Connecticut by a kind of Yankee bogle in the shape
+of a bird.
+
+
+
+
+THE SHAD SPIRIT.
+
+ "Now drop the bolt, and securely nail
+ The horse-shoe over the door;
+ 'T is a wise precaution; and, if it should fail,
+ It never failed before.
+
+ "Know ye the shepherd that gathers his flock
+ Where the gales of the equinox blow
+ From each unknown reef and sunken rock
+ In the Gulf of Mexico,--
+
+ "While the monsoons growl, and the trade-winds bark,
+ And the watch-dogs of the surge
+ Pursue through the wild waves the ravenous shark
+ That prowls around their charge?
+
+ "To fair Connecticut's northernmost source,
+ O'er sand-bars, rapids, and falls,
+ The Shad Spirit holds his onward course
+ With the flocks which his whistle calls.
+
+ "Oh, how shall he know where he went before?
+ Will he wander around forever?
+ The last year's shad heads shall shine on the shore,
+ To light him up the river.
+
+ "And well can he tell the very time
+ To undertake his task
+ When the pork-barrel's low he sits on the chine
+ And drums on the empty cask.
+
+ "The wind is light, and the wave is white
+ With the fleece of the flock that's near;
+ Like the breath of the breeze he comes over the seas
+ And faithfully leads them here.
+
+ "And now he 's passed the bolted door
+ Where the rusted horse-shoe clings;
+ So carry the nets to the nearest shore,
+ And take what the Shad Spirit brings."
+
+The comparatively innocent nature and simple poetic beauty of this class
+of superstitions have doubtless often induced the moralist to hesitate
+in exposing their absurdity, and, like Burns in view of his national
+thistle, to:
+
+ "Turn the weeding hook aside
+ And spare the symbol dear."
+
+But the age has fairly outgrown them, and they are falling away by a
+natural process of exfoliation. The wonderland of childhood must
+henceforth be sought within the domains of truth. The strange facts of
+natural history, and the sweet mysteries of flowers and forests, and
+hills and waters, will profitably take the place of the fairy lore of
+the past, and poetry and romance still hold their accustomed seats in
+the circle of home, without bringing with them the evil spirits of
+credulity and untruth. Truth should be the first lesson of the child
+and the last aspiration of manhood; for it has been well said that the
+inquiry of truth, which is the lovemaking of it, the knowledge of truth,
+which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the
+enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.
+
+
+
+
+MAGICIANS AND WITCH FOLK.
+
+FASCINATION, saith Henry Cornelius Agrippa, in the fiftieth chapter of
+his first book on Occult Philosophy, "is a binding which comes of the
+spirit of the witch through the eyes of him that is bewitched, entering
+to his heart; for the eye being opened and intent upon any one, with a
+strong imagination doth dart its beams, which are the vehiculum of the
+spirit, into the eyes of him that is opposite to her; which tender
+spirit strikes his eyes, stirs up and wounds his heart, and infects his
+spirit. Whence Apuleius saith, 'Thy eyes, sliding down through my eyes
+into my inmost heart, stirreth up a most vehement burning.' And when
+eyes are reciprocally intent upon each other, and when rays are joined
+to rays, and lights to lights, then the spirit of the one is joined to
+that of the other; so are strong ligations made and vehement loves
+inflamed." Taking this definition of witchcraft, we sadly fear it is
+still practised to a very great extent among us. The best we can say of
+it is, that the business seems latterly to have fallen into younger
+hands; its victims do not appear to regard themselves as especial
+objects of compassion; and neither church nor state seems inclined to
+interfere with it.
+
+As might be expected in a shrewd community like ours, attempts are not
+unfrequently made to speculate in the supernatural,--to "make gain of
+sooth-saying." In the autumn of last year a "wise woman" dreamed, or
+somnambulized, that a large sum of money, in gold and silver coin, lay
+buried in the centre of the great swamp in Poplin, New Hampshire;
+whereupon an immediate search was made for the precious metal. Under
+the bleak sky of November, in biting frost and sleet rain, some twenty
+or more grown men, graduates of our common schools, and liable, every
+mother's son of them, to be made deacons, squires, and general court
+members, and such other drill officers as may be requisite in the march
+of mind, might be seen delving in grim earnest, breaking the frozen
+earth, uprooting swamp-maples and hemlocks, and waking, with sledge and
+crowbar, unwonted echoes in a solitude which had heretofore only
+answered to the woodman's axe or the scream of the wild fowl. The snows
+of December put an end to their labors; but the yawning excavation still
+remains, a silent but somewhat expressive commentary upon the age of
+progress.
+
+Still later, in one of our Atlantic cities, an attempt was made,
+partially at least, successful, to form a company for the purpose of
+digging for money in one of the desolate sand-keys of the West Indies.
+It appears that some mesmerized "subject," in the course of one of those
+somnambulic voyages of discovery in which the traveller, like Satan in
+chaos,--
+
+ "O'er bog, o'er steep, through straight, rough, dense, or rare,
+ With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,
+ And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies,"--
+
+while peering curiously into the earth's mysteries, chanced to have his
+eyes gladdened by the sight of a huge chest packed with Spanish coins,
+the spoil, doubtless, of some rich-freighted argosy, or Carthagena
+galleon, in the rare days of Queen Elizabeth's Christian buccaneers.
+
+During the last quarter of a century, a colored woman in one of the
+villages on the southern border of New Hampshire has been consulted by
+hundreds of anxious inquirers into the future. Long experience in her
+profession has given her something of that ready estimate of character,
+that quick and keen appreciation of the capacity, habits, and wishes of
+her visitors, which so remarkably distinguished the late famous Madame
+Le Normand, of Paris; and if that old squalid sorceress, in her cramped
+Parisian attic, redolent of garlic and bestrewn with the greasy
+implements of sorry housewifery, was, as has been affirmed, consulted by
+such personages as the fair Josephine Beauharnois, and the "man of
+destiny," Napoleon himself, is it strange that the desire to lift the
+veil of the great mystery before us should overcome in some degree our
+peculiar and most republican prejudice against color, and reconcile us
+to the disagreeable necessity of looking at futurity through a black
+medium?
+
+Some forty years ago, on the banks of the pleasant little creek
+separating Berwick, in Maine, from Somersworth, in New Hampshire, within
+sight of my mother's home, dwelt a plain, sedate member of the society
+of Friends, named Bantum. He passed throughout a circle of several
+miles as a conjurer and skilful adept in the art of magic. To him
+resorted farmers who had lost their cattle, matrons whose household
+gear, silver spoons, and table-linen had been stolen, or young maidens
+whose lovers were absent; and the quiet, meek-spirited old man received
+them all kindly, put on his huge iron-rimmed spectacles, opened his
+"conjuring book," which my mother describes as a large clasped volume in
+strange language and black-letter type, and after due reflection and
+consideration gave the required answers without money and without price.
+The curious old volume is still in the possession of the conjurer's
+family. Apparently inconsistent as was this practice of the black art
+with the simplicity and truthfulness of his religious profession, I have
+not been able to learn that he was ever subjected to censure on account
+of it. It may be that our modern conjurer defended himself on grounds
+similar to those assumed by the celebrated knight of Nettesheim, in the
+preface to his first Book of Magic: "Some," says he, "may crie oute that
+I teach forbidden arts, sow the seed of heresies, offend pious ears, and
+scandalize excellent wits; that I am a sorcerer, superstitious and
+devilish, who indeed am a magician. To whom I answer, that a magician
+doth not among learned men signifie a sorcerer or one that is
+superstitious or devilish, but a wise man, a priest, a prophet, and that
+the sibyls prophesied most clearly of Christ; that magicians, as wise
+men, by the wonderful secrets of the world, knew Christ to be born, and
+came to worship him, first of all; and that the name of magicke is
+received by philosophers, commended by divines, and not unacceptable to
+the Gospel."
+
+The study of astrology and occult philosophy, to which many of the
+finest minds of the Middle Ages devoted themselves without molestation
+from the Church, was never practised with impunity after the
+Reformation. The Puritans and Presbyterians, taking the Bible for their
+rule, "suffered not a witch to live;" and, not content with burning the
+books of those who "used curious arts" after the manner of the
+Ephesians, they sacrificed the students themselves on the same pile.
+Hence we hear little of learned and scientific wizards in New England.
+One remarkable character of this kind seems, however, to have escaped
+the vigilance of our modern Doctors of the Mosaic Law. Dr. Robert Child
+came to this country about the year 1644, and took up his residence in
+the Massachusetts colony. He was a man of wealth, and owned plantations
+at Nashaway, now Lancaster, and at Saco, in Maine. He was skilful in
+mineralogy and metallurgy, and seems to have spent a good deal of money
+in searching for mines. He is well known as the author of the first
+decided movement for liberty of conscience in Massachusetts, his name
+standing at the head of the famous petition of 1646 for a modification
+of the laws in respect to religious worship, and complaining in strong
+terms of the disfranchisement of persons not members of the Church. A
+tremendous excitement was produced by this remonstrance; clergy and
+magistrates joined in denouncing it; Dr. Child and his associates were
+arrested, tried for contempt of government, and heavily fined. The
+Court, in passing sentence, assured the Doctor that his crime was only
+equalled by that of Korah and his troop, who rebelled against Moses and
+Aaron. He resolved to appeal to the Parliament of England, and made
+arrangements for his departure, but was arrested, and ordered to be kept
+a prisoner in his own house until the vessel in which he was to sail had
+left Boston. He was afterwards imprisoned for a considerable length of
+time, and on his release found means to return to England. The Doctor's
+trunks were searched by the Puritan authorities while he was in prison;
+but it does not appear that they detected the occult studies to which
+lie was addicted, to which lucky circumstance it is doubtless owing that
+the first champion of religious liberty in the New World was not hung
+for a wizard.
+
+Dr. Child was a graduate of the renowned University of Padua, and had
+travelled extensively in the Old World. Probably, like Michael Scott,
+he had:
+
+ "Learned the art of glammarye
+ In Padua, beyond the sea;"
+
+for I find in the dedication of an English translation of a Continental
+work on astrology and magic, printed in 1651 "at the sign of the Three
+Bibles," that his "sublime hermeticall and theomagicall lore" is
+compared to that of Hermes and Agrippa. He is complimented as a master
+of the mysteries of Rome and Germany, and as one who had pursued his
+investigations among the philosophers of the Old World and the Indians
+of the New, "leaving no stone unturned, the turning whereof might
+conduce to the discovery of what is occult."
+
+There was still another member of the Friends' society in Vermont, of
+the name of Austin, who, in answer, as he supposed, to prayer and a
+long-cherished desire to benefit his afflicted fellow-creatures,
+received, as he believed, a special gift of healing. For several years
+applicants from nearly all parts of New England visited him with the
+story of their sufferings and praying for a relief, which, it is
+averred, was in many instances really obtained. Letters from the sick
+who were unable to visit him, describing their diseases, were sent him;
+and many are yet living who believe that they were restored miraculously
+at the precise period of time when Austin was engaged in reading their
+letters. One of my uncles was commissioned to convey to him a large
+number of letters from sick persons in his neighborhood. He found the
+old man sitting in his plain parlor in the simplest garb of his sect,--
+grave, thoughtful, venerable,--a drab-coated Prince Hohenlohe. He
+received the letters in silence, read them slowly, casting them one
+after another upon a large pile of similar epistles in a corner of the
+apartment.
+
+Half a century ago nearly every neighborhood in New England was favored
+with one or more reputed dealers in magic. Twenty years later there
+were two poor old sisters who used to frighten school urchins and
+"children of a larger growth" as they rode down from New Hampshire on
+their gaunt skeleton horses, strung over with baskets for the
+Newburyport market. They were aware of the popular notion concerning
+them, and not unfrequently took advantage of it to levy a sort of black
+mail upon their credulous neighbors. An attendant at the funeral of one
+of these sisters, who when living was about as unsubstantial as Ossian's
+ghost, through which the stars were visible, told me that her coffin was
+so heavy that four stout men could barely lift it.
+
+One, of my earliest recollections is that of an old woman, residing
+about two miles from the place of my nativity, who for many years had
+borne the unenviable reputation of a witch. She certainly had the look
+of one,--a combination of form, voice, and features which would have
+made the fortune of an English witch finder in the days of Matthew Paris
+or the Sir John Podgers of Dickens, and insured her speedy conviction in
+King James's High Court of Justiciary. She was accused of divers ill-
+doings,--such as preventing the cream in her neighbor's churn from
+becoming butter, and snuffing out candles at huskings and quilting-
+parties.
+
+ "She roamed the country far and near,
+ Bewitched the children of the peasants,
+ Dried up the cows, and lamed the deer,
+ And sucked the eggs, and killed the pheasants."
+
+The poor old woman was at length so sadly annoyed by her unfortunate
+reputation that she took the trouble to go before a justice of the
+peace, and made solemn oath that she was a Christian woman, and no
+witch.
+
+Not many years since a sad-visaged, middle-aged man might be seen in the
+streets of one of our seaboard towns at times suddenly arrested in the
+midst of a brisk walk and fixed motionless for some minutes in the busy
+thoroughfare. No effort could induce him to stir until, in his opinion,
+the spell was removed and his invisible tormentor suffered him to
+proceed. He explained his singular detention as the act of a whole
+family of witches whom he had unfortunately offended during a visit down
+East. It was rumored that the offence consisted in breaking off a
+matrimonial engagement with the youngest member of the family,--a
+sorceress, perhaps, in more than one sense of the word, like that
+"winsome wench and walie" in Tam O'Shanter's witch-dance at Kirk
+Alloway. His only hope was that he should outlive his persecutors; and
+it is said that at the very hour in which the event took place he
+exultingly assured his friends that the spell was forever broken, and
+that the last of the family of his tormentors was no more.
+
+When a boy, I occasionally met, at the house of a relative in an
+adjoining town, a stout, red-nosed old farmer of the neighborhood.
+A fine tableau he made of a winter's evening, in the red light of a
+birch-log fire, as he sat for hours watching its progress, with sleepy,
+half-shut eyes, changing his position only to reach the cider-mug on the
+shelf near him. Although he seldom opened his lips save to assent to
+some remark of his host or to answer a direct question, yet at times,
+when the cider-mug got the better of his taciturnity, he would amuse us
+with interesting details of his early experiences in "the Ohio country."
+
+There was, however, one chapter in these experiences which he usually
+held in reserve, and with which "the stranger intermeddled not." He was
+not willing to run the risk of hearing that which to him was a frightful
+reality turned into ridicule by scoffers and unbelievers. The substance
+of it, as I received it from one of his neighbors, forms as clever a
+tale of witchcraft as modern times have produced.
+
+It seems that when quite a young man he left the homestead, and,
+strolling westward, worked his way from place to place until he found
+himself in one of the old French settlements on the Ohio River. Here he
+procured employment on the farm of a widow; and being a smart, active
+fellow, and proving highly serviceable in his department, he rapidly
+gained favor in the eyes of his employer. Ere long, contrary to the
+advice of the neighbors, and in spite of somewhat discouraging hints
+touching certain matrimonial infelicities experienced by the late
+husband, he resolutely stepped into the dead man's shoes: the mistress
+became the wife, and the servant was legally promoted to the head of the
+household.--
+
+For a time matters went on cosily and comfortably enough. He was now
+lord of the soil; and, as he laid in his crops of corn and potatoes,
+salted down his pork, and piled up his wood for winter's use, he
+naturally enough congratulated himself upon his good fortune and laughed
+at the sinister forebodings of his neighbors. But with the long winter
+months came a change over his "love's young dream." An evil and
+mysterious influence seemed to be at work in his affairs. Whatever he
+did after consulting his wife or at her suggestion resulted favorably
+enough; but all his own schemes and projects were unaccountably marred
+and defeated. If he bought a horse, it was sure to prove spavined or
+wind-broken. His cows either refused to give down their milk, or,
+giving it, perversely kicked it over. A fine sow which he had bargained
+for repaid his partiality by devouring, like Saturn, her own children.
+By degrees a dark thought forced its way into his mind. Comparing his
+repeated mischances with the ante-nuptial warnings of his neighbors, he
+at last came to the melancholy conclusion that his wife was a witch.
+The victim in Motherwell's ballad of the Demon Lady, or the poor fellow
+in the Arabian tale who discovered that he had married a ghoul in the
+guise of a young and blooming princess, was scarcely in a more sorrowful
+predicament. He grew nervous and fretful. Old dismal nursery stories
+and all the witch lore of boyhood came back to his memory; and he crept
+to his bed like a criminal to the gallows, half afraid to fall asleep
+lest his mysterious companion should take a fancy to transform him into
+a horse, get him shod at the smithy, and ride him to a witch-meeting.
+And, as if to make the matter worse, his wife's affection seemed to
+increase just in proportion as his troubles thickened upon him. She
+aggravated him with all manner of caresses and endearments. This was
+the drop too much. The poor husband recoiled from her as from a waking
+nightmare. His thoughts turned to New England; he longed to see once
+more the old homestead, with its tall well-sweep and butternut-trees by
+the roadside; and he sighed amidst the rich bottom-lands of his new home
+for his father's rocky pasture, with its crop of stinted mulleins. So
+one cold November day, finding himself out of sight and hearing of his
+wife, he summoned courage to attempt an escape, and, resolutely turning
+his back on the West, plunged into the wilderness towards the sunrise.
+After a long and hard journey he reached his birthplace, and was kindly
+welcomed by his old friends. Keeping a close mouth with respect to his
+unlucky adventure in Ohio, he soon after married one of his schoolmates,
+and, by dint of persevering industry and economy, in a few years found
+himself in possession of a comfortable home.
+
+But his evil star still lingered above the horizon. One summer evening,
+on returning from the hayfield, who should meet him but his witch wife
+from Ohio! She came riding up the street on her old white horse, with a
+pillion behind the saddle. Accosting him in a kindly tone, yet not
+without something of gentle reproach for his unhandsome desertion of
+her, she informed him that she had come all the way from Ohio to take
+him back again.
+
+It was in vain that he pleaded his later engagements; it was in vain
+that his new wife raised her shrillest remonstrances, not unmingled with
+expressions of vehement indignation at the revelation of her husband's
+real position; the witch wife was inexorable; go he must, and that
+speedily. Fully impressed with a belief in her supernatural power of
+compelling obedience, and perhaps dreading more than witchcraft itself
+the effects of the unlucky disclosure on the temper of his New England
+helpmate, he made a virtue of the necessity of the case, bade farewell
+to the latter amidst a perfect hurricane of reproaches, and mounted the
+white horse, with his old wife on the pillion behind him.
+
+Of that ride Burger might have written a counterpart to his ballad:--
+
+ "Tramp, tramp, along the shore they ride,
+ Splash, splash, along the sea."
+
+Two or three years had passed away, bringing no tidings of the
+unfortunate husband, when he once more made his appearance in his native
+village. He was not disposed to be very communicative; but for one
+thing, at least, he seemed willing to express his gratitude. His Ohio
+wife, having no spell against intermittent fever, had paid the debt of
+nature, and had left him free; in view of which, his surviving wife,
+after manifesting a due degree of resentment, consented to take him back
+to her bed and board; and I could never learn that she had cause to
+regret her clemency.
+
+
+
+
+THE BEAUTIFUL
+
+ "A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face;
+ a beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form;
+ it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures;
+ it is the finest of the fine arts."
+ EMERSON'S Essays, Second Series, iv., p. 162.
+
+A FEW days since I was walking with a friend, who, unfortunately for
+himself, seldom meets with anything in the world of realities worthy of
+comparison with the ideal of his fancy, which, like the bird in the
+Arabian tale, glides perpetually before him, always near yet never
+overtaken. He was half humorously, half seriously, complaining of the
+lack of beauty in the faces and forms that passed us on the crowded
+sidewalk. Some defect was noticeable in all: one was too heavy, another
+too angular; here a nose was at fault, there a mouth put a set of
+otherwise fine features out of countenance; the fair complexions had red
+hair, and glossy black locks were wasted upon dingy ones. In one way or
+another all fell below his impossible standard.
+
+The beauty which my friend seemed in search of was that of proportion
+and coloring; mechanical exactness; a due combination of soft curves and
+obtuse angles, of warm carnation and marble purity. Such a man, for
+aught I can see, might love a graven image, like the girl of Florence
+who pined into a shadow for the Apollo Belvidere, looking coldly on her
+with stony eyes from his niche in the Vatican. One thing is certain,--
+he will never find his faultless piece of artistical perfection by
+searching for it amidst flesh-and-blood realities. Nature does not,
+as far as I can perceive, work with square and compass, or lay on her
+colors by the rules of royal artists or the dunces of the academies.
+She eschews regular outlines. She does not shape her forms by a common
+model. Not one of Eve's numerous progeny in all respects resembles her
+who first culled the flowers of Eden. To the infinite variety and
+picturesque inequality of Nature we owe the great charm of her uncloying
+beauty. Look at her primitive woods; scattered trees, with moist sward
+and bright mosses at their roots; great clumps of green shadow, where
+limb intwists with limb and the rustle of one leaf stirs a hundred
+others,--stretching up steep hillsides, flooding with green beauty the
+valleys, or arching over with leaves the sharp ravines, every tree and
+shrub unlike its neighbor in size and proportion,--the old and storm-
+broken leaning on the young and vigorous,--intricate and confused,
+without order or method. Who would exchange this for artificial French
+gardens, where every tree stands stiff and regular, clipped and trimmed
+into unvarying conformity, like so many grenadiers under review? Who
+wants eternal sunshine or shadow? Who would fix forever the loveliest
+cloudwork of an autumn sunset, or hang over him an everlasting
+moonlight? If the stream had no quiet eddying place, could we so admire
+its cascade over the rocks? Were there no clouds, could we so hail the
+sky shining through them in its still, calm purity? Who shall venture
+to ask our kind Mother Nature to remove from our sight any one of her
+forms or colors? Who shall decide which is beautiful, or otherwise, in
+itself considered?
+
+There are too many, like my fastidious friend, who go through the world
+"from Dan to Beersheba, finding all barren,"--who have always some fault
+or other to find with Nature and Providence, seeming to consider
+themselves especially ill used because the one does not always coincide
+with their taste, nor the other with their narrow notions of personal
+convenience. In one of his early poems, Coleridge has well expressed a
+truth, which is not the less important because it is not generally
+admitted. The idea is briefly this: that the mind gives to all things
+their coloring, their gloom, or gladness; that the pleasure we derive
+from external nature is primarily from ourselves:--
+
+ "from the mind itself must issue forth
+ A light, a glory, a fair luminous mist,
+ Enveloping the earth."
+
+The real difficulty of these lifelong hunters after the beautiful exists
+in their own spirits. They set up certain models of perfection in their
+imaginations, and then go about the world in the vain expectation of
+finding them actually wrought out according to pattern; very
+unreasonably calculating that Nature will suspend her everlasting laws
+for the purpose of creating faultless prodigies for their especial
+gratification.
+
+The authors of Gayeties and Gravities give it as their opinion that no
+object of sight is regarded by us as a simple disconnected form, but
+that--an instantaneous reflection as to its history, purpose, or
+associations converts it into a concrete one,--a process, they shrewdly
+remark, which no thinking being can prevent, and which can only be
+avoided by the unmeaning and stolid stare of "a goose on the common or a
+cow on the green." The senses and the faculties of the understanding
+are so blended with and dependent upon each other that not one of them
+can exercise its office alone and without the modification of some
+extrinsic interference or suggestion. Grateful or unpleasant
+associations cluster around all which sense takes cognizance of; the
+beauty which we discern in an external object is often but the
+reflection of our own minds.
+
+What is beauty, after all? Ask the lover who kneels in homage to one
+who has no attractions for others. The cold onlooker wonders that he
+can call that unclassic combination of features and that awkward form
+beautiful. Yet so it is. He sees, like Desdemona, her "visage in her
+mind," or her affections. A light from within shines through the
+external uncomeliness,--softens, irradiates, and glorifies it. That
+which to others seems commonplace and unworthy of note is to him, in the
+words of Spenser,--
+
+ "A sweet, attractive kind of grace;
+ A full assurance given by looks;
+ Continual comfort in a face;
+ The lineaments of Gospel books."
+
+"Handsome is that handsome does,--hold up your heads, girls!" was the
+language of Primrose in the play when addressing her daughters. The
+worthy matron was right. Would that all my female readers who are
+sorrowing foolishly because they are not in all respects like Dubufe's
+Eve, or that statue of the Venus "which enchants the world," could be
+persuaded to listen to her. What is good looking, as Horace Smith
+remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle,--generous in
+your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my
+word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration. Loving and
+pleasant associations will gather about you. Never mind the ugly
+reflection which your glass may give you. That mirror has no heart.
+But quite another picture is yours on the retina of human sympathy.
+There the beauty of holiness, of purity, of that inward grace which
+passeth show, rests over it, softening and mellowing its features just
+as the full calm moonlight melts those of a rough landscape into
+harmonious loveliness. "Hold up your heads, girls!" I repeat after
+Primrose. Why should you not? Every mother's daughter of you can be
+beautiful. You can envelop yourselves in an atmosphere of moral and
+intellectual beauty, through which your otherwise plain faces will look
+forth like those of angels. Beautiful to Ledyard, stiffening in the
+cold of a northern winter, seemed the diminutive, smokestained women of
+Lapland, who wrapped him in their furs and ministered to his necessities
+with kindness and gentle words of compassion. Lovely to the homesick
+heart of Park seemed the dark maids of Sego, as they sung their low and
+simple song of welcome beside his bed, and sought to comfort the white
+stranger, who had "no mother to bring him milk and no wife to grind him
+corn." Oh, talk as we may of beauty as a thing to be chiselled from
+marble or wrought out on canvas, speculate as we may upon its colors and
+outlines, what is it but an intellectual abstraction, after all? The
+heart feels a beauty of another kind; looking through the outward
+environment, it discovers a deeper and more real loveliness.
+
+This was well understood by the old painters. In their pictures of
+Mary, the virgin mother, the beauty which melts and subdues the gazer is
+that of the soul and the affections, uniting the awe and mystery of that
+mother's miraculous allotment with the irrepressible love, the
+unutterable tenderness, of young maternity,--Heaven's crowning miracle
+with Nature's holiest and sweetest instinct. And their pale Magdalens,
+holy with the look of sins forgiven,--how the divine beauty of their
+penitence sinks into the heart! Do we not feel that the only real
+deformity is sin, and that goodness evermore hallows and sanctifies its
+dwelling-place? When the soul is at rest, when the passions and desires
+are all attuned to the divine harmony,--
+
+ "Spirits moving musically
+ To a lute's well-ordered law,"
+ The Haunted Palace, by Edgar A. Poe.
+
+do we not read the placid significance thereof in the human countenance?
+"I have seen," said Charles Lamb, "faces upon which the dove of peace
+sat brooding." In that simple and beautiful record of a holy life, the
+Journal of John Woolman, there is a passage of which I have been more
+than once reminded in my intercourse with my fellow-beings: "Some
+glances of real beauty may be seen in their faces who dwell in true
+meekness. There is a harmony in the sound of that voice to which divine
+love gives utterance."
+
+Quite the ugliest face I ever saw was that of a woman whom the world
+calls beautiful. Through its "silver veil" the evil and ungentle
+passions looked out hideous and hateful. On the other hand, there are
+faces which the multitude at the first glance pronounce homely,
+unattractive, and such as "Nature fashions by the gross," which I always
+recognize with a warm heart-thrill; not for the world would I have one
+feature changed; they please me as they are; they are hallowed by kind
+memories; they are beautiful through their associations; nor are they
+any the less welcome that with my admiration of them "the stranger
+intermeddleth not."
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD'S END.
+
+
+
+ "Our Father Time is weak and gray,
+ Awaiting for the better day;
+ See how idiot-like he stands,
+ Fumbling his old palsied hands!"
+ SHELLEY's Masque of Anarchy.
+
+"STAGE ready, gentlemen! Stage for campground, Derry! Second Advent
+camp-meeting!"
+
+Accustomed as I begin to feel to the ordinary sights and sounds of this
+busy city, I was, I confess, somewhat startled by this business-like
+annunciation from the driver of a stage, who stood beside his horses
+swinging his whip with some degree of impatience: "Seventy-five cents to
+the Second Advent camp-ground!"
+
+The stage was soon filled; the driver cracked his whip and went rattling
+down the street.
+
+The Second Advent,--the coming of our Lord in person upon this earth,
+with signs, and wonders, and terrible judgments,--the heavens robing
+together as a scroll, the elements melting with fervent heat! The
+mighty consummation of all things at hand, with its destruction and its
+triumphs, sad wailings of the lost and rejoicing songs of the glorified!
+From this overswarming hive of industry,--from these crowded treadmills
+of gain,--here were men and women going out in solemn earnestness to
+prepare for the dread moment which they verily suppose is only a few
+months distant,--to lift up their warning voices in the midst of
+scoffers and doubters, and to cry aloud to blind priests and careless
+churches, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh!"
+
+It was one of the most lovely mornings of this loveliest season of the
+year; a warm, soft atmosphere; clear sunshine falling on the city spires
+and roofs; the hills of Dracut quiet and green in the distance, with
+their white farm-houses and scattered trees; around me the continual
+tread of footsteps hurrying to the toils of the day; merchants spreading
+out their wares for the eyes of purchasers; sounds of hammers, the sharp
+clink of trowels, the murmur of the great manufactories subdued by
+distance. How was it possible, in the midst of so much life, in that
+sunrise light, and in view of all abounding beauty, that the idea of the
+death of Nature--the baptism of the world in fire--could take such a
+practical shape as this? Yet here were sober, intelligent men, gentle
+and pious women, who, verily believing the end to be close at hand, had
+left their counting-rooms, and workshops, and household cares to publish
+the great tidings, and to startle, if possible, a careless and
+unbelieving generation into preparation for the day of the Lord and for
+that blessed millennium,--the restored paradise,--when, renovated and
+renewed by its fire-purgation, the earth shall become as of old the
+garden of the Lord, and the saints alone shall inherit it.
+
+Very serious and impressive is the fact that this idea of a radical
+change in our planet is not only predicted in the Scriptures, but that
+the Earth herself, in her primitive rocks and varying formations, on
+which are lithographed the history of successive convulsions, darkly
+prophesies of others to come. The old poet prophets, all the world
+over, have sung of a renovated world. A vision of it haunted the
+contemplations of Plato. It is seen in the half-inspired speculations
+of the old Indian mystics. The Cumaean sibyl saw it in her trances.
+The apostles and martyrs of our faith looked for it anxiously and
+hopefully. Gray anchorites in the deserts, worn pilgrims to the holy
+places of Jewish and Christian tradition, prayed for its coming. It
+inspired the gorgeous visions of the early fathers. In every age since
+the Christian era, from the caves, and forests, and secluded "upper
+chambers" of the times of the first missionaries of the cross, from the
+Gothic temples of the Middle Ages, from the bleak mountain gorges of the
+Alps, where the hunted heretics put up their expostulation, "How long,
+O Lord, how long?" down to the present time, and from this Derry
+campground, have been uttered the prophecy and the prayer for its
+fulfilment.
+
+How this great idea manifests itself in the lives of the enthusiasts of
+the days of Cromwell! Think of Sir Henry Vane, cool, sagacious
+statesman as he was, waiting with eagerness for the foreshadowings of
+the millennium, and listening, even in the very council hall, for the
+blast of the last trumpet! Think of the Fifth Monarchy Men, weary with
+waiting for the long-desired consummation, rushing out with drawn swords
+and loaded matchlocks into the streets of London to establish at once
+the rule of King Jesus! Think of the wild enthusiasts at Munster,
+verily imagining that the millennial reign had commenced in their mad
+city! Still later, think of Granville Sharpe, diligently laboring in
+his vocation of philanthropy, laying plans for the slow but beneficent
+amelioration of the condition of his country and the world, and at the
+same time maintaining, with the zeal of Father Miller himself, that the
+earth was just on the point of combustion, and that the millennium would
+render all his benevolent schemes of no sort of consequence!
+
+And, after all, is the idea itself a vain one? Shall to-morrow be as
+to-day? Shall the antagonism of good and evil continue as heretofore
+forever? Is there no hope that this world-wide prophecy of the human
+soul, uttered in all climes, in all times, shall yet be fulfilled? Who
+shall say it may not be true? Nay, is not its truth proved by its
+universality? The hope of all earnest souls must be realized. That
+which, through a distorted and doubtful medium, shone even upon the
+martyr enthusiasts of the French revolution,--soft gleams of heaven's
+light rising over the hell of man's passions and crimes,--the glorious
+ideal of Shelley, who, atheist as he was through early prejudice and
+defective education, saw the horizon of the world's future kindling with
+the light of a better day,--that hope and that faith which constitute,
+as it were, the world's life, and without which it would be dark and
+dead, cannot be in vain.
+
+I do not, I confess, sympathize with my Second Advent friends in their
+lamentable depreciation of Mother Earth even in her present state. I
+find it extremely difficult to comprehend how it is that this goodly,
+green, sunlit home of ours is resting under a curse. It really does not
+seem to me to be altogether like the roll which the angel bore in the
+prophet's vision, "written within and without with mourning,
+lamentation, and woe." September sunsets, changing forests, moonrise
+and cloud, sun and rain,--I for one am contented with them. They fill
+my heart with a sense of beauty. I see in them the perfect work of
+infinite love as well as wisdom. It may be that our Advent friends,
+however, coincide with the opinions of an old writer on the prophecies,
+who considered the hills and valleys of the earth's surface and its
+changes of seasons as so many visible manifestations of God's curse, and
+that in the millennium, as in the days of Adam's innocence, all these
+picturesque inequalities would be levelled nicely away, and the flat
+surface laid handsomely down to grass.
+
+As might be expected, the effect of this belief in the speedy
+destruction of the world and the personal coming of the Messiah, acting
+upon a class of uncultivated, and, in some cases, gross minds, is not
+always in keeping with the enlightened Christian's ideal of the better
+day. One is shocked in reading some of the "hymns" of these believers.
+Sensual images,--semi-Mahometan descriptions of the condition of the
+"saints,"--exultations over the destruction of the "sinners,"--mingle
+with the beautiful and soothing promises of the prophets. There are
+indeed occasionally to be found among the believers men of refined and
+exalted spiritualism, who in their lives and conversation remind one of
+Tennyson's Christian knight-errant in his yearning towards the hope set
+before him:
+
+ "to me is given
+ Such hope I may not fear;
+ I long to breathe the airs of heaven,
+ Which sometimes meet me here.
+
+ "I muse on joys that cannot cease,
+ Pure spaces filled with living beams,
+ White lilies of eternal peace,
+ Whose odors haunt my dreams."
+
+One of the most ludicrous examples of the sensual phase of Millerism,
+the incongruous blending of the sublime with the ridiculous, was
+mentioned to me not long since. A fashionable young woman in the
+western part of this State became an enthusiastic believer in the
+doctrine. On the day which had been designated as the closing one of
+time she packed all her fine dresses and toilet valuables in a large
+trunk, with long straps attached to it, and, seating herself upon it,
+buckled the straps over her shoulders, patiently awaiting the crisis,--
+shrewdly calculating that, as she must herself go upwards, her goods and
+chattels would of necessity follow.
+
+Three or four years ago, on my way eastward, I spent an hour or two at a
+camp-ground of the Second Advent in East Kingston. The spot was well
+chosen. A tall growth of pine and hemlock threw its melancholy shadow
+over the multitude, who were arranged upon rough seats of boards and
+logs. Several hundred--perhaps a thousand people--were present, and
+more were rapidly coming. Drawn about in a circle, forming a background
+of snowy whiteness to the dark masses of men and foliage, were the white
+tents, and back of them the provision-stalls and cook-shops. When I
+reached the ground, a hymn, the words of which I could not distinguish,
+was pealing through the dim aisles of the forest. I could readily
+perceive that it had its effect upon the multitude before me, kindling
+to higher intensity their already excited enthusiasm. The preachers
+were placed in a rude pulpit of rough boards, carpeted only by the dead
+forest-leaves and flowers, and tasselled, not with silk and velvet, but
+with the green boughs of the sombre hemlocks around it. One of them
+followed the music in an earnest exhortation on the duty of preparing
+for the great event. Occasionally he was really eloquent, and his
+description of the last day had the ghastly distinctness of Anelli's
+painting of the End of the World.
+
+Suspended from the front of the rude pulpit were two broad sheets of
+canvas, upon one of which was the figure of a man, the head of gold, the
+breast and arms of silver, the belly of brass, the legs of iron, and
+feet of clay,--the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. On the other were depicted
+the wonders of the Apocalyptic vision,--the beasts, the dragons, the
+scarlet woman seen by the seer of Patmos, Oriental types, figures, and
+mystic symbols, translated into staring Yankee realities, and exhibited
+like the beasts of a travelling menagerie. One horrible image, with its
+hideous heads and scaly caudal extremity, reminded me of the tremendous
+line of Milton, who, in speaking of the same evil dragon, describes him
+as
+
+ "Swinging the scaly horrors of his folded tail."
+
+To an imaginative mind the scene was full of novel interest. The white
+circle of tents; the dim wood arches; the upturned, earnest faces; the
+loud voices of the speakers, burdened with the awful symbolic language
+of the Bible; the smoke from the fires, rising like incense,--carried me
+back to those days of primitive worship which tradition faintly whispers
+of, when on hill-tops and in the shade of old woods Religion had her
+first altars, with every man for her priest and the whole universe for
+her temple.
+
+Wisely and truthfully has Dr. Channing spoken of this doctrine of the
+Second Advent in his memorable discourse in Berkshire a little before
+his death:--
+
+"There are some among us at the present moment who are waiting for the
+speedy coming of Christ. They expect, before another year closes, to
+see Him in the clouds, to hear His voice, to stand before His judgment-
+seat. These illusions spring from misinterpretation of Scripture
+language. Christ, in the New Testament, is said to come whenever His
+religion breaks out in new glory or gains new triumphs. He came in the
+Holy Spirit in the day of Pentecost. He came in the destruction of
+Jerusalem, which, by subverting the old ritual law and breaking the
+power of the worst enemies of His religion, insured to it new victories.
+He came in the reformation of the Church. He came on this day four
+years ago, when, through His religion, eight hundred thousand men were
+raised from the lowest degradation to the rights, and dignity, and
+fellowship of men. Christ's outward appearance is of little moment
+compared with the brighter manifestation of His spirit. The Christian,
+whose inward eyes and ears are touched by God, discerns the coming of
+Christ, hears the sound of His chariot-wheels and the voice of His
+trumpet, when no other perceives them. He discerns the Saviour's advent
+in the dawning of higher truth on the world, in new aspirations of the
+Church after perfection, in the prostration of prejudice and error, in
+brighter expressions of Christian love, in more enlightened and intense
+consecration of the Christian to the cause of humanity, freedom, and
+religion. Christ comes in the conversion, the regeneration, the
+emancipation, of the world."
+
+
+
+
+THE HEROINE OF LONG POINT. (1869.)
+
+LOOKING at the Government Chart of Lake Erie, one sees the outlines of a
+long, narrow island, stretching along the shore of Canada West, opposite
+the point where Loudon District pushes its low, wooded wedge into the
+lake. This is Long Point Island, known and dreaded by the navigators of
+the inland sea which batters its yielding shores, and tosses into
+fantastic shapes its sandheaps. The eastern end is some twenty miles
+from the Canada shore, while on the west it is only separated from the
+mainland by a narrow strait known as "The Cut." It is a sandy, desolate
+region, broken by small ponds, with dreary tracts of fenland, its ridges
+covered with a low growth of pine, oak, beech, and birch, in the midst
+of which, in its season, the dogwood puts out its white blossoms. Wild
+grapes trail over the sand-dunes and festoon the dwarf trees. Here and
+there are almost impenetrable swamps, thick-set with white cedars,
+intertwisted and contorted by the lake winds, and broken by the weight
+of snow and ice in winter. Swans and wild geese paddle in the shallow,
+reedy bayous; raccoons and even deer traverse the sparsely wooded
+ridges. The shores of its creeks and fens are tenanted by minks and
+muskrats. The tall tower of a light-house rises at the eastern
+extremity of the island, the keeper of which is now its solitary
+inhabitant.
+
+Fourteen years ago, another individual shared the proprietorship of Long
+Point. This was John Becker, who dwelt on the south side of the island,
+near its westerly termination, in a miserable board shanty nestled
+between naked sand-hills. He managed to make a poor living by trapping
+and spearing muskrats, the skins of which he sold to such boatmen and
+small-craft skippers as chanced to land on his forlorn territory. His
+wife, a large, mild-eyed, patient young woman of some twenty-six years,
+kept her hut and children as tidy as circumstances admitted, assisted
+her husband in preparing the skins, and sometimes accompanied him on his
+trapping excursions.
+
+On that lonely coast, seldom visited in summer, and wholly cut off from
+human communication in winter, they might have lived and died with as
+little recognition from the world as the minks and wildfowl with whom
+they were tenants in common, but for a circumstance which called into
+exercise unsuspected qualities of generous courage and heroic self-
+sacrifice.
+
+The dark, stormy close of November, 1854, found many vessels on Lake
+Erie, but the fortunes of one alone have special interest for us. About
+that time the schooner Conductor, owned by John McLeod, of the
+Provincial Parliament, a resident of Amherstburg, at the mouth of the
+Detroit River, entered the lake from that river, bound for Port
+Dalhousie, at the mouth of the Welland Canal.
+
+She was heavily loaded with grain. Her crew consisted of Captain
+Hackett, a Highlander by birth, and a skilful and experienced navigator,
+and six sailors. At nightfall, shortly after leaving the head of the
+lake, one of those terrific storms, with which the late autumnal
+navigators of that "Sea of the Woods" are all too familiar, overtook
+them. The weather was intensely cold for the season; the air was filled
+with snow and sleet; the chilled water made ice rapidly, encumbering the
+schooner, and loading down her decks and rigging. As the gale
+increased, the tops of the waves were shorn off by the fierce blasts,
+clouding the whole atmosphere with frozen spray, or what the sailors
+call "spoondrift," rendering it impossible to see any object a few rods
+distant. Driving helplessly before the wind, yet in the direction of
+her place of destination, the schooner sped through the darkness. At
+last, near midnight, running closer than her crew supposed to the
+Canadian shore, she struck on the outer bar off Long Point Island, beat
+heavily across it, and sunk in the deeper water between it and the inner
+bar. The hull was entirely submerged, the waves rolling in heavily, and
+dashing over the rigging, to which the crew betook themselves. Lashed
+there, numb with cold, drenched by the pitiless waves, and scourged by
+the showers of sleet driven before the wind, they waited for morning.
+The slow, dreadful hours wore away, and at length the dubious and
+doubtful gray of a morning of tempest succeeded to the utter darkness of
+night.
+
+Abigail Becker chanced at that time to be in her hut with none but her
+young children. Her husband was absent on the Canada shore, and she was
+left the sole adult occupant of the island, save the light-keeper, at
+its lower end, some fifteen miles off. Looking out at daylight on the
+beach in front of her door, she saw the shattered boat of the Conductor,
+east up by the waves. Her experience of storm and disaster on that
+dangerous coast needed nothing more to convince her that somewhere in
+her neighborhood human life had been, or still was, in peril. She
+followed the southwesterly trend of the island for a little distance,
+and, peering through the gloom of the stormy morning, discerned the
+spars of the sunken schooner, with what seemed to be human forms
+clinging to the rigging. The heart of the strong woman sunk within her,
+as she gazed upon those helpless fellow-creatures, so near, yet so
+unapproachable. She had no boat, and none could have lived on that wild
+water. After a moment's reflection she went back to her dwelling, put
+the smaller children in charge of the eldest, took with her an iron
+kettle, tin teapot, and matches, and returned to the beach, at the
+nearest point to the vessel; and, gathering up the logs and drift-wood
+always abundant, on the coast, kindled a great fire, and, constantly
+walking back and forth between it and the water, strove to intimate to
+the sufferers that they were at least not beyond human sympathy. As the
+wrecked sailors looked shoreward, and saw, through the thick haze of
+snow and sleet, the red light of the fire and the tall figure of the
+woman passing to and fro before it, a faint hope took the place of the
+utter despair which had prompted them to let go their hold and drop into
+the seething waters, that opened and closed about them like the jaws of
+death. But the day wore on, bringing no abatement of the storm that
+tore through the frail spars, and clutched at and tossed them as it
+passed, and drenched them with ice-cold spray,--a pitiless, unrelenting
+horror of sight, sound, and touch! At last the deepening gloom told
+them that night was approaching, and night under such circumstances was
+death.
+
+All day long Abigail Becker had fed her fire, and sought to induce the
+sailors by signals--for even her strong voice could not reach them--to
+throw themselves into the surf, and trust to Providence and her for
+succor. In anticipation of this, she had her kettle boiling over the
+drift-wood, and her tea ready made for restoring warmth and life to the
+half-frozen survivors. But either they did not understand her, or the
+chance of rescue seemed too small to induce them to abandon the
+temporary safety of the wreck. They clung to it with the desperate
+instinct of life brought face to face with death. Just at nightfall
+there was a slight break in the west; a red light glared across the
+thick air, as if for one instant the eye of the storm looked out upon
+the ruin it had wrought, and closed again under lids of cloud. Taking
+advantage of this, the solitary watcher ashore made one more effort.
+She waded out into the water, every drop of which, as it struck the
+beach, became a particle of ice, and stretching out and drawing in her
+arms, invited, by her gestures, the sailors to throw themselves into the
+waves, and strive to reach her. Captain Hackett understood her. He
+called to his mate in the rigging of the other mast: "It is our last
+chance. I will try! If I live, follow me; if I drown, stay where you
+are!" With a great effort he got off his stiffly frozen overcoat,
+paused for one moment in silent commendation of his soul to God, and,
+throwing himself into the waves, struck out for the shore. Abigail
+Becker, breast-deep in the surf, awaited him. He was almost within her
+reach, when the undertow swept him back. By a mighty exertion she
+caught hold of him, bore him in her strong arms out of the water, and,
+laying him down by her fire, warmed his chilled blood with copious
+draughts of hot tea. The mate, who had watched the rescue, now
+followed, and the captain, partially restored, insisted upon aiding him.
+As the former neared the shore, the recoiling water baffled him.
+Captain Hackett caught hold of him, but the undertow swept them both
+away, locked in each other's arms. The brave woman plunged after them,
+and, with the strength of a giantess, bore them, clinging to each other,
+to the shore, and up to her fire. The five sailors followed in
+succession, and were all rescued in the same way.
+
+A few days after, Captain Hackett and his crew were taken off Long Point
+by a passing vessel; and Abigail Becker resumed her simple daily duties
+without dreaming that she had done anything extraordinary enough to win
+for her the world's notice. In her struggle every day for food and
+warmth for her children, she had no leisure for the indulgence of self-
+congratulation. Like the woman of Scripture, she had only "done what
+she could," in the terrible exigency that had broken the dreary monotony
+of her life.
+
+It so chanced, however, that a gentleman from Buffalo, E. P. Dorr, who
+had, in his early days, commanded a vessel on the lake, found himself,
+shortly after, at a small port on the Canada shore, not far from Long
+Point Island. Here he met an old shipmate, Captain Davis, whose vessel
+had gone ashore at a more favorable point, and who related to him the
+circumstances of the wreck of the Conductor. Struck by the account,
+Captain Dorr procured a sleigh and drove across the frozen bay to the
+shanty of Abigail Becker. He found her with her six children, all
+thinly clad and barefooted in the bitter cold. She stood there six feet
+or more of substantial womanhood,--not in her stockings, for she had
+none,--a veritable daughter of Anak, broad-bosomed, large-limbed, with
+great, patient blue eyes, whose very smile had a certain pathos, as if
+one saw in it her hard and weary life-experience. She might have passed
+for any amiable giantess, or one of those much--developed maids of honor
+who tossed Gulliver from hand to hand in the court of Brobdingnag. The
+thing that most surprised her visitor was the childlike simplicity of
+the woman, her utter unconsciousness of deserving anything for an action
+that seemed to her merely a matter of course. When he expressed his
+admiration with all the warmth of a generous nature, she only opened her
+wide blue eyes still wider with astonishment.
+
+"Well, I don't know," she said, slowly, as if pondering the matter for
+the first time,--"I don't know as I did more 'n I'd ought to, nor more'n
+I'd do again."
+
+Before Captain Dorr left, he took the measure of her own and her
+children's feet, and on his return to Buffalo sent her a box containing
+shoes, stockings, and such other comfortable articles of clothing as
+they most needed. He published a brief account of his visit to the
+heroine of Long Point, which attracted the attention of some members of
+the Provincial Parliament, and through their exertions a grant of one
+hundred acres of land, on the Canada shore, near Port Rowan, was made to
+her. Soon after she was invited to Buffalo, where she naturally excited
+much interest. A generous contribution of one thousand dollars, to
+stock her farm, was made by the merchants, ship-owners and masters of
+the city, and she returned to her family a grateful and, in her own
+view, a rich woman.
+
+When the story of her adventure reached New York, the Life-Saving
+Benevolent Association sent her a gold medal with an appropriate
+inscription, and a request that she would send back a receipt in her own
+name. As she did not know how to write, Captain Dorr hit upon the
+expedient of having her photograph taken with the medal in her hand, and
+sent that in lieu of her autograph.
+
+In a recent letter dictated at Walsingham, where Abigail Becker now
+lives,--a widow, cultivating with her own hands her little farm in the
+wilderness,--she speaks gratefully of the past and hopefully of the
+future. She mentions a message received from Captain Hackett, who she
+feared had almost forgotten her, that he was about to make her a visit,
+adding with a touch of shrewdness: "After his second shipwreck last
+summer, I think likely that I must have recurred very fresh to him."
+
+The strong lake winds now blow unchecked over the sand-hills where once
+stood the board shanty of Abigail Becker. But the summer tourist of the
+great lakes, who remembers her story, will not fail to give her a place
+in his imagination with Perry's battle-line and the Indian heroines of
+Cooper and Longfellow. Through her the desolate island of Long Point is
+richly dowered with the interest which a brave and generous action gives
+to its locality.
+
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME VI. OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES, plus PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES and HISTORICAL PAPERS
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES.
+ JOHN BUNYAN
+ THOMAS ELLWOOD
+ JAMES NAYLER
+ ANDREW MARVELL
+ JOHN ROBERTS
+ SAMUEL HOPKINS
+ RICHARD BAXTER
+ WILLIAM LEGGETT
+ NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS
+ ROBERT DINSMORE
+ PLACIDO, THE SLAVE POET
+
+ PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES.
+ THE FUNERAL OF TORREY
+ EDWARD EVERETT
+ LEWIS TAPPAN
+ BAYARD TAYLOR
+ WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
+ DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD
+ LYDIA MARIA CHILD
+
+ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
+ LONGFELLOW
+ OLD NEWBURY
+ SCHOOLDAY REMEMBRANCES
+ EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE
+
+ HISTORICAL PAPERS.
+ DANIEL O'CONNELL
+ ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II.
+ THE BORDER WAR OF 1708
+ THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT
+ THE BOY CAPTIVES
+ THE BLACK MEN IN THE REVOLUTION AND WAR OF 1812
+ THE SCOTTISH REFORMERS
+ THE PILGRIMS OF PLYMOUTH
+ GOVERNOR ENDICOTT
+ JOHN WINTHROP
+
+
+
+
+OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES
+
+ Inscribed as follows, when first collected in book-form:--
+ To Dr. G. BAILEY, of the National Era, Washington, D. C., these
+ sketches, many of which originally appeared in the columns of the
+ paper under his editorial supervision, are, in their present form,
+ offered as a token of the esteem and confidence which years of
+ political and literary communion have justified and confirmed, on
+ the part of his friend and associate,
+ THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+
+ JOHN BUNYAN.
+
+ "Wouldst see
+ A man I' the clouds, and hear him speak to thee?"
+
+Who has not read Pilgrim's Progress? Who has not, in childhood,
+followed the wandering Christian on his way to the Celestial City? Who
+has not laid at night his young head on the pillow, to paint on the
+walls of darkness pictures of the Wicket Gate and the Archers, the Hill
+of Difficulty, the Lions and Giants, Doubting Castle and Vanity Fair,
+the sunny Delectable Mountains and the Shepherds, the Black River and
+the wonderful glory beyond it; and at last fallen asleep, to dream over
+the strange story, to hear the sweet welcomings of the sisters at the
+House Beautiful, and the song of birds from the window of that "upper
+chamber which opened towards the sunrising?" And who, looking back to
+the green spots in his childish experiences, does not bless the good
+Tinker of Elstow?
+
+And who, that has reperused the story of the Pilgrim at a maturer age,
+and felt the plummet of its truth sounding in the deep places of the
+soul, has not reason to bless the author for some timely warning or
+grateful encouragement? Where is the scholar, the poet, the man of taste
+and feeling, who does not, with Cowper,
+
+ "Even in transitory life's late day,
+ Revere the man whose Pilgrim marks the road,
+ And guides the Progress of the soul to God!"
+
+We have just been reading, with no slight degree of interest, that simple
+but wonderful piece of autobiography, entitled Grace abounding to the
+Chief of Sinners, from the pen of the author of Pilgrim's Progress. It
+is the record of a journey more terrible than that of the ideal Pilgrim;
+"truth stranger than fiction;" the painful upward struggling of a spirit
+from the blackness of despair and blasphemy, into the high, pure air of
+Hope and Faith. More earnest words were never written. It is the entire
+unveiling of a human heart; the tearing off of the fig-leaf covering of
+its sin. The voice which speaks to us from these old pages seems not so
+much that of a denizen of the world in which we live, as of a soul at the
+last solemn confessional. Shorn of all ornament, simple and direct as
+the contrition and prayer of childhood, when for the first time the
+Spectre of Sin stands by its bedside, the style is that of a man dead to
+self-gratification, careless of the world's opinion, and only desirous to
+convey to others, in all truthfulness and sincerity, the lesson of his
+inward trials, temptations, sins, weaknesses, and dangers; and to give
+glory to Him who had mercifully led him through all, and enabled him,
+like his own Pilgrim, to leave behind the Valley of the Shadow of Death,
+the snares of the Enchanted Ground, and the terrors of Doubting Castle,
+and to reach the land of Beulah, where the air was sweet and pleasant,
+and the birds sang and the flowers sprang up around him, and the Shining
+Ones walked in the brightness of the not distant Heaven. In the
+introductory pages he says "he could have dipped into a style higher than
+this in which I have discoursed, and could have adorned all things more
+than here I have seemed to do; but I dared not. God did not play in
+tempting me; neither did I play when I sunk, as it were, into a
+bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell took hold on me; wherefore, I may
+not play in relating of them, but be plain and simple, and lay down the
+thing as it was."
+
+This book, as well as Pilgrim's Progress, was written in Bedford prison,
+and was designed especially for the comfort and edification of his
+"children, whom God had counted him worthy to beget in faith by his
+ministry." In his introduction he tells them, that, although taken from
+them, and tied up, "sticking, as it were, between the teeth of the lions
+of the wilderness," he once again, as before, from the top of Shemer and
+Hermon, so now, from the lion's den and the mountain of leopards, would
+look after then with fatherly care and desires for their everlasting
+welfare. "If," said he, "you have sinned against light; if you are
+tempted to blaspheme; if you are drowned in despair; if you think God
+fights against you; or if Heaven is hidden from your eyes, remember it
+was so with your father. But out of all the Lord delivered me."
+
+He gives no dates; he affords scarcely a clue to his localities; of the
+man, as he worked, and ate, and drank, and lodged, of his neighbors and
+contemporaries, of all he saw and heard of the world about him, we have
+only an occasional glimpse, here and there, in his narrative. It is the
+story of his inward life only that he relates. What had time and place
+to do with one who trembled always with the awful consciousness of an
+immortal nature, and about whom fell alternately the shadows of hell and
+the splendors of heaven? We gather, indeed, from his record, that he was
+not an idle on-looker in the time of England's great struggle for
+freedom, but a soldier of the Parliament, in his young years, among the
+praying sworders and psalm-singing pikemen, the Greathearts and Holdfasts
+whom he has immortalized in his allegory; but the only allusion which he
+makes to this portion of his experience is by way of illustration of the
+goodness of God in preserving him on occasions of peril.
+
+He was born at Elstow, in Bedfordshire, in 1628; and, to use his own
+words, his "father's house was of that rank which is the meanest and most
+despised of all the families of the land." His father was a tinker, and
+the son followed the same calling, which necessarily brought him into
+association with the lowest and most depraved classes of English society.
+The estimation in which the tinker and his occupation were held, in the
+seventeenth century, may be learned from the quaint and humorous
+description of Sir Thomas Overbury. "The tinker," saith he, "is a
+movable, for he hath no abiding in one place; he seems to be devout, for
+his life is a continual pilgrimage, and sometimes, in humility, goes
+barefoot, therein making necessity a virtue; he is a gallant, for he
+carries all his wealth upon his back; or a philosopher, for he bears all
+his substance with him. He is always furnished with a song, to which his
+hammer, keeping tune, proves that he was the first founder of the kettle-
+drum; where the best ale is, there stands his music most upon crotchets.
+The companion of his travel is some foul, sun-burnt quean, that, since
+the terrible statute, has recanted gypsyism, and is turned pedlaress. So
+marches he all over England, with his bag and baggage; his conversation
+is irreprovable, for he is always mending. He observes truly the
+statutes, and therefore had rather steal than beg. He is so strong an
+enemy of idleness, that in mending one hole he would rather make three
+than want work; and when he hath done, he throws the wallet of his faults
+behind him. His tongue is very voluble, which, with canting, proves him
+a linguist. He is entertained in every place, yet enters no farther than
+the door, to avoid suspicion. To conclude, if he escape Tyburn and
+Banbury, he dies a beggar."
+
+Truly, but a poor beginning for a pious life was the youth of John
+Bunyan. As might have been expected, he was a wild, reckless, swearing
+boy, as his father doubtless was before him. "It was my delight," says
+he, "to be taken captive by the Devil. I had few equals, both for
+cursing and swearing, lying and blaspheming." Yet, in his ignorance and
+darkness, his powerful imagination early lent terror to the reproaches of
+conscience. He was scared, even in childhood, with dreams of hell and
+apparitions of devils. Troubled with fears of eternal fire, and the
+malignant demons who fed it in the regions of despair, he says that he
+often wished either that there was no hell, or that he had been born a
+devil himself, that he might be a tormentor rather than one of the
+tormented.
+
+At an early age he appears to have married. His wife was as poor as
+himself, for he tells us that they had not so much as a dish or spoon
+between them; but she brought with her two books on religious subjects,
+the reading of which seems to have had no slight degree of influence on
+his mind. He went to church regularly, adored the priest and all things
+pertaining to his office, being, as he says, "overrun with superstition."
+On one occasion, a sermon was preached against the breach of the Sabbath
+by sports or labor, which struck him at the moment as especially designed
+for himself; but by the time he had finished his dinner he was prepared
+to "shake it out of his mind, and return to his sports and gaming."
+
+"But the same day," he continues, "as I was in the midst of a game of
+cat, and having struck it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to
+strike it a second time, a voice did suddenly dart from Heaven into my
+soul, which said, 'Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy
+sins and go to hell?' At this, I was put to an exceeding maze;
+wherefore, leaving my cat upon the ground, I looked up to Heaven, and it
+was as if I had, with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus
+look down upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as if He
+did severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for those and
+other ungodly practices.
+
+"I had no sooner thus conceived in my mind, but suddenly this conclusion
+fastened on my spirit, (for the former hint did set my sins again before
+my face,) that I had been a great and grievous sinner, and that it was
+now too late for me to look after Heaven; for Christ would not forgive me
+nor pardon my transgressions. Then, while I was thinking of it, and
+fearing lest it should be so, I felt my heart sink in despair, concluding
+it was too late; and therefore I resolved in my mind to go on in sin;
+for, thought I, if the case be thus, my state is surely miserable;
+miserable if I leave my sins, and but miserable if I follow them; I can
+but be damned; and if I must be so, I had as good be damned for many sins
+as be damned for few."
+
+The reader of Pilgrim's Progress cannot fail here to call to mind the
+wicked suggestions of the Giant to Christian, in the dungeon of Doubting
+Castle.
+
+"I returned," he says, "desperately to my sport again; and I well
+remember, that presently this kind of despair did so possess my soul,
+that I was persuaded I could never attain to other comfort than what I
+should get in sin; for Heaven was gone already, so that on that I must
+not think; wherefore, I found within me great desire to take my fill of
+sin, that I might taste the sweetness of it; and I made as much haste as
+I could to fill my belly with its delicates, lest I should die before I
+had my desires; for that I feared greatly. In these things, I protest
+before God, I lie not, neither do I frame this sort of speech; these were
+really, strongly, and with all my heart, my desires; the good Lord, whose
+mercy is unsearchable, forgive my transgressions."
+
+One day, while standing in the street, cursing and blaspheming, he met
+with a reproof which startled him. The woman of the house in front of
+which the wicked young tinker was standing, herself, as he remarks, "a
+very loose, ungodly wretch," protested that his horrible profanity made
+her tremble; that he was the ungodliest fellow for swearing she had ever
+heard, and able to spoil all the youth of the town who came in his
+company. Struck by this wholly unexpected rebuke, he at once abandoned
+the practice of swearing; although previously he tells us that "he had
+never known how to speak, unless he put an oath before and another
+behind."
+
+The good name which he gained by this change was now a temptation to him.
+"My neighbors," he says, "were amazed at my great conversion from
+prodigious profaneness to something like a moral life and sober man.
+Now, therefore, they began to praise, to commend, and to speak well of
+me, both to my face and behind my back. Now I was, as they said, become
+godly; now I was become a right honest man. But oh! when I understood
+those were their words and opinions of me, it pleased me mighty well; for
+though as yet I was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite, yet I loved to
+be talked of as one that was truly godly. I was proud of my godliness,
+and, indeed, I did all I did either to be seen of or well spoken of by
+men; and thus I continued for about a twelvemonth or more."
+
+The tyranny of his imagination at this period is seen in the following
+relation of his abandonment of one of his favorite sports.
+
+"Now, you must know, that before this I had taken much delight in
+ringing, but my conscience beginning to be tender, I thought such
+practice was but vain, and therefore forced myself to leave it; yet my
+mind hankered; wherefore, I would go to the steeple-house and look on,
+though I durst not ring; but I thought this did not become religion
+neither; yet I forced myself, and would look on still. But quickly
+after, I began to think, 'How if one of the bells should fall?' Then I
+chose to stand under a main beam, that lay overthwart the steeple, from
+side to side, thinking here I might stand sure; but then I thought again,
+should the bell fall with a swing, it might first hit the wall, and then,
+rebounding upon me, might kill me for all this beam. This made me stand
+in the steeple door; and now, thought I, I am safe enough; for if a bell
+should then fall, I can slip out behind these thick walls, and so be
+preserved notwithstanding.
+
+"So after this I would yet go to see them ring, but would not go any
+farther than the steeple-door. But then it came in my head, 'How if the
+steeple itself should fall?' And this thought (it may, for aught I know,
+when I stood and looked on) did continually so shake my mind, that I
+durst not stand at the steeple-door any longer, but was forced to flee,
+for fear the steeple should fall upon my head."
+
+About this time, while wandering through Bedford in pursuit of
+employment, he chanced to see three or four poor old women sitting at a
+door, in the evening sun, and, drawing near them, heard them converse
+upon the things of God; of His work in their hearts; of their natural
+depravity; of the temptations of the Adversary; and of the joy of
+believing, and of the peace of reconciliation. The words of the aged
+women found a response in the soul of the listener. "He felt his heart
+shake," to use his own words; he saw that he lacked the true tokens of a
+Christian. He now forsook the company of the profane and licentious, and
+sought that of a poor man who had the reputation of piety, but, to his
+grief, he found him "a devilish ranter, given up to all manner of
+uncleanness; he would laugh at all exhortations to sobriety, and deny
+that there was a God, an angel, or a spirit."
+
+"Neither," he continues, "was this man only a temptation to me, but, my
+calling lying in the country, I happened to come into several people's
+company, who, though strict in religion formerly, yet were also drawn
+away by these ranters. These would also talk with me of their ways, and
+condemn me as illegal and dark; pretending that they only had attained to
+perfection, that they could do what they would, and not sin. Oh! these
+temptations were suitable to my flesh, I being but a young man, and my
+nature in its prime; but God, who had, as I hope, designed me for better
+things, kept me in the fear of His name, and did not suffer me to accept
+such cursed principles."
+
+At this time he was sadly troubled to ascertain whether or not he had
+that faith which the Scriptures spake of. Travelling one day from Elstow
+to Bedford, after a recent rain, which had left pools of water in the
+path, he felt a strong desire to settle the question, by commanding the
+pools to become dry, and the dry places to become pools. Going under the
+hedge, to pray for ability to work the miracle, he was struck with the
+thought that if he failed he should know, indeed, that he was a castaway,
+and give himself up to despair. He dared not attempt the experiment, and
+went on his way, to use his own forcible language, "tossed up and down
+between the Devil and his own ignorance."
+
+Soon after, he had one of those visions which foreshadowed the wonderful
+dream of his Pilgrim's Progress. He saw some holy people of Bedford on
+the sunny side of an high mountain, refreshing themselves in the pleasant
+air and sunlight, while he was shivering in cold and darkness, amidst
+snows and never-melting ices, like the victims of the Scandinavian hell.
+A wall compassed the mountain, separating him from the blessed, with one
+small gap or doorway, through which, with great pain and effort, he was
+at last enabled to work his way into the sunshine, and sit down with the
+saints, in the light and warmth thereof.
+
+But now a new trouble assailed him. Like Milton's metaphysical spirits,
+who sat apart,
+
+"And reasoned of foreknowledge, will, and fate," he grappled with one of
+those great questions which have always perplexed and baffled human
+inquiry, and upon which much has been written to little purpose. He was
+tortured with anxiety to know whether, according to the Westminster
+formula, he was elected to salvation or damnation. His old adversary
+vexed his soul with evil suggestions, and even quoted Scripture to
+enforce them. "It may be you are not elected," said the Tempter; and the
+poor tinker thought the supposition altogether too probable. "Why,
+then," said Satan, "you had as good leave off, and strive no farther; for
+if, indeed, you should not be elected and chosen of God, there is no hope
+of your being saved; for it is neither in him that willeth nor in him
+that runneth, but in God who showeth mercy." At length, when, as he
+says, he was about giving up the ghost of all his hopes, this passage
+fell with weight upon his spirit: "Look at the generations of old, and
+see; did ever any trust in God, and were confounded?" Comforted by these
+words, he opened his Bible took note them, but the most diligent search
+and inquiry of his neighbors failed to discover them. At length his eye
+fell upon them in the Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus. This, he says,
+somewhat doubted him at first, as the book was not canonical; but in the
+end he took courage and comfort from the passage. "I bless God," he
+says, "for that word; it was good for me. That word doth still
+oftentimes shine before my face."
+
+A long and weary struggle was now before him. "I cannot," he says,
+"express with what longings and breathings of my soul I cried unto Christ
+to call me. Gold! could it have been gotten by gold, what would I have
+given for it. Had I a whole world, it had all gone ten thousand times
+over for this, that my soul might have been in a converted state. How
+lovely now was every one in my eyes, that I thought to be converted men
+and women. They shone, they walked like a people who carried the broad
+seal of Heaven with them."
+
+With what force and intensity of language does he portray in the
+following passage the reality and earnestness of his agonizing
+experience:--
+
+"While I was thus afflicted with the fears of my own damnation, there
+were two things would make me wonder: the one was, when I saw old people
+hunting after the things of this life, as if they should live here
+always; the other was, when I found professors much distressed and cast
+down, when they met with outward losses; as of husband, wife, or child.
+Lord, thought I, what seeking after carnal things by some, and what grief
+in others for the loss of them! If they so much labor after and shed so
+many tears for the things of this present life, how am I to be bemoaned,
+pitied, and prayed for! My soul is dying, my soul is damning. Were my
+soul but in a good condition, and were I but sure of it, ah I how rich
+should I esteem myself, though blessed but with bread and water! I
+should count these but small afflictions, and should bear them as little
+burdens. 'A wounded spirit who can bear!'"
+
+He looked with envy, as he wandered through the country, upon the birds
+in the trees, the hares in the preserves, and the fishes in the streams.
+They were happy in their brief existence, and their death was but a
+sleep. He felt himself alienated from God, a discord in the harmonies of
+the universe. The very rooks which fluttered around the old church spire
+seemed more worthy of the Creator's love and care than himself. A vision
+of the infernal fire, like that glimpse of hell which was afforded to
+Christian by the Shepherds, was continually before him, with its
+"rumbling noise, and the cry of some tormented, and the scent of
+brimstone." Whithersoever he went, the glare of it scorched him, and its
+dreadful sound was in his ears. His vivid but disturbed imagination lent
+new terrors to the awful figures by which the sacred writers conveyed the
+idea of future retribution to the Oriental mind. Bunyan's World of Woe,
+if it lacked the colossal architecture and solemn vastness of Milton's
+Pandemonium, was more clearly defined; its agonies were within the pale
+of human comprehension; its victims were men and women, with the same
+keen sense of corporeal suffering which they possessed in life; and who,
+to use his own terrible description, had "all the loathed variety of hell
+to grapple with; fire unquenchable, a lake of choking brimstone, eternal
+chains, darkness more black than night, the everlasting gnawing of the
+worm, the sight of devils, and the yells and outcries of the damned."
+
+His mind at this period was evidently shaken in some degree from its
+balance. He was troubled with strange, wicked thoughts, confused by
+doubts and blasphemous suggestions, for which he could only account by
+supposing himself possessed of the Devil. He wanted to curse and swear,
+and had to clap his hands on his mouth to prevent it. In prayer, he
+felt, as he supposed, Satan behind him, pulling his clothes, and telling
+him to have done, and break off; suggesting that he had better pray to
+him, and calling up before his mind's eye the figures of a bull, a tree,
+or some other object, instead of the awful idea of God.
+
+He notes here, as cause of thankfulness, that, even in this dark and
+clouded state, he was enabled to see the "vile and abominable things
+fomented by the Quakers," to be errors. Gradually, the shadow wherein he
+had so long
+
+ "Walked beneath the day's broad glare,
+ A darkened man,"
+
+passed from him, and for a season he was afforded an "evidence of his
+salvation from Heaven, with many golden seals thereon hanging in his
+sight." But, ere long, other temptations assailed him. A strange
+suggestion haunted him, to sell or part with his Saviour. His own
+account of this hallucination is too painfully vivid to awaken any other
+feeling than that of sympathy and sadness.
+
+"I could neither eat my food, stoop for a pin, chop a stick, or cast mine
+eye to look on this or that, but still the temptation would come, Sell
+Christ for this, or sell Christ for that; sell him, sell him.
+
+"Sometimes it would run in my thoughts, not so little as a hundred times
+together, Sell him, sell him; against which, I may say, for whole hours
+together, I have been forced to stand as continually leaning and forcing
+my spirit against it, lest haply, before I were aware, some wicked
+thought might arise in my heart, that might consent thereto; and
+sometimes the tempter would make me believe I had consented to it; but
+then I should be as tortured upon a rack, for whole days together.
+
+"This temptation did put me to such scares, lest I should at sometimes, I
+say, consent thereto, and be overcome therewith, that, by the very force
+of my mind, my very body would be put into action or motion, by way of
+pushing or thrusting with my hands or elbows; still answering, as fast as
+the destroyer said, Sell him, I will not, I will not, I will not; no, not
+for thousands, thousands, thousands of worlds; thus reckoning, lest I
+should set too low a value on him, even until I scarce well knew where I
+was, or how to be composed again.
+
+"But to be brief: one morning, as I did lie in my bed, I was, as at other
+times, most fiercely assaulted with this temptation, to sell and part
+with Christ; the wicked suggestion still running in my mind, Sell him,
+sell him, sell him, sell him, sell him, as fast as a man could speak;
+against which, also, in my mind, as at other times, I answered, No, no,
+not for thousands, thousands, thousands, at least twenty times together;
+but at last, after much striving, I felt this thought pass through my
+heart, Let him go if he will; and I thought also, that I felt my heart
+freely consent thereto. Oh, the diligence of Satan! Oh, the
+desperateness of man's heart!
+
+"Now was the battle won, and down fell I, as a bird that is shot from the
+top of a tree, into great guilt, and fearful despair. Thus getting out
+of my bed, I went moping into the field; but God knows with as heavy a
+heart as mortal man, I think, could bear; where, for the space of two
+hours, I was like a man bereft of life; and, as now, past all recovery,
+and bound over to eternal punishment.
+
+"And withal, that Scripture did seize upon my soul: 'Or profane person,
+as Esau, who, for one morsel of meat, sold his birthright; for ye know,
+how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was
+rejected; for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it
+carefully with tears."
+
+For two years and a half, as he informs us, that awful scripture sounded
+in his ears like the knell of a lost soul. He believed that he had
+committed they unpardonable sin. His mental anguish 'was united with
+bodily illness and suffering. His nervous system became fearfully
+deranged; his limbs trembled; and he supposed this visible tremulousness
+and agitation to be the mark of Cain. 'Troubled with pain and
+distressing sensations in his chest, he began to fear that his breast-
+bone would split open, and that he should perish like Judas Iscariot. He
+feared that the tiles of the houses would fall upon him as he walked in
+the streets. He was like his own Man in the Cage at the House of the
+Interpreter, shut out from the promises, and looking forward to certain
+judgment. "Methought," he says, "the very sun that shineth in heaven did
+grudge to give me light." And still the dreadful words, "He found no
+place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears," sounded
+in the depths of his soul. They were, he says, like fetters of brass to
+his legs, and their continual clanking followed him for months.
+Regarding himself elected and predestined for damnation, he thought that
+all things worked for his damage and eternal overthrow, while all things
+wrought for the best and to do good to the elect and called of God unto
+salvation. God and all His universe had, he thought, conspired against
+him; the green earth, the bright waters, the sky itself, were written
+over with His irrevocable curse.
+
+Well was it said by Bunyan's contemporary, the excellent Cudworth, in his
+eloquent sermon before the Long Parliament, that "We are nowhere
+commanded to pry into the secrets of God, but the wholesome advice given
+us is this: 'To make our calling and election sure.' We have no warrant
+from Scripture to peep into the hidden rolls of eternity, to spell out
+our names among the stars." "Must we say that God sometimes, to exercise
+His uncontrollable dominion, delights rather in plunging wretched souls
+down into infernal night and everlasting darkness? What, then, shall we
+make the God of the whole world? Nothing but a cruel and dreadful
+_Erinnys_, with curled fiery snakes about His head, and firebrands in His
+hand; thus governing the world! Surely, this will make us either
+secretly think there is no God in the world, if He must needs be such, or
+else to wish heartily there were none." It was thus at times with
+Bunyan. He was tempted, in this season of despair, to believe that there
+was no resurrection and no judgment.
+
+One day, he tells us, a sudden rushing sound, as of wind or the wings of
+angels, came to him through the window, wonderfully sweet and pleasant;
+and it was as if a voice spoke to him from heaven words of encouragement
+and hope, which, to use his language, commanded, for the time, "a silence
+in his heart to all those tumultuous thoughts that did use, like
+masterless hell-hounds, to roar and bellow and make a hideous noise
+within him." About this time, also, some comforting passages of
+Scripture were called to mind; but he remarks, that whenever he strove to
+apply them to his case, Satan would thrust the curse of Esau in his face,
+and wrest the good word from him. The blessed promise "Him that cometh
+to me, I will in no wise cast out" was the chief instrumentality in
+restoring his lost peace. He says of it: "If ever Satan and I did strive
+for any word of God in all my life, it was for this good word of Christ;
+he at one end, and I at the other. Oh, what work we made! It was for
+this in John, I say, that we did so tug and strive; he pulled, and I
+pulled, but, God be praised! I overcame him; I got sweetness from it.
+Oh, many a pull hath my heart had with Satan for this blessed sixth
+chapter of John!" Who does not here call to mind the struggle between
+Christian and Apollyon in the valley!
+
+That was no fancy sketch; it was the narrative of the author's own
+grapple with the Spirit of Evil. Like his ideal Christian, he "conquered
+through Him that loved him." Love wrought the victory the Scripture of
+Forgiveness overcame that of Hatred.
+
+He never afterwards relapsed into that state of religious melancholy from
+which he so hardly escaped. He speaks of his deliverance as the waking
+out of a troublesome dream. His painful experience was not lost upon
+him; for it gave him, ever after, a tender sympathy for the weak, the
+sinful, the ignorant, and desponding. In some measure, he had been
+"touched with the feeling of their infirmities." He could feel for those
+in the bonds of sin and despair, as bound with them. Hence his power as
+a preacher; hence the wonderful adaptation of his great allegory to all
+the variety of spiritual conditions. Like Fearing, he had lain a month
+in the Slough of Despond, and had played, like him, the long melancholy
+bass of spiritual heaviness. With Feeble-mind, he had fallen into the
+hands of Slay-good, of the nature of Man-eaters: and had limped along his
+difficult way upon the crutches of Ready-to-halt. Who better than
+himself could describe the condition of Despondency, and his daughter
+Much-afraid, in the dungeon of Doubting Castle? Had he not also fallen
+among thieves, like Little-faith?
+
+His account of his entering upon the solemn duties of a preacher of the
+Gospel is at once curious and instructive. He deals honestly with
+himself, exposing all his various moods, weaknesses, doubts, and
+temptations. "I preached," he says, "what I felt; for the terrors of the
+law and the guilt of transgression lay heavy on my conscience. I have
+been as one sent to them from the dead. I went, myself in chains, to
+preach to them in chains; and carried that fire in my conscience which I
+persuaded them to beware of." At times, when he stood up to preach,
+blasphemies and evil doubts rushed into his mind, and he felt a strong
+desire to utter them aloud to his congregation; and at other seasons,
+when he was about to apply to the sinner some searching and fearful text
+of Scripture, he was tempted to withhold it, on the ground that it
+condemned himself also; but, withstanding the suggestion of the Tempter,
+to use his own simile, he bowed himself like Samson to condemn sin
+wherever he found it, though he brought guilt and condemnation upon
+himself thereby, choosing rather to die with the Philistines than to deny
+the truth.
+
+Foreseeing the consequences of exposing himself to the operation of the
+penal laws by holding conventicles and preaching, he was deeply afflicted
+at the thought of the suffering and destitution to which his wife and
+children might be exposed by his death or imprisonment. Nothing can be
+more touching than his simple and earnest words on this point. They show
+how warm and deep were him human affections, and what a tender and loving
+heart he laid as a sacrifice on the altar of duty.
+
+"I found myself a man compassed with infirmities; the parting with my
+wife and poor children hath often been to me in this place as the pulling
+the flesh from the bones; and also it brought to my mind the many
+hardships, miseries, and wants, that my poor family was like to meet
+with, should I be taken from them, especially my poor blind child, who
+lay nearer my heart than all beside. Oh, the thoughts of the hardships I
+thought my poor blind one might go under would break my heart to pieces.
+
+"Poor child! thought I, what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion
+in this world! thou must be beaten, must beg, suffer hunger, cold,
+nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind
+should blow upon thee. But yet, thought I, I must venture you all with
+God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you: oh! I saw I was as a man
+who was pulling down his house upon the heads of his wife and children;
+yet I thought on those 'two milch kine that were to carry the ark of God
+into another country, and to leave their calves behind them.'
+
+"But that which helped me in this temptation was divers considerations:
+the first was, the consideration of those two Scriptures, 'Leave thy
+fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust
+in me;' and again, 'The Lord said, verily it shall go well with thy
+remnant; verily I will cause the enemy to entreat them well in the time
+of evil.'"
+
+He was arrested in 1660, charged with "devilishly and perniciously
+abstaining from church," and of being "a common upholder of
+conventicles." At the Quarter Sessions, where his trial seems to have
+been conducted somewhat like that of Faithful at Vanity Fair, he was
+sentenced to perpetual banishment. This sentence, however, was never
+executed, but he was remanded to Bedford jail, where he lay a prisoner
+for twelve years.
+
+Here, shut out from the world, with no other books than the Bible and
+Fox's Martyrs, he penned that great work which has attained a wider and
+more stable popularity than any other book in the English tongue. It is
+alike the favorite of the nursery and the study. Many experienced
+Christians hold it only second to the Bible; the infidel himself would
+not willingly let it die. Men of all sects read it with delight, as in
+the main a truthful representation of the 'Christian pilgrimage, without
+indeed assenting to all the doctrines which the author puts in the month
+of his fighting sermonizer, Great-heart, or which may be deduced from
+some other portions of his allegory. A recollection of his fearful
+sufferings, from misapprehension of a single text in the Scriptures,
+relative to the question of election, we may suppose gave a milder tone
+to the theology of his Pilgrim than was altogether consistent with the
+Calvinism of the seventeenth century. "Religion," says Macaulay, "has
+scarcely ever worn a form so calm and soothing as in Bunyan's allegory."
+In composing it, he seems never to have altogether lost sight of the
+fact, that, in his life-and-death struggle with Satan for the blessed
+promise recorded by the Apostle of Love, the adversary was generally
+found on the Genevan side of the argument. Little did the short-sighted
+persecutors of Bunyan dream, when they closed upon him the door of
+Bedford jail, that God would overrule their poor spite and envy to His
+own glory and the worldwide renown of their victim. In the solitude of
+his prison, the ideal forms of beauty and sublimity, which had long
+flitted before him vaguely, like the vision of the Temanite, took shape
+and coloring; and he was endowed with power to reduce them to order, and
+arrange them in harmonious groupings. His powerful imagination, no
+longer self-tormenting, but under the direction of reason and grace,
+expanded his narrow cell into a vast theatre, lighted up for the display
+of its wonders. To this creative faculty of his mind might have been
+aptly applied the language which George Wither, a contemporary prisoner,
+addressed to his Muse:--
+
+ "The dull loneness, the black shade
+ Which these hanging vaults have made,
+ The rude portals that give light
+ More to terror than delight;
+ This my chamber of neglect,
+ Walled about with disrespect,--
+ From all these, and this dull air,
+ A fit object for despair,
+ She hath taught me by her might,
+ To draw comfort and delight."
+
+That stony cell of his was to him like the rock of Padan-aram to the
+wandering Patriarch. He saw angels ascending and descending. The House
+Beautiful rose up before him, and its holy sisterhood welcomed him. He
+looked, with his Pilgrim, from the Chamber of Peace. The Valley of
+Humiliation lay stretched out beneath his eye, and he heard "the curious,
+melodious note of the country birds, who sing all the day long in the
+spring time, when the flowers appear, and the sun shines warm, and make
+the woods and groves and solitary places glad." Side by side with the
+good Christiana and the loving Mercy, he walked through the green and
+lowly valley, "fruitful as any the crow flies over," through "meadows
+beautiful with lilies;" the song of the poor but fresh-faced shepherd-
+boy, who lived a merry life, and wore the herb heartsease in his bosom,
+sounded through his cell:--
+
+ "He that is down need fear no fall;
+ He that is low no pride."
+
+The broad and pleasant "river of the Water of Life" glided peacefully
+before him, fringed "on either side with green trees, with all manner of
+fruit," and leaves of healing, with "meadows beautified with lilies, and
+green all the year long;" he saw the Delectable Mountains, glorious with
+sunshine, overhung with gardens and orchards and vineyards; and beyond
+all, the Land of Beulah, with its eternal sunshine, its song of birds,
+its music of fountains, its purple clustered vines, and groves through
+which walked the Shining Ones, silver-winged and beautiful.
+
+What were bars and bolts and prison-walls to him, whose eyes were
+anointed to see, and whose ears opened to hear, the glory and the
+rejoicing of the City of God, when the pilgrims were conducted to its
+golden gates, from the black and bitter river, with the sounding
+trumpeters, the transfigured harpers with their crowns of gold, the sweet
+voices of angels, the welcoming peal of bells in the holy city, and the
+songs of the redeemed ones? In reading the concluding pages of the first
+part of Pilgrim's Progress, we feel as if the mysterious glory of the
+Beatific Vision was unveiled before us. We are dazzled with the excess
+of light. We are entranced with the mighty melody; overwhelmed by the
+great anthem of rejoicing spirits. It can only be adequately described
+in the language of Milton in respect to the Apocalypse, as "a seven-fold
+chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies."
+
+Few who read Bunyan nowadays think of him as one of the brave old English
+confessors, whose steady and firm endurance of persecution baffled and in
+the end overcame the tyranny of the Established Church in the reign of
+Charles II. What Milton and Penn and Locke wrote in defence of Liberty,
+Bunyan lived out and acted. He made no concessions to worldly rank.
+Dissolute lords and proud bishops he counted less than the humblest and
+poorest of his disciples at Bedford. When first arrested and thrown into
+prison, he supposed he should be called to suffer death for his faithful
+testimony to the truth; and his great fear was, that he should not meet
+his fate with the requisite firmness, and so dishonor the cause of his
+Master. And when dark clouds came over him, and he sought in vain for a
+sufficient evidence that in the event of his death it would be well with
+him, he girded up his soul with the reflection, that, as he suffered for
+the word and way of God, he was engaged not to shrink one hair's breadth
+from it. "I will leap," he says, "off the ladder blindfold into
+eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell. Lord Jesus, if thou wilt
+catch me, do; if not, I will venture in thy name!"
+
+The English revolution of the seventeenth century, while it humbled the
+false and oppressive aristocracy of rank and title, was prodigal in the
+development of the real nobility of the mind and heart. Its history is
+bright with the footprints of men whose very names still stir the hearts
+of freemen, the world over, like a trumpet peal. Say what we may of its
+fanaticism, laugh as we may at its extravagant enjoyment of newly
+acquired religious and civil liberty, who shall now venture to deny that
+it was the golden age of England? Who that regards freedom above
+slavery, will now sympathize with the outcry and lamentation of those
+interested in the continuance of the old order of things, against the
+prevalence of sects and schism, but who, at the same time, as Milton
+shrewdly intimates, dreaded more the rending of their pontifical sleeves
+than the rending of the Church? Who shall now sneer at Puritanism, with
+the Defence of Unlicensed Printing before him? Who scoff at Quakerism
+over the Journal of George Fox? Who shall join with debauched lordlings
+and fat-witted prelates in ridicule of Anabaptist levellers and dippers,
+after rising from the perusal of Pilgrim's Progress? "There were giants
+in those days." And foremost amidst that band of liberty-loving and God-
+fearing men,
+
+ "The slandered Calvinists of Charles's time,
+ Who fought, and won it, Freedom's holy fight,"
+
+stands the subject of our sketch, the Tinker of Elstow. Of his high
+merit as an author there is no longer any question. The Edinburgh Review
+expressed the common sentiment of the literary world, when it declared
+that the two great creative minds of the seventeenth century were those
+which produced Paradise Lost and the Pilgrim's Progress.
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS ELLWOOD.
+
+Commend us to autobiographies! Give us the veritable notchings of
+Robinson Crusoe on his stick, the indubitable records of a life long
+since swallowed up in the blackness of darkness, traced by a hand the
+very dust of which has become undistinguishable. The foolishest egotist
+who ever chronicled his daily experiences, his hopes and fears, poor
+plans and vain reachings after happiness, speaking to us out of the Past,
+and thereby giving us to understand that it was quite as real as our
+Present, is in no mean sort our benefactor, and commands our attention,
+in spite of his folly. We are thankful for the very vanity which
+prompted him to bottle up his poor records, and cast them into the great
+sea of Time, for future voyagers to pick up. We note, with the deepest
+interest, that in him too was enacted that miracle of a conscious
+existence, the reproduction of which in ourselves awes and perplexes us.
+He, too, had a mother; he hated and loved; the light from old-quenched
+hearths shone over him; he walked in the sunshine over the dust of those
+who had gone before him, just as we are now walking over his. These
+records of him remain, the footmarks of a long-extinct life, not of mere
+animal organism, but of a being like ourselves, enabling us, by studying
+their hieroglyphic significance, to decipher and see clearly into the
+mystery of existence centuries ago. The dead generations live again in
+these old self-biographies. Incidentally, unintentionally, yet in the
+simplest and most natural manner, they make us familiar with all the
+phenomena of life in the bygone ages. We are brought in contact with
+actual flesh-and-blood men and women, not the ghostly outline figures
+which pass for such, in what is called History. The horn lantern of the
+biographer, by the aid of which, with painful minuteness, he chronicled,
+from day to day, his own outgoings and incomings, making visible to us
+his pitiful wants, labors, trials, and tribulations of the stomach and of
+the conscience, sheds, at times, a strong clear light upon
+contemporaneous activities; what seemed before half fabulous, rises up in
+distinct and full proportions; we look at statesmen, philosophers, and
+poets, with the eyes of those who lived perchance their next-door
+neighbors, and sold them beer, and mutton, and household stuffs, had
+access to their kitchens, and took note of the fashion of their wigs and
+the color of their breeches. Without some such light, all history would
+be just about as unintelligible and unreal as a dimly remembered dream.
+
+The journals of the early Friends or Quakers are in this respect
+invaluable. Little, it is true, can be said, as a general thing, of
+their literary merits. Their authors were plain, earnest men and women,
+chiefly intent upon the substance of things, and having withal a strong
+testimony to bear against carnal wit and outside show and ornament. Yet,
+even the scholar may well admire the power of certain portions of George
+Fox's Journal, where a strong spirit clothes its utterance in simple,
+downright Saxon words; the quiet and beautiful enthusiasm of Pennington;
+the torrent energy of Edward Burrough; the serene wisdom of Penn; the
+logical acuteness of Barclay; the honest truthfulness of Sewell; the wit
+and humor of John Roberts, (for even Quakerism had its apostolic jokers
+and drab-coated Robert Halls;) and last, not least, the simple beauty of
+Woolman's Journal, the modest record of a life of good works and love.
+
+Let us look at the Life of Thomas Ellwood. The book before us is a
+hardly used Philadelphia reprint, bearing date of 1775. The original was
+published some sixty years before. It is not a book to be found in
+fashionable libraries, or noticed in fashionable reviews, but is none the
+less deserving of attention.
+
+Ellwood was born in 1639, in the little town of Crowell, in Oxfordshire.
+Old Walter, his father, was of "gentlemanly lineage," and held a
+commission of the peace under Charles I. One of his most intimate
+friends was Isaac Pennington, a gentleman of estate and good reputation,
+whose wife, the widow of Sir John Springette, was a lady of superior
+endowments. Her only daughter, Gulielma, was the playmate and companion
+of Thomas. On making this family a visit, in 1658, in company with his
+father, he was surprised to find that they had united with the Quakers, a
+sect then little known, and everywhere spoken against. Passing through
+the vista of nearly two centuries, let us cross the threshold, and look
+with the eyes of young Ellwood upon this Quaker family. It will
+doubtless give us a good idea of the earnest and solemn spirit of that
+age of religious awakening.
+
+"So great a change from a free, debonair, and courtly sort of behavior,
+which we had formerly found there, into so strict a gravity as they now
+received us with, did not a little amuse us, and disappointed our
+expectations of such a pleasant visit as we had promised ourselves.
+
+"For my part, I sought, and at length found, means to cast myself into
+the company of the daughter, whom I found gathering flowers in the
+garden, attended by her maid, also a Quaker. But when I addressed her
+after my accustomed manner, with intention to engage her in discourse on
+the foot of our former acquaintance, though she treated me with a
+courteous mien, yet, as young as she was, the gravity of her looks and
+behavior struck such an awe upon me, that I found myself not so much
+master of myself as to pursue any further converse with her.
+
+"We staid dinner, which was very handsome, and lacked nothing to
+recommend it to me but the want of mirth and pleasant discourse, which we
+could neither have with them, nor, by reason of them, with one another;
+the weightiness which was upon their spirits and countenances keeping
+down the lightness that would have been up in ours."
+
+Not long after, they made a second visit to their sober friends, spending
+several days, during which they attended a meeting, in a neighboring
+farmhouse, where we are introduced by Ellwood to two remarkable
+personages, Edward Burrough, the friend and fearless reprover of
+Cromwell, and by far the most eloquent preacher of his sect and James
+Nayler, whose melancholy after-history of fanaticism, cruel sufferings,
+and beautiful repentance, is so well known to the readers of English
+history under the Protectorate. Under the preaching of these men, and
+the influence of the Pennington family, young Ellwood was brought into
+fellowship with the Quakers. Of the old Justice's sorrow and indignation
+at this sudden blasting of his hopes and wishes in respect to his son,
+and of the trials and difficulties of the latter in his new vocation, it
+is now scarcely worth while to speak. Let us step forward a few years,
+to 1662, considering meantime how matters, political and spiritual, are
+changed in that brief period. Cromwell, the Maccabeus of Puritanism, is
+no longer among men; Charles the Second sits in his place; profane and
+licentious cavaliers have thrust aside the sleek-haired, painful-faced
+Independents, who used to groan approval to the Scriptural illustrations
+of Harrison and Fleetwood; men easy of virtue, without sincerity, either
+in religion or politics, occupying the places made honorable by the
+Miltons, Whitlocks, and Vanes of the Commonwealth. Having this change in
+view, the light which the farthing candle of Ellwood sheds upon one of
+these illustrious names will not be unwelcome. In his intercourse with
+Penn, and other learned Quakers, he had reason to lament his own
+deficiencies in scholarship, and his friend Pennington undertook to put
+him in a way of remedying the defect.
+
+"He had," says Ellwood, "an intimate acquaintance with Dr. Paget, a
+physician of note in London, and he with John Milton, a gentleman of
+great note for learning throughout the learned world, for the accurate
+pieces he had written on various subjects and occasions.
+
+"This person, having filled a public station in the former times, lived a
+private and retired life in London, and, having lost his sight, kept
+always a man to read for him, which usually was the son of some gentleman
+of his acquaintance, whom, in kindness, he took to improve in his
+learning.
+
+"Thus, by the mediation of my friend Isaac Pennington with Dr. Paget, and
+through him with John Milton, was I admitted to come to him, not as a
+servant to him, nor to be in the house with him, but only to have the
+liberty of coming to his house at certain hours when I would, and read to
+him what books he should appoint, which was all the favor I desired.
+
+"He received me courteously, as well for the sake of Dr. Paget, who
+introduced me, as of Isaac Pennington, who recommended me, to both of
+whom he bore a good respect. And, having inquired divers things of me,
+with respect to my former progression in learning, he dismissed me, to
+provide myself with such accommodations as might be most suitable to my
+studies.
+
+"I went, therefore, and took lodgings as near to his house (which was
+then in Jewen Street) as I conveniently could, and from thenceforward
+went every day in the afternoon, except on the first day of the week,
+and, sitting by him in his dining-room, read to him such books in the
+Latin tongue as he pleased to have me read.
+
+"He perceiving with what earnest desire I had pursued learning, gave me
+not only all the encouragement, but all the help he could. For, having a
+curious ear, he understood by my tone when I understood what I read and
+when I did not, and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the
+most difficult passages to me."
+
+Thanks, worthy Thomas, for this glimpse into John Milton's dining-room!
+
+He had been with "Master Milton," as he calls him, only a few weeks,
+when, being one "first day morning," at the Bull and Mouth meeting,
+Aldersgate, the train-bands of the city, "with great noise and clamor,"
+headed by Major Rosewell, fell upon him and his friends. The immediate
+cause of this onslaught upon quiet worshippers was the famous plot of the
+Fifth Monarchy men, grim old fanatics, who (like the Millerites of the
+present day) had been waiting long for the personal reign of Christ and
+the saints upon earth, and in their zeal to hasten such a consummation
+had sallied into London streets with drawn swords and loaded matchlocks.
+The government took strong measures for suppressing dissenters' meetings
+or "conventicles;" and the poor Quakers, although not at all implicated
+in the disturbance, suffered more severely than any others. Let us look
+at the "freedom of conscience and worship" in England under that
+irreverent Defender of the Faith, Charles II. Ellwood says: "He that
+commanded the party gave us first a general charge to come out of the
+room. But we, who came thither at God's requiring to worship Him, (like
+that good man of old, who said, we ought to obey God rather than man,)
+stirred not, but kept our places. Whereupon, he sent some of his
+soldiers among us, with command to drag or drive us out, which they did
+roughly enough." Think of it: grave men and women, and modest maidens,
+sitting there with calm, impassive countenances, motionless as death, the
+pikes of the soldiery closing about them in a circle of bristling steel!
+Brave and true ones! Not in vain did ye thus oppose God's silence to the
+Devil's uproar; Christian endurance and calm persistence in the exercise
+of your rights as Englishmen and men to the hot fury of impatient
+tyranny! From your day down to this, the world has been the better for
+your faithfulness.
+
+Ellwood and some thirty of his friends were marched off to prison in Old
+Bridewell, which, as well as nearly all the other prisons, was already
+crowded with Quaker prisoners. One of the rooms of the prison was used
+as a torture chamber. "I was almost affrighted," says Ellwood, "by the
+dismalness of the place; for, besides that the walls were all laid over
+with black, from top to bottom, there stood in the middle a great
+whipping-post.
+
+"The manner of whipping there is, to strip the party to the skin, from
+the waist upward, and, having fastened him to the whipping-post, (so that
+he can neither resist nor shun the strokes,) to lash his naked body with
+long, slender twigs of holly, which will bend almost like thongs around
+the body; and these, having little knots upon them, tear the skin and
+flesh, and give extreme pain."
+
+To this terrible punishment aged men and delicately nurtured young
+females were often subjected, during this season of hot persecution.
+
+From the Bridewell, Ellwood was at length removed to Newgate, and thrust
+in, with other "Friends," amidst the common felons. He speaks of this
+prison, with its thieves, murderers, and prostitutes, its over-crowded
+apartments and loathsome cells, as "a hell upon earth." In a closet,
+adjoining the room where he was lodged, lay for several days the
+quartered bodies of Phillips, Tongue, and Gibbs, the leaders of the Fifth
+Monarchy rising, frightful and loathsome, as they came from the bloody
+hands of the executioners! These ghastly remains were at length obtained
+by the friends of the dead, and buried. The heads were ordered to be
+prepared for setting up in different parts of the city. Read this grim
+passage of description:--
+
+"I saw the heads when they were brought to be boiled. The hangman
+fetched them in a dirty basket, out of some by-place, and, setting them
+down among the felons, he and they made sport of them. They took them by
+the hair, flouting, jeering, and laughing at them; and then giving them
+some ill names, boxed them on their ears and cheeks; which done, the
+hangman put them into his kettle, and parboiled them with bay-salt and
+cummin-seed: that to keep them from putrefaction, and this to keep off
+the fowls from seizing upon them. The whole sight, as well that of the
+bloody quarters first as this of the heads afterwards, was both frightful
+and loathsome, and begat an abhorrence in my nature."
+
+At the next session of the municipal court at the Old Bailey, Ellwood
+obtained his discharge. After paying a visit to "my Master Milton," he
+made his way to Chalfont, the home of his friends the Penningtons, where
+he was soon after engaged as a Latin teacher. Here he seems to have had
+his trials and temptations. Gulielma Springette, the daughter of
+Pennington's wife, his old playmate, had now grown to be "a fair woman of
+marriageable age," and, as he informs us, "very desirable, whether regard
+was had to her outward person, which wanted nothing to make her
+completely comely, or to the endowments of her mind, which were every way
+extraordinary, or to her outward fortune, which was fair." From all
+which, we are not surprised to learn that "she was secretly and openly
+sought for by many of almost every rank and condition." "To whom,"
+continues Thomas, "in their respective turns, (till he at length came for
+whom she was reserved,) she carried herself with so much evenness of
+temper, such courteous freedom, guarded by the strictest modesty, that as
+it gave encouragement or ground of hope to none, so neither did it
+administer any matter of offence or just cause of complaint to any."
+
+Beautiful and noble maiden! How the imagination fills up this outline
+limning by her friend, and, if truth must be told, admirer! Serene,
+courteous, healthful; a ray of tenderest and blandest light, shining
+steadily in the sober gloom of that old household! Confirmed Quaker as
+she is, shrinking from none of the responsibilities and dangers of her
+profession, and therefore liable at any time to the penalties of prison
+and whipping-post, under that plain garb and in spite of that "certain
+gravity of look and behavior,"--which, as we have seen, on one occasion
+awed young Ellwood into silence,--youth, beauty, and refinement assert
+their prerogatives; love knows no creed; the gay, and titled, and wealthy
+crowd around her, suing in vain for her favor.
+
+ "Followed, like the tided moon,
+ She moves as calmly on,"
+
+"until he at length comes for whom she was reserved," and her name is
+united with that of one worthy even of her, the world-renowned William
+Penn.
+
+Meantime, one cannot but feel a good degree of sympathy with young
+Ellwood, her old schoolmate and playmate, placed, as he was, in the same
+family with her, enjoying her familiar conversation and unreserved
+confidence, and, as he says, the "advantageous opportunities of riding
+and walking abroad with her, by night as well as by day, without any
+other company than her maid; for so great, indeed, was the confidence
+that her mother had in me, that she thought her daughter safe, if I was
+with her, even from the plots and designs of others upon her." So near,
+and yet, alas! in truth, so distant! The serene and gentle light which
+shone upon him, in the sweet solitudes of Chalfont, was that of a star,
+itself unapproachable.
+
+As he himself meekly intimates, she was reserved for another. He seems
+to have fully understood his own position in respect to her; although, to
+use his own words, "others, measuring him by the propensity of their own
+inclinations, concluded he would steal her, run away with her, and marry
+her." Little did these jealous surmisers know of the true and really
+heroic spirit of the young Latin master. His own apology and defence of
+his conduct, under circumstances of temptation which St. Anthony himself
+could have scarcely better resisted, will not be amiss.
+
+"I was not ignorant of the various fears which filled the jealous heads
+of some concerning me, neither was I so stupid nor so divested of all
+humanity as not to be sensible of the real and innate worth and virtue
+which adorned that excellent dame, and attracted the eyes and hearts of
+so many, with the greatest importunity, to seek and solicit her; nor was
+I so devoid of natural heat as not to feel some sparklings of desire, as
+well as others; but the force of truth and sense of honor suppressed
+whatever would have risen beyond the bounds of fair and virtuous
+friendship. For I easily foresaw that, if I should have attempted any
+thing in a dishonorable way, by fraud or force, upon her, I should have
+thereby brought a wound upon mine own soul, a foul scandal upon my
+religious profession, and an infamous stain upon mine honor, which was
+far more dear unto me than my life. Wherefore, having observed how some
+others had befooled themselves, by misconstruing her common kindness
+(expressed in an innocent, open, free, and familiar conversation,
+springing from the abundant affability, courtesy, and sweetness of her
+natural temper) to be the effect of a singular regard and peculiar
+affection to them, I resolved to shun the rock whereon they split; and,
+remembering the saying of the poet
+
+ 'Felix quem faciunt aliena Pericula cantum,'
+
+I governed myself in a free yet respectful carriage towards her, thereby
+preserving a fair reputation with my friends, and enjoying as much of her
+favor and kindness, in a virtuous and firm friendship, as was fit for her
+to show or for me to seek."
+
+Well and worthily said, poor Thomas! Whatever might be said of others,
+thou, at least, wast no coxcomb. Thy distant and involuntary admiration
+of "the fair Guli" needs, however, no excuse. Poor human nature, guard
+it as one may, with strictest discipline and painfully cramping
+environment, will sometimes act out itself; and, in thy case, not even
+George Fox himself, knowing thy beautiful young friend, (and doubtless
+admiring her too, for he was one of the first to appreciate and honor the
+worth and dignity or woman,) could have found it in his heart to censure
+thee!
+
+At this period, as was indeed most natural, our young teacher solaced
+himself with occasional appeals to what he calls "the Muses." There is
+reason to believe, however, that the Pagan sisterhood whom he ventured to
+invoke seldom graced his study with their personal attendance. In these
+rhyming efforts, scattered up and down his Journal, there are occasional
+sparkles of genuine wit, and passages of keen sarcasm, tersely and fitly
+expressed. Others breathe a warm, devotional feeling; in the following
+brief prayer, for instance, the wants of the humble Christian are
+condensed in a manner worthy of Quarles or Herbert:--
+
+ "Oh! that mine eye might closed be
+ To what concerns me not to see;
+ That deafness might possess mine ear
+ To what concerns me not to hear;
+ That Truth my tongue might always tie
+ From ever speaking foolishly;
+ That no vain thought might ever rest
+ Or be conceived in my breast;
+ That by each word and deed and thought
+ Glory may to my God be brought!
+ But what are wishes? Lord, mine eye
+ On Thee is fixed, to Thee I cry
+ Wash, Lord, and purify my heart,
+ And make it clean in every part;
+ And when 't is clean, Lord, keep it too,
+ For that is more than I can do."
+
+The thought in the following extracts from a poem written on the death of
+his friend Pennington's son is trite, but not inaptly or inelegantly
+expressed:--
+
+ "What ground, alas, has any man
+ To set his heart on things below,
+ Which, when they seem most like to stand,
+ Fly like the arrow from the bow!
+ Who's now atop erelong shall feel
+ The circling motion of the wheel!
+
+ "The world cannot afford a thing
+ Which to a well-composed mind
+ Can any lasting pleasure bring,
+ But in itself its grave will find.
+ All things unto their centre tend
+ What had beginning must have end!
+
+ "No disappointment can befall
+ Us, having Him who's all in all!
+ What can of pleasure him prevent
+ Who lath the Fountain of Content?"
+
+In the year 1663 a severe law was enacted against the "sect called
+Quakers," prohibiting their meetings, with the penalty of banishment for
+the third offence! The burden of the prosecution which followed fell
+upon the Quakers of the metropolis, large numbers of whom were heavily
+fined, imprisoned, and sentenced to be banished from their native land.
+Yet, in time, our worthy friend Ellwood came in for his own share of
+trouble, in consequence of attending the funeral of one of his friends.
+An evil-disposed justice of the county obtained information of the Quaker
+gathering; and, while the body of the dead was "borne on Friends'
+shoulders through the street, in order to be carried to the burying-
+ground, which was at the town's end," says Ellwood, "he rushed out upon
+us with the constables and a rabble of rude fellows whom he had gathered
+together, and, having his drawn sword in his hand, struck one of the
+foremost of the bearers with it, commanding them to set down the coffin.
+But the Friend who was so stricken, being more concerned for the safety
+of the dead body than for his own, lest it should fall, and any indecency
+thereupon follow, held the coffin fast; which the justice observing, and
+being enraged that his word was not forthwith obeyed, set his hand to the
+coffin, and with a forcible thrust threw it off from the bearers'
+shoulders, so, that it fell to the ground in the middle of the street,
+and there we were forced to leave it; for the constables and rabble fell
+upon us, and drew some and drove others into the inn. Of those thus
+taken," continues Ellwood, "I was one. They picked out ten of us, and
+sent us to Aylesbury jail.
+
+"They caused the body to lie in the open street and cartway, so that all
+travellers that passed, whether horsemen, coaches, carts, or wagons, were
+fain to break out of the way to go by it, until it was almost night. And
+then, having caused a grave to be made in the unconsecrated part of what
+is called the Churchyard, they forcibly took the body from the widow, and
+buried it there."
+
+He remained a prisoner only about two months, during which period he
+comforted himself by such verse-making as follows, reminding us of
+similar enigmas in Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_:
+
+ "Lo! a Riddle for the wise,
+ In the which a Mystery lies.
+
+ RIDDLE.
+ "Some men are free whilst they in prison lie;
+ Others who ne'er saw prison captives die.
+
+ CAUTION.
+ "He that can receive it may,
+ He that cannot, let him stay,
+ Not be hasty, but suspend
+ Judgment till he sees the end.
+
+ SOLUTION.
+ "He's only free, indeed, who's free from sin,
+ And he is fastest bound that's bound therein."
+
+
+In the mean time, where is our "Master Milton"? We, left him deprived of
+his young companion and reader, sitting lonely in his small dining-room,
+in Jewen Street. It is now the year 1665; is not the pestilence in
+London? A sinful and godless city, with its bloated bishops fawning
+around the Nell Gwyns of a licentious and profane Defender of the Faith;
+its swaggering and drunken cavaliers; its ribald jesters; its obscene
+ballad-singers; its loathsome prisons, crowded with Godfearing men and
+women: is not the measure of its iniquity already filled up? Three years
+only have passed since the terrible prayer of Vane went upward from the
+scaffold on Tower Hill: "When my blood is shed upon the block, let it, O
+God, have a voice afterward!" Audible to thy ear, O bosom friend of the
+martyr! has that blood cried from earth; and now, how fearfully is it
+answered! Like the ashes which the Seer of the Hebrews cast towards
+Heaven, it has returned in boils and blains upon the proud and oppressive
+city. John Milton, sitting blind in Jewen Street, has heard the toll of
+the death-bells, and the nightlong rumble of the burial-carts, and the
+terrible summons, "Bring out your dead!" The Angel of the Plague, in
+yellow mantle, purple-spotted, walks the streets. Why should he tarry in
+a doomed city, forsaken of God! Is not the command, even to him, "Arise
+and flee, for thy life"? In some green nook of the quiet country, he may
+finish the great work which his hands have found to do. He bethinks him
+of his old friends, the Penningtons, and his young Quaker companion, the
+patient and gentle Ellwood. "Wherefore," says the latter, "some little
+time before I went to Aylesbury jail, I was desired by my quondam Master
+Milton to take an house for him in the neighborhood where I dwelt, that
+he might go out of the city for the safety of himself and his family, the
+pestilence then growing hot in London. I took a pretty box for him in
+Giles Chalfont, a mile from me, of which I gave him notice, and intended
+to have waited on him and seen him well settled, but was prevented by
+that imprisonment. But now being released and returned home, I soon made
+a visit to him, to welcome him into the country. After some common
+discourse had passed between us, he called for a manuscript of his,
+which, having brought, he delivered to me, bidding me take it home with
+me and read it at my leisure, and when I had so done return it to him,
+with my judgment thereupon."
+
+Now, what does the reader think young Ellwood carried in his gray coat
+pocket across the dikes and hedges and through the green lanes of Giles
+Chalfont that autumn day? Let us look farther "When I came home, and had
+set myself to read it, I found it was that excellent poem which he
+entitled _Paradise Lost_. After I had, with the best attention, read it
+through, I made him another visit; and, returning his book with due
+acknowledgment of the favor he had done me in communicating it to me, he
+asked me how I liked it and what I thought of it, which I modestly but
+freely told him; and, after some farther discourse about it, I pleasantly
+said to him, 'Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost; what hast thou
+to say of Paradise Found?' He made me no answer, but sat some time in a
+muse; then brake off that discourse, and fell upon another subject."
+
+"I modestly but freely told him what I thought" of Paradise Lost! What
+he told him remains a mystery. One would like to know more precisely
+what the first critical reader of that song "of Man's first disobedience"
+thought of it. Fancy the young Quaker and blind Milton sitting, some
+pleasant afternoon of the autumn of that old year, in "the pretty box" at
+Chalfont, the soft wind through the open window lifting the thin hair of
+the glorious old Poet! Back-slidden England, plague-smitten, and
+accursed with her faithless Church and libertine King, knows little of
+poor "Master Milton," and takes small note of his Puritanic verse-making.
+Alone, with his humble friend, he sits there, conning over that poem
+which, he fondly hoped, the world, which had grown all dark and strange
+to the author, "would not willingly let die." The suggestion in respect
+to Paradise Found, to which, as we have seen, "he made no answer, but sat
+some time in a muse," seems not to have been lost; for, "after the
+sickness was over," continues Ellwood, "and the city well cleansed, and
+become safely habitable again, he returned thither; and when afterwards I
+waited on him there, which I seldom failed of doing whenever my occasions
+drew me to London, he showed me his second poem, called Paradise Gained;
+and, in a pleasant tone, said to me, 'This is owing to you, for you put
+it into my head by the question you put to me at Chalfont, which before I
+had not thought of.'"
+
+Golden days were these for the young Latin reader, even if it be true, as
+we suspect, that he was himself very far from appreciating the glorious
+privilege which he enjoyed, of the familiar friendship and confidence of
+Milton. But they could not last. His amiable host, Isaac Pennington,
+a blameless and quiet country gentleman, was dragged from his house by a
+military force, and lodged in Aylesbury jail; his wife and family
+forcibly ejected from their pleasant home, which was seized upon by the
+government as security for the fines imposed upon its owner. The plague
+was in the village of Aylesbury, and in the very prison itself; but the
+noble-hearted Mary Pennington followed her husband, sharing with him the
+dark peril. Poor Ellwood, while attending a monthly meeting at Hedgerly,
+with six others, (among them one Morgan Watkins, a poor old Welshman,
+who, painfully endeavoring to utter his testimony in his own dialect, was
+suspected by the Dogberry of a justice of being a Jesuit trolling over
+his Latin,) was arrested, and committed to Wiccomb House of Correction.
+
+This was a time of severe trial for the sect with which Ellwood had
+connected himself. In the very midst of the pestilence, when thousands
+perished weekly in London, fifty-four Quakers were marched through the
+almost deserted streets, and placed on board a ship, for the purpose of
+being conveyed, according to their sentence of banishment, to the West
+Indies. The ship lay for a long time, with many others similarly
+situated, a helpless prey to the pestilence. Through that terrible
+autumn, the prisoners sat waiting for the summons of the ghastly
+Destroyer; and, from their floating dungeon.
+
+ "Heard the groan
+ Of agonizing ships from shore to shore;
+ Heard nightly plunged beneath the sullen wave
+ The frequent corse."
+
+When the vessel at length set sail, of the fifty-four who went on board,
+twenty-seven only were living. A Dutch privateer captured her, when two
+days out, and carried the prisoners to North Holland, where they were set
+at liberty. The condition of the jails in the city, where were large
+numbers of Quakers, was dreadful in the extreme. Ill ventilated,
+crowded, and loathsome with the accumulated filth of centuries, they
+invited the disease which daily decimated their cells. "Go on!" says
+Pennington, writing to the King and bishops from his plague-infected cell
+in the Aylesbury prison: "try it out with the Spirit of the Lord! Come
+forth with your laws, and prisons, and spoiling of goods, and banishment,
+and death, if the Lord please, and see if ye can carry it! Whom the Lord
+loveth He can save at His pleasure. Hath He begun to break our bonds and
+deliver us, and shall we now distrust Him? Are we in a worse condition
+than Israel was when the sea was before them, the mountains on either
+side, and the Egyptians behind, pursuing them?"
+
+Brave men and faithful! It is not necessary that the present generation,
+how quietly reaping the fruit of your heroic endurance, should see eye to
+eye with you in respect to all your testimonies and beliefs, in order to
+recognize your claim to gratitude and admiration. For, in an age of
+hypocritical hollowness and mean self-seeking, when, with noble
+exceptions, the very Puritans of Cromwell's Reign of the Saints were
+taking profane lessons from their old enemies, and putting on an outside
+show of conformity, for the sake of place or pardon, ye maintained the
+austere dignity of virtue, and, with King and Church and Parliament
+arrayed against you, vindicated the Rights of Conscience, at the cost of
+home, fortune, and life. English liberty owes more to your unyielding
+firmness than to the blows stricken for her at Worcester and Naseby.
+
+In 1667, we find the Latin teacher in attendance at a great meeting of
+Friends, in London, convened at the suggestion of George Fox, for the
+purpose of settling a little difficulty which had arisen among the
+Friends, even under the pressure of the severest persecution, relative to
+the very important matter of "wearing the hat." George Fox, in his love
+of truth and sincerity in word and action, had discountenanced the
+fashionable doffing of the hat, and other flattering obeisances towards
+men holding stations in Church or State, as savoring of man-worship,
+giving to the creature the reverence only due to the Creator, as
+undignified and wanting in due self-respect, and tending to support
+unnatural and oppressive distinctions among those equal in the sight of
+God. But some of his disciples evidently made much more of this "hat
+testimony" than their teacher. One John Perrott, who had just returned
+from an unsuccessful attempt to convert the Pope, at Rome, (where that
+dignitary, after listening to his exhortations, and finding him in no
+condition to be benefited by the spiritual physicians of the Inquisition,
+had quietly turned him over to the temporal ones of the Insane Hospital,)
+had broached the doctrine that, in public or private worship, the hat was
+not to be taken off, without an immediate revelation or call to do so!
+Ellwood himself seems to have been on the point of yielding to this
+notion, which appears to have been the occasion of a good deal of
+dissension and scandal. Under these circumstances, to save truth from
+reproach, and an important testimony to the essential equality of mankind
+from running into sheer fanaticism, Fox summoned his tried and faithful
+friends together, from all parts of the United Kingdom, and, as it
+appears, with the happiest result. Hat-revelations were discountenanced,
+good order and harmony reestablished, and John Perrott's beaver and the
+crazy head under it were from thenceforth powerless for evil. Let those
+who are disposed to laugh at this notable "Ecumenical Council of the Hat"
+consider that ecclesiastical history has brought down to us the records
+of many larger and more imposing convocations, wherein grave bishops and
+learned fathers took each other by the beard upon matters of far less
+practical importance.
+
+In 1669, we find Ellwood engaged in escorting his fair friend, Gulielma,
+to her uncle's residence in Sussex. Passing through London, and taking
+the Tunbridge road, they stopped at Seven Oak to dine. The Duke of York
+was on the road, with his guards and hangers-on, and the inn was filled
+with a rude company. "Hastening," says Ellwood, "from a place where we
+found nothing but rudeness, the roysterers who swarmed there, besides the
+damning oaths they belched out against each other, looked very sourly
+upon us, as if they grudged us the horses which we rode and the clothes
+we wore." They had proceeded but a little distance, when they were
+overtaken by some half dozen drunken rough-riding cavaliers, of the
+Wildrake stamp, in full pursuit after the beautiful Quakeress. One of
+them impudently attempted to pull her upon his horse before him, but was
+held at bay by Ellwood, who seems, on this occasion, to have relied
+somewhat upon his "stick," in defending his fair charge. Calling up
+Gulielma's servant, he bade him ride on one side of his mistress, while
+he guarded her on the other. "But he," says Ellwood, "not thinking it
+perhaps decent to ride so near his mistress, left room enough for another
+to ride between." In dashed the drunken retainer, and Gulielma was once
+more in peril. It was clearly no time for exhortations and
+expostulations; "so," says Ellwood, "I chopped in upon him, by a nimble
+turn, and kept him at bay. I told him I had hitherto spared him, but
+wished him not to provoke me further. This I spoke in such a tone as
+bespoke an high resentment of the abuse put upon us, and withal pressed
+him so hard with my horse that I suffered him not to come up again to
+Guli." By this time, it became evident to the companions of the
+ruffianly assailant that the young Quaker was in earnest, and they
+hastened to interfere. "For they," says Ellwood, "seeing the contest
+rise so high, and probably fearing it would rise higher, not knowing
+where it might stop, came in to part us; which they did by taking him
+away."
+
+Escaping from these sons of Belial, Ellwood and his fair companion rode
+on through Tunbridge Wells, "the street thronged with men, who looked
+very earnestly at them, but offered them no affront," and arrived, late
+at night, in a driving rain, at the mansion-house of Herbert Springette.
+The fiery old gentleman was so indignant at the insult offered to his
+niece, that he was with difficulty dissuaded from demanding satisfaction
+at the hands of the Duke of York.
+
+This seems to have been his last ride with Gulielma. She was soon after
+married to William Penn, and took up her abode at Worminghurst, in
+Sussex. How blessed and beautiful was that union may be understood from
+the following paragraph of a letter, written by her husband, on the eve
+of his departure for America to lay the foundations of a Christian
+colony:--
+
+ "My dear wife! remember thou wast the love of my youth, and much the
+ joy of my life, the most beloved as well as the most worthy of all
+ my earthly comforts; and the reason of that love was more thy inward
+ than thy outward excellences, which yet were many. God knows, and
+ thou knowest it, I can say it was a match of Providence's making;
+ and God's image in us both was the first thing and the most amiable
+ and engaging ornament in our eyes."
+
+About this time our friend Thomas, seeing that his old playmate at
+Chalfont was destined for another, turned his attention towards a "young
+Friend, named Mary Ellis." He had been for several years acquainted with
+her, but now he "found his heart secretly drawn and inclining towards
+her." "At length," he tells us, "as I was sitting all alone, waiting
+upon the Lord for counsel and guidance in this, in itself and to me,
+important affair, I felt a word sweetly arise in me, as if I had heard a
+Voice which said, Go, and prevail! and faith springing in my heart at the
+word, I immediately rose and went, nothing doubting." On arriving at her
+residence, he states that he "solemnly opened his mind to her, which was
+a great surprisal to her, for she had taken in an apprehension, as others
+had also done," that his eye had been fixed elsewhere and nearer home.
+"I used not many words to her," he continues, "but I felt a Divine Power
+went along with the words, and fixed the matter expressed by them so fast
+in her breast, that, as she afterwards acknowledged to me, she could not
+shut it out."
+
+"I continued," he says, "my visits to my best-beloved Friend until we
+married, which was on the 28th day of the eighth month, 1669. We took
+each other in a select meeting of the ancient and grave Friends of that
+country. A very solemn meeting it was, and in a weighty frame of spirit
+we were." His wife seems to have had some estate; and Ellwood, with that
+nice sense of justice which marked all his actions, immediately made his
+will, securing to her, in case of his decease, all her own goods and
+moneys, as well as all that he had himself acquired before marriage.
+"Which," he tells, "was indeed but little, yet, by all that little, more
+than I had ever given her ground to expect with me." His father, who was
+yet unreconciled to the son's religious views, found fault with his
+marriage, on the ground that it was unlawful and unsanctioned by priest
+or liturgy, and consequently refused to render him any pecuniary
+assistance. Yet, in spite of this and other trials, he seems to have
+preserved his serenity of spirit. After an unpleasant interview with his
+father, on one occasion, he wrote, at his lodgings in an inn, in London,
+what he calls _A Song of Praise_. An extract from it will serve to show
+the spirit of the good man in affliction:--
+
+ "Unto the Glory of Thy Holy Name,
+ Eternal God! whom I both love and fear,
+ I hereby do declare, I never came
+ Before Thy throne, and found Thee loath to hear,
+ But always ready with an open ear;
+ And, though sometimes Thou seem'st Thy face to hide,
+ As one that had withdrawn his love from me,
+ 'T is that my faith may to the full, be tried,
+ And that I thereby may the better see
+ How weak I am when not upheld by Thee!"
+
+The next year, 1670, an act of Parliament, in relation to "Conventicles,"
+provided that any person who should be present at any meeting, under
+color or pretence of any exercise of religion, in other manner than
+according to the liturgy and practice of the Church of England, "should
+be liable to fines of from five to ten shillings; and any person
+preaching at or giving his house for the meeting, to a fine of twenty
+pounds: one third of the fines being received by the informer or
+informers." As a natural consequence of such a law, the vilest
+scoundrels in the land set up the trade of informers and heresy-hunters.
+Wherever a dissenting meeting or burial took place, there was sure to be
+a mercenary spy, ready to bring a complaint against all in attendance.
+The Independents and Baptists ceased, in a great measure, to hold public
+meetings, yet even they did not escape prosecution. Bunyan, for
+instance, in these days, was dreaming, like another Jacob, of angels
+ascending and descending, in Bedford prison. But upon the poor Quakers
+fell, as usual, the great force of the unjust enactment. Some of these
+spies or informers, men of sharp wit, close countenances, pliant tempers,
+and skill in dissimulation, took the guise of Quakers, Independents, or
+Baptists, as occasion required, thrusting themselves into the meetings of
+the proscribed sects, ascertaining the number who attended, their rank
+and condition, and then informing against them. Ellwood, in his Journal
+for 1670, describes several of these emissaries of evil. One of them
+came to a Friend's house, in Bucks, professing to be a brother in the
+faith, but, overdoing his counterfeit Quakerism, was detected and
+dismissed by his host. Betaking himself to the inn, he appeared in his
+true character, drank and swore roundly, and confessed over his cups that
+he had been sent forth on his mission by the Rev. Dr. Mew, Vice-
+Chancellor of Oxford. Finding little success in counterfeiting
+Quakerism, he turned to the Baptists, where, for a time, he met with
+better success. Ellwood, at this time, rendered good service to his
+friends, by exposing the true character of these wretches, and bringing
+them to justice for theft, perjury, and other misdemeanors.
+
+While this storm of persecution lasted, (a period of two or three years,)
+the different dissenting sects felt, in some measure, a common sympathy,
+and, while guarding themselves against their common foe, had little
+leisure for controversy with each other; but, as was natural, the
+abatement of their mutual suffering and danger was the signal for
+renewing their suspended quarrels. The Baptists fell upon the Quakers,
+with pamphlet and sermon; the latter replied in the same way. One of the
+most conspicuous of the Baptist disputants was the famous Jeremy Ives,
+with whom our friend Ellwood seems to have had a good deal of trouble.
+"His name," says Ellwood, "was up for a topping Disputant. He was well,
+read in the fallacies of logic, and was ready in framing syllogisms. His
+chief art lay in tickling the humor of rude, unlearned, and injudicious
+hearers."
+
+The following piece of Ellwood's, entitled "An Epitaph for Jeremy Ives,"
+will serve to show that wit and drollery were sometimes found even among
+the proverbially sober Quakers of the seventeenth century:--
+
+ "Beneath this stone, depressed, doth lie
+ The Mirror of Hypocrisy--
+ Ives, whose mercenary tongue
+ Like a Weathercock was hung,
+ And did this or that way play,
+ As Advantage led the way.
+ If well hired, he would dispute,
+ Otherwise he would be mute.
+ But he'd bawl for half a day,
+ If he knew and liked his pay.
+
+ "For his person, let it pass;
+ Only note his face was brass.
+ His heart was like a pumice-stone,
+ And for Conscience he had none.
+ Of Earth and Air he was composed,
+ With Water round about enclosed.
+ Earth in him had greatest share,
+ Questionless, his life lay there;
+ Thence his cankered Envy sprung,
+ Poisoning both his heart and tongue.
+
+ "Air made him frothy, light, and vain,
+ And puffed him with a proud disdain.
+ Into the Water oft he went,
+ And through the Water many sent
+ That was, ye know, his element!
+ The greatest odds that did appear
+ Was this, for aught that I can hear,
+ That he in cold did others dip,
+ But did himself hot water sip.
+
+ "And his cause he'd never doubt,
+ If well soak'd o'er night in Stout;
+ But, meanwhile, he must not lack
+ Brandy and a draught of Sack.
+ One dispute would shrink a bottle
+ Of three pints, if not a pottle.
+ One would think he fetched from thence
+ All his dreamy eloquence.
+
+ "Let us now bring back the Sot
+ To his Aqua Vita pot,
+ And observe, with some content,
+ How he framed his argument.
+ That his whistle he might wet,
+ The bottle to his mouth he set,
+ And, being Master of that Art,
+ Thence he drew the Major part,
+ But left the Minor still behind;
+ Good reason why, he wanted wind;
+ If his breath would have held out,
+ He had Conclusion drawn, no doubt."
+
+The residue of Ellwood's life seems to have glided on in serenity and
+peace. He wrote, at intervals, many pamphlets in defence of his Society,
+and in favor of Liberty of Conscience. At his hospitable residence, the
+leading spirits of the sect were warmly welcomed. George Fox and William
+Penn seem to have been frequent guests. We find that, in 1683, he was
+arrested for seditious publications, when on the eve of hastening to his
+early friend, Gulielma, who, in the absence of her husband, Governor
+Penn, had fallen dangerously ill. On coming before the judge, "I told
+him," says Ellwood, "that I had that morning received an express out of
+Sussex, that William Penn's wife (with whom I had an intimate
+acquaintance and strict friendship, _ab ipsis fere incunabilis_, at
+least, _a teneris unguiculis_) lay now ill, not without great danger, and
+that she had expressed her desire that I would come to her as soon as I
+could." The judge said "he was very sorry for Madam Penn's illness," of
+whose virtues he spoke very highly, but not more than was her due. Then
+he told me, "that, for her sake, he would do what he could to further my
+visit to her." Escaping from the hands of the law, he visited his
+friend, who was by this time in a way of recovery, and, on his return,
+learned that the prosecution had been abandoned.
+
+At about this date his narrative ceases. We learn, from other sources,
+that he continued to write and print in defence of his religious views up
+to the year of his death, which took place in 1713. One of his
+productions, a poetical version of the Life of David, may be still met
+with, in the old Quaker libraries. On the score of poetical merit, it is
+about on a level with Michael Drayton's verses on the same subject. As
+the history of one of the firm confessors of the old struggle for
+religious freedom, of a genial-hearted and pleasant scholar, the friend
+of Penn and Milton, and the suggester of Paradise Regained, we trust our
+hurried sketch has not been altogether without interest; and that,
+whatever may be the religious views of our readers, they have not failed
+to recognize a good and true man in Thomas Ellwood.
+
+
+
+
+JAMES NAYLER.
+
+ "You will here read the true story of that much injured, ridiculed
+ man, James Nayler; what dreadful sufferings, with what patience he
+ endured, even to the boring of the tongue with hot irons, without a
+ murmur; and with what strength of mind, when the delusion he had
+ fallen into, which they stigmatized as blasphemy, had given place to
+ clearer thoughts, he could renounce his error in a strain of the
+ beautifullest humility."--Essays of Elia.
+
+"Would that Carlyle could now try his hand at the English Revolution!"
+was our exclamation, on laying down the last volume of his remarkable
+History of the French Revolution with its brilliant and startling word-
+pictures still flashing before us. To some extent this wish has been
+realized in the Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. Yet we confess
+that the perusal of these volumes has disappointed us. Instead of giving
+himself free scope, as in his French Revolution, and transferring to his
+canvas all the wild and ludicrous, the terrible and beautiful phases of
+that moral phenomenon, he has here concentrated all his artistic skill
+upon a single figure, whom he seems to have regarded as the embodiment
+and hero of the great event. All else on his canvas is subordinated to
+the grim image of the colossal Puritan. Intent upon presenting him as
+the fitting object of that "hero-worship," which, in its blind admiration
+and adoration of mere abstract Power, seems to us at times nothing less
+than devil-worship, he dwarfs, casts into the shadow, nay, in some
+instances caricatures and distorts, the figures which surround him. To
+excuse Cromwell in his usurpation, Henry Vane, one of those exalted and
+noble characters, upon whose features the lights held by historical
+friends or foes detect no blemish, is dismissed with a sneer and an
+utterly unfounded imputation of dishonesty. To reconcile, in some
+degree, the discrepancy between the declarations of Cromwell, in behalf
+of freedom of conscience, and that mean and cruel persecution which the
+Quakers suffered under the Protectorate, the generally harmless
+fanaticism of a few individuals bearing that name is gravely urged. Nay,
+the fact that some weak-brained enthusiasts undertook to bring about the
+millennium, by associating together, cultivating the earth, and "dibbling
+beans" for the New Jerusalem market, is regarded by our author as the
+"germ of Quakerism;" and furnishes an occasion for sneering at "my poor
+friend Dryasdust, lamentably tearing his hair over the intolerance of
+that old time to Quakerism and such like."
+
+The readers of this (with all its faults) powerfully written Biography
+cannot fail to have been impressed with the intensely graphic description
+(Part I., vol. ii., pp. 184, 185) of the entry of the poor fanatic,
+James Nayler, and his forlorn and draggled companions into Bristol.
+Sadly ludicrous is it; affecting us like the actual sight of tragic
+insanity enacting its involuntary comedy, and making us smile through our
+tears.
+
+In another portion of the work, a brief account is given of the trial and
+sentence of Nayler, also in the serio-comic view; and the poor man is
+dismissed with the simple intimation, that after his punishment he
+"repented, and confessed himself mad." It was no part of the author's
+business, we are well aware, to waste time and words upon the history of
+such a man as Nayler; he was of no importance to him, otherwise than as
+one of the disturbing influences in the government of the Lord Protector.
+But in our mind the story of James Nayler has always been one of
+interest; and in the belief that it will prove so to others, who, like
+Charles Lamb, can appreciate the beautiful humility of a forgiven spirit,
+we have taken some pains to collect and embody the facts of it.
+
+James Nayler was born in the parish of Ardesley, in Yorkshire, 1616. His
+father was a substantial farmer, of good repute and competent estate and
+be, in consequence, received a good education: At the age of twenty-two,
+he married and removed to Wakefield parish, which has since been made
+classic ground by the pen of Goldsmith. Here, an honest, God-fearing
+farmer, he tilled his soil, and alternated between cattle-markets and
+Independent conventicles. In 1641, he obeyed the summons of "my Lord
+Fairfax" and the Parliament, and joined a troop of horse composed of
+sturdy Independents, doing such signal service against "the man of
+Belial, Charles Stuart," that he was promoted to the rank of
+quartermaster, in which capacity he served under General Lambert, in his
+Scottish campaign. Disabled at length by sickness, he was honorably
+dismissed from the service, and returned to his family in 1649.
+
+For three or four years, he continued to attend the meetings of the
+Independents, as a zealous and devout member. But it so fell out, that
+in the winter of 1651, George Fox, who had just been released from a
+cruel imprisonment in Derby jail, felt a call to set his face towards
+Yorkshire. "So travelling," says Fox, in his Journal, "through the
+countries, to several places, preaching Repentance and the Word of Life,
+I came into the parts about Wakefield, where James Navler lived." The
+worn and weary soldier, covered with the scars of outward battle,
+received, as he believed, in the cause of God and his people, against
+Antichrist and oppression, welcomed with thankfulness the veteran of
+another warfare; who, in conflict with a principalities and powers, and
+spiritual wickedness in high places, had made his name a familiar one in
+every English hamlet. "He and Thomas Goodyear," says Fox, "came to me,
+and were both convinced, and received the truth." He soon after joined
+the Society of Friends. In the spring of the next year he was in his
+field following his plough, and meditating, as he was wont, on the great
+questions of life and duty, when he seemed to hear a voice bidding him go
+out from his kindred and his father's house, with an assurance that the
+Lord would be with him, while laboring in his service. Deeply impressed,
+he left his employment, and, returning to his house, made immediate
+preparations for a journey. But hesitation and doubt followed; he became
+sick from anxiety of mind, and his recovery, for a time, was exceedingly
+doubtful. On his restoration to bodily health, he obeyed what he
+regarded as a clear intimation of duty, and went forth a preacher of the
+doctrines he had embraced. The Independent minister of the society to
+which he had formerly belonged sent after him the story that he was the
+victim of sorcery; that George Fox carried with him a bottle, out of
+which he made people drink; and that the draught had the power to change
+a Presbyterian or Independent into a Quaker at once; that, in short, the
+Arch-Quaker, Fox, was a wizard, and could be seen at the same moment of
+time riding on the same black horse, in two places widely separated. He
+had scarcely commenced his exhortations, before the mob, excited by such
+stories, assailed him. In the early summer of the year we hear of him in
+Appleby jail. On his release, he fell in company with George Fox. At
+Walney Island, he was furiously assaulted, and beaten with clubs and
+stones; the poor priest-led fishermen being fully persuaded that they
+were dealing with a wizard. The spirit of the man, under these
+circumstances, may be seen in the following extract from a letter to his
+friends, dated at "Killet, in Lancashire, the 30th of 8th Month, 1652:"--
+
+"Dear friends! Dwell in patience, and wait upon the Lord, who will do
+his own work. Look not at man who is in the work, nor at any man
+opposing it; but rest in the will of the Lord, that so ye may be
+furnished with patience, both to do and to suffer what ye shall be called
+unto, that your end in all things may be His praise. Meet often
+together; take heed of what exalteth itself above its brother; but keep
+low, and serve one another in love."
+
+Laboring thus, interrupted only by persecution, stripes, and
+imprisonment, he finally came to London, and spoke with great power and
+eloquence in the meetings of Friends in that city. Here he for the first
+time found himself surrounded by admiring and sympathizing friends. He
+saw and rejoiced in the fruits of his ministry. Profane and drunken
+cavaliers, intolerant Presbyters, and blind Papists, owned the truths
+which he uttered, and counted themselves his disciples. Women, too, in
+their deep trustfulness and admiring reverence, sat at the feet of the
+eloquent stranger. Devout believers in the doctrine of the inward light
+and manifestation of God in the heart of man, these latter, at length,
+thought they saw such unmistakable evidences of the true life in James
+Nayler, that they felt constrained to declare that Christ was, in an
+especial manner, within him, and to call upon all to recognize in
+reverent adoration this new incarnation of the divine and heavenly. The
+wild enthusiasm of his disciples had its effect on the teacher. Weak in
+body, worn with sickness, fasting, stripes, and prison-penance, and
+naturally credulous and imaginative, is it strange that in some measure
+he yielded to this miserable delusion? Let those who would harshly judge
+him, or ascribe his fall to the peculiar doctrines of his sect, think of
+Luther, engaged in personal combat with the Devil, or conversing with him
+on points of theology in his bed-chamber; or of Bunyan at actual
+fisticuffs with the adversary; or of Fleetwood and Vane and Harrison
+millennium-mad, and making preparations for an earthly reign of King
+Jesus. It was an age of intense religious excitement. Fanaticism had
+become epidemic. Cromwell swayed his Parliaments by "revelations" and
+Scripture phrases in the painted chamber; stout generals and sea-captains
+exterminated the Irish, and swept Dutch navies from the ocean, with old
+Jewish war-cries, and hymns of Deborah and Miriam; country justices
+charged juries in Hebraisms, and cited the laws of Palestine oftener than
+those of England. Poor Nayler found himself in the very midst of this
+seething and confused moral maelstrom. He struggled against it for a
+time, but human nature was weak; he became, to use his own words,
+"bewildered and darkened," and the floods went over him.
+
+Leaving London with some of his more zealous followers, not without
+solemn admonition and rebuke from Francis Howgill and Edward Burrough,
+who at that period were regarded as the most eminent and gifted of the
+Society's ministers, he bent his steps towards Exeter. Here, in
+consequence of the extravagance of his language and that of his
+disciples, he was arrested and thrown into prison. Several infatuated
+women surrounded the jail, declaring that "Christ was in prison," and on
+being admitted to see him, knelt down and kissed his feet, exclaiming,
+"Thy name shall be no more called James Nayler, but Jesus!" Let us pity
+him and them. They, full of grateful and extravagant affection for the
+man whose voice had called them away from worldly vanities to what they
+regarded as eternal realities, whose hand they imagined had for them
+swung back the pearl gates of the celestial city, and flooded their
+atmosphere with light from heaven; he, receiving their homage (not as
+offered to a poor, weak, sinful Yorkshire trooper, but rather to the
+hidden man of the heart, the "Christ within" him) with that self-
+deceiving humility which is but another name for spiritual pride.
+Mournful, yet natural; such as is still in greater or less degree
+manifested between the Catholic enthusiast and her confessor; such as the
+careful observer may at times take note of in our Protestant revivals and
+camp meetings.
+
+How Nayler was released from Exeter jail does not appear, but the next we
+hear of him is at Bristol, in the fall of the year. His entrance into
+that city shows the progress which he and his followers had made in the
+interval. Let us look at Carlyle's description of it: "A procession of
+eight persons one, a man on horseback riding single, the others, men and
+women partly riding double, partly on foot, in the muddiest highway in
+the wettest weather; singing, all but the single rider, at whose bridle
+walk and splash two women, 'Hosannah! Holy, holy! Lord God of Sabaoth,'
+and other things, 'in a buzzing tone,' which the impartial hearer could
+not make out. The single rider is a raw-boned male figure, 'with lank
+hair reaching below his cheeks,' hat drawn close over his brows, 'nose
+rising slightly in the middle,' of abstruse 'down look,' and large
+dangerous jaws strictly closed: he sings not, sits there covered, and is
+sung to by the others bare. Amid pouring deluges and mud knee-deep, 'so
+that the rain ran in at their necks and vented it at their hose and
+breeches: 'a spectacle to the West of England and posterity! Singing as
+above; answering no question except in song. From Bedminster to
+Ratcliffgate, along the streets to the High Cross of Bristol: at the High
+Cross they are laid hold of by the authorities: turn out to be James
+Nayler and Company."
+
+Truly, a more pitiful example of "hero-worship" is not well to be
+conceived of. Instead of taking the rational view of it, however, and
+mercifully shutting up the actors in a mad-house, the authorities of that
+day, conceiving it to be a stupendous blasphemy, and themselves God's
+avengers in the matter, sent Nayler under strong guard up to London, to
+be examined before the Parliament. After long and tedious examinations
+and cross-questionings, and still more tedious debates, some portion of
+which, not uninstructive to the reader, may still be found in Burton's
+Diary, the following horrible resolution was agreed upon:--
+
+"That James Nayler be set in the pillory, with his head in the pillory in
+the Palace Yard, Westminster, during the space of two hours on Thursday
+next; and be whipped by the hangman through the streets from Westminster
+to the Old Exchange, and there, likewise, be set in the pillory, with his
+head in the pillory for the space of two hours, between eleven and one,
+on Saturday next, in each place wearing a paper containing a description
+of his crimes; and that at the Old Exchange his tongue be bored through
+with a hot iron, and that he be there stigmatized on the forehead with
+the letter 'B;' and that he be afterwards sent to Bristol, to be conveyed
+into and through the said city on horseback with his face backward, and
+there, also, publicly whipped the next market-day after he comes thither;
+that from thence he be committed to prison in Bridewell, London, and
+there restrained from the society of people, and there to labor hard
+until he shall be released by Parliament; and during that time be
+debarred the use of pen, ink, and paper, and have no relief except what
+he earns by his daily labor."
+
+Such, neither more nor less, was, in the opinion of Parliament, required
+on their part to appease the divine vengeance. The sentence was
+pronounced on the 17th of the twelfth month; the entire time of the
+Parliament for the two months previous having been occupied with the
+case. The Presbyterians in that body were ready enough to make the most
+of an offence committed by one who had been an Independent; the
+Independents, to escape the stigma of extenuating the crimes of one of
+their quondam brethren, vied with their antagonists in shrieking over the
+atrocity of Nayler's blasphemy, and in urging its severe punishment.
+Here and there among both classes were men disposed to leniency, and more
+than one earnest plea was made for merciful dealing with a man whose
+reason was evidently unsettled, and who was, therefore, a fitting object
+of compassion; whose crime, if it could indeed be called one, was
+evidently the result of a clouded intellect, and not of wilful intention
+of evil. On the other hand, many were in favor of putting him to death
+as a sort of peace-offering to the clergy, who, as a matter of course,
+were greatly scandalized by Nayler's blasphemy, and still more by the
+refusal of his sect to pay tithes, or recognize their divine commission.
+
+Nayler was called into the Parliament-house to receive his sentence.
+"I do not know mine offence," he said mildly. "You shall know it," said
+Sir Thomas Widrington, "by your sentence." When the sentence was read,
+he attempted to speak, but was silenced. "I pray God," said Nayler,
+"that he may not lay this to your charge."
+
+The next day, the 18th of the twelfth month, he stood in the pillory two
+hours, in the chill winter air, and was then stripped and scourged by the
+hangman at the tail of a cart through the streets. Three hundred and ten
+stripes were inflicted; his back and arms were horribly cut and mangled,
+and his feet crushed and bruised by the feet of horses treading on him in
+the crowd. He bore all with uncomplaining patience; but was so far
+exhausted by his sufferings, that it was found necessary to postpone the
+execution of the residue of the sentence for one week. The terrible
+severity of his sentence, and his meek endurance of it, had in the mean
+time powerfully affected many of the humane and generous of all classes
+in the city; and a petition for the remission of the remaining part of
+the penalty was numerously signed and presented to Parliament. A debate
+ensued upon it, but its prayer was rejected. Application was then made
+to Cromwell, who addressed a letter to the Speaker of the House,
+inquiring into the affair, protesting an "abhorrence and detestation of
+giving or occasioning the least countenance to such opinions and
+practices" as were imputed to Nayler; "yet we, being intrusted in the
+present government on behalf of the people of these nations, and not
+knowing how far such proceeding entered into wholly without us may extend
+in the consequence of it, do hereby desire the House may let us know the
+grounds and reasons whereon they have proceeded." From this, it is not
+unlikely that the Protector might have been disposed to clemency, and to
+look with a degree of charity upon the weakness and errors of one of his
+old and tried soldiers who had striven like a brave man, as he was, for
+the rights and liberties of Englishmen; but the clergy here interposed,
+and vehemently, in the name of God and His Church, demanded that the
+executioner should finish his work. Five of the most eminent of them,
+names well known in the Protectorate, Caryl, Manton, Nye, Griffith, and
+Reynolds, were deputed by Parliament to visit the mangled prisoner. A
+reasonable request was made, that some impartial person might be present,
+that justice might be done Nayler in the report of his answers. This was
+refused. It was, however, agreed that the conversation should be written
+down and a copy of it left with the jailer. He was asked if he was sorry
+for his blasphemies. He said he did not know to what blasphemies they
+alluded; that he did believe in Jesus Christ; that He had taken up His
+dwelling in his own heart, and for the testimony of Him he now suffered.
+"I believe," said one of the ministers, "in a Christ who was never in any
+man's heart." "I know no such Christ," rejoined the prisoner; "the
+Christ I witness to fills Heaven and Earth, and dwells in the hearts of
+all true believers." On being asked why he allowed the women to adore
+and worship him, he said he "denied bowing to the creature; but if they
+beheld the power of Christ, wherever it was, and bowed to it, he could
+not resist it, or say aught against it."
+
+After some further parley, the reverend visitors grew angry, threw the
+written record of the conversation in the fire, and left the prison, to
+report the prisoner incorrigible.
+
+On the 27th of the month, he was again led out of his cell and placed
+upon the pillory. Thousands of citizens were gathered around, many of
+them earnestly protesting against the extreme cruelty of his punishment.
+Robert Rich, an influential and honorable merchant, followed him up to
+the pillory with expressions of great sympathy, and held him by the hand
+while the red-hot iron was pressed through his tongue and the brand was
+placed on his forehead. He was next sent to Bristol, and publicly
+whipped through the principal streets of that city; and again brought
+back to the Bridewell prison, where he remained about two years, shut out
+from all intercourse with his fellow-beings. At the expiration of this
+period, he was released by order of Parliament. In the solitude of his
+cell, the angel of patience had been with him.
+
+Through the cloud which had so long rested over him, the clear light of
+truth shone in upon his spirit; the weltering chaos of a disordered
+intellect settled into the calm peace of a reconciliation with God and
+man. His first act on leaving prison was to visit Bristol, the scene of
+his melancholy fall. There he publicly confessed his errors, in the
+eloquent earnestness of a contrite spirit, humbled in view of the past,
+yet full of thanksgiving and praise for the great boon of forgiveness. A
+writer who was present says, the "assembly was tendered, and broken into
+tears; there were few dry eyes, and many were bowed in their minds."
+
+In a paper which he published soon after, he acknowledges his lamentable
+delusion. "Condemned forever," he says, "be all those false worships
+with which any have idolized my person in that Night of my Temptation,
+when the Power of Darkness was above rue; all that did in any way tend to
+dishonor the Lord, or draw the minds of any from the measure of Christ
+Jesus in themselves, to look at flesh, which is as grass, or to ascribe
+that to the visible which belongs to Him. Darkness came over me
+through want of watchfulness and obedience to the pure Eye of God. I was
+taken captive from the true light; I was walking in the Night, as a
+wandering bird fit for a prey. And if the Lord of all my mercies had not
+rescued me, I had perished; for I was as one appointed to death and
+destruction, and there was none to deliver me."
+
+"It is in my heart to confess to God, and before men, my folly and
+offence in that day; yet there were many things formed against me in
+that day, to take away my life and bring scandal upon the truth, of
+which I was not guilty at all." "The provocation of that Time of
+Temptation was exceeding great against the Lord, yet He left me not; for
+when Darkness was above, and the Adversary so prevailed that all things
+were turned and perverted against my right seeing, hearing, or
+understanding, only a secret hope and faith I had in my God, whom I had
+served, that He would bring me through it and to the end of it, and that
+I should again see the day of my redemption from under it all,--this
+quieted my soul in its greatest tribulation." He concludes his
+confession with these words: "He who hath saved my soul from death, who
+hath lifted my feet up out of the pit, even to Him be glory forever; and
+let every troubled soul trust in Him, for his mercy endureth forever!"
+
+Among his papers, written soon after his release, is a remarkable prayer,
+or rather thanksgiving. The limit I have prescribed to myself will only
+allow me to copy an extract:--
+
+"It is in my heart to praise Thee, O my God! Let me never forget Thee,
+what Thou hast been to me in the night, by Thy presence in my hour of
+trial, when I was beset in darkness, when I was cast out as a wandering
+bird; when I was assaulted with strong temptations, then Thy presence, in
+secret, did preserve me, and in a low state I felt Thee near me; when my
+way was through the sea, when I passed under the mountains, there wast
+Thou present with me; when the weight of the hills was upon me, Thou
+upheldest me. Thou didst fight, on my part, when I wrestled with death;
+when darkness would have shut me up, Thy light shone about me; when my
+work was in the furnace, and I passed through the fire, by Thee I was not
+consumed; when I beheld the dreadful visions, and was among the fiery
+spirits, Thy faith staid me, else through fear I had fallen. I saw Thee,
+and believed, so that the enemy could not prevail." After speaking of
+his humiliation and sufferings, which Divine Mercy had overruled for his
+spiritual good, he thus concludes: "Thou didst lift me out from the pit,
+and set me forth in the sight of my enemies; Thou proclaimedst liberty to
+the captive; Thou calledst my acquaintances near me; they to whom I had
+been a wonder looked upon me; and in Thy love I obtained favor with those
+who had deserted me. Then did gladness swallow up sorrow, and I forsook
+my troubles; and I said, How good is it that man be proved in the night,
+that he may know his folly, that every mouth may become silent, until
+Thou makest man known unto himself, and has slain the boaster, and shown
+him the vanity which vexeth Thy spirit."
+
+All honor to the Quakers of that day, that, at the risk of
+misrepresentation and calumny, they received back to their communion
+their greatly erring, but deeply repentant, brother. His life, ever
+after, was one of self-denial and jealous watchfulness over himself,--
+blameless and beautiful in its humility and lowly charity.
+
+Thomas Ellwood, in his autobiography for the year 1659, mentions Nayler,
+whom he met in company with Edward Burrough at the house of Milton's
+friend, Pennington. Ellwood's father held a discourse with the two
+Quakers on their doctrine of free and universal grace. "James Nailer,"
+says Ellwood, "handled the subject with so much perspicuity and clear
+demonstration, that his reasoning seemed to be irresistible. As for
+Edward Burrough, he was a brisk young Man, of a ready Tongue, and might
+have been for aught I then knew, a Scholar, which made me less admire his
+Way of Reasoning. But what dropt from James Nailer had the greater Force
+upon me, because he lookt like a simple Countryman, having the appearance
+of an Husbandman or Shepherd."
+
+In the latter part of the eighth month, 1660, he left London on foot, to
+visit his wife and children in Wakefield. As he journeyed on, the sense
+of a solemn change about to take place seemed with him; the shadow of the
+eternal world fell over him. As he passed through Huntingdon, a friend
+who saw him describes him as "in an awful and weighty frame of mind, as
+if he had been redeemed from earth, and a stranger on it, seeking a
+better home and inheritance." A few miles beyond the town, he was found,
+in the dusk of the evening, very ill, and was taken to the house of a
+friend, who lived not far distant. He died shortly after, expressing his
+gratitude for the kindness of his attendants, and invoking blessings upon
+them. About two hours before his death, he spoke to the friend at his
+bedside these remarkable words, solemn as eternity, and beautiful as the
+love which fills it:--
+
+"There is a spirit which I feel which delights to do no evil, nor to
+avenge any wrong; but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its
+own in the end; its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to
+weary out all exultation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary
+to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations; as it bears no evil in
+itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other: if it be betrayed,
+it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercy and forgiveness of
+God. Its crown is meekness; its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it
+takes its kingdom with entreaty, and not with contention, and keeps it by
+lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard
+it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth
+with none to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It
+never rejoiceth but through sufferings, for with the world's joy it is
+murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein
+with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through
+death obtained resurrection and eternal Holy Life."
+
+So died James Nayler. He was buried in "Thomas Parnell's burying-ground,
+at King's Rippon," in a green nook of rural England. Wrong and violence,
+and temptation and sorrow, and evil-speaking, could reach him no more.
+And in taking leave of him, let us say, with old Joseph Wyeth, where he
+touches upon this case in his _Anguis Flagellatus_: "Let none insult, but
+take heed lest they also, in the hour of their temptation, do fall away."
+
+
+
+
+ANDREW MARVELL
+
+ "They who with a good conscience and an upright heart do their civil
+ duties in the sight of God, and in their several places, to resist
+ tyranny and the violence of superstition banded both against them,
+ will never seek to be forgiven that which may justly be attributed
+ to their immortal praise."--Answer to Eikon Basilike.
+
+Among, the great names which adorned the Protectorate,--that period of
+intense mental activity, when political and religious rights and duties
+were thoroughly discussed by strong and earnest statesmen and
+theologians,--that of Andrew Marvell, the friend of Milton, and Latin
+Secretary of Cromwell, deserves honorable mention. The magnificent prose
+of Milton, long neglected, is now perhaps as frequently read as his great
+epic; but the writings of his friend and fellow secretary, devoted like
+his own to the cause of freedom and the rights of the people, are
+scarcely known to the present generation. It is true that Marvell's
+political pamphlets were less elaborate and profound than those of the
+author of the glorious _Defence of Unlicensed Printing_. He was light,
+playful, witty, and sarcastic; he lacked the stern dignity, the terrible
+invective, the bitter scorn, the crushing, annihilating retort, the grand
+and solemn eloquence, and the devout appeals, which render immortal the
+controversial works of Milton. But he, too, has left his foot-prints on
+his age; he, too, has written for posterity that which they "will not
+willingly let die." As one of the inflexible defenders of English
+liberty, sowers of the seed, the fruits of which we are now reaping, he
+has a higher claim on the kind regards of this generation than his merits
+as a poet, by no means inconsiderable, would warrant.
+
+Andrew Marvell was born in Kingston-upon-Hull, in 1620. At the age of
+eighteen he entered Trinity College, whence he was enticed by the
+Jesuits, then actively seeking proselytes. After remaining with them a
+short time, his father found him, and brought him back to his studies.
+On leaving college, he travelled on the Continent. At Rome he wrote his
+first satire, a humorous critique upon Richard Flecknoe, an English
+Jesuit and verse writer, whose lines on Silence Charles Lamb quotes in
+one of his Essays. It is supposed that he made his first acquaintance
+with Milton in Italy.
+
+At Paris he made the Abbot de Manihan the subject of another satire. The
+Abbot pretended to skill in the arts of magic, and used to prognosticate
+the fortunes of people from the character of their handwriting. At what
+period he returned from his travels we are not aware. It is stated, by
+some of his biographers, that he was sent as secretary of a Turkish
+mission. In 1653, he was appointed the tutor of Cromwell's nephew; and,
+four years after, doubtless through the instrumentality of his friend
+Milton, he received the honorable appointment of Latin Secretary of the
+Commonwealth. In 1658, he was selected by his townsmen of Hull to
+represent them in Parliament. In this service he continued until 1663,
+when, notwithstanding his sturdy republican principles, he was appointed
+secretary to the Russian embassy. On his return, in 1665, he was again
+elected to Parliament, and continued in the public service until the
+prorogation of the Parliament of 1675.
+
+The boldness, the uncompromising integrity and irreproachable consistency
+of Marvell, as a statesman, have secured for him the honorable
+appellation of "the British Aristides." Unlike too many of his old
+associates under the Protectorate, he did not change with the times. He
+was a republican in Cromwell's day, and neither threats of assassination,
+nor flatteries, nor proffered bribes, could make him anything else in
+that of Charles II. He advocated the rights of the people at a time when
+patriotism was regarded as ridiculous folly; when a general corruption,
+spreading downwards from a lewd and abominable Court, had made
+legislation a mere scramble for place and emolument. English history
+presents no period so disgraceful as the Restoration. To use the words
+of Macaulay, it was "a day of servitude without loyalty and sensuality
+without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of
+cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot,
+and the slave. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every
+grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean." It
+is the peculiar merit of Milton and Marvell, that in such an age they
+held fast their integrity, standing up in glorious contrast with clerical
+apostates and traitors to the cause of England's liberty.
+
+In the discharge of his duties as a statesman Marvell was as punctual and
+conscientious as our own venerable Apostle of Freedom, John Quincy Adams.
+He corresponded every post with his constituents, keeping them fully
+apprised of all that transpired at Court or in Parliament. He spoke but
+seldom, but his great personal influence was exerted privately upon the
+members of the Commons as well as upon the Peers. His wit, accomplished
+manners, and literary eminence made him a favorite at the Court itself.
+The voluptuous and careless monarch laughed over the biting satire of the
+republican poet, and heartily enjoyed his lively conversation. It is
+said that numerous advances were made to him by the courtiers of Charles
+II., but he was found to be incorruptible. The personal compliments of
+the King, the encomiums of Rochester, the smiles and flatteries of the
+frail but fair and high-born ladies of the Court; nay, even the golden
+offers of the King's treasurer, who, climbing with difficulty to his
+obscure retreat on an upper floor of a court in the Strand, laid a
+tempting bribe of L1,000 before him, on the very day when he had been
+compelled to borrow a guinea, were all lost upon the inflexible patriot.
+He stood up manfully, in an age of persecution, for religious liberty,
+opposed the oppressive excise, and demanded frequent Parliaments and a
+fair representation of the people.
+
+In 1672, Marvell engaged in a controversy with the famous High-Churchman,
+Dr. Parker, who had taken the lead in urging the persecution of Non-
+conformists. In one of the works of this arrogant divine, he says that
+"it is absolutely necessary to the peace and government of the world that
+the supreme magistrate should be vested with power to govern and conduct
+the consciences of subjects in affairs of religion. Princes may with
+less hazard give liberty to men's vices and debaucheries than to their
+consciences." And, speaking of the various sects of Non-conformists, he
+counsels princes and legislators that "tenderness and indulgence to such
+men is to nourish vipers in their own bowels, and the most sottish
+neglect of our quiet and security." Marvell replied to him in a severely
+satirical pamphlet, which provoked a reply from the Doctor. Marvell
+rejoined, with a rare combination of wit and argument. The effect of his
+sarcasm on the Doctor and his supporters may be inferred from an
+anonymous note sent him, in which the writer threatens by the eternal God
+to cut his throat, if he uttered any more libels upon Dr. Parker. Bishop
+Burnet remarks that "Marvell writ in a burlesque strain, but with so
+peculiar and so entertaining a conduct 'that from the King down to the
+tradesman his books were read with great pleasure, and not only humbled
+Parker, but his whole party, for Marvell had all the wits on his side.'"
+The Bishop further remarks that Marvell's satire "gave occasion to the
+only piece of modesty with which Dr. Parker was ever charged, namely, of
+withdrawing from town, and not importuning the press for some years,
+since even a face of brass must grow red when it is burnt as his has
+been."
+
+Dean Swift, in commenting upon the usual fate of controversial pamphlets,
+which seldom live beyond their generation, says: "There is indeed an
+exception, when a great genius undertakes to expose a foolish piece; so
+we still read Marvell's answer to Parker with pleasure, though the book
+it answers be sunk long ago."
+
+Perhaps, in the entire compass of our language, there is not to be found
+a finer piece of satirical writing than Marvell's famous parody of the
+speeches of Charles II., in which the private vices and public
+inconsistencies of the King, and his gross violations of his pledges on
+coming to the throne, are exposed with the keenest wit and the most
+laugh-provoking irony. Charles himself, although doubtless annoyed by
+it, could not refrain from joining in the mirth which it excited at his
+expense.
+
+The friendship between Marvell and Milton remained firm and unbroken to
+the last. The former exerted himself to save his illustrious friend from
+persecution, and omitted no opportunity to defend him as a politician and
+to eulogize him as a poet. In 1654 he presented to Cromwell Milton's
+noble tract in _Defence of the People of England_, and, in writing to the
+author, says of the work, "When I consider how equally it teems and rises
+with so many figures, it seems to me a Trajan's column, in whose winding
+ascent we see embossed the several monuments of your learned victories."
+He was one of the first to appreciate _Paradise Lost_, and to commend it
+in some admirable lines. One couplet is exceedingly beautiful, in its
+reference to the author's blindness:--
+
+ "Just Heaven, thee like Tiresias to requite,
+ Rewards with prophecy thy loss of sight."
+
+His poems, written in the "snatched leisure" of an active political life,
+bear marks of haste, and are very unequal. In the midst of passages of
+pastoral description worthy of Milton himself, feeble lines and hackneyed
+phrases occur. His _Nymph lamenting the Death of her Fawn_ is a finished
+and elaborate piece, full of grace and tenderness. _Thoughts in a
+Garden_ will be remembered by the quotations of that exquisite critic,
+Charles Lamb. How pleasant is this picture!
+
+ "What wondrous life is this I lead!
+ Ripe apples drop about my head;
+ The luscious clusters of the vine
+ Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
+ The nectarine and curious peach
+ Into my hands themselves do reach;
+ Stumbling on melons as I pass,
+ Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
+
+ "Here at this fountain's sliding foot,
+ Or at the fruit-tree's mossy root,
+ Casting the body's vest aside,
+ My soul into the boughs does glide.
+ There like a bird it sits and sings,
+ And whets and claps its silver wings;
+ And, till prepared for longer flight,
+ Waves in its plumes the various light.
+
+ "How well the skilful gard'ner drew
+ Of flowers and herbs this dial true!
+ Where, from above, the milder sun
+ Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
+ And, as it works, the industrious bee
+ Computes his time as well as we.
+ How could such sweet and wholesome hours
+ Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers!"
+
+
+One of his longer poems, _Appleton House_, contains passages of admirable
+description, and many not unpleasing conceits. Witness the following:--
+
+ "Thus I, an easy philosopher,
+ Among the birds and trees confer,
+ And little now to make me wants,
+ Or of the fowl or of the plants.
+ Give me but wings, as they, and I
+ Straight floating on the air shall fly;
+ Or turn me but, and you shall see
+ I am but an inverted tree.
+ Already I begin to call
+ In their most learned original;
+ And, where I language want, my signs
+ The bird upon the bough divines.
+ No leaf does tremble in the wind,
+ Which I returning cannot find.
+ Out of these scattered Sibyl's leaves,
+ Strange prophecies my fancy weaves:
+ What Rome, Greece, Palestine, e'er said,
+ I in this light Mosaic read.
+ Under this antic cope I move,
+ Like some great prelate of the grove;
+ Then, languishing at ease, I toss
+ On pallets thick with velvet moss;
+ While the wind, cooling through the boughs,
+ Flatters with air my panting brows.
+ Thanks for my rest, ye mossy banks!
+ And unto you, cool zephyrs, thanks!
+ Who, as my hair, my thoughts too shed,
+ And winnow from the chaff my head.
+ How safe, methinks, and strong behind
+ These trees have I encamped my mind!"
+
+Here is a picture of a piscatorial idler and his trout stream, worthy of
+the pencil of Izaak Walton:--
+
+ "See in what wanton harmless folds
+ It everywhere the meadow holds:
+ Where all things gaze themselves, and doubt
+ If they be in it or without;
+ And for this shade, which therein shines
+ Narcissus-like, the sun too pines.
+ Oh! what a pleasure 't is to hedge
+ My temples here in heavy sedge;
+ Abandoning my lazy side,
+ Stretched as a bank unto the tide;
+ Or, to suspend my sliding foot
+ On the osier's undermining root,
+ And in its branches tough to hang,
+ While at my lines the fishes twang."
+
+A little poem of Marvell's, which he calls Eyes and Tears, has the
+following passages:--
+
+ "How wisely Nature did agree
+ With the same eyes to weep and see!
+ That having viewed the object vain,
+ They might be ready to complain.
+ And, since the self-deluding sight
+ In a false angle takes each height,
+ These tears, which better measure all,
+ Like watery lines and plummets fall."
+
+ "Happy are they whom grief doth bless,
+ That weep the more, and see the less;
+ And, to preserve their sight more true,
+ Bathe still their eyes in their own dew;
+ So Magdalen, in tears more wise,
+ Dissolved those captivating eyes,
+ Whose liquid chains could, flowing, meet
+ To fetter her Redeemer's feet.
+ The sparkling glance, that shoots desire,
+ Drenched in those tears, does lose its fire;
+ Yea, oft the Thunderer pity takes,
+ And there his hissing lightning slakes.
+ The incense is to Heaven dear,
+ Not as a perfume, but a tear;
+ And stars shine lovely in the night,
+ But as they seem the tears of light.
+ Ope, then, mine eyes, your double sluice,
+ And practise so your noblest use;
+ For others, too, can see or sleep,
+ But only human eyes can weep."
+
+The Bermuda Emigrants has some happy lines, as the following:--
+
+ "He hangs in shade the orange bright,
+ Like golden lamps in a green night."
+
+Or this, which doubtless suggested a couplet in Moore's _Canadian Boat
+Song_:--
+
+ "And all the way, to guide the chime,
+ With falling oars they kept the time."
+
+His facetious and burlesque poetry was much admired in his day; but a
+great portion of it referred to persons and events no longer of general
+interest. The satire on Holland is an exception. There is nothing in
+its way superior to it in our language. Many of his best pieces were
+originally written in Latin, and afterwards translated by himself. There
+is a splendid Ode to Cromwell--a worthy companion of Milton's glorious
+sonnet--which is not generally known, and which we transfer entire to our
+pages. Its simple dignity and the melodious flow of its versification
+commend themselves more to our feelings than its eulogy of war. It is
+energetic and impassioned, and probably affords a better idea of the
+author, as an actor in the stirring drama of his time, than the "soft
+Lydian airs" of the poems that we have quoted.
+
+
+ AN HORATIAN ODE UPON CROMWELL'S RETURN FROM IRELAND.
+
+ The forward youth that would appear
+ Must now forsake his Muses dear;
+ Nor in the shadows sing
+ His numbers languishing.
+
+ 'T is time to leave the books in dust,
+ And oil the unused armor's rust;
+ Removing from the wall
+ The corslet of the hall.
+
+ So restless Cromwell could not cease
+ In the inglorious arts of peace,
+ But through adventurous war
+ Urged his active star.
+
+ And, like the three-forked lightning, first
+ Breaking the clouds wherein it nurst,
+ Did thorough his own side
+ His fiery way divide.
+
+ For 't is all one to courage high,
+ The emulous, or enemy;
+ And with such to enclose
+ Is more than to oppose.
+
+ Then burning through the air he went,
+ And palaces and temples rent;
+ And Caesar's head at last
+ Did through his laurels blast.
+
+ 'T is madness to resist or blame
+ The face of angry Heaven's flame;
+ And, if we would speak true,
+ Much to the man is due,
+
+ Who, from his private gardens, where
+ He lived reserved and austere,
+ (As if his highest plot
+ To plant the bergamot,)
+
+ Could by industrious valor climb
+ To ruin the great work of time,
+ And cast the kingdoms old
+ Into another mould!
+
+ Though justice against fate complain,
+ And plead the ancient rights in vain,--
+ But those do hold or break,
+ As men are strong or weak.
+
+ Nature, that hateth emptiness,
+ Allows of penetration less,
+ And therefore must make room
+ Where greater spirits come.
+
+ What field of all the civil war,
+ Where his were not the deepest scar?
+ And Hampton shows what part
+ He had of wiser art;
+
+ Where, twining subtle fears with hope,
+ He wove a net of such a scope,
+ That Charles himself might chase
+ To Carisbrook's narrow case;
+
+ That hence the royal actor borne,
+ The tragic scaffold might adorn,
+ While round the armed bands
+ Did clap their bloody hands.
+
+ HE nothing common did or mean
+ Upon that memorable scene,
+ But with his keener eye
+ The axe's edge did try
+
+ Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite,
+ To vindicate his helpless right!
+ But bowed his comely head,
+ Down, as upon a bed.
+
+ This was that memorable hour,
+ Which first assured the forced power;
+ So when they did design
+ The Capitol's first line,
+
+ A bleeding head, where they begun,
+ Did fright the architects to run;
+ And yet in that the state
+ Foresaw its happy fate.
+
+ And now the Irish are ashamed
+ To see themselves in one year tamed;
+ So much one man can do,
+ That does best act and know.
+
+ They can affirm his praises best,
+ And have, though overcome, confest
+ How good he is, how just,
+ And fit for highest trust.
+
+ Nor yet grown stiffer by command,
+ But still in the Republic's hand,
+ How fit he is to sway
+ That can so well obey.
+
+ He to the Commons' feet presents
+ A kingdom for his first year's rents,
+ And, what he may, forbears
+ His fame to make it theirs.
+
+ And has his sword and spoils ungirt,
+ To lay them at the public's skirt;
+ So when the falcon high
+ Falls heavy from the sky,
+
+ She, having killed, no more does search,
+ But on the next green bough to perch,
+ Where, when he first does lure,
+ The falconer has her sure.
+
+ What may not, then, our isle presume,
+ While Victory his crest does plume?
+ What may not others fear,
+
+ If thus he crowns each year?
+
+ As Caesar, he, erelong, to Gaul;
+ To Italy as Hannibal,
+ And to all states not free
+ Shall climacteric be.
+
+ The Pict no shelter now shall find
+ Within his parti-contoured mind;
+ But from his valor sad
+ Shrink underneath the plaid,
+
+ Happy if in the tufted brake
+ The English hunter him mistake,
+ Nor lay his hands a near
+ The Caledonian deer.
+
+ But thou, the war's and fortune's son,
+ March indefatigably on;
+ And, for the last effect,
+ Still keep the sword erect.
+
+ Besides the force, it has to fright
+ The spirits of the shady night
+ The same arts that did gain
+ A power, must it maintain.
+
+
+Marvell was never married. The modern critic, who affirms that bachelors
+have done the most to exalt women into a divinity, might have quoted his
+extravagant panegyric of Maria Fairfax as an apt illustration:--
+
+ "'T is she that to these gardens gave
+ The wondrous beauty which they have;
+ She straitness on the woods bestows,
+ To her the meadow sweetness owes;
+ Nothing could make the river be
+ So crystal pure but only she,--
+ She, yet more pure, sweet, strait, and fair,
+ Than gardens, woods, meals, rivers are
+ Therefore, what first she on them spent
+ They gratefully again present:
+ The meadow carpets where to tread,
+ The garden flowers to crown her head,
+ And for a glass the limpid brook
+ Where she may all her beauties look;
+ But, since she would not have them seen,
+ The wood about her draws a screen;
+ For she, to higher beauty raised,
+ Disdains to be for lesser praised;
+ She counts her beauty to converse
+ In all the languages as hers,
+ Nor yet in those herself employs,
+ But for the wisdom, not the noise,
+ Nor yet that wisdom could affect,
+ But as 't is Heaven's dialect."
+
+It has been the fashion of a class of shallow Church and State defenders
+to ridicule the great men of the Commonwealth, the sturdy republicans of
+England, as sour-featured, hard-hearted ascetics, enemies of the fine
+arts and polite literature. The works of Milton and Marvell, the prose-
+poem of Harrington, and the admirable discourses of Algernon Sydney are a
+sufficient answer to this accusation. To none has it less application
+than to the subject of our sketch. He was a genial, warmhearted man, an
+elegant scholar, a finished gentleman at home, and the life of every
+circle which he entered, whether that of the gay court of Charles II.,
+amidst such men as Rochester and L'Estrange, or that of the republican
+philosophers who assembled at Miles's Coffee House, where he discussed
+plans of a free representative government with the author of Oceana, and
+Cyriack Skinner, that friend of Milton, whom the bard has immortalized in
+the sonnet which so pathetically, yet heroically, alludes to his own
+blindness. Men of all parties enjoyed his wit and graceful conversation.
+His personal appearance was altogether in his favor. A clear, dark,
+Spanish complexion, long hair of jetty blackness falling in graceful
+wreaths to his shoulders, dark eyes, full of expression and fire, a
+finely chiselled chin, and a mouth whose soft voluptuousness scarcely
+gave token of the steady purpose and firm will of the inflexible
+statesman: these, added to the prestige of his genius, and the respect
+which a lofty, self-sacrificing patriotism extorts even from those who
+would fain corrupt and bribe it, gave him a ready passport to the
+fashionable society of the metropolis. He was one of the few who mingled
+in that society, and escaped its contamination, and who,
+
+ "Amidst the wavering days of sin,
+ Kept himself icy chaste and pure."
+
+The tone and temper of his mind may be most fitly expressed in his own
+paraphrase of Horace:--
+
+ "Climb at Court for me that will,
+ Tottering Favor's pinnacle;
+ All I seek is to lie still!
+ Settled in some secret nest,
+ In calm leisure let me rest;
+ And, far off the public stage,
+ Pass away my silent age.
+ Thus, when, without noise, unknown,
+ I have lived out all my span,
+ I shall die without a groan,
+ An old, honest countryman.
+ Who, exposed to other's eyes,
+ Into his own heart ne'er pries,
+ Death's to him a strange surprise."
+
+He died suddenly in 1678, while in attendance at a popular meeting of his
+old constituents at Hull. His health had previously been remarkably
+good; and it was supposed by many that he was poisoned by some of his
+political or clerical enemies. His monument, erected by his grateful
+constituency, bears the following inscription:--
+
+ "Near this place lyeth the body of Andrew Marvell, Esq., a man so
+ endowed by Nature, so improved by Education, Study, and Travel, so
+ consummated by Experience, that, joining the peculiar graces of Wit
+ and Learning, with a singular penetration and strength of judgment;
+ and exercising all these in the whole course of his life, with an
+ unutterable steadiness in the ways of Virtue, he became the ornament
+ and example of his age, beloved by good men, feared by bad, admired
+ by all, though imitated by few; and scarce paralleled by any. But a
+ Tombstone can neither contain his character, nor is Marble necessary
+ to transmit it to posterity; it is engraved in the minds of this
+ generation, and will be always legible in his inimitable writings,
+ nevertheless. He having served twenty years successfully in
+ Parliament, and that with such Wisdom, Dexterity, and Courage, as
+ becomes a true Patriot, the town of Kingston-upon-Hull, from whence
+ he was deputed to that Assembly, lamenting in his death the public
+ loss, have erected this Monument of their Grief and their Gratitude,
+ 1688."
+
+Thus lived and died Andrew Marvell. His memory is the inheritance of
+Americans as well as Englishmen. His example commends itself in an
+especial manner to the legislators of our Republic. Integrity and
+fidelity to principle are as greatly needed at this time in our halls of
+Congress as in the Parliaments of the Restoration; men are required who
+can feel, with Milton, that "it is high honor done them from God, and a
+special mark of His favor, to have been selected to stand upright and
+steadfast in His cause, dignified with the defence of Truth and public
+liberty."
+
+
+
+
+JOHN ROBERTS.
+
+Thomas Carlyle, in his history of the stout and sagacious Monk of St.
+Edmunds, has given us a fine picture of the actual life of Englishmen in
+the middle centuries. The dim cell-lamp of the somewhat apocryphal
+Jocelin of Brakelond becomes in his hands a huge Drummond-light, shining
+over the Dark Ages like the naphtha-fed cressets over Pandemonium,
+proving, as he says in his own quaint way, that "England in the year 1200
+was no dreamland, but a green, solid place, which grew corn and several
+other things; the sun shone on it; the vicissitudes of seasons and human
+fortunes were there; cloth was woven, ditches dug, fallow fields
+ploughed, and houses built." And if, as the writer just quoted insists,
+it is a matter of no small importance to make it credible to the present
+generation that the Past is not a confused dream of thrones and battle-
+fields, creeds and constitutions, but a reality, substantial as hearth
+and home, harvest-field and smith-shop, merry-making and death, could
+make it, we shall not wholly waste our time and that of our readers in
+inviting them to look with us at the rural life of England two centuries
+ago, through the eyes of John Roberts and his worthy son, Daniel, yeomen,
+of Siddington, near Cirencester.
+
+_The Memoirs of John Roberts, alias Haywood, by his son, Daniel Roberts_,
+(the second edition, printed verbatim from the original one, with its
+picturesque array of italics and capital letters,) is to be found only in
+a few of our old Quaker libraries. It opens with some account of the
+family. The father of the elder Roberts "lived reputably, on a little
+estate of his own," and it is mentioned as noteworthy that he married a
+sister of a gentleman in the Commission of the Peace. Coming of age
+about the beginning of the civil wars, John and one of his young
+neighbors enlisted in the service of Parliament. Hearing that
+Cirencester had been taken by the King's forces, they obtained leave of
+absence to visit their friends, for whose safety they naturally felt
+solicitous. The following account of the reception they met with from
+the drunken and ferocious troopers of Charles I., the "bravos of Alsatia
+and the pages of Whitehall," throws a ghastly light upon the horrors of
+civil war:--
+
+"As they were passing by Cirencester, they were discovered, and pursued
+by two soldiers of the King's party, then in possession of the town.
+Seeing themselves pursued, they quitted their horses, and took to their
+heels; but, by reason of their accoutrements, could make little speed.
+They came up with my father first; and, though he begged for quarter,
+none they would give him, but laid on him with their swords, cutting and
+slashing his hands and arms, which he held up to save his head; as the
+marks upon them did long after testify. At length it pleased the
+Almighty to put it into his mind to fall down on his face; which he did.
+Hereupon the soldiers, being on horseback, cried to each other, _Alight,
+and cut his throat_! but neither of them did; yet continued to strike and
+prick him about the jaws, till they thought him dead. Then they left
+him, and pursued his neighbor, whom they presently overtook and killed.
+Soon after they had left my father, it was said in his heart, _Rise, and
+flee for thy life_! which call he obeyed; and, starting upon his feet,
+his enemies espied him in motion, and pursued him again. He ran down a
+steep hill, and through a river which ran at the bottom of it; though
+with exceeding difficulty, his boots filling with water, and his wounds
+bleeding very much. They followed him to the top of the hill; but,
+seeing he had got over, pursued him no farther."
+
+The surgeon who attended him was a Royalist, and bluntly told his
+bleeding patient that if he had met him in the street he would have
+killed him himself, but now he was willing to cure him. On his recovery,
+young Roberts again entered the army, and continued in it until the
+overthrow, of the Monarchy. On his return, he married "Lydia Tindall,
+of the denomination of Puritans." A majestic figure rises before us,
+on reading the statement that Sir Matthew Hale, afterwards Lord Chief
+Justice of England, the irreproachable jurist and judicial saint, was
+"his wife's kinsman, and drew her marriage settlement."
+
+No stronger testimony to the high-toned morality and austere virtue of
+the Puritan yeomanry of England can be adduced than the fact that, of the
+fifty thousand soldiers who were discharged on the accession of Charles
+II., and left to shift for themselves, comparatively few, if any, became
+chargeable to their parishes, although at that very time one out of six
+of the English population were unable to support themselves. They
+carried into their farm-fields and workshops the strict habits of
+Cromwell's discipline; and, in toiling to repair their wasted fortunes,
+they manifested the same heroic fortitude and self-denial which in war
+had made them such formidable and efficient "Soldiers of the Lord." With
+few exceptions, they remained steadfast in their uncompromising non-
+conformity, abhorring Prelacy and Popery, and entertaining no very
+orthodox notions with respect to the divine right of Kings. From them
+the Quakers drew their most zealous champions; men who, in renouncing the
+"carnal weapons" of their old service, found employment for habitual
+combativeness in hot and wordy sectarian warfare. To this day the
+vocabulary of Quakerism abounds in the military phrases and figures which
+were in use in the Commonwealth's time. Their old force and significance
+are now in a great measure lost; but one can well imagine that, in the
+assemblies of the primitive Quakers, such stirring battle-cries and
+warlike tropes, even when employed in enforcing or illustrating the
+doctrines of peace, must have made many a stout heart' to beat quicker,
+tinder its drab coloring, with recollections of Naseby and Preston;
+transporting many a listener from the benches of his place of worship to
+the ranks of Ireton and Lambert, and causing him to hear, in the place of
+the solemn and nasal tones of the preacher, the blast of Rupert's bugles,
+and the answering shout of Cromwell's pikemen: "Let God arise, and let
+his enemies be scattered!"
+
+Of this class was John Roberts. He threw off his knapsack, and went back
+to his small homestead, contented with the privilege of supporting
+himself and family by daily toil, and grumbling in concert with his old
+campaign brothers at the new order of things in Church and State. To his
+apprehension, the Golden Days of England ended with the parade on
+Blackheath to receive the restored King. He manifested no reverence for
+Bishops and Lords, for he felt none. For the Presbyterians he had no
+good will; they had brought in the King, and they denied the liberty of
+prophesying. John Milton has expressed the feeling of the Independents
+and Anabaptists towards this latter class, in that famous line in which
+he defines Presbyter as "old priest writ large." Roberts was by no means
+a gloomy fanatic; he had a great deal of shrewdness and humor, loved a
+quiet joke; and every gambling priest and swearing magistrate in the
+neighborhood stood in fear of his sharp wit. It was quite in course for
+such a man to fall in with the Quakers, and he appears to have done so at
+the first opportunity.
+
+In the year 1665, "it pleased the Lord to send two women Friends out of
+the North to Cirencester," who, inquiring after such as feared God, were
+directed to the house of John Roberts. He received them kindly, and,
+inviting in some of his neighbors, sat down with them, whereupon "the
+Friends spake a few words, which had a good effect." After the meeting
+was over, he was induced to visit a "Friend" then confined in Banbury
+jail, whom he found preaching through the grates of his cell to the
+people in the street. On seeing Roberts he called to mind the story of
+Zaccheus, and declared that the word was now to all who were seeking
+Christ by climbing the tree of knowledge, "Come down, come down; for that
+which is to be known of God is manifested within." Returning home, he
+went soon after to the parish meeting-house, and, entering with his hat
+on, the priest noticed him, and, stopping short in his discourse,
+declared that he could not go on while one of the congregation wore his
+hat. He was thereupon led out of the house, and a rude fellow, stealing
+up behind, struck him on the back with a heavy stone. "Take that for
+God's sake," said the ruffian. "So I do," answered Roberts, without
+looking back to see his assailant, who the next day came and asked his
+forgiveness for the injury, as he could not sleep in consequence of it.
+
+We next find him attending the Quarter Sessions, where three "Friends"
+were arraigned for entering Cirencester Church with their hats on.
+Venturing to utter a word of remonstrance against the summary proceedings
+of the Court, Justice Stephens demanded his name, and, on being told,
+exclaimed, in the very tone and temper of Jeffreys:
+
+"I 've heard of you. I'm glad I have you here. You deserve a stone
+doublet. There's many an honester man than you hanged."
+
+"It may be so," said Roberts, "but what becomes of such as hang honest
+men?"
+
+The Justice snatched a ball of wax and hurled it at the quiet questioner.
+"I 'll send you to prison," said he; "and if any insurrection or tumult
+occurs, I 'll come and cut your throat with my own sword." A warrant was
+made out, and he was forthwith sent to the jail. In the evening, Justice
+Sollis, his uncle, released him, on condition of his promise to appear at
+the next Sessions. He returned to his home, but in the night following
+he was impressed with a belief that it was his duty to visit Justice
+Stephens. Early in the morning, with a heavy heart, without eating or
+drinking, he mounted his horse and rode towards the residence of his
+enemy. When he came in sight of the house, he felt strong misgivings
+that his uncle, Justice Sollis, who had so kindly released him, and his
+neighbors generally, would condemn him for voluntarily running into
+danger, and drawing down trouble upon himself and family. He alighted
+from his horse, and sat on the ground in great doubt and sorrow, when a
+voice seemed to speak within him, "Go, and I will go with thee." The
+Justice met him at the door. "I am come," said Roberts, "in the fear
+and dread of Heaven, to warn thee to repent of thy wickedness with speed,
+lest the Lord send thee to the pit that is bottomless!" This terrible
+summons awed the Justice; he made Roberts sit down on his couch beside
+him, declaring that he received the message from God, and asked
+forgiveness for the wrong he had done him.
+
+The parish vicar of Siddington at this time was George Bull, afterwards
+Bishop of St. David's, whom Macaulay speaks of as the only rural parish
+priest who, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, was noted
+as a theologian, or Who possessed a respectable library. Roberts refused
+to pay the vicar his tithes, and the vicar sent him to prison. It was
+the priest's "Short Method with Dissenters." While the sturdy Non-
+conformist lay in prison, he was visited by the great woman of the
+neighborhood, Lady Dunch, of Down Amney. "What do you lie in jail for?"
+inquired the lady. Roberts replied that it was because he could not put
+bread into the mouth of a hireling priest. The lady suggested that he
+might let somebody else satisfy the demands of the priest; and that she
+had a mind to do this herself, as she wished to talk with him on
+religious subjects. To this Roberts objected; there were poor people who
+needed her charities, which would be wasted on such devourers as the
+priests, who, like Pharaoh's lean kine, were eating up the fat and the
+goodly, without looking a whit the better. But the lady, who seems to
+have been pleased and amused by the obstinate prisoner, paid the tithe
+and the jail fees, and set him at liberty, making him fix a day when he
+would visit her. At the time appointed he went to Down Amney, and was
+overtaken on the way by the priest of Cirencester, who had been sent for
+to meet the Quaker. They found the lady ill in bed; but she had them
+brought to her chamber, being determined not to lose the amusement of
+hearing a theological discussion, to which she at once urged them,
+declaring that it would divert her and do her good. The parson began by
+accusing the Quakers of holding Popish doctrines. The Quaker retorted
+by telling him that if he would prove the Quakers like the Papists in one
+thing, by the help of God, he would prove him like them in ten. After a
+brief and sharp dispute, the priest, finding his adversary's wit too keen
+for his comfort, hastily took his leave.
+
+The next we hear of Roberts he is in Gloucester Castle, subjected to the
+brutal usage of a jailer, who took a malicious satisfaction in thrusting
+decent and respectable Dissenters, imprisoned for matters of conscience,
+among felons and thieves. A poor vagabond tinker was hired to play at
+night on his hautboy, and prevent their sleeping; but Roberts spoke to
+him in such a manner that the instrument fell from his hand; and he told
+the jailer that he would play no more, though he should hang him up at
+the door for it.
+
+How he was released from jail does not appear; but the narrative tells us
+that some time after an apparitor came to cite him to the Bishop's Court
+at Gloucester. When he was brought before the Court, Bishop Nicholson, a
+kind-hearted and easy-natured prelate, asked him the number of his
+children, and how many of them had been _bishoped_?
+
+"None, that I know of," said Roberts.
+
+"What reason," asked the Bishop, "do you give for this?"
+
+"A very good one," said the Quaker: "most of my children were born in
+Oliver's days, when Bishops were out of fashion."
+
+The Bishop and the Court laughed at this sally, and proceeded to question
+him touching his views of baptism. Roberts admitted that John had a
+Divine commission to baptize with water, but that he never heard of
+anybody else that had. The Bishop reminded him that Christ's disciples
+baptized. "What 's that to me?" responded Roberts. "Paul says he was
+not sent to baptize, but to preach the Gospel. And if he was not sent,
+who required it at his hands? Perhaps he had as little thanks for his
+labor as thou hast for thine; and I would willingly know who sent thee to
+baptize?"
+
+The Bishop evaded this home question, and told him he was there to answer
+for not coming to church. Roberts denied the charge; sometimes he went
+to church, and sometimes it came to him. "I don't call that a church
+which you do, which is made of wood and stone."
+
+"What do you call it?" asked the Bishop.
+
+"It might be properly called a mass-house," was the reply; "for it was
+built for that purpose." The Bishop here told him he might go for the
+present; he would take another opportunity to convince him of his errors.
+
+The next person called was a Baptist minister, who, seeing that Roberts
+refused to put off his hat, kept on his also. The Bishop sternly
+reminded him that he stood before the King's Court, and the
+representative of the majesty of England; and that, while some regard
+might be had to the scruples of men who made a conscience of putting off
+the hat, such contempt could not be tolerated on the part of one who
+could put it off to every mechanic be met. The Baptist pulled off his
+hat, and apologized, on the ground of illness.
+
+We find Roberts next following George Fox on a visit to Bristol. On his
+return, reaching his house late in the evening, he saw a man standing in
+the moonlight at his door, and knew him to be a bailiff.
+
+"Hast thou anything against me?" asked Roberts.
+
+"No," said the bailiff, "I've wronged you enough, God forgive me! Those
+who lie in wait for you are my Lord Bishop's bailiffs; they are merciless
+rogues. Ever, my master, while you live, please a knave, for an honest
+man won't hurt you."
+
+The next morning, having, as he thought, been warned by a dream to do so,
+he went to the Bishop's house at Cleave, near Gloucester. Confronting
+the Bishop in his own hall, he told him that he had come to know why he
+was hunting after him with his bailiffs, and why he was his adversary.
+"The King is your adversary," said the Bishop; "you have broken the
+King's law." Roberts ventured to deny the justice of the law. "What!"
+cried the Bishop, "do such men as you find fault with the laws?" "Yes,"
+replied the other, stoutly; "and I tell thee plainly to thy face, it is
+high time wiser men were chosen, to make better laws."
+
+The discourse turning upon the Book of Common Prayer, Roberts asked the
+Bishop if the sin of idolatry did not consist in worshipping the work of
+men's hands. The Bishop admitted it, as in the case of Nebuchadnezzar's
+image.
+
+"Then," said Roberts, "whose hands made your Prayer Book? It could not
+make itself."
+
+"Do you compare our Prayer Book to Nebuchadnezzar's image?" cried the
+Bishop.
+
+"Yes," returned Roberts, "that was his image; this is thine. I no more
+dare bow to thy Common-Prayer Book than the Three Children to
+Nebuchadnezzar's image."
+
+"Yours is a strange upstart religion," said the Bishop.
+
+Roberts told him it was older than his by several hundred years. At this
+claim of antiquity the prelate was greatly amused, and told Roberts that
+if he would make out his case, he should speed the better for it.
+
+"Let me ask thee," said Roberts, "where thy religion was in Oliver's
+days, when thy Common-Prayer Book was as little regarded as an old
+almanac, and your priests, with a few honest exceptions, turned with the
+tide, and if Oliver had put mass in their mouths would have conformed to
+it for the sake of their bellies."
+
+"What would you have us do?" asked the Bishop. "Would you have had
+Oliver cut our throats?"
+
+"No," said Roberts; "but what sort of religion was that which you were
+afraid to venture your throats for?"
+
+The Bishop interrupted him to say, that in Oliver's days he had never
+owned any other religion than his own, although he did not dare to openly
+maintain it as he then did.
+
+"Well," continued Roberts, "if thou didst not think thy religion worth
+venturing thy throat for then, I desire thee to consider that it is not
+worth the cutting of other men's throats now for not conforming to it."
+
+"You are right," responded the frank Bishop. "I hope we shall have a
+care how we cut men's throats."
+
+The following colloquy throws some light on the condition and character
+of the rural clergy at this period, and goes far to confirm the
+statements of Macaulay, which many have supposed exaggerated. Baxter's
+early religious teachers were more exceptionable than even the maudlin
+mummer whom Roberts speaks of, one of them being "the excellentest stage-
+player in all the country, and a good gamester and goodfellow, who,
+having received Holy Orders, forged the like for a neighbor's son, who on
+the strength of that title officiated at the desk and altar; and after
+him came an attorney's clerk, who had tippled himself into so great
+poverty that he had no other way to live than to preach."
+
+J. ROBERTS. I was bred up under a Common-Prayer Priest; and a poor
+drunken old Man he was. Sometimes he was so drunk he could not say his
+Prayers, and at best he could but say them; though I think he was by far
+a better Man than he that is Priest there now.
+
+BISHOP. Who is your Minister now?
+
+J. ROBERTS. My Minister is Christ Jesus, the Minister of the everlasting
+Covenant; but the present Priest of the Parish is George Bull.
+
+BISHOP. Do you say that drunken old Man was better than Mr. Bull? I
+tell you, I account Mr. Bull as sound, able, and orthodox a Divine as any
+we have among us.
+
+J. ROBERT. I am sorry for that; for if he be one of the best of you, I
+believe the Lord will not suffer you long; for he is a proud, ambitious,
+ungodly Man: he hath often sued me at Law, and brought his Servants to
+swear against me wrongfully. His Servants themselves have confessed to
+my Servants, that I might have their Ears; for their Master made them
+drunk, and then told them they were set down in the List as Witnesses
+against me, and they must swear to it: And so they did, and brought
+treble Damages. They likewise owned they took Tithes from my Servants,
+threshed them out, and sold them for their Master. They have also
+several Times took my Cattle out of my Grounds, drove them to Fairs and
+Markets, and sold them, without giving me any Account.
+
+BISHOP. I do assure you I will inform Mr. Bull of what you say.
+
+J. ROBERTS. Very well. And if thou pleasest to send for me to face him,
+I shall make much more appear to his Face than I'll say behind his Back.
+
+After much more discourse, Roberts told the Bishop that if it would do
+him any good to have him in jail, he would voluntarily go and deliver
+himself up to the keeper of Gloucester Castle. The good-natured prelate
+relented at this, and said he should not be molested or injured, and
+further manifested his good will by ordering refreshments. One of the
+Bishop's friends who was present was highly offended by the freedom of
+Roberts with his Lordship, and undertook to rebuke him, but was so
+readily answered that he flew into a rage. "If all the Quakers in
+England," said he, "are not hanged in a month's time, I 'll be hanged for
+them." "Prithee, friend," quoth Roberts, "remember and be as good as thy
+word!"
+
+Good old Bishop Nicholson, it would seem, really liked his incorrigible
+Quaker neighbor, and could enjoy heartily his wit and humor, even when
+exercised at the expense of his own ecclesiastical dignity. He admired
+his blunt honesty and courage. Surrounded by flatterers and self-
+seekers, he found satisfaction in the company and conversation of one
+who, setting aside all conventionalisms, saw only in my Lord Bishop a
+poor fellow-probationer, and addressed him on terms of conscious
+equality. The indulgence which he extended to him naturally enough
+provoked many of the inferior clergy, who had been sorely annoyed by the
+sturdy Dissenter's irreverent witticisms and unsparing ridicule. Vicar
+Bull, of Siddington, and Priest Careless, of Cirencester, in particular,
+urged the Bishop to deal sharply with him. The former accused him of
+dealing in the Black Art, and filled the Bishop's ear with certain
+marvellous stories of his preternatural sagacity and discernment in
+discovering cattle which were lost. The Bishop took occasion to inquire
+into these stories; and was told by Roberts that, except in a single
+instance, the discoveries were the result of his acquaintance with the
+habits of animals and his knowledge of the localities where they were
+lost. The circumstance alluded to, as an exception, will be best related
+in his own words.
+
+"I had a poor Neighbor, who had a Wife and six Children, and whom the
+chief men about us permitted to keep six or seven Cows upon the Waste,
+which were the principal Support of the Family, and preserved them from
+becoming chargeable to the Parish. One very stormy night the Cattle were
+left in the Yard as usual, but could not be found in the morning. The
+Man and his Sons had sought them to no purpose; and, after they had been
+lost four days, his Wife came to me, and, in a great deal of grief,
+cried, 'O Lord! Master Hayward, we are undone! My Husband and I must go
+a begging in our old age! We have lost all our Cows. My Husband and the
+Boys have been round the country, and can hear nothing of them. I'll
+down on my bare knees, if you'll stand our Friend!' I desired she would
+not be in such an agony, and told her she should not down on her knees to
+me; but I would gladly help them in what I could. 'I know,' said she,
+'you are a good Man, and God will hear your Prayers.' I desire thee,
+said I, to be still and quiet in thy mind; perhaps thy Husband or Sons
+may hear of them to-day; if not, let thy Husband get a horse, and come to
+me to-morrow morning as soon as he will; and I think, if it please God,
+to go with him to seek then. The Woman seemed transported with joy,
+crying, 'Then we shall have our Cows again.' Her Faith being so strong,
+brought the greater Exercise on me, with strong cries to the Lord, that
+he would be pleased to make me instrumental in his Hand, for the help of
+the poor Family. In the Morning early comes the old Man. In the Name of
+God, says he, which way shall we go to seek them? I, being deeply
+concerned in my Mind, did not answer him till he had thrice repeated it;
+and then I answered, In the Name of God, I would go to seek them; and
+said (before I was well aware) we will go to Malmsbury, and at the Horse-
+Fair we shall find them. When I had spoken the Words, I was much
+troubled lest they should not prove true. It was very early, and the
+first Man we saw, I asked him if he had seen any stray Milch Cows
+thereabouts. What manner of Cattle are they? said he. And the old Man
+describing their Mark and Number, he told us there were some stood
+chewing their Cuds in the Horse-Fair; but thinking they belonged to some
+in the Neighborhood, he did not take particular Notice of them. When we
+came to the Place, the old Man found them to be his; but suffered his
+Transports of Joy to rise so high, that I was ashamed of his behavior;
+for he fell a hallooing, and threw up his Montier Cap in the Air several
+times, till he raised the Neighbors out of their Beds to see what was the
+Matter. 'O!' said he, 'I had lost my Cows four or five days ago, and
+thought I should never see them again; and this honest Neighbor of mine
+told me this Morning, by his own Fire's Side, nine Miles off, that here
+I should find them, and here I have them!' Then up goes his Cap again.
+I begged of the poor Man to be quiet, and take his Cows home, and be
+thankful; as indeed I was, being reverently bowed in my Spirit before the
+Lord, in that he was pleased to put the words of Truth into my mouth.
+And the Man drove his Cattle home, to the great Joy of his Family."
+
+Not long after the interview with the Bishop at his own palace, which has
+been related, that dignitary, with the Lord Chancellor, in their coaches,
+and about twenty clergymen on horseback, made a call at the humble
+dwelling of Roberts, on their way to Tedbury, where the Bishop was to
+hold a Visitation. "I could not go out of the country without seeing
+you," said the prelate, as the farmer came to his coach door and pressed
+him to alight.
+
+"John," asked Priest Evans, the Bishop's kinsman, "is your house free to
+entertain such men as we are?"
+
+"Yes, George," said Roberts; "I entertain honest men, and sometimes
+others."
+
+"My Lord," said Evans, turning to the Bishop, "John's friends are the
+honest men, and we are the others."
+
+The Bishop told Roberts that they could not then alight, but would gladly
+drink with him; whereupon the good wife brought out her best beer.
+"I commend you, John," quoth the Bishop, as he paused from his hearty
+draught; "you keep a cup of good beer in your house. I have not drank
+any that has pleased me better since I left home." The cup passed next
+to the Chancellor, and finally came to Priest Bull, who thrust it aside,
+declaring that it was full of hops and heresy. As to hops, Roberts
+replied, he could not say, but as for heresy, he bade the priest take
+note that the Lord Bishop had drank of it, and had found no heresy in the
+cup.
+
+The Bishop leaned over his coach door and whispered: "John, I advise you
+to take care you don't offend against the higher Powers. I have heard
+great complaints against you, that you are the Ringleader of the Quakers
+in this Country; and that, if you are not suppressed, all will signify
+nothing. Therefore, pray, John, take care, for the future, you don't
+offend any more."
+
+"I like thy Counsel very well," answered Roberts, "and intend to take it.
+But thou knowest God is the higher Power; and you mortal Men, however
+advanced in this World, are but the lower Power; and it is only because I
+endeavor to be obedient to the will of the higher Powers, that the lower
+Powers are angry with me. But I hope, with the assistance of God, to
+take thy Counsel, and be subject to the higher Powers, let the lower
+Powers do with me as it may please God to suffer them."
+
+The Bishop then said he would like to talk with him further, and
+requested him to meet him at Tedbury the next day. At the time
+appointed, Roberts went to the inn where the Bishop lodged, and was
+invited to dine with him. After dinner was over, the prelate told him
+that he must go to church, and leave off holding conventicles at his
+house, of which great complaint was made. This he flatly refused to do;
+and the Bishop, losing patience, ordered the constable to be sent for.
+Roberts told him that if, after coming to his house under the guise of
+friendship, he should betray him and send him to prison, he, who had
+hitherto commended him for his moderation, would put his name in print,
+and cause it to stink before all sober people. It was the priests, he
+told him, who set him on; but, instead of hearkening to them, he should
+commend them to some honest vocation, and not suffer them to rob their
+honest neighbors, and feed on the fruits of other men's toil, like
+caterpillars.
+
+"Whom do you call caterpillars?" cried Priest Rich, of North Surrey.
+
+"We farmers," said Roberts, "call those so who live on other men's
+fields, and by the sweat of other men's brows; and if thou dost so, thou
+mayst be one of them."
+
+This reply so enraged the Bishop's attendants that they could only be
+appeased by an order for the constable to take him to jail. In fact,
+there was some ground for complaint of a lack of courtesy on the part of
+the blunt farmer; and the Christian virtue of forbearance, even in
+Bishops, has its limits.
+
+The constable, obeying the summons, came to the inn, at the door of which
+the landlady met him. "What do you here!" cried the good woman, "when
+honest John is going to be sent to prison? Here, come along with me."
+The constable, nothing loath, followed her into a private room, where she
+concealed him. Word was sent to the Bishop, that the constable was not
+to be found; and the prelate, telling Roberts he could send him to jail
+in the afternoon, dismissed him until evening. At the hour appointed,
+the latter waited upon the Bishop, and found with him only one priest and
+a lay gentleman. The priest begged the Bishop to be allowed to discourse
+with the prisoner; and, leave being granted, he began by telling Roberts
+that the knowledge of the Scriptures had made him mad, and that it was a
+great pity he had ever seen them.
+
+"Thou art an unworthy man," said the Quaker, "and I 'll not dispute with
+thee. If the knowledge of the Scriptures has made me mad, the knowledge
+of the sack-pot hath almost made thee mad; and if we two madmen should
+dispute about religion, we should make mad work of it."
+
+"An 't please you, my Lord," said the scandalized priest, "he says I 'm
+drunk."
+
+The Bishop asked Roberts to repeat his words; and, instead of
+reprimanding him, as the priest expected, was so much amused that he held
+up his hands and laughed; whereupon the offended inferior took a hasty
+leave. The Bishop, who was evidently glad to be rid of him, now turned
+to Roberts, and complained that he had dealt hardly with him, in telling
+him, before so many gentlemen, that he had sought to betray him by
+professions of friendship, in order to send him to prison; and that,
+if he had not done as he did, people would have reported him as an
+encourager of the Quakers. "But now, John," said the good prelate, "I'll
+burn the warrant against you before your face." "You know, Mr. Burnet,"
+he continued, addressing his attendant, "that a Ring of Bells may be made
+of excellent metal, but they may be out of tune; so we may say of John:
+he is a man of as good metal as I ever met with, but quite out of tune."
+
+"Thou mayst well say so," quoth Roberts, "for I can't tune after thy
+pipe."
+
+The inferior clergy were by no means so lenient as the Bishop. They
+regarded Roberts as the ringleader of Dissent, an impracticable,
+obstinate, contumacious heretic, not only refusing to pay them tithes
+himself, but encouraging others to the same course. Hence, they thought
+it necessary to visit upon him the full rigor of the law. His crops were
+taken from his field, and his cattle from his yard. He was often
+committed to the jail, where, on one occasion, he was kept, with many
+others, for a long time, through the malice of the jailer, who refused to
+put the names of his prisoners in the Calendar, that they might have a
+hearing. But the spirit of the old Commonwealth's man remained
+steadfast. When Justice George, at the Ram in Cirencester, told him he
+must conform, and go to church, or suffer the penalty of the law, he
+replied that he had heard indeed that some were formerly whipped out of
+the Temple, but he had never heard of any being whipped in. The Justice,
+pointing, through the open window of the inn, at the church tower, asked
+him what that was. "Thou mayst call it a daw-house," answered the
+incorrigible Quaker. "Dost thou not see how the jackdaws flock about
+it?"
+
+Sometimes it happened that the clergyman was also a magistrate, and
+united in his own person the authority of the State and the zeal of the
+Church. Justice Parsons, of Gloucester, was a functionary of this sort.
+He wielded the sword of the Spirit on the Sabbath against Dissenters, and
+on week days belabored them with the arm of flesh and the constable's
+staff. At one time he had between forty and fifty of them locked up in
+Gloucester Castle, among them Roberts and his sons, on the charge of
+attending conventicles. But the troublesome prisoners baffled his
+vigilance, and turned their prison into a meeting-house, and held their
+conventicles in defiance of him. The Reverend Justice pounced upon them
+on one occasion, with his attendants. An old, gray-haired man, formerly
+a strolling fencing-master, was preaching when he came in. The Justice
+laid hold of him by his white locks, and strove to pull him down, but the
+tall fencing-raster stood firm and spoke on; he then tried to gag him,
+but failed in that also. He demanded the names of the prisoners, but no
+one answered him. A voice (we fancy it was that of our old friend
+Roberts) called out: "The Devil must be hard put to it to have his
+drudgery done, when the Priests must leave their pulpits to turn
+informers against poor prisoners." The Justice obtained a list of the
+names of the prisoners, made out on their commitment, and, taking it for
+granted that all were still present, issued warrants for the collection
+of fines by levies upon their estates. Among the names was that of a
+poor widow, who had been discharged, and was living, at the time the
+clerical magistrate swore she was at the meeting, twenty miles distant
+from the prison.
+
+Soon after this event, our old friend fell sick. He had been discharged
+from prison, but his sons were still confined. The eldest had leave,
+however, to attend him in his illness, and he bears his testimony that
+the Lord was pleased to favor his father with His living presence in his
+last moments. In keeping with the sturdy Non-conformist's life, he was
+interred at the foot of his own orchard, in Siddington, a spot he had
+selected for a burial-ground long before, where neither the foot of a
+priest nor the shadow of a steeple-house could rest upon his grave.
+
+In closing our notice of this pleasant old narrative, we may remark that
+the light it sheds upon the antagonistic religious parties of the time is
+calculated to dissipate prejudices and correct misapprehensions, common
+alike to Churchmen and Dissenters. The genial humor, sound sense, and
+sterling virtues of the Quaker farmer should teach the one class that
+poor James Nayler, in his craziness and folly, was not a fair
+representative of his sect; while the kind nature, the hearty
+appreciation of goodness, and the generosity and candor of Bishop
+Nicholson should convince the other class that a prelate is not
+necessarily, and by virtue of his mitre, a Laud or a Bonner. The
+Dissenters of the seventeenth century may well be forgiven for the
+asperity of their language; men whose ears had been cropped because they
+would not recognize Charles I. as a blessed martyr, and his scandalous
+son as the head of the Church, could scarcely be expected to make
+discriminations, or suggest palliating circumstances, favorable to any
+class of their adversaries. To use the homely but apt simile of
+McFingal,
+
+ "The will's confirmed by treatment horrid,
+ As hides grow harder when they're curried."
+
+They were wronged, and they told the world of it. Unlike Shakespeare's
+cardinal, they did not die without a sign. They branded, by their fierce
+epithets, the foreheads of their persecutors more deeply than the
+sheriff's hot iron did their own. If they lost their ears, they enjoyed
+the satisfaction of making those of their oppressors tingle. Knowing
+their persecutors to be in the wrong, they did not always inquire whether
+they themselves had been entirely right, and had done no unrequired works
+of supererogation by the way of "testimony" against their neighbors' mode
+cf worship. And so from pillory and whipping-post, from prison and
+scaffold, they sent forth their wail and execration, their miserere and
+anathema, and the sound thereof has reached down to our day. May it
+never wholly die away until, the world over, the forcing of conscience is
+regarded as a crime against humanity and a usurpation of God's
+prerogative. But abhorring, as we must, persecution under whatever
+pretext it is employed, we are not, therefore, to conclude that all
+persecutors were bad and unfeeling men. Many of their severities, upon
+which we now look back with horror, were, beyond a question, the result
+of an intense anxiety for the well-being of immortal souls, endangered by
+the poison which, in their view, heresy was casting into the waters of
+life. Coleridge, in one of the moods of a mind which traversed in
+imagination the vast circle of human experience, reaches this point in
+his Table-Talk. "It would require," says he, "stronger arguments than
+any I have seen to convince me that men in authority have not a right,
+involved in an imperative duty, to deter those under their control from
+teaching or countenancing doctrines which they believe to be damnable,
+and even to punish with death those who violate such prohibition." It
+would not be very difficult for us to imagine a tender-hearted Inquisitor
+of this stamp, stifling his weak compassion for the shrieking wretch
+under bodily torment by his strong pity for souls in danger of perdition
+from the sufferer's heresy. We all know with what satisfaction the
+gentle-spirited Melanethon heard of the burning of Servetus, and with
+what zeal he defended it. The truth is, the notion that an intellectual
+recognition of certain dogmas is the essential condition of salvation
+lies at the bottom of all intolerance in matters of religion. Under this
+impression, men are too apt to forget that the great end of Christianity
+is love, and that charity is its crowning virtue; they overlook the
+beautiful significance of the parable of the heretic Samaritan and the
+orthodox Pharisee: and thus, by suffering their speculative opinions of
+the next world to make them uncharitable and cruel in this, they are
+really the worse for them, even admitting them to be true.
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL HOPKINS.
+
+Three quarters of a century ago, the name of Samuel Hopkins was as
+familiar as a household word throughout New England. It was a spell
+wherewith to raise at once a storm of theological controversy. The
+venerable minister who bore it had his thousands of ardent young
+disciples, as well as defenders and followers of mature age and
+acknowledged talent; a hundred pulpits propagated the dogmas which he had
+engrafted on the stock of Calvinism. Nor did he lack numerous and
+powerful antagonists. The sledge ecclesiastic, with more or less effect,
+was unceasingly plied upon the strong-linked chain of argument which he
+slowly and painfully elaborated in the seclusion of his parish. The
+press groaned under large volumes of theological, metaphysical, and
+psychological disquisition, the very thought of which is now "a weariness
+to the flesh;" in rapid succession pamphlet encountered pamphlet, horned,
+beaked, and sharp of talon, grappling with each other in mid-air, like
+Milton's angels. That loud controversy, the sound whereof went over
+Christendom, awakening responses from beyond the Atlantic, has now died
+away; its watchwords no longer stir the blood of belligerent sermonizers;
+its very terms and definitions have well-nigh become obsolete and
+unintelligible. The hands which wrote and the tongues which spoke in
+that day are now all cold and silent; even Emmons, the brave old
+intellectual athlete of Franklin, now sleeps with his fathers,--the last
+of the giants. Their fame is still in all the churches; effeminate
+clerical dandyism still affects to do homage to their memories; the
+earnest young theologian, exploring with awe the mountainous debris of
+their controversial lore, ponders over the colossal thoughts entombed
+therein, as he would over the gigantic fossils of an early creation, and
+endeavors in vain to recall to the skeleton abstractions before him the
+warm and vigorous life wherewith they were once clothed; but
+Hopkinsianism, as a distinct and living school of philosophy, theology,
+and metaphysics, no longer exists. It has no living oracles left; and
+its memory survives only in the doctrinal treatises of the elder and
+younger Edwards, Hopkins, Bellamy, and Emmons.
+
+It is no part of our present purpose to discuss the merits of the system
+in question. Indeed, looking at the great controversy which divided New
+England Calvinism in the eighteenth century, from a point of view which
+secures our impartiality and freedom from prejudice, we find it
+exceedingly difficult to get a precise idea of what was actually at
+issue. To our poor comprehension, much of the dispute hinges upon names
+rather than things; on the manner of reaching conclusions quite as much
+as upon the conclusions themselves. Its origin may be traced to the
+great religious awakening of the middle of the past century, when the
+dogmas of the Calvinistic faith were subjected to the inquiry of acute
+and earnest minds, roused up from the incurious ease and passive
+indifference of nominal orthodoxy. Without intending it, it broke down
+some of the barriers which separated Arminianism and Calvinism; its
+product, Hopkinsianism, while it pushed the doctrine of the Genevan
+reformer on the subject of the Divine decrees and agency to that extreme
+point where it well-nigh loses itself in Pantheism, held at the same time
+that guilt could not be hereditary; that man, being responsible for his
+sinful acts, and not for his sinful nature, can only be justified by a
+personal holiness, consisting not so much in legal obedience as in that
+disinterested benevolence which prefers the glory of God and the welfare
+of universal being above the happiness of self. It had the merit,
+whatever it may be, of reducing the doctrines of the Reformation to an
+ingenious and scholastic form of theology; of bringing them boldly to the
+test of reason and philosophy. Its leading advocates were not mere
+heartless reasoners and closet speculators. They taught that sin was
+selfishness, and holiness self-denying benevolence, and they endeavored
+to practise accordingly. Their lives recommended their doctrines. They
+were bold and faithful in the discharge of what they regarded as duty.
+In the midst of slave-holders, and in an age of comparative darkness on
+the subject of human rights, Hopkins and the younger Edwards lifted up
+their voices for the slave. And twelve years ago, when Abolitionism was
+everywhere spoken against, and the whole land was convulsed with mobs to
+suppress it, the venerable Emmons, burdened with the weight of ninety
+years, made a journey to New York, to attend a meeting of the Anti-
+Slavery Society. Let those who condemn the creed of these men see to
+it that they do not fall behind them in practical righteousness and
+faithfulness to the convictions of duty.
+
+Samuel Hopkins, who gave his name to the religious system in question,
+was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1721. In his fifteenth year he
+was placed under the care of a neighboring clergyman, preparatory for
+college, which he entered about a year after. In 1740, the celebrated
+Whitefield visited New Haven, and awakened there, as elsewhere, serious
+inquiry on religious subjects. He was followed the succeeding spring by
+Gilbert Tennent, the New Jersey revivalist, a stirring and powerful
+preacher. A great change took place in the college. All the phenomena
+which President Edwards has described in his account of the Northampton
+awakening were reproduced among the students. The excellent David
+Brainard, then a member of the college, visited Hopkins in his apartment,
+and, by a few plain and earnest words, convinced him that he was a
+stranger to vital Christianity. In his autobiographical sketch, he
+describes in simple and affecting language the dark and desolate state of
+his mind at this period, and the particular exercise which finally
+afforded him some degree of relief, and which he afterwards appears to
+have regarded as his conversion from spiritual death to life. When he
+first heard Tennent, regarding him as the greatest as well as the best of
+men, he made up his mind to study theology with him; but just before the
+commencement at which he was to take his degree, the elder Edwards
+preached at New Haven. Struck by the power of the great theologian, he
+at once resolved to make him his spiritual father. In the winter
+following, he left his father's house on horseback, on a journey of
+eighty miles to Northampton. Arriving at the house of President Edwards,
+he was disappointed by hearing that he was absent on a preaching tour.
+But he was kindly received by the gifted and accomplished lady of the
+mansion, and encouraged to remain during the winter. Still doubtful in
+respect to his own spiritual state, he was, he says, "very gloomy, and
+retired most of the time in his chamber." The kind heart of his amiable
+hostess was touched by his evident affliction. After some days she came
+to his chamber, and, with the gentleness and delicacy of a true woman,
+inquired into the cause of his unhappiness. The young student disclosed
+to her, without reserve, the state of his feelings and the extent of his
+fears. "She told me," says the Doctor, "that she had had peculiar
+exercises respecting me since I had been in the family; that she trusted
+I should receive light and comfort, and doubted not that God intended yet
+to do great things by me."
+
+After pursuing his studies for some months with the Puritan philosopher,
+young Hopkins commenced preaching, and, in 1743, was ordained at
+Sheffield, (now Great Barrington') in the western part of Massachusetts.
+There were at the time only about thirty families in the town. He says
+it was a matter of great regret to him to be obliged to settle so far
+from his spiritual guide and tutor but seven years after he was relieved
+and gratified by the removal of Edwards to Stockbridge, as the Indian
+missionary at that station, seven miles only from his own residence; and
+for several years the great metaphysician and his favorite pupil enjoyed
+the privilege of familiar intercourse with each other. The removal of
+the former in 1758 to Princeton, New Jersey, and his death, which soon
+followed, are mentioned in the diary of Hopkins as sore trials and
+afflictive dispensations.
+
+Obtaining a dismissal from his society in Great Barrington in 1769,
+he was installed at Newport the next year, as minister of the first
+Congregational church in that place. Newport, at this period, was, in
+size, wealth, and commercial importance, the second town in New England.
+It was the great slave mart of the North. Vessels loaded with stolen men
+and women and children, consigned to its merchant princes, lay at its
+wharves; immortal beings were sold daily in its market, like cattle at a
+fair. The soul of Hopkins was moved by the appalling spectacle. A
+strong conviction of the great wrong of slavery, and of its utter
+incompatibility with the Christian profession, seized upon his mind.
+While at Great Barrington, he had himself owned a slave, whom he had sold
+on leaving the place, without compunction or suspicion in regard to the
+rightfulness of the transaction. He now saw the origin of the system in
+its true light; he heard the seamen engaged in the African trade tell of
+the horrible scenes of fire and blood which they had witnessed, and in
+which they had been actors; he saw the half-suffocated wretches brought
+up from their noisome and narrow prison, their squalid countenances and
+skeleton forms bearing fearful evidence of the suffering attendant upon
+the transportation from their native homes. The demoralizing effects of
+slaveholding everywhere forced themselves upon his attention, for the
+evil had struck its roots deeply in the community, and there were few
+families into which it had not penetrated. The right to deal in slaves,
+and use them as articles of property, was questioned by no one; men of
+all professions, clergymen and church-members, consulted only their
+interest and convenience as to their purchase or sale. The magnitude of
+the evil at first appalled him; he felt it to be his duty to condemn it,
+but for a time even his strong spirit faltered and turned pale in
+contemplation of the consequences to be apprehended from an attack upon
+it. Slavery and slave-trading were at that time the principal source of
+wealth to the island; his own church and congregation were personally
+interested in the traffic; all were implicated in its guilt. He stood
+alone, as it were, in its condemnation; with here and there an exception,
+all Christendom maintained the rightfulness of slavery. No movement had
+yet been made in England against the slave-trade; the decision of
+Granville Sharp's Somerset case had not yet taken place. The Quakers,
+even, had not at that time redeemed themselves from the opprobrium.
+Under these circumstances, after a thorough examination of the subject,
+he resolved, in the strength of the Lord, to take his stand openly and
+decidedly on the side of humanity. He prepared a sermon for the purpose,
+and for the first time from a pulpit of New England was heard an emphatic
+testimony against the sin of slavery. In contrast with the unselfish and
+disinterested benevolence which formed in his mind the essential element
+of Christian holiness, he held up the act of reducing human beings to the
+condition of brutes, to minister to the convenience, the luxury, and
+lusts of the owner. He had expected bitter complaint and opposition from
+his hearers, but was agreeably surprised to find that in most cases his
+sermon only excited astonishment in their minds that they themselves had
+never before looked at the subject in the light in which he presented it.
+Steadily and faithfully pursuing the matter, he had the satisfaction to
+carry with him his church, and obtain from it, in the midst of a
+slaveholding and slavetrading community, a resolution every way worthy of
+note in this day of cowardly compromise with the evil on the part of our
+leading ecclesiastical bodies:--
+
+"Resolved, That the slave-trade and the slavery of the Africans, as it
+has existed among us, is a gross violation of the righteousness and
+benevolence which are so much inculcated in the Gospel, and therefore we
+will not tolerate it in this church."
+
+There are few instances on record of moral heroism superior to that of
+Samuel Hopkins, in thus rebuking slavery in the time and place of its
+power. Honor to the true man ever, who takes his life in his hands, and,
+at all hazards, speaks the word which is given him to utter, whether men
+will hear or forbear, whether the end thereof is to be praise or censure,
+gratitude or hatred. It well may be doubted whether on that Sabbath day
+the angels of God, in their wide survey of His universe, looked upon a
+nobler spectacle than that of the minister of Newport, rising up before
+his slaveholding congregation, and demanding, in the name of the Highest,
+the "deliverance of the captive, and the opening of prison doors to them
+that were bound."
+
+Dr. Hopkins did not confine his attention solely to slaveholding in his
+own church and congregation. He entered into correspondence with the
+early Abolitionists of Europe as well as his own country. He labored
+with his brethren in the ministry to bring then to his own view of the
+great wrong of holding men as slaves. In a visit to his early friend,
+Dr. Bellamy, at Bethlehem, who was the owner of a slave, he pressed the
+subject kindly but earnestly upon his attention. Dr. Bellamy urged the
+usual arguments in favor of slavery. Dr. Hopkins refuted them in the
+most successful manner, and called upon his friend to do an act of simple
+justice, in giving immediate freedom to his slave. Dr. Bellamy, thus
+hardly pressed, said that the slave was a most judicious and faithful
+fellow; that, in the management of his farm, he could trust everything to
+his discretion; that he treated him well, and he was so happy in his
+service that he would refuse his freedom if it were offered him.
+
+"Will you," said Hopkins, "consent to his liberation, if he really
+desires it?"
+
+"Yes, certainly," said Dr. Bellamy.
+
+"Then let us try him," said his guest.
+
+The slave was at work in an adjoining field, and at the call of his
+master came promptly to receive his commands.
+
+"Have you a good master?" inquired Hopkins.
+
+"O yes; massa, he berry good."
+
+"But are you happy in your present condition?" queried the Doctor.
+
+"O yes, massa; berry happy."
+
+Dr. Bellamy here could scarcely suppress his exultation at what he
+supposed was a complete triumph over his anti-slavery brother. But the
+pertinacious guest continued his queries.
+
+"Would you not be more happy if you were free?"
+
+"O yes, massa," exclaimed the negro, his dark face glowing with new life;
+"berry much more happy!"
+
+To the honor of Dr. Bellamy, he did not hesitate.
+
+"You have your wish," he said to his servant. "From this moment you are
+free."
+
+Dr. Hopkins was a poor man, but one of his first acts, after becoming
+convinced of the wrongfulness of slavery, was to appropriate the very sum
+which, in the days of his ignorance, he had obtained as the price of his
+slave to the benevolent purpose of educating some pious colored men in
+the town of Newport, who were desirous of returning to their native
+country as missionaries. In one instance he borrowed, on his own
+responsibility, the sum requisite to secure the freedom of a slave in
+whom he became interested. One of his theological pupils was Newport
+Gardner, who, twenty years after the death of his kind patron, left
+Boston as a missionary to Africa. He was a native African, and was held
+by Captain Gardner, of Newport, who allowed him to labor for his own
+benefit, whenever by extra diligence he could gain a little time for that
+purpose. The poor fellow was in the habit of laying up his small
+earnings on these occasions, in the faint hope of one day obtaining
+thereby the freedom of himself and his family. But time passed on, and
+the hoard of purchase-money still looked sadly small. He concluded to
+try the efficacy of praying. Having gained a day for himself, by severe
+labor, and communicating his plan only to Dr. Hopkins and two or three
+other Christian friends, he shut himself up in his humble dwelling, and
+spent the time in prayer for freedom. Towards the close of the day, his
+master sent for him. He was told that this was his gained time, and that
+he was engaged for himself. "No matter," returned the master, "I must
+see him." Poor Newport reluctantly abandoned his supplications, and came
+at his master's bidding, when, to his astonishment, instead of a
+reprimand, he received a paper, signed by his master, declaring him and
+his family from thenceforth free. He justly attributed this signal
+blessing to the all-wise Disposer, who turns the hearts of men as the
+rivers of water are turned; but it cannot be doubted that the labors and
+arguments of Dr. Hopkins with his master were the human instrumentality
+in effecting it.
+
+In the year 1773, in connection with Dr. Ezra Stiles, he issued an appeal
+to the Christian community in behalf of a society which he had been
+instrumental in forming, for the purpose of educating missionaries for
+Africa. In the desolate and benighted condition of that unhappy
+continent he had become painfully interested, by conversing with the
+slaves brought into Newport. Another appeal was made on the subject in
+1776.
+
+The war of the Revolution interrupted, for a time, the philanthropic
+plans of Dr. Hopkins. The beautiful island on which he lived was at an
+early period exposed to the exactions and devastations of the enemy. All
+who could do so left it for the mainland. Its wharves were no longer
+thronged with merchandise; its principal dwellings stood empty; the very
+meeting houses were in a great measure abandoned. Dr. Hopkins, who had
+taken the precaution, at the commencement of hostilities, to remove his
+family to Great Barrington, remained himself until the year 1776, when
+the British took possession of the island. During the period of its
+occupation, he was employed in preaching to destitute congregations.
+He spent the summer of 1777 at Newburyport, where his memory is still
+cherished by the few of his hearers who survive. In the spring of 1780,
+he returned to Newport. Everything had undergone a melancholy change.
+The garden of New England lay desolate. His once prosperous and wealthy
+church and congregation were now poor, dispirited, and, worst of all,
+demoralized. His meeting-house had been used as a barrack for soldiers;
+pulpit and pews had been destroyed; the very bell had been stolen.
+Refusing, with his characteristic denial of self, a call to settle in a
+more advantageous position, he sat himself down once more in the midst of
+his reduced and impoverished parishioners, and, with no regular salary,
+dependent entirely on such free-will offerings as from time to time were
+made him, he remained with them until his death.
+
+In 1776, Dr. Hopkins published his celebrated "Dialogue concerning the
+Slavery of the Africans; showing it to be the Duty and Interest of the
+American States to Emancipate all their Slaves." This he dedicated to
+the Continental Congress, the Signers of the Declaration of Independence.
+It was republished in 1785, by the New York Abolition Society, and was
+widely circulated. A few years after, on coming unexpectedly into
+possession of a few hundred dollars, he devoted immediately one hundred
+of it to the society for ameliorating the condition of the Africans.
+
+He continued to preach until he had reached his eighty-third year. His
+last sermon was delivered on the 16th of the tenth month, 1803, and his
+death took place in the twelfth month following. He died calmly, in the
+steady faith of one who had long trusted all things in the hand of God.
+"The language of my heart is," said he, "let God be glorified by all
+things, and the best interest of His kingdom promoted, whatever becomes
+of me or my interest." To a young friend, who visited him three days
+before his death, he said, "I am feeble and cannot say much. I have said
+all I can say. With my last words, I tell you, religion is the one thing
+needful." "And now," he continued, affectionately pressing the hand of
+his friend, "I am going to die, and I am glad of it." Many years before,
+an agreement had been made between Dr. Hopkins and his old and tried
+friend, Dr. Hart, of Connecticut, that when either was called home, the
+survivor should preach the funeral sermon of the deceased. The venerable
+Dr. Hart accordingly came, true to his promise, preaching at the funeral
+from the words of Elisha, "My father, my father; the chariots of Israel,
+and the horsemen thereof." In the burial-ground adjoining his meeting-
+house lies all that was mortal of Samuel Hopkins.
+
+One of Dr. Hopkins's habitual hearers, and who has borne grateful
+testimony to the beauty and holiness of his life and conversation, was
+William Ellery Channing. Widely as he afterwards diverged from the creed
+of his early teacher, it contained at least one doctrine to the influence
+of which the philanthropic devotion of his own life to the welfare of man
+bears witness. He says, himself, that there always seemed to him
+something very noble in the doctrine of disinterested benevolence, the
+casting of self aside, and doing good, irrespective of personal
+consequences, in this world or another, upon which Dr. Hopkins so
+strongly insisted, as the all-essential condition of holiness.
+
+How widely apart, as mere theologians, stood Hopkins and Channing! Yet
+how harmonious their lives and practice! Both could forget the poor
+interests of self, in view of eternal right and universal humanity. Both
+could appreciate the saving truth, that love to God and His creation is
+the fulfilling of the divine law. The idea of unselfish benevolence,
+which they held in common, clothed with sweetness and beauty the stern
+and repulsive features of the theology of Hopkins, and infused a sublime
+spirit of self-sacrifice and a glowing humanity into the indecisive and
+less robust faith of Charming. What is the lesson of this but that
+Christianity consists rather in the affections than in the intellect;
+that it is a life rather than a creed; and that they who diverge the
+widest from each other in speculation upon its doctrines may, after all,
+be found working side by side on the common ground of its practice.
+
+We have chosen to speak of Dr. Hopkins as a philanthropist rather than as
+a theologian. Let those who prefer to contemplate the narrow sectarian
+rather than the universal man dwell upon his controversial works, and
+extol the ingenuity and logical acumen with which he defended his own
+dogmas and assailed those of others. We honor him, not as the founder of
+a new sect, but as the friend of all mankind,--the generous defender of
+the poor and oppressed. Great as unquestionably were his powers of
+argument, his learning, and skill in the use of the weapons of theologic
+warfare, these by no means constitute his highest title to respect and
+reverence. As the product of an honest and earnest mind, his doctrinal
+dissertations have at least the merit of sincerity. They were put forth
+in behalf of what he regarded as truth; and the success which they met
+with, while it called into exercise his profoundest gratitude, only
+served to deepen the humility and self-abasement of their author. As the
+utterance of what a good man believed and felt, as a part of the history
+of a life remarkable for its consecration to apprehended duty, these
+writings cannot be without interest even to those who dissent from their
+arguments and deny their assumptions; but in the time now, we trust, near
+at hand, when distracted and divided Christendom shall unite in a new
+Evangelical union, in which orthodoxy in life and practice shall be
+estimated above orthodoxy in theory, he will be honored as a good man,
+rather than as a successful creed-maker; as a friend of the oppressed and
+the fearless rebuker of popular sin rather than as the champion of a
+protracted sectarian war. Even now his writings, so popular in their
+day, are little known. The time may come when no pilgrim of sectarianism
+shall visit his grave. But his memory shall live in the hearts of the
+good and generous; the emancipated slave shall kneel over his ashes, and
+bless God for the gift to humanity of a life so devoted to its welfare.
+To him may be applied the language of one who, on the spot where he
+labored and lay down to rest, while rejecting the doctrinal views of the
+theologian, still cherishes the philanthropic spirit of the man:--
+
+ "He is not lost,--he hath not passed away
+ Clouds, earths, may pass, but stars shine calmly on;
+ And he who doth the will of God, for aye
+ Abideth, when the earth and heaven are gone.
+
+ "Alas that such a heart is in the grave!'
+ Thanks for the life that now shall never end!
+ Weep, and rejoice, thou terror-hunted slave,
+ That hast both lost and found so great a friend!"
+
+
+
+
+RICHARD BAXTER.
+
+The picture drawn by a late English historian of the infamous Jeffreys in
+his judicial robes, sitting in judgment upon the venerable Richard
+Baxter, brought before him to answer to an indictment, setting; forth
+that the said "Richardus Baxter, persona seditiosa et factiosa pravae
+mentis, impiae, inquietae, turbulent disposition et conversation; falso
+illicte, injuste nequit factiose seditiose, et irreligiose, fecit,
+composuit, scripsit quendam falsum, seditiosum, libellosum, factiosum et
+irreligiosum librum," is so remarkable that the attention of the most
+careless reader is at once arrested. Who was that old man, wasted with
+disease and ghastly with the pallor of imprisonment, upon whom the foul-
+mouthed buffoon in ermine exhausted his vocabulary of abuse and ridicule?
+Who was Richardus Baxter?
+
+The author of works so elaborate and profound as to frighten by their
+very titles and ponderous folios the modern ecclesiastical student from
+their perusal, his hold upon the present generation is limited to a few
+practical treatises, which, from their very nature, can never become
+obsolete. The _Call to the Unconverted_ and the _Saints' Everlasting
+Rest_ belong to no time or sect. They speak the universal language of
+the wants and desires of the human soul. They take hold of the awful
+verities of life and death, righteousness and judgment to come. Through
+them the suffering and hunted minister of Kidderminster has spoken in
+warning, entreaty, and rebuke, or in tones of tenderest love and pity, to
+the hearts of the generations which have succeeded him. His
+controversial works, his confessions of faith, his learned disputations,
+and his profound doctrinal treatises are no longer read. Their author
+himself, towards the close of his life, anticipated, in respect to these
+favorite productions, the children of his early zeal, labor, and
+suffering, the judgment of posterity. "I perceive," he says, "that most
+of the doctrinal controversies among Protestants are far more about
+equivocal words than matter. Experience since the year 1643 to this year
+1675 hath loudly called me to repent of my own prejudices, sidings, and
+censurings of causes and persons not understood, and of all the
+miscarriages of my ministry and life which have been thereby caused; and
+to make it my chief work to call men that are within my bearing to more
+peaceable thoughts, affections, and practices."
+
+Richard Baxter was born at the village of Eton Constantine, in 1615. He
+received from officiating curates of the little church such literary
+instruction as could be given by men who had left the farmer's flail, the
+tailor's thimble, and the service of strolling stage-players, to perform
+church drudgery under the parish incumbent, who was old and well-nigh
+blind. At the age of sixteen, he was sent to a school at Wroxeter, where
+he spent three years, to little purpose, so far as a scientific education
+was concerned. His teacher left him to himself mainly, and following the
+bent of his mind, even at that early period, he abandoned the exact
+sciences for the perusal of such controversial and metaphysical writings
+of the schoolmen as his master's library afforded. The smattering of
+Latin which he acquired only served in after years to deform his
+treatises with barbarous, ill-adapted, and erroneous citations. "As to
+myself," said he, in his letter written in old age to Anthony Wood, who
+had inquired whether he was an Oxonian graduate, "my faults are no
+disgrace to a university, for I was of none; I have but little but what I
+had out of books and inconsiderable help of country divines. Weakness
+and pain helped me to study how to die; that set me a-studying how to
+live; and that on studying the doctrine from which I must fetch my
+motives and comforts; beginning with necessities, I proceeded by degrees,
+and am now going to see that for which I have lived and studied."
+
+Of the first essays of the young theologian as a preacher of the
+Established Church, his early sufferings from that complication of
+diseases with which his whole life was tormented, of the still keener
+afflictions of a mind whose entire outlook upon life and nature was
+discolored and darkened by its disordered bodily medium, and of the
+struggles between his Puritan temperament and his reverence for Episcopal
+formulas, much might be profitably said, did the limits we have assigned
+ourselves admit. Nor can we do more than briefly allude to the religious
+doubts and difficulties which darkened and troubled his mind at an early
+period.
+
+He tells us at length in his Life how he struggled with these spiritual
+infirmities and temptations. The future life, the immortality of the
+soul, and the truth of the Scriptures were by turns questioned. "I
+never," says he in a letter to Dr. More, inserted in the _Sadducisimus
+Triumphatus_, "had so much ado to overcome a temptation as that to the
+opinion of Averroes, that, as extinguished candles go all out in an
+illuminated air, so separated souls go all into one common anima mundi,
+and lose their individuation." With these and similar "temptations"
+Baxter struggled long, earnestly, and in the end triumphantly. His
+faith, when once established, remained unshaken to the last; and although
+always solemn, reverential, and deeply serious, he was never the subject
+of religious melancholy, or of that mournful depression of soul which
+arises from despair of an interest in the mercy and paternal love of our
+common Father.
+
+The Great Revolution found him settled as a minister in Kidderminster,
+under the sanction of a drunken vicar, who, yielding to the clamor of his
+more sober parishioners, and his fear of their appeal to the Long
+Parliament, then busy in its task of abating church nuisances, had agreed
+to give him sixty pounds per year, in the place of a poor tippling
+curate, notorious as a common railer and pothouse encumbrance.
+
+As might have been expected, the sharp contrast which the earnest,
+devotional spirit and painful strictness of Baxter presented to the
+irreverent license and careless good humor of his predecessor by no means
+commended him to the favor of a large class of his parishioners. Sabbath
+merry-makers missed the rubicund face and maudlin jollity of their old
+vicar; the ignorant and vicious disliked the new preacher's rigid
+morality; the better informed revolted at his harsh doctrines, austere
+life, and grave manner. Intense earnestness characterized all his
+efforts. Contrasting human nature with the Infinite Purity and Holiness,
+he was oppressed with the sense of the loathsomeness and deformity of
+sin, and afflicted by the misery of his fellow-creatures separated from
+the divine harmony. He tells us that at this period he preached the
+terrors of the Law and the necessity of repentance, rather than the joys
+and consolations of the Gospel, upon which he so loved to dwell in his
+last years. He seems to have felt a necessity laid upon him to startle
+men from false hope and security, and to call for holiness of life and
+conformity to the divine will as the only ground of safety. Powerful and
+impressive as are the appeals and expostulations contained in his written
+works, they probably convey but a faint idea of the force and earnestness
+of those which he poured forth from his pulpit. As he advanced in years,
+these appeals were less frequently addressed to the fears of his
+auditors, for he had learned to value a calm and consistent life of
+practical goodness beyond any passionate exhibition of terrors, fervors,
+and transports. Having witnessed, in an age of remarkable enthusiasm and
+spiritual awakening, the ill effects of passional excitements and
+religious melancholy, he endeavored to present cheerful views of
+Christian life and duty, and made it a special object to repress morbid
+imaginations and heal diseased consciences. Thus it came to pass that no
+man of his day was more often applied to for counsel and relief by
+persons laboring under mental depression than himself. He has left
+behind him a very curious and not uninstructive discourse, which he
+entitled The Cure of Melancholy, by Faith and Physick, in which he shows
+a great degree of skill in his morbid mental anatomy. He had studied
+medicine to some extent for the benefit of the poor of his parish, and
+knew something of the intimate relations and sympathy of the body and
+mind; he therefore did not hesitate to ascribe many of the spiritual
+complaints of his applicants to disordered bodily functions, nor to
+prescribe pills and powders in the place of Scripture texts. More than
+thirty years after the commencement of his labors at Kidderminster he
+thus writes: "I was troubled this year with multitudes of melancholy
+persons from several places of the land; some of high quality, some of
+low, some exquisitely learned, and some unlearned. I know not how it
+came to pass, but if men fell melancholy I must hear from them or see
+them, more than any physician I knew." He cautions against ascribing
+melancholy phantasms and passions to the Holy Spirit, warns the young
+against licentious imaginations and excitements, and ends by advising all
+to take heed how they make of religion a matter of "fears, tears, and
+scruples." "True religion," he remarks, "doth principally consist in
+obedience, love, and joy."
+
+At this early period of his ministry, however, he had all of Whitefield's
+intensity and fervor, added to reasoning powers greatly transcending
+those of the revivalist of the next century. Young in years, he was even
+then old in bodily infirmity and mental experience. Believing himself
+the victim of a mortal disease, he lived and preached in the constant
+prospect of death. His memento mori was in his bed-chamber, and sat by
+him at his frugal meal. The glory of the world was stained to his
+vision. He was blind to the beauty of all its "pleasant pictures." No
+monk of Mount Athos or silent Chartreuse, no anchorite of Indian
+superstition, ever more completely mortified the flesh, or turned his
+back more decidedly upon the "good things" of this life. A solemn and
+funeral atmosphere surrounded him. He walked in the shadows of the
+cypress, and literally "dwelt among the tombs." Tortured by incessant
+pain, he wrestled against its attendant languor and debility, as a sinful
+wasting of inestimable time; goaded himself to constant toil and
+devotional exercise, and, to use his own words, "stirred up his sluggish
+soul to speak to sinners with compassion, as a dying man to dying men."
+
+Such entire consecration could not long be without its effect, even upon
+the "vicious rabble," as Baxter calls them. His extraordinary
+earnestness, self-forgetting concern for the spiritual welfare of others,
+his rigid life of denial and sacrifice, if they failed of bringing men to
+his feet as penitents, could not but awaken a feeling of reverence and
+awe. In Kidderminster, as in most other parishes of the kingdom, there
+were at this period pious, sober, prayerful people, diligent readers of
+the Scriptures, who were derided by their neighbors as Puritans,
+precisians, and hypocrites. These were naturally drawn towards the new
+preacher, and he as naturally recognized them as "honest seekers of the
+word and way of God." Intercourse with such men, and the perusal of the
+writings of certain eminent Non-conformists, had the effect to abate, in
+some degree, his strong attachment to the Episcopal formula and polity.
+He began to doubt the rightfulness of making the sign of the cross in
+baptism, and to hesitate about administering the sacrament to profane
+swearers and tipplers.
+
+But while Baxter, in the seclusion of his parish, was painfully weighing
+the arguments for and against the wearing of surplices, the use of
+marriage rings, and the prescribed gestures and genuflections of his
+order, tithing with more or less scruple of conscience the mint and anise
+and cummin of pulpit ceremonials, the weightier matters of the law,
+freedom, justice, and truth were claiming the attention of Pym and
+Hampden, Brook and Vane, in the Parliament House. The controversy
+between King and Commons had reached the point where it could only be
+decided by the dread arbitrament of battle. The somewhat equivocal
+position of the Kidderminster preacher exposed him to the suspicion of
+the adherents of the King and Bishops. The rabble, at that period
+sympathizing with the party of license in morals and strictness in
+ceremonials, insulted and mocked him, and finally drove him from his
+parish.
+
+On the memorable 23d of tenth month, 1642, he was invited to occupy a
+friend's pulpit at Alcester.
+
+While preaching, a low, dull, jarring roll, as of continuous thunder,
+sounded in his ears. It was the cannon-fire of Edgehill, the prelude to
+the stern battle-piece of revolution. On the morrow, Baxter hurried to
+the scene of action. "I was desirous," he says, "to see the field. I
+found the Earl of Essex keeping the ground, and the King's army facing
+them on a hill about a mile off. There were about a thousand dead bodies
+in the field between them." Turning from this ghastly survey, the
+preacher mingled with the Parliamentary army, when, finding the surgeons
+busy with the wounded, he very naturally sought occasion for the exercise
+of his own vocation as a spiritual practitioner. He attached himself to
+the army. So far as we can gather from his own memoirs and the testimony
+of his contemporaries, he was not influenced to this step by any of the
+political motives which actuated the Parliamentary leaders. He was no
+revolutionist. He was as blind and unquestioning in his reverence for
+the King's person and divine right, and as hearty in his hatred of
+religious toleration and civil equality, as any of his clerical brethren
+who officiated in a similar capacity in the ranks of Goring and Prince
+Rupert. He seems only to have looked upon the soldiers as a new set of
+parishioners, whom Providence had thrown in his way. The circumstances
+of his situation left him little choice in the matter. "I had," he says,
+"neither money nor friends. I knew not who would receive me in a place
+of safety, nor had I anything to satisfy them for diet and
+entertainment." He accepted an offer to live in the Governor's house at
+Coventry, and preach to the soldiers of the garrison. Here his skill in
+polemics was called into requisition, in an encounter with two New
+England Antinomians, and a certain Anabaptist tailor who was making more
+rents in the garrison's orthodoxy than he mended in their doublets and
+breeches. Coventry seems at this time to have been the rendezvous of a
+large body of clergymen, who, as Baxter says, were "for King and
+Parliament,"--men who, in their desire for a more spiritual worship, most
+unwillingly found themselves classed with the sentries whom they regarded
+as troublers and heretics, not to be tolerated; who thought the King had
+fallen into the hands of the Papists, and that Essex and Cromwell were
+fighting to restore him; and who followed the Parliamentary forces to see
+to it that they were kept sound in faith, and free from the heresy of
+which the Court News-Book accused them. Of doing anything to overturn
+the order of Church and State, or of promoting any radical change in the
+social and political condition of the people, they had no intention
+whatever. They looked at the events of the time, and upon their duties
+in respect to them, not as politicians or reformers, but simply as
+ecclesiastics and spiritual teachers, responsible to God for the
+religious beliefs and practices of the people, rather than for their
+temporal welfare and happiness. They were not the men who struck down
+the solemn and imposing prelacy of England, and vindicated the divine
+right of men to freedom by tossing the head of an anointed tyrant from
+the scaffold at Whitehall. It was the so-called schismatics, ranters,
+and levellers, the disputatious corporals and Anabaptist musketeers, the
+dread and abhorrence alike of prelate and presbyter, who, under the lead
+of Cromwell,
+
+ "Ruined the great work of time,
+ And cast the kingdoms old
+ Into another mould."
+
+The Commonwealth was the work of the laity, the sturdy yeomanry and God-
+fearing commoners of England.
+
+The news of the fight of Naseby reaching Coventry, Baxter, who had
+friends in the Parliamentary forces, wishing, as he says, to be assured
+of their safety, passed over to the stricken field, and spent a night
+with them. He was afflicted and confounded by the information which they
+gave him, that the victorious army was full of hot-headed schemers and
+levellers, who were against King and Church, prelacy and ritual, and who
+were for a free Commonwealth and freedom of religious belief and worship.
+He was appalled to find that the heresies of the Antinomians, Arminians,
+and Anabaptists had made sadder breaches in the ranks of Cromwell than
+the pikes of Jacob Astley, or the daggers of the roysterers who followed
+the mad charge of Rupert. Hastening back to Coventry, he called together
+his clerical brethren, and told them "the sad news of the corruption of
+the army." After much painful consideration of the matter, it was deemed
+best for Baxter to enter Cromwell's army, nominally as its chaplain, but
+really as the special representative of orthodoxy in politics and
+religion, against the democratic weavers and prophesying tailors who
+troubled it. He joined Whalley's regiment, and followed it through many
+a hot skirmish and siege. Personal fear was by no means one of Baxter's
+characteristics, and he bore himself through all with the coolness of an
+old campaigner. Intent upon his single object, he sat unmoved under the
+hail of cannon-shot from the walls of Bristol, confronted the well-plied
+culverins of Sherburne, charged side by side with Harrison upon Goring's
+musketeers at Langford, and heard the exulting thanksgiving of that grim
+enthusiast, when "with a loud voice he broke forth in praises of God, as
+one in rapture;" and marched, Bible in hand, with Cromwell himself, to
+the storming of Basing-House, so desperately defended by the Marquis of
+Winchester. In truth, these storms of outward conflict were to him of
+small moment. He was engaged in a sterner battle with spiritual
+principalities and powers, struggling with Satan himself in the guise of
+political levellers and Antinomian sowers of heresy. No antagonist was
+too high and none too low for him. Distrusting Cromwell, he sought to
+engage him in a discussion of certain points of abstract theology,
+wherein his soundness seemed questionable; but the wary chief baffled off
+the young disputant by tedious, unanswerable discourses about free grace,
+which Baxter admits were not unsavory to others, although the speaker
+himself had little understanding of the matter. At other times, he
+repelled his sad-visaged chaplain with unwelcome jests and rough,
+soldierly merriment; for he had "a vivacity, hilarity, and alacrity as
+another man hath when he hath taken a cup too much." Baxter says of him,
+complainingly, "he would not dispute with me at all." But, in the midst
+of such an army, he could not lack abundant opportunity for the exercise
+of his peculiar powers of argumentation. At Amersham, he had a sort of
+pitched battle with the contumacious soldiers. "When the public talking
+day came," says he, "I took the reading-pew, and Pitchford's cornet and
+troopers took the gallery. There did the leader of the Chesham men
+begin, and afterwards Pitchford's soldiers set in; and I alone disputed
+with them from morning until almost night; for I knew their trick, that
+if I had gone out first, they would have prated what boasting words they
+listed, and made the people believe that they had baffled me, or got the
+best; therefore I stayed it out till they first rose and went away." As
+usual in such cases, both parties claimed the victory. Baxter got thanks
+only from the King's adherents; "Pitchford's troops and the leader of the
+Chesham men" retired from their hard day's work, to enjoy the countenance
+and favor of Cromwell, as men after his own heart, faithful to the Houses
+and the Word, against kingcraft and prelacy.
+
+Laughed at and held at arm's length by Cromwell, shunned by Harrison and
+Berry and other chief officers, opposed on all points by shrewd, earnest
+men, as ready for polemic controversy as for battle with the King's
+malignants, and who set off against his theological and metaphysical
+distinctions their own personal experiences and spiritual exercises, he
+had little to encourage him in his arduous labors. Alone in such a
+multitude, flushed with victory and glowing with religious enthusiasm,
+he earnestly begged his brother ministers to come to his aid. "If the
+army," said he, "had only ministers enough, who could have done such
+little as I did, all their plot might have been broken, and King,
+Parliament, and Religion might have been preserved." But no one
+volunteered to assist him, and the "plot" of revolution went on.
+
+After Worcester fight he returned to Coventry, to make his report to the
+ministers assembled there. He told them of his labors and trials, of the
+growth of heresy and levelling principles in the army, and of the evident
+design of its leaders to pull down Church, King, and Ministers. He
+assured them that the day was at hand when all who were true to the King,
+Parliament, and Religion should come forth to oppose these leaders, and
+draw away their soldiers from them. For himself, he was willing to go
+back to the army, and labor there until the crisis of which he spoke had
+arrived. "Whereupon," says he, "they all voted me to go yet longer."
+
+Fortunately for the cause of civil and religious freedom, the great body
+of the ministers, who disapproved of the ultraism of the victorious army,
+and sympathized with the defeated King, lacked the courage and
+devotedness of Baxter. Had they promptly seconded his efforts, although
+the restoration of the King might have been impossible at that late
+period, the horrors of civil war must have been greatly protracted. As
+it was, they preferred to remain at home, and let Baxter have the benefit
+of their prayers and good wishes. He returned to the army with the
+settled purpose, of causing its defection from Cromwell; but, by one of
+those dispensations which the latter used to call "births of Providence,"
+he was stricken down with severe sickness. Baxter's own comments upon
+this passage in his life are not without interest. He says, God
+prevented his purposes in his last and chiefest opposition to the army;
+that he intended to take off or seduce from their officers the regiment
+with which he was connected, and then to have tried his persuasion upon
+the others. He says he afterwards found that his sickness was a mercy to
+himself, "for they were so strong and active, and I had been likely to
+have had small success in the attempt, and to have lost my life among
+them in their fury." He was right in this last conjecture; Oliver
+Cromwell would have had no scruples in making an example of a plotting
+priest; and "Pitchford's soldiers" might have been called upon to
+silence, with their muskets, the tough disputant who was proof against
+their tongues.
+
+After a long and dubious illness, Baxter was so far restored as to be
+able to go back to his old parish at Kidderminster. Here, under the
+Protectorate of Cromwell, he remained in the full enjoyment of that
+religious liberty which he still stoutly condemned in its application to
+others.
+
+He afterwards candidly admits, that, under the "Usurper," as he styles
+Cromwell, "he had such liberty and advantage to preach the Gospel with
+success, as he could not have under a King, to whom he had sworn and
+performed true subjection and obedience." Yet this did not prevent him
+from preaching and printing, "seasonably and moderately," against the
+Protector. "I declared," said he, "Cromwell and his adherents to be
+guilty of treason and rebellion, aggravated by perfidiousness and
+hypocrisy. But yet I did not think it my duty to rave against him in the
+pulpit, or to do this so unseasonably and imprudently as might irritate
+him to mischief. And the rather, because, as he kept up his approbation
+of a godly life in general, and of all that was good, except that which
+the interest of his sinful cause engaged him to be against. So I
+perceived that it was his design to do good in the main, and to promote
+the Gospel and the interests of godliness more than any had done before
+him."
+
+Cromwell, if he heard of his diatribes against him, appears to have cared
+little for them. Lords Warwick and Broghill, on one occasion, brought
+him to preach before the Lord Protector. He seized the occasion to
+preach against the sentries, to condemn all who countenanced them, and to
+advocate the unity of the Church. Soon after, he was sent for by
+Cromwell, who made "a long and tedious speech" in the presence of three
+of his chief men, (one of whom, General Lambert, fell asleep the while,)
+asserting that God had owned his government in a signal manner. Baxter
+boldly replied to him, that he and his friends regarded the ancient
+monarchy as a blessing, and not an evil, and begged to know how that
+blessing was forfeited to England, and to whom that forfeiture was made.
+Cromwell, with some heat, made answer that it was no forfeiture, but that
+God had made the change. They afterwards held a long conference with
+respect to freedom of conscience, Cromwell defending his liberal policy,
+and Baxter opposing it. No one can read Baxter's own account of these
+interviews, without being deeply impressed with the generous and
+magnanimous spirit of the Lord Protector in tolerating the utmost freedom
+of speech on the part of one who openly denounced him as a traitor and
+usurper. Real greatness of mind could alone have risen above personal
+resentment under such circumstances of peculiar aggravation.
+
+In the death of the Protector, the treachery of Monk, and the restoration
+of the King, Baxter and his Presbyterian friends believed that they saw
+the hand of a merciful Providence preparing the way for the best good of
+England and the Church. Always royalists, they had acted with the party
+opposed to the King from necessity rather than choice. Considering all
+that followed, one can scarcely avoid smiling over the extravagant
+jubilations of the Presbyterian divines, on the return of the royal
+debauchee to Whitehall. They hurried up to London with congratulations
+of formidable length and papers of solemn advice and counsel, to all
+which the careless monarch listened, with what patience he was master of.
+Baxter was one of the first to present himself at Court, and it is
+creditable to his heart rather than his judgment and discrimination that
+he seized the occasion to offer a long address to the King, expressive of
+his expectation that his Majesty would discountenance all sin and promote
+godliness, support the true exercise of Church discipline and cherish and
+hold up the hands of the faithful ministers of the Church. To all which
+Charles II. "made as gracious an answer as we could expect," says Baxter,
+"insomuch that old Mr. Ash burst out into tears of joy." Who doubts that
+the profligate King avenged himself as soon as the backs of his unwelcome
+visitors were fairly turned, by coarse jests and ribaldry, directed
+against a class of men whom he despised and hated, but towards whom
+reasons of policy dictated a show of civility and kindness?
+
+There is reason to believe that Charles II., had he been able to effect
+his purpose, would have gone beyond Cromwell himself in the matter of
+religious toleration; in other words, he would have taken, in the outset
+of his reign, the very steps which cost his successor his crown, and
+procured the toleration of Catholics by a declaration of universal
+freedom in religion. But he was not in a situation to brave the
+opposition alike of Prelacy and Presbyterianism, and foiled in a scheme
+to which he was prompted by that vague, superstitious predilection for
+the Roman Catholic religion which at times struggled with his habitual
+scepticism, his next object was to rid himself of the importunities of
+sentries and the trouble of religious controversies by reestablishing the
+liturgy, and bribing or enforcing conformity to it on the part of the
+Presbyterians. The history of the successful execution of this purpose
+is familiar to all the readers of the plausible pages of Clarendon on the
+one side, or the complaining treatises of Neal and Calamy on the other.
+
+Charles and his advisers triumphed, not so much through their own art,
+dissimulation, and bad faith as through the blind bigotry, divided
+counsels, and self-seeking of the Nonconformists. Seduction on one hand
+and threats on the other, the bribe of bishoprics, hatred of Independents
+and Quakers, and the terror of penal laws, broke the strength of
+Presbyterianism.
+
+Baxter's whole conduct, on this occasion, bears testimony to his honesty
+and sincerity, while it shows him to have been too intolerant to secure
+his own religious freedom at the price of toleration for Catholics,
+Quakers, and Anabaptists; and too blind in his loyalty to perceive that
+pure and undefiled Christianity had nothing to hope for from a scandalous
+and depraved King, surrounded by scoffing, licentious courtiers and a
+haughty, revengeful prelacy. To secure his influence, the Court offered
+him the bishopric of Hereford. Superior to personal considerations, he
+declined the honor; but somewhat inconsistently, in his zeal for the
+interests of his party, he urged the elevation of at least three of his
+Presbyterian friends to the Episcopal bench, to enforce that very liturgy
+which they condemned. He was the chief speaker for the Presbyterians at
+the famous Savoy Conference, summoned to advise and consult upon the Book
+of Common Prayer. His antagonist was Dr. Gunning, ready, fluent, and
+impassioned. "They spent," as Gilbert Burnet says, "several days in
+logical arguing, to the diversion of the town, who looked upon them as a
+couple of fencers, engaged in a discussion which could not be brought to
+an end." In themselves considered, many of the points at issue seem
+altogether too trivial for the zeal with which Baxter contested them,--
+the form of a surplice, the wording of a prayer, kneeling at sacrament,
+the sign of the cross, etc. With him, however, they were of momentous
+interest and importance, as things unlawful in the worship of God. He
+struggled desperately, but unavailingly. Presbyterianism, in its
+eagerness for peace and union and a due share of State support, had
+already made fatal concessions, and it was too late to stand upon non-
+essentials. Baxter retired from the conference baffled and defeated,
+amidst murmurs and jests. "If you had only been as fat as Dr. Manton,"
+said Clarendon to him, "you would have done well."
+
+The Act of Conformity, in which Charles II. and his counsellors gave the
+lie to the liberal declarations of Breda and Whitehall, drove Baxter from
+his sorrowing parishioners of Kidderminster, and added the evils of
+poverty and persecution to the painful bodily infirmities under which he
+was already bowed down. Yet his cup was not one of unalloyed bitterness,
+and loving lips were prepared to drink it with him.
+
+Among Baxter's old parishioners of Kidderminster was a widowed lady of
+gentle birth, named Charlton, who, with her daughter Margaret, occupied a
+house in his neighborhood. The daughter was a brilliant girl, of
+"strangely vivid wit," and "in early youth," he tells us, "pride, and
+romances, and company suitable thereunto, did take her up." But erelong,
+Baxter, who acted in the double capacity of spiritual and temporal
+physician, was sent for to visit her, on an occasion of sickness. He
+ministered to her bodily and mental sufferings, and thus secured her
+gratitude and confidence. On her recovery, under the influence of his
+warnings and admonitions, the gay young girl became thoughtful and
+serious, abandoned her light books and companions, and devoted herself to
+the duties of a Christian profession. Baxter was her counsellor and
+confidant. She disclosed to him all her doubts, trials, and temptations,
+and he, in return, wrote her long letters of sympathy, consolation, and
+encouragement. He began to feel such an unwonted interest in the moral
+and spiritual growth of his young disciple, that, in his daily walks
+among his parishioners, he found himself inevitably drawn towards her
+mother's dwelling. In her presence, the habitual austerity of his manner
+was softened; his cold, close heart warmed and expanded. He began to
+repay her confidence with his own, disclosing to her all his plans of
+benevolence, soliciting her services, and waiting, with deference, for
+her judgment upon them. A change came over his habits of thought and his
+literary tastes; the harsh, rude disputant, the tough, dry logician,
+found himself addressing to his young friend epistles in verse on
+doctrinal points and matters of casuistry; Westminster Catechism in
+rhyme; the Solemn League and Covenant set to music. A miracle alone
+could have made Baxter a poet; the cold, clear light of reason "paled the
+ineffectual fires" of his imagination; all things presented themselves to
+his vision "with hard outlines, colorless, and with no surrounding
+atmosphere." That he did, nevertheless, write verses, so creditable as
+to justify a judicious modern critic in their citation and approval, can
+perhaps be accounted for only as one of the phenomena of that subtle and
+transforming influence to which even his stern nature was unconsciously
+yielding. Baxter was in love.
+
+Never did the blind god try his archery on a more unpromising subject.
+Baxter was nearly fifty years of age, and looked still older. His life
+had been one long fast and penance. Even in youth he had never known a
+schoolboy's love for cousin or playmate. He had resolutely closed up his
+heart against emotions which he regarded as the allurements of time and
+sense. He had made a merit of celibacy, and written and published
+against the entanglement of godly ministers in matrimonial engagements
+and family cares. It is questionable whether he now understood his own
+case, or attributed to its right cause the peculiar interest which he
+felt in Margaret Charlton. Left to himself, it is more than probable
+that he might never have discovered the true nature of that interest, or
+conjectured that anything whatever of earthly passion or sublunary
+emotion had mingled with his spiritual Platonism. Commissioned and set
+apart to preach repentance to dying men, penniless and homeless, worn
+with bodily pain and mental toil, and treading, as he believed, on the
+very margin of his grave, what had he to do with love? What power had he
+to inspire that tender sentiment, the appropriate offspring only of
+youth, and health, and beauty?
+
+ "Could any Beatrice see
+ A lover in such anchorite!"
+
+But in the mean time a reciprocal feeling was gaining strength in the
+heart of Margaret. To her grateful appreciation of the condescension of
+a great and good man--grave, learned, and renowned--to her youth and
+weakness, and to her enthusiastic admiration of his intellectual powers,
+devoted to the highest and holiest objects, succeeded naturally enough
+the tenderly suggestive pity of her woman's heart, as she thought of his
+lonely home, his unshared sorrows, his lack of those sympathies and
+kindnesses which make tolerable the hard journey of life. Did she not
+owe to him, under God, the salvation of body and mind? Was he not her
+truest and most faithful friend, entering with lively interest into all
+her joys and sorrows? Had she not seen the cloud of his habitual sadness
+broken by gleams of sunny warmth and cheerfulness, as they conversed
+together? Could she do better than devote herself to the pleasing task
+of making his life happier, of comforting him in seasons of pain and
+weariness, encouraging him in his vast labors, and throwing over the cold
+and hard austerities of his nature the warmth and light of domestic
+affection? Pity, reverence, gratitude, and womanly tenderness, her
+fervid imagination and the sympathies of a deeply religious nature,
+combined to influence her decision. Disparity of age and condition
+rendered it improbable that Baxter would ever venture to address her in
+any other capacity than that of a friend and teacher; and it was left to
+herself to give the first intimation of the possibility of a more
+intimate relation.
+
+It is easy to imagine with what mixed feelings of joy, surprise, and
+perplexity Baxter must have received the delicate avowal. There was much
+in the circumstances of the case to justify doubt, misgiving, and close
+searchings of heart. He must have felt the painful contrast which that
+fair girl in the bloom of her youth presented to the worn man of middle
+years, whose very breath was suffering, and over whom death seemed always
+impending. Keenly conscious of his infirmities of temper, he must have
+feared for the happiness of a loving, gentle being, daily exposed to
+their manifestations. From his well-known habit of consulting what he
+regarded as the divine will in every important step of his life, there
+can be no doubt that his decision was the result quite as much of a
+prayerful and patient consideration of duty as of the promptings of his
+heart. Richard Baxter was no impassioned Abelard; his pupil in the
+school of his severe and self-denying piety was no Heloise; but what
+their union lacked in romantic interest was compensated by its purity and
+disinterestedness, and its sanction by all that can hallow human passion,
+and harmonize the love of the created with the love and service of the
+Creator.
+
+Although summoned by a power which it would have been folly to resist,
+the tough theologian did not surrender at discretion. "From the first
+thoughts yet many changes and stoppages intervened, and long delays," he
+tells us. The terms upon which he finally capitulated are perfectly in
+keeping with his character. "She consented," he says, "to three
+conditions of our marriage. 1st. That I should have nothing that before
+our marriage was hers; that I, who wanted no earthly supplies, might not
+seem to marry her from selfishness. 2d. That she would so alter her
+affairs that I might be entangled in no lawsuits. 3d. That she should
+expect none of my time which my ministerial work should require."
+
+As was natural, the wits of the Court had their jokes upon this singular
+marriage; and many of his best friends regretted it, when they called to
+mind what he had written in favor of ministerial celibacy, at a time
+when, as he says, "he thought to live and die a bachelor." But Baxter
+had no reason to regret the inconsistency of his precept and example.
+How much of the happiness of the next twenty years of his life resulted
+from his union with a kind and affectionate woman he has himself
+testified, in his simple and touching Breviate of the Life of the late
+Mrs. Baxter. Her affections were so ardent that her husband confesses
+his fear that he was unable to make an adequate return, and that she must
+have been disappointed in him in consequence. He extols her pleasant
+conversation, her active benevolence, her disposition to aid him in all
+his labors, and her noble forgetfulness of self, in ministering to his
+comfort, in sickness and imprisonment. "She was the meetest helper I
+could have had in the world," is his language. "If I spoke harshly or
+sharply, it offended her. If I carried it (as I am apt) with too much
+negligence of ceremony or humble compliment to any, she would modestly
+tell me of it. If my looks seemed not pleasant, she would have me amend
+them (which my weak, pained state of body indisposed me to do)." He
+admits she had her failings, but, taken as a whole, the Breviate is an
+exalted eulogy.
+
+His history from this time is marked by few incidents of a public
+character. During that most disgraceful period in the annals of England,
+the reign of the second Charles, his peculiar position exposed him to the
+persecutions of prelacy and the taunts and abuse of the sentries,
+standing as he did between these extremes, and pleading for a moderate
+Episcopacy. He was between the upper millstone of High Church and the
+nether one of Dissent. To use his own simile, he was like one who seeks
+to fill with his hand a cleft in a log, and feels both sides close upon
+him with pain. All parties and sects had, as they thought, grounds of
+complaint against him. There was in him an almost childish simplicity of
+purpose, a headlong earnestness and eagerness, which did not allow him to
+consider how far a present act or opinion harmonized with what he had
+already done or written. His greatest admirers admit his lack of
+judgment, his inaptitude for the management of practical matters. His
+utter incapacity to comprehend rightly the public men and measures of his
+day is abundantly apparent; and the inconsistencies of his conduct and
+his writings are too marked to need comment. He suffered persecution for
+not conforming to some trifling matters of Church usage, while he
+advocated the doctrine of passive obedience to the King or ruling power,
+and the right of that power to enforce conformity. He wrote against
+conformity while himself conforming; seceded from the Church, and yet
+held stated communion with it; begged for the curacy of Kidderminster,
+and declined the bishopric of Hereford. His writings were many of them
+directly calculated to make Dissenters from the Establishment, but he was
+invariably offended to find others practically influenced by them, and
+quarrelled with his own converts to Dissent. The High Churchmen of
+Oxford burned his Holy Commonwealth as seditious and revolutionary; while
+Harrington and the republican club of Miles's Coffee House condemned it
+for its hostility to democracy and its servile doctrine of obedience to
+kings. He made noble pleas for liberty of conscience and bitterly
+complained of his own suffering from Church courts, yet maintained the
+necessity of enforcing conformity, and stoutly opposed the tolerant
+doctrines of Penn and Milton. Never did a great and good man so entangle
+himself with contradictions and inconsistencies. The witty and wicked
+Sir Roger L'Estrange compiled from the irreconcilable portions of his
+works a laughable Dialogue between Richard and Baxter. The Antinomians
+found him guilty of Socinianism; and one noted controversialist undertook
+to show, not without some degree of plausibility, that he was by turns a
+Quaker and a Papist!
+
+Although able to suspend his judgment and carefully weigh evidence, upon
+matters which he regarded as proper subjects of debate and scrutiny, he
+possessed the power to shut out and banish at will all doubt and
+misgiving in respect to whatever tended to prove, illustrate, or enforce
+his settled opinions and cherished doctrines. His credulity at times
+seems boundless. Hating the Quakers, and prepared to believe all manner
+of evil of them, he readily came to the conclusion that their leaders
+were disguised Papists. He maintained that Lauderdale was a good and
+pious man, in spite of atrocities in Scotland which entitle him to a
+place with Claverhouse; and indorsed the character of the infamous
+Dangerfield, the inventor of the Meal-tub Plot, as a worthy convert from
+popish errors. To prove the existence of devils and spirits, he
+collected the most absurd stories and old-wives' fables, of soldiers
+scared from their posts at night by headless bears, of a young witch
+pulling the hooks out of Mr. Emlen's breeches and swallowing them, of Mr.
+Beacham's locomotive tobacco-pipe, and the Rev. Mr. Munn's jumping Bible,
+and of a drunken man punished for his intemperance by being lifted off
+his legs by an invisible hand! Cotton Mather's marvellous account of his
+witch experiments in New England delighted him. He had it republished,
+declaring that "he must be an obstinate Sadducee who doubted it."
+
+The married life of Baxter, as might be inferred from the state of the
+times, was an unsettled one. He first took a house at Moorfields, then
+removed to Acton, where he enjoyed the conversation of his neighbor, Sir
+Matthew Hale; from thence he found refuge in Rickmansworth, and after
+that in divers other places. "The women have most of this trouble," he
+remarks, "but my wife easily bore it all." When unable to preach, his
+rapid pen was always busy. Huge folios of controversial and doctrinal
+lore followed each other in quick succession. He assailed Popery and the
+Establishment, Anabaptists, ultra Calvinists, Antinomians, Fifth Monarchy
+men, and Quakers. His hatred of the latter was only modified by his
+contempt. He railed rather than argued against the "miserable
+creatures," as he styled them. They in turn answered him in like manner.
+"The Quakers," he says, "in their shops, when I go along London streets,
+say, 'Alas' poor man, thou art yet in darkness.' They have oft come to
+the congregation, when I had liberty to preach Christ's Gospel, and cried
+out against me as a deceiver of the people. They have followed me home,
+crying out in the streets, 'The day of the Lord is coming, and thou shalt
+perish as a deceiver.' They have stood in the market-place, and under my
+window, year after year, crying to the people, 'Take heed of your
+priests, they deceive your souls;' and if any one wore a lace or neat
+clothing, they cried out to me, 'These are the fruits of your ministry.'"
+
+At Rickmansworth, he found himself a neighbor of William Penn, whom he
+calls "the captain of the Quakers." Ever ready for battle, Baxter
+encountered him in a public discussion, with such fierceness and
+bitterness as to force from that mild and amiable civilian the remark,
+that he would rather be Socrates at the final judgment than Richard
+Baxter. Both lived to know each other better, and to entertain
+sentiments of mutual esteem. Baxter himself admits that the Quakers, by
+their perseverance in holding their religious meetings in defiance of
+penal laws, took upon themselves the burden of persecution which would
+otherwise have fallen upon himself and his friends; and makes special
+mention of the noble and successful plea of Penn before the Recorder's
+Court in London, based on the fundamental liberties of Englishmen and the
+rights of the Great Charter.
+
+The intolerance of Baxter towards the Separatists was turned against him
+whenever he appealed to the King and Parliament against the proscription
+of himself and his friends. "They gathered," he complains, "out of mine
+and other men's books all that we had said against liberty for Popery and
+Quakers railing against ministers in open congregation, and applied it as
+against the toleration of ourselves." It was in vain that he explained
+that he was only in favor of a gentle coercion of dissent, a moderate
+enforcement of conformity. His plan for dealing with sentries reminds
+one of old Isaak Walton's direction to his piscatorial readers, to impale
+the frog on the hook as gently as if they loved him.
+
+While at Acton, he was complained of by Dr. Ryves, the rector, one of the
+King's chaplains in ordinary, for holding religious services in his
+family with more than five strangers present. He was cast into
+Clerkenwell jail, whither his faithful wife followed him. On his
+discharge, he sought refuge in the hamlet of Totteridge, where he wrote
+and published that Paraphrase on the New Testament which was made the
+ground of his prosecution and trial before Jeffreys.
+
+On the 14th of the sixth month, 1681, he was called to endure the
+greatest affliction of his life. His wife died on that day, after a
+brief illness. She who had been his faithful friend, companion, and
+nurse for twenty years was called away from him in the time of his
+greatest need of her ministrations. He found consolation in dwelling on
+her virtues and excellences in the Breviate of her life; "a paper
+monument," he says, "erected by one who is following her even at the door
+in some passion indeed of love and grief." In the preface to his
+poetical pieces he alludes to her in terms of touching simplicity and
+tenderness: "As these pieces were mostly written in various passions, so
+passion hath now thrust them out into the world. God having taken away
+the dear companion of the last nineteen years of my life, as her sorrows
+and sufferings long ago gave being to some of these poems, for reasons,
+which the world is not concerned to know; so my grief for her removal,
+and the revival of the sense of former things, have prevailed upon me to
+be passionate in the sight of all."
+
+The circumstances of his trial before the judicial monster, Jeffreys, are
+too well known to justify their detail in this sketch. He was sentenced
+to pay a fine of five hundred marks. Seventy years of age, and reduced
+to poverty by former persecutions, he was conveyed to the King's Bench
+prison. Here for two years he lay a victim to intense bodily suffering.
+When, through the influence of his old antagonist, Penn, he was restored
+to freedom, he was already a dying man. But he came forth from prison as
+he entered it, unsubdued in spirit.
+
+Urged to sign a declaration of thanks to James II., his soul put on the
+athletic habits of youth, and he stoutly refused to commend an act of
+toleration which had given freedom not to himself alone, but to Papists
+and sentries. Shaking off the dust of the Court from his feet, he
+retired to a dwelling in Charter-House Square, near his friend
+Sylvester's, and patiently awaited his deliverance. His death was quiet
+and peaceful. "I have pain," he said to his friend Mather; "there is no
+arguing against sense; but I have peace. I have peace." On being asked
+how he did, he answered, in memorable words, "Almost well!"
+
+He was buried in Christ Church, where the remains of his wife and her
+mother had been placed. An immense concourse attended his funeral, of
+all ranks and parties. Conformist and Non-conformist forgot the
+bitterness of the controversialist, and remembered only the virtues and
+the piety of the man. Looking back on his life of self-denial and
+faithfulness to apprehended duty, the men who had persecuted him while
+living wept over his grave. During the last few years of his life, the
+severity of his controversial tone had been greatly softened; he lamented
+his former lack of charity, the circle of his sympathies widened, his
+social affections grew stronger with age, and love for his fellow-men
+universally, and irrespective of religious differences, increased within
+him. In his Narrative, written in the long, cool shadows of the evening
+of life, he acknowledges with extraordinary candor this change in his
+views and feelings. He confesses his imperfections as a writer and
+public teacher.
+
+"I wish," he says, "all over-sharp passages were expunged from my
+writings, and I ask forgiveness of God and man." He tells us that
+mankind appear more equal to him; the good are not so good as he once
+thought, nor the bad so evil; and that in all there is more for grace to
+make advantage of, and more to testify for God and holiness, than he once
+believed. "I less admire," he continues, "gifts of utterance, and the
+bare profession of religion, than I once did, and have now much more
+charity for those who, by want of gifts, do make an obscurer profession."
+
+He laments the effects of his constitutional irritability and impatience
+upon his social intercourse and his domestic relations, and that his
+bodily infirmities did not allow him a free expression of the tenderness
+and love of his heart. Who does not feel the pathos and inconsolable
+regret which dictated the following paragraph?
+
+"When God forgiveth me, I cannot forgive myself, especially for my rash
+words and deeds by which I have seemed injurious and less tender and kind
+than I should have been to my near and dear relations, whose love
+abundantly obliged me. When such are dead, though we never differed in
+point of interest or any other matter, every sour or cross or provoking
+word which I gave them maketh me almost irreconcilable to myself, and
+tells me how repentance brought some of old to pray to the dead whom they
+had wronged to forgive them, in the hurry of their passion."
+
+His pride as a logician and skilful disputant abated in the latter and
+better portion of his life he had more deference to the judgment of
+others, and more distrust of his own. "You admire," said he to a
+correspondent who had lauded his character, "one you do not know;
+knowledge will cure your error." In his Narrative he writes: "I am much
+more sensible than heretofore of the breadth and length and depth of the
+radical, universal, odious sin of selfishness, and therefore have written
+so much against it; and of the excellency and necessity of self-denial
+and of a public mind, and of loving our neighbors as ourselves." Against
+many difficulties and discouragements, both within himself and in his
+outward circumstances, he strove to make his life and conversation an
+expression of that Christian love whose root, as he has said with equal
+truth and beauty, "is set
+
+ In humble self-denial, undertrod,
+ While flower and fruit are growing up to God."
+
+Of the great mass of his writings, more voluminous than those of any
+author of his time, it would ill become us to speak with confidence. We
+are familiar only with some of the best of his practical works, and our
+estimate of the vast and appalling series of his doctrinal, metaphysical
+and controversial publications would be entitled to small weight, as the
+result of very cursory examination. Many of them relate to obsolete
+questions and issues, monumental of controversies long dead, and of
+disputatious doctors otherwise forgotten. Yet, in respect to even these,
+we feel justified in assenting to the opinion of one abundantly capable
+of appreciating the character of Baxter as a writer. "What works of Mr.
+Baxter shall I read?" asked Boswell of Dr. Johnson. "Read any of them,"
+was the answer, "for they are all good." He has left upon all the
+impress of his genius. Many of them contain sentiments which happily
+find favor with few in our time: philosophical and psychological
+disquisitions, which look oddly enough in the light of the intellectual
+progress of nearly two centuries; dissertations upon evil spirits,
+ghosts, and witches, which provoke smiles at the good man's credulity;
+but everywhere we find unmistakable evidences of his sincerity and
+earnest love of truth. He wrote under a solemn impression of duty,
+allowing neither pain, nor weakness, nor the claims of friendship, nor
+the social enjoyments of domestic affection, to interfere with his
+sleepless intensity of purpose. He stipulated with his wife, before
+marriage, that she should not expect him to relax, even for her society,
+the severity of his labors. He could ill brook interruption, and
+disliked the importunity of visitors. "We are afraid, sir, we break in
+upon your time," said some of his callers to him upon one occasion. "To
+be sure you do," was his answer. His seriousness seldom forsook him;
+there is scarce a gleam of gayety in all his one hundred and sixty-eight
+volumes. He seems to have relished, however, the wit of others,
+especially when directed against what he looked upon as error. Marvell's
+inimitable reply to the High-Church pretensions of Parker fairly overcame
+his habitual gravity, and he several times alludes to it with marked
+satisfaction; but, for himself, he had no heart for pleasentry. His
+writings, like his sermons, were the earnest expostulations of a dying
+man with dying men. He tells us of no other amusement or relaxation than
+the singing of psalms. "Harmony and melody," said he, "are the pleasure
+and elevation of my soul. It was not the least comfort that I had in the
+converse of my late dear wife, that our first act in the morning and last
+in bed at night was a psalm of praise."
+
+It has been fashionable to speak of Baxter as a champion of civil and
+religious freedom. He has little claim to such a reputation. He was the
+stanch advocate of monarchy, and of the right and duty of the State to
+enforce conformity to what he regarded as the essentials of religious
+belief and practice. No one regards the prelates who went to the Tower,
+under James II., on the ground of conscientious scruples against reading
+the King's declaration of toleration to Dissenters, as martyrs in the
+cause of universal religious freedom. Nor can Baxter, although he wrote
+much against the coercion and silencing of godly ministers, and suffered
+imprisonment himself for the sake of a good conscience, be looked upon in
+the light of an intelligent and consistent confessor of liberty. He did
+not deny the abstract right of ecclesiastical coercion, but complained of
+its exercise upon himself and his friends as unwarranted and unjust.
+
+One of the warmest admirers and ablest commentators of Baxter designates
+the leading and peculiar trait of his character as unearthliness. In our
+view, this was its radical defect. He had too little of humanity, he
+felt too little of the attraction of this world, and lived too
+exclusively in the spiritual and the unearthly, for a full and healthful
+development of his nature as a man, or of the graces, charities, and
+loves of the Christian. He undervalued the common blessings and joys of
+life, and closed his eyes and ears against the beauty and harmony of
+outward nature. Humanity, in itself considered, seemed of small moment
+to him; "passing away" was written alike on its wrongs and its rights,
+its pleasures and its pains; death would soon level all distinctions; and
+the sorrows or the joys, the poverty or the riches, the slavery or the
+liberty, of the brief day of its probation seemed of too little
+consequence to engage his attention and sympathies. Hence, while he was
+always ready to minister to temporal suffering wherever it came to his
+notice, he made no efforts to remove its political or social causes.
+In this respect he differed widely from some of his illustrious
+contemporaries. Penn, while preaching up and down the land, and writing
+theological folios and pamphlets, could yet urge the political rights of
+Englishmen, mount the hustings for Algernon Sydney, and plead for
+unlimited religious liberty; and Vane, while dreaming of a coming
+millennium and reign of the saints, and busily occupied in defending his
+Antinomian doctrines, could at the same time vindicate, with tongue and
+pen, the cause of civil and religious freedom. But Baxter overlooked the
+evils and oppressions which were around him, and forgot the necessities
+and duties of the world of time and sense in his earnest aspirations
+towards the world of spirits. It is by no means an uninstructive fact,
+that with the lapse of years his zeal for proselytism, doctrinal
+disputations, and the preaching of threats and terrors visibly declined,
+while love for his fellow-men and catholic charity greatly increased, and
+he was blessed with a clearer perception of the truth that God is best
+served through His suffering children, and that love and reverence for
+visible humanity is an indispensable condition of the appropriate worship
+of the Unseen God.
+
+But, in taking leave of Richard Baxter, our last words must not be those
+of censure. Admiration and reverence become us rather. He was an honest
+man. So far as we can judge, his motives were the highest and best which
+can influence human action. He had faults and weaknesses, and committed
+grave errors, but we are constrained to believe that the prayer with
+which he closes his Saints' Rest and which we have chosen as the fitting
+termination of our article, was the earnest aspiration of his life:--
+
+"O merciful Father of Spirits! suffer not the soul of thy unworthy
+servant to be a stranger to the joys which he describes to others, but
+keep me while I remain on earth in daily breathing after thee, and in a
+believing affectionate walking with thee! Let those who shall read these
+pages not merely read the fruits of my studies, but the breathing of my
+active hope and love; that if my heart were open to their view, they
+might there read thy love most deeply engraven upon it with a beam from
+the face of the Son of God; and not find vanity or lust or pride within
+where the words of life appear without, that so these lines may not
+witness against me, but, proceeding from the heart of the writer, be
+effectual through thy grace upon the heart of the reader, and so be the
+savor of life to both."
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM LEGGETT
+
+ "O Freedom! thou art not, as poets dream,
+ A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs,
+ And wavy tresses, gushing from the cap
+ With which the Roman master crowned his slave,
+ When he took off the gyves. A bearded man,
+ Armed to the teeth, art thou; one mailed hand
+ Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow,
+ Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred
+ With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs
+ Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched
+ His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee;
+ They could not quench the life thou hast from Heaven."
+ BRYANT.
+
+WHEN the noblest woman in all France stood on the scaffold, just before
+her execution, she is said to have turned towards the statue of Liberty,
+--which, strangely enough, had been placed near the guillotine, as its
+patron saint,--with the exclamation, "O Liberty! what crimes have been
+committed in thy name!" It is with a feeling akin to that which prompted
+this memorable exclamation of Madame Roland that the sincere lover of
+human freedom and progress is often compelled to regard American
+democracy.
+
+For democracy, pure and impartial,--the self-government of the whole;
+equal rights and privileges, irrespective of birth or complexion; the
+morality of the Gospel of Christ applied to legislation; Christianity
+reduced to practice, and showering the blessings of its impartial love
+and equal protection upon all, like the rain and dews of heaven,--we have
+the sincerest love and reverence. So far as our own government
+approaches this standard--and, with all its faults, we believe it does so
+more nearly than any other--it has our hearty and steadfast allegiance.
+We complain of and protest against it only where, in its original
+framework or actual administration, it departs from the democratic
+principle. Holding, with Novalis, that the Christian religion is the
+root of all democracy and the highest fact in the rights of man, we
+regard the New Testament as the true political text-book; and believe
+that, just in proportion as mankind receive its doctrines and precepts,
+not merely as matters of faith and relating to another state of being,
+but as practical rules, designed for the regulation of the present life
+as well as the future, their institutions, social arrangements, and forms
+of government will approximate to the democratic model. We believe in
+the ultimate complete accomplishment of the mission of Him who came "to
+preach deliverance to the captive, and the opening of prison doors to
+them that are bound." We look forward to the universal dominion of His
+benign humanity; and, turning from the strife and blood, the slavery, and
+social and political wrongs of the past and present, anticipate the
+realization in the distant future of that state when the song of the
+angels at His advent shall be no longer a prophecy, but the jubilant
+expression of a glorious reality,--"Glory to God in the highest! Peace
+on earth, and good will to man!"
+
+For the party in this country which has assumed the name of Democracy, as
+a party, we have had, we confess, for some years past, very little
+respect. It has advocated many salutary measures, tending to equalize the
+advantages of trade and remove the evils of special legislation. But if
+it has occasionally lopped some of the branches of the evil tree of
+oppression, so far from striking at its root, it has suffered itself to
+be made the instrument of nourishing and protecting it. It has allowed
+itself to be called, by its Southern flatterers, "the natural ally of
+slavery." It has spurned the petitions of the people in behalf of
+freedom under its feet, in Congress and State legislatures. Nominally
+the advocate of universal suffrage, it has wrested from the colored
+citizens of Pennsylvania that right of citizenship which they had enjoyed
+under a Constitution framed by Franklin and Rush. Perhaps the most
+shameful exhibition of its spirit was made in the late Rhode Island
+struggle, when the free suffrage convention, solemnly calling heaven and
+earth to witness its readiness to encounter all the horrors of civil war,
+in defence of the holy principle of equal and universal suffrage,
+deliberately excluded colored Rhode Islanders from the privilege of
+voting. In the Constitutional Conventions of Michigan and Iowa, the same
+party declared all men equal, and then provided an exception to this rule
+in the case of the colored inhabitants. Its course on the question of
+excluding slavery from Texas is a matter of history, known and read of
+all.
+
+After such exhibitions of its practice, its professions have lost their
+power. The cant of democracy upon the lips of men who are living down
+its principles is, to an earnest mind, well nigh insufferable. Pertinent
+were the queries of Eliphaz the Temanite, "Shall a man utter vain
+knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind? Shall he reason with
+unprofitable talk, or with speeches wherewith he can do no good?" Enough
+of wearisome talk we have had about "progress," the rights of "the
+masses," the "dignity of labor," and "extending the area of freedom"!
+"Clear your mind of cant, sir," said Johnson to Boswell; and no better
+advice could be now given to a class of our democratic politicians. Work
+out your democracy; translate your words into deeds; away with your
+sentimental generalizations, and come down to the practical details of
+your duty as men and Christians. What avail your abstract theories, your
+hopeless virginity of democracy, sacred from the violence of meanings?
+A democracy which professes to hold, as by divine right, the doctrine of
+human equality in its special keeping, and which at the same time gives
+its direct countenance and support to the vilest system of oppression on
+which the sun of heaven looks, has no better title to the name it
+disgraces than the apostate Son of the Morning has to his old place in
+heaven. We are using strong language, for we feel strongly on this
+subject. Let those whose hypocrisy we condemn, and whose sins against
+humanity we expose, remember that they are the publishers of their own
+shame, and that they have gloried in their apostasy. There is a cutting
+severity in the answer which Sophocles puts in the mouth of Electra, in
+justification of her indignant rebuke of her wicked mother:--
+
+ "'Tis you that say it, not I
+ You do the unholy deeds which find rue words."
+
+Yet in that party calling itself democratic we rejoice to recognize true,
+generous, and thoroughly sincere men,--lovers of the word of democracy,
+and doers of it also, honest and hearty in their worship of liberty, who
+are still hoping that the antagonism which slavery presents to democracy
+will be perceived by the people, in spite of the sophistry and appeals to
+prejudice by which interested partisans have hitherto succeeded in
+deceiving them. We believe with such that the mass of the democratic
+voters of the free States are in reality friends of freedom, and hate
+slavery in all its forms; and that, with a full understanding of the
+matter, they could never consent to be sold to presidential aspirants, by
+political speculators, in lots to suit purchasers, and warranted to be
+useful in putting down free discussion, perpetuating oppression, and
+strengthening the hands of modern feudalism. They are beginning already
+to see that, under the process whereby men of easy virtue obtain offices
+from the general government, as the reward of treachery to free
+principles, the strength and vitality of the party are rapidly declining.
+To them, at least, democracy means something more than collectorships,
+consulates, and governmental contracts. For the sake of securing a
+monopoly of these to a few selfish and heartless party managers, they are
+not prepared to give up the distinctive principles of democracy, and
+substitute in their place the doctrines of the Satanic school of
+politics. They will not much longer consent to stand before the world as
+the slavery party of the United States, especially when policy and
+expediency, as well as principle, unite in recommending a position more
+congenial to the purposes of their organization, the principles of the
+fathers of their political faith, the spirit of the age, and the
+obligations of Christianity.
+
+The death-blow of slavery in this country will be given by the very power
+upon which it has hitherto relied with so much confidence. Abused and
+insulted Democracy will, erelong, shake off the loathsome burden under
+which it is now staggering. In the language of the late Theodore
+Sedgwiek, of Massachusetts, a consistent democrat of the old school:
+"Slavery, in all its forms, is anti-democratic,--an old poison left in
+the veins, fostering the worst principles of aristocracy, pride, and
+aversion to labor; the natural enemy of the poor man, the laboring man,
+the oppressed man. The question is, whether absolute dominion over any
+creature in the image of man be a wholesome power in a free country;
+whether this is a school in which to train the young republican mind;
+whether slave blood and free blood can course healthily together in the
+same body politic. Whatever may be present appearances, and by whatever
+name party may choose to call things, this question must finally be
+settled by the democracy of the country."
+
+This prediction was made eight years ago, at a time when all the facts in
+the case seemed against the probability of its truth, and when only here
+and there the voice of an indignant freeman protested against the
+exulting claims of the slave power upon the democracy as its "natural
+ally." The signs of the times now warrant the hope of its fulfilment.
+Over the hills of the East, and over the broad territory of the Empire
+State, a new spirit is moving. Democracy, like Balaam upon Zophim, has
+felt the divine _afflatus_, and is blessing that which it was summoned to
+curse.
+
+The present hopeful state of things is owing, in no slight degree, to the
+self-sacrificing exertions of a few faithful and clear-sighted men,
+foremost among whom was the late William Leggett; than whom no one has
+labored more perseveringly, or, in the end, more successfully, to bring
+the practice of American democracy into conformity with its professions.
+
+William Leggett! Let our right hand forget its cunning, when that name
+shall fail to awaken generous emotions and aspirations for a higher and
+worthier manhood! True man and true democrat; faithful always to
+Liberty, following wherever she led, whether the storm beat in his face
+or on his back; unhesitatingly counting her enemies his own, whether in
+the guise of Whig monopoly and selfish expediency, or democratic
+servility north of Mason and Dixon's line towards democratic slaveholding
+south of it; poor, yet incorruptible; dependent upon party favor, as a
+party editor, yet risking all in condemnation of that party, when in the
+wrong; a man of the people, yet never stooping to flatter the people's
+prejudices,--he is the politician, of all others, whom we would hold up
+to the admiration and imitation of the young men of our country. What
+Fletcher of Saltoun is to Scotland, and the brave spirits of the old
+Commonwealth time--
+
+ "Hands that penned
+ And tongues that uttered wisdom, better none
+ The later Sydney, Marvell, Harrington,
+ Young Vane, and others, who called Milton friend--"
+
+are to England, should Leggett be to America. His character was formed
+on these sturdy democratic models. Had he lived in their day, he would
+have scraped with old Andrew Marvell the bare blade-bone of poverty, or
+even laid his head on the block with Vane, rather than forego his
+independent thought and speech.
+
+Of the early life of William Leggett we have no very definite knowledge.
+Born in moderate circumstances; at first a woodsman in the Western
+wilderness, then a midshipman in the navy, then a denizen of New York;
+exposed to sore hardships and perilous temptations, he worked his way by
+the force of his genius to the honorable position of associate editor of
+the Evening Post, the leading democratic journal of our great commercial
+metropolis. Here he became early distinguished for his ultraism in
+democracy. His whole soul revolted against oppression. He was for
+liberty everywhere and in all things, in thought, in speech, in vote, in
+religion, in government, and in trade; he was for throwing off all
+restraints upon the right of suffrage; regarding all men as brethren, he
+looked with disapprobation upon attempts to exclude foreigners from the
+rights of citizenship; he was for entire freedom of commerce; he
+denounced a national bank; he took the lead in opposition to the monopoly
+of incorporated banks; he argued in favor of direct taxation, and
+advocated a free post-office, or a system by which letters should be
+transported, as goods and passengers now are, by private enterprise. In
+all this he was thoroughly in earnest. That he often erred through
+passion and prejudice cannot be doubted; but in no instance was he found
+turning aside from the path which he believed to be the true one, from
+merely selfish considerations. He was honest alike to himself and the
+public. Every question which was thrown up before him by the waves of
+political or moral agitation he measured by his standard of right and
+truth, and condemned or advocated it in utter disregard of prevailing
+opinions, of its effect upon his pecuniary interest, or of his standing
+with his party. The vehemence of his passions sometimes betrayed him
+into violence of language and injustice to his opponents; but he had that
+rare and manly trait which enables its possessor, whenever he becomes
+convinced of error, to make a prompt acknowledgment of the conviction.
+
+In the summer of 1834, a series of mobs, directed against the
+Abolitionists, who had organized a national society, with the city of New
+York as its central point, followed each other in rapid succession. The
+houses of the leading men in the society were sacked and pillaged;
+meeting-houses broken into and defaced; and the unoffending colored
+inhabitants of the city treated with the grossest indignity, and
+subjected, in some instances, to shameful personal outrage. It was
+emphatically a "Reign of Terror." The press of both political parties
+and of the leading religious sects, by appeals to prejudice and passion,
+and by studied misrepresentation of the designs and measures of the
+Abolitionists, fanned the flame of excitement, until the fury of demons
+possessed the misguided populace. To advocate emancipation, or defend
+those who did so, in New York, at that period, was like preaching
+democracy in Constantinople or religious toleration in Paris on the eve
+of St. Bartholomew. Law was prostrated in the dust; to be suspected of
+abolitionism was to incur a liability to an indefinite degree of insult
+and indignity; and the few and hunted friends of the slave who in those
+nights of terror laid their heads upon the pillow did so with the prayer
+of the Psalmist on their lips, "Defend me from them that rise up against
+me; save me from bloody men."
+
+At this period the New York Evening Post spoke out strongly in
+condemnation of the mob. William Leggett was not then an Abolitionist;
+he had known nothing of the proscribed class, save through the cruel
+misrepresentations of their enemies; but, true to his democratic faith,
+he maintained the right to discuss the question of slavery. The
+infection of cowardly fear, which at that time sealed the lips of
+multitudes who deplored the excesses of the mob and sympathized with its
+victims, never reached him. Boldly, indignantly, he demanded that the
+mob should be put down at once by the civil authorities. He declared the
+Abolitionists, even if guilty of all that had been charged upon them,
+fully entitled to the privileges and immunities of American citizens. He
+sternly reprimanded the board of aldermen of the city for rejecting with
+contempt the memorial of the Abolitionists to that body, explanatory of
+their principles and the measures by which they had sought to disseminate
+them. Referring to the determination, expressed by the memorialists in
+the rejected document, not to recant or relinquish any principle which
+they had adopted, but to live and die by their faith, he said: "In this,
+however mistaken, however mad, we may consider their opinions in relation
+to the blacks, what honest, independent mind can blame them? Where is
+the man so poor of soul, so white-livered, so base, that he would do less
+in relation to any important doctrine in which he religiously believed?
+Where is the man who would have his tenets drubbed into him by the clubs
+of ruffians, or hold his conscience at the dictation of a mob?"
+
+In the summer of 1835, a mob of excited citizens broke open the post-
+office at Charleston, South Carolina, and burnt in the street such papers
+and pamphlets as they judged to be "incendiary;" in other words, such as
+advocated the application of the democratic principle to the condition of
+the slaves of the South. These papers were addressed, not to the slave,
+but to the master. They contained nothing which had not been said and
+written by Southern men themselves, the Pinkneys, Jeffersons, Henrys, and
+Martins, of Maryland and Virginia. The example set at Charleston did not
+lack imitators. Every petty postmaster south of Mason and Dixon's line
+became ex officio a censor of the press. The Postmaster-General, writing
+to his subordinate at Charleston, after stating that the post-office
+department had "no legal right to exclude newspapers from the mail, or
+prohibit their carriage or delivery, on account of their character or
+tendency, real or supposed," declared that he would, nevertheless, give
+no aid, directly or indirectly, in circulating publications of an
+incendiary or inflammatory character; and assured the perjured
+functionary, who had violated his oath of office, that, while he could
+not sanction, he would not condemn his conduct. Against this virtual
+encouragement of a flagrant infringement of a constitutional right, this
+licensing of thousands of petty government officials to sit in their mail
+offices--to use the figure of Milton--cross-legged, like so many envious
+Junos, in judgment upon the daily offspring of the press, taking counsel
+of passion, prejudice, and popular excitement as to what was "incendiary"
+or "inflammatory," the Evening Post spoke in tones of manly protest.
+
+While almost all the editors of his party throughout the country either
+openly approved of the conduct of the Postmaster-General or silently
+acquiesced in it, William Leggett, who, in the absence of his colleague,
+was at that time sole editor of the Post, and who had everything to lose,
+in a worldly point of view, by assailing a leading functionary of the
+government, who was a favorite of the President and a sharer of his
+popularity, did not hesitate as to the course which consistency and duty
+required at his hands. He took his stand for unpopular truth, at a time
+when a different course on his part could not have failed to secure him
+the favor and patronage of his party. In the great struggle with the
+Bank of the United States, his services had not been unappreciated by the
+President and his friends. Without directly approving the course of the
+administration on the question of the rights of the Abolitionists, by
+remaining silent in respect to it, he might have avoided all suspicion of
+mental and moral independence incompatible with party allegiance. The
+impracticable honesty of Leggett, never bending from the erectness of
+truth for the sake of that "thrift which follows fawning," dictated a
+most severe and scorching review of the letter of the Postmaster-General.
+"More monstrous, more detestable doctrines we have never heard
+promulgated," he exclaimed in one of his leading editorials. "With what
+face, after this, can the Postmaster-General punish a postmaster for any
+exercise of the fearfully dangerous power of stopping and destroying any
+portion of the mails?" "The Abolitionists do not deserve to be placed on
+the same footing with a foreign enemy, nor their publications as the
+secret despatches of a spy. They are American citizens, in the exercise
+of their undoubted right of citizenship; and however erroneous their
+views, however fanatic their conduct, while they act within the limits of
+the law, what official functionary, be he merely a subordinate or the
+head of the post-office department, shall dare to abridge them of their
+rights as citizens, and deny them those facilities of intercourse which
+were instituted for the equal accommodation of all? If the American
+people will submit to this, let us expunge all written codes, and resolve
+society into its original elements, where the might of the strong is
+better than the right of the weak."
+
+A few days after the publication of this manly rebuke, he wrote an
+indignantly sarcastic article upon the mobs which were at this time
+everywhere summoned to "put down the Abolitionists." The next day, the
+4th of the ninth month, 1835, he received a copy of the Address of the
+American Anti-Slavery Society to the public, containing a full and
+explicit avowal of all the principles and designs of the association. He
+gave it a candid perusal, weighed its arguments, compared its doctrines
+with those at the foundation of his own political faith, and rose up from
+its examination an Abolitionist. He saw that he himself, misled by the
+popular clamor, had done injustice to benevolent and self-sacrificing
+men; and he took the earliest occasion, in an article of great power and
+eloquence, to make the amplest atonement. He declared his entire
+concurrence with the views of the American Anti-Slavery Society, with the
+single exception of a doubt which rested, on his mind as to the abolition
+of slavery in the District of Columbia. We quote from the concluding
+paragraph of this article:--
+
+"We assert without hesitation, that, if we possessed the right, we should
+not scruple to exercise it for the speedy annihilation of servitude and
+chains. The impression made in boyhood by the glorious exclamation of
+Cato,
+
+ "'A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty
+ Is worth a whole eternity of bondage!'
+
+has been worn deeper, not effaced, by time; and we eagerly and ardently
+trust that the day will yet arrive when the clank of the bondman's
+fetters will form no part of the multitudinous sounds which our country
+sends up to Heaven, mingling, as it were, into a song of praise for our
+national prosperity. We yearn with strong desire for the day when
+freedom shall no longer wave
+
+ "Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves.'"
+
+A few days after, in reply to the assaults made upon him from all
+quarters, he calmly and firmly reiterated his determination to maintain
+the right of free discussion of the subject of slavery.
+
+"The course we are pursuing," said he, "is one which we entered upon after
+mature deliberation, and we are not to be turned from it by a species of
+opposition, the inefficacy of which we have seen displayed in so many
+former instances. It is Philip Van Artevelde who says:--
+
+ "'All my life long,
+ I have beheld with most respect the man
+ Who knew himself, and knew the ways before him;
+ And from among them chose considerately,
+ With a clear foresight, not a blindfold courage;
+ And, having chosen, with a steadfast mind.
+ Pursued his purpose.'
+
+"This is the sort of character we emulate. If to believe slavery a
+deplorable evil and curse, in whatever light it is viewed; if to yearn
+for the day which shall break the fetters of three millions of human
+beings, and restore to them their birthright of equal freedom; if to be
+willing, in season and out of season, to do all in our power to promote
+so desirable a result, by all means not inconsistent with higher duty: if
+these sentiments constitute us Abolitionists, then are we such, and glory
+in the name."
+
+"The senseless cry of 'Abolitionist' shall never deter us, nor the more
+senseless attempt of puny prints to read us out of the democratic party.
+The often-quoted and beautiful saying of the Latin historian, Homo sum:
+humani nihil a me alienum puto, we apply to the poor slave as well as his
+master, and shall endeavor to fulfil towards both the obligations of an
+equal humanity."
+
+The generation which, since the period of which we are speaking, have
+risen into active life can have but a faint conception of the boldness of
+this movement on the part of William Leggett. To be an Abolitionist then
+was to abandon all hope of political preferment or party favor; to be
+marked and branded as a social outlaw, under good society's interdict of
+food and fire; to hold property, liberty, and life itself at the mercy of
+lawless mobs. All this William Leggett clearly saw. He knew how rugged
+and thorny was the path upon which, impelled by his love of truth and the
+obligations of humanity, he was entering. From hunted and proscribed
+Abolitionists and oppressed and spirit-broken colored men, the Pariahs of
+American democracy, he could alone expect sympathy. The Whig journals,
+with a few honorable exceptions, exulted over what they regarded as the
+fall of a formidable opponent; and after painting his abolitionism in the
+most hideous colors, held him up to their Southern allies as a specimen
+of the radical disorganizers and democratic levellers of the North. His
+own party, in consequence, made haste to proscribe him. Government
+advertising was promptly withdrawn from his paper. The official journals
+of Washington and Albany read him out of the pale of democracy. Father
+Ritchie scolded and threatened. The democratic committee issued its bull
+against him from Tammany Hall. The resolutions of that committee were
+laid before him when he was sinking under a severe illness. Rallying his
+energies, he dictated from his sick-bed an answer marked by all his
+accustomed vigor and boldness. Its tone was calm, manly, self-relying;
+the language of one who, having planted his feet hard down on the rock of
+principle, stood there like Luther at Worms, because he "could not
+otherwise." Exhausted nature sunk under the effort. A weary sickness of
+nearly a year's duration followed. In this sore affliction, deserted as
+he was by most of his old political friends, we have reason to know that
+he was cheered by the gratitude of those in whose behalf he had well-nigh
+made a martyr's sacrifice; and that from the humble hearths of his poor
+colored fellow-citizens fervent prayers went up for his restoration.
+
+His work was not yet done. Purified by trial, he was to stand forth once
+more in vindication of the truths of freedom. As soon as his health was
+sufficiently reestablished, he commenced the publication of an
+independent political and literary journal, under the expressive title of
+The Plaindealer. In his first number he stated, that, claiming the right
+of absolute freedom of discussion, he should exercise it with no other
+limitations than those of his own judgment. A poor man, he admitted that
+he established the paper in the expectation of deriving from it a
+livelihood, but that even for that object he could not trim its sails to
+suit the varying breeze of popular prejudice. "If," said he, "a paper
+which makes the Right, and not the Expedient, its cardinal object, will
+not yield its conductor a support, there are honest vocations that will,
+and better the humblest of them than to be seated at the head of an
+influential press, if its influence is not exerted to promote the cause
+of truth." He was true to his promise. The free soul of a free, strong
+man spoke out in his paper. How refreshing was it, after listening to
+the inanities, the dull, witless vulgarity, the wearisome commonplace of
+journalists, who had no higher aim than to echo, with parrot-like
+exactness, current prejudices and falsehoods, to turn to the great and
+generous thoughts, the chaste and vigorous diction, of the Plaindealer!
+No man ever had a clearer idea of the duties and responsibilities of a
+conductor of the public press than William Leggett, and few have ever
+combined so many of the qualifications for their perfect discharge: a
+nice sense of justice, a warm benevolence, inflexible truth, honesty
+defying temptation, a mind stored with learning, and having at command
+the treasures of the best thoughts of the best authors. As was said of
+Fletcher of Saltoun, he was "a gentleman steady in his principles; of
+nice honor, abundance of learning; bold as a lion; a sure friend; a man
+who would lose his life to serve his country, and would not do a base
+thing to save it."
+
+He had his faults: his positive convictions sometimes took the shape
+of a proud and obstinate dogmatism; he who could so well appeal to the
+judgment and the reason of his readers too often only roused their
+passions by invective and vehement declamation. Moderate men were
+startled and pained by the fierce energy of his language; and he not
+unfrequently made implacable enemies of opponents whom he might have
+conciliated and won over by mild expostulation and patient explanation.
+It must be urged in extenuation, that, as the champion of unpopular
+truths, he was assailed unfairly on all sides, and indecently
+misrepresented and calumniated to a degree, as his friend Sedgwick justly
+remarks, unprecedented even in the annals of the American press; and that
+his errors in this respect were, in the main, errors of retaliation.
+
+In the Plaindealer, in common with the leading moral and political
+subjects of the day, that of slavery was freely discussed in all its
+bearings. It is difficult, in a single extract, to convey an adequate
+idea of the character of the editorial columns of a paper, where terse
+and concentrated irony and sarcasm alternate with eloquent appeal and
+diffuse commentary and labored argument. We can only offer at random the
+following passages from a long review of a speech of John C. Calhoun, in
+which that extraordinary man, whose giant intellect has been shut out of
+its appropriate field of exercise by the very slavery of which he is the
+champion, undertook to maintain, in reply to a Virginia senator, that
+chattel slavery was not an evil, but "a great good."
+
+"We have Mr. Calhoun's own warrant for attacking his position with all
+the fervor which a high sense of duty can give, for we do hold, from the
+bottom of our soul, that slavery is an evil,--a deep, detestable,
+damnable evil; evil in all its aspects to the blacks, and a greater evil
+to the whites; an evil moral, social, and political; an evil which shows
+itself in the languishing condition of agriculture where it exists, in
+paralyzed commerce, and in the prostration of the mechanic arts; an evil
+which stares you in the face from uncultivated fields, and howls in your
+ears through tangled swamps and morasses. Slavery is such an evil that
+it withers what it touches. Where it is once securely established the
+land becomes desolate, as the tree inevitably perishes which the sea-hawk
+chooses for its nest; while freedom, on the contrary, flourishes like the
+tannen, 'on the loftiest and least sheltered rocks,' and clothes with its
+refreshing verdure what, without it, would frown in naked and incurable
+sterility.
+
+"If any one desires an illustration of the opposite influences of slavery
+and freedom, let him look at the two sister States of Kentucky and Ohio.
+Alike in soil and climate, and divided only by a river, whose translucent
+waters reveal, through nearly the whole breadth, the sandy bottom over
+which they sparkle, how different are they in all the respects over which
+man has control! On the one hand the air is vocal with the mingled
+tumult of a vast and prosperous population. Every hillside smiles with
+an abundant harvest, every valley shelters a thriving village, the click
+of a busy mill drowns the prattle of every rivulet, and all the
+multitudinous sounds of business denote happy activity in every branch
+of social occupation.
+
+"This is the State which, but a few years ago, slept in the unbroken
+solitude of nature. The forest spread an interminable canopy of shade
+over the dark soil on which the fat and useless vegetation rotted at
+ease, and through the dusky vistas of the wood only savage beasts and
+more savage men prowled in quest of prey. The whole land now blossoms
+like a garden. The tall and interlacing trees have unlocked their hold,
+and bowed before the woodman's axe. The soil is disencumbered of the
+mossy trunks which had reposed upon it for ages. The rivers flash in the
+sunlight, and the fields smile with waving harvests. This is Ohio, and
+this is what freedom has done for it.
+
+"Now, let us turn to Kentucky, and note the opposite influences of
+slavery. A narrow and unfrequented path through the close and sultry
+canebrake conducts us to a wretched hovel. It stands in the midst of an
+unweeded field, whose dilapidated enclosure scarcely protects it from the
+lowing and hungry kine. Children half clad and squalid, and destitute of
+the buoyancy natural to their age, lounge in the sunshine, while their
+parent saunters apart, to watch his languid slaves drive the ill-
+appointed team afield. This is not a fancy picture. It is a true copy
+of one of the features which make up the aspect 'of the State, and of
+every State where the moral leprosy of slavery covers the people with its
+noisome scales; a deadening lethargy benumbs the limbs of the body
+politic; a stupor settles on the arts of life; agriculture reluctantly
+drags the plough and harrow to the field, only when scourged by
+necessity; the axe drops from the woodman's nerveless hand the moment his
+fire is scantily supplied with fuel; and the fen, undrained, sends up its
+noxious exhalations, to rack with cramps and agues the frame already too
+much enervated by a moral epidemic to creep beyond the sphere of the
+material miasm."
+
+The Plaindealer was uniformly conducted with eminent ability; but its
+editor was too far in advance of his contemporaries to find general
+acceptance, or even toleration. In addition to pecuniary embarrassments,
+his health once more failed, and in the autumn of 1837 he was compelled
+to suspend the publication of his paper. One of the last articles which
+he wrote for it shows the extent to which he was sometimes carried by the
+intensity and depth of his abhorrence of oppression, and the fervency of
+his adoration of liberty. Speaking of the liability of being called upon
+to aid the master in the subjection of revolted slaves, and in replacing
+their cast-off fetters, he thus expresses himself: "Would we comply with
+such a requisition? No! Rather would we see our right arm lopped from
+our body, and the mutilated trunk itself gored with mortal wounds, than
+raise a finger in opposition to men struggling in the holy cause of
+freedom. The obligations of citizenship are strong, but those of
+justice, humanity, and religion, stronger. We earnestly trust that the
+great contest of opinion which is now going on in this country may
+terminate in the enfranchisement of the slaves, without recourse to the
+strife of blood; but should the oppressed bondmen, impatient of the tardy
+progress of truth, urged only in discussion, attempt to burst their
+chains by a more violent and shorter process, they should never encounter
+our arm nor hear our voice in the ranks of their opponents. We should
+stand a sad spectator of the conflict; and, whatever commiseration we
+might feel for the discomfiture of the oppressors, we should pray that
+the battle might end in giving freedom to the oppressed."
+
+With the Plain dealer, his connection with the public, in a great
+measure, ceased. His steady and intimate friend, personal as well as
+political, Theodore Sedgwick, Jun., a gentleman who has, on many
+occasions, proved himself worthy of his liberty-loving ancestry, thus
+speaks of him in his private life at this period: "Amid the reverses of
+fortune, harassed by pecuniary embarrassments, during the tortures of a
+disease which tore away his life piecemeal, hee ever maintained the same
+manly and unaltered front, the same cheerfulness of disposition, the same
+dignity of conduct. No humiliating solicitation, no weak complaint,
+escaped him." At the election in the fall of 1838, the noble-spirited
+democrat was not wholly forgotten. A strenuous effort, which was well-
+nigh successful, was made to secure his nomination as a candidate for
+Congress. It was at this juncture that he wrote to a friend in the city,
+from his residence at New Rochelle, one of the noblest letters ever
+penned by a candidate for popular favor. The following extracts will
+show how a true man can meet the temptations of political life:--
+
+"What I am most afraid of is, that some of my friends, in their too
+earnest zeal, will place me in a false position on the subject of
+slavery. I am an Abolitionist. I hate slavery in all its forms,
+degrees, and influences; and I deem myself bound, by the highest moral
+and political obligations, not to let that sentiment of hate lie dormant
+and smouldering in my own breast, but to give it free vent, and let it
+blaze forth, that it may kindle equal ardor through the whole sphere of
+my influence. I would not have this fact disguised or mystified for any
+office the people have it in their power to give. Rather, a thousand
+times rather, would I again meet the denunciations of Tammany Hall, and
+be stigmatized with all the foul epithets with which the anti-abolition
+vocabulary abounds, than recall or deny one tittle of my creed.
+Abolition is, in my sense, a necessary and a glorious part of democracy;
+and I hold the right and duty to discuss the subject of slavery, and to
+expose its hideous evils in all their bearings,--moral, social, and
+political,--as of infinitely higher importance than to carry fifty sub-
+treasury bills. That I should discharge this duty temperately; that I
+should not let it come in collision with other duties; that I should not
+let my hatred of slavery transcend the express obligations of the
+Constitution, or violate its clear spirit, I hope and trust you think
+sufficiently well of me to believe. But what I fear is, (not from you,
+however,) that some of my advocates and champions will seek to recommend
+me to popular support by representing me as not an Abolitionist, which is
+false. All that I have written gives the lie to it. All I shall write
+will give the lie to it.
+
+"And here, let me add, (apart from any consideration already adverted
+to,) that, as a matter of mere policy, I would not, if I could, have my
+name disjoined from abolitionism. To be an Abolitionist now is to be an
+incendiary; as, three years ago, to be an anti-monopolist was to be a
+leveller and a Jack Cade. See what three short years have done in
+effecting the anti-monopoly reform; and depend upon it that the next
+three years, or, if not three, say three times three, if you please, will
+work a greater revolution on the slavery question. The stream of public
+opinion now sets against us; but it is about to turn, and the
+regurgitation will be tremendous. Proud in that day may well be the man
+who can float in triumph on the first refluent wave, swept onward by the
+deluge which he himself, in advance of his fellows, has largely shared in
+occasioning. Such be my fate; and, living or dead, it will, in some
+measure, be mine! I have written my name in ineffaceable letters on the
+abolition record; and whether the reward ultimately come in the shape of
+honors to the living man, or a tribute to the memory of a departed one, I
+would not forfeit my right to it for as many offices as has in his gift,
+if each of them was greater than his own."
+
+After mentioning that he had understood that some of his friends had
+endeavored to propitiate popular prejudice by representing him as no
+Abolitionist, he says:--
+
+"Keep them, for God's sake, from committing any such fooleries for the
+sake of getting me into Congress. Let others twist themselves into what
+shapes they please, to gratify the present taste of the people; as for
+me, I am not formed of such pliant materials, and choose to retain,
+undisturbed, the image of my God! I do not wish to cheat the people of
+their votes. I would not get their support, any more than their money,
+under false pretences. I am what I am; and if that does not suit them,
+I am content to stay at home."
+
+God be praised for affording us, even in these latter days, the sight of
+an honest man! Amidst the heartlessness, the double-dealing, the
+evasions, the prevarications, the shameful treachery and falsehood, of
+political men of both parties, in respect to the question of slavery, how
+refreshing is it to listen to words like these! They renew our failing
+faith in human nature. They reprove our weak misgivings. We rise up
+from their perusal stronger and healthier. With something of the spirit
+which dictated them, we renew our vows to freedom, and, with manlier
+energy, gird up our souls for the stern struggle before us.
+
+As might have been expected, and as he himself predicted, the efforts of
+his friends to procure his nomination failed; but the same generous
+appreciators of his rare worth were soon after more successful in their
+exertions in his behalf. He received from President Van Buren the
+appointment of the mission to Guatemala,--an appointment which, in
+addition to honorable employment in the service of his country, promised
+him the advantages of a sea voyage and a change of climate, for the
+restoration of his health. The course of Martin Van Buren on the subject
+of slavery in the District of Columbia forms, in the estimation of many
+of his best friends, by no means the most creditable portion of his
+political history; but it certainly argues well for his magnanimity and
+freedom from merely personal resentment that he gave this appointment to
+the man who had animadverted upon that course with the greatest freedom,
+and whose rebuke of the veto pledge, severe in its truth and justice,
+formed the only discord in the paean of partisan flattery which greeted
+his inaugural. But, however well intended, it came too late. In the
+midst of the congratulations of his friends on the brightening prospect
+before him, the still hopeful and vigorous spirit of William Leggett was
+summoned away by death. Universal regret was awakened. Admiration of
+his intellectual power, and that generous and full appreciation of his
+high moral worth which had been in too many instances withheld from the
+living man by party policy and prejudice, were now freely accorded to the
+dead. The presses of both political parties vied with each other in
+expressions of sorrow at the loss of a great and true man. The
+Democracy, through all its organs, hastened to canonize him as one of the
+saints of its calendar. The general committee, in New York, expunged
+their resolutions of censure. The Democratic Review, at that period the
+most respectable mouthpiece of the democratic party, made him the subject
+of exalted eulogy. His early friend and co-editor, William Cullen
+Bryant, laid upon his grave the following tribute, alike beautiful and
+true:--
+
+ "The earth may ring, from shore to shore,
+ With echoes of a glorious name,
+ But he whose loss our tears deplore
+ Has left behind him more than fame.
+
+ "For when the death-frost came to lie
+ On Leggett's warm and mighty heart,
+ And quenched his bold and friendly eye,
+ His spirit did not all depart.
+
+ "The words of fire that from his pen
+ He flung upon the lucid page
+ Still move, still shake the hearts of men,
+ Amid a cold and coward age.
+
+ "His love of Truth, too warm, too strong,
+ For Hope or Fear to chain or chill,
+ His hate of tyranny and wrong,
+ Burn in the breasts they kindled still."
+
+So lived and died William Leggett. What a rebuke of party perfidy, of
+political meanness, of the common arts and stratagems of demagogues,
+comes up from his grave! How the cheek of mercenary selfishness crimsons
+at the thought of his incorruptible integrity! How heartless and hollow
+pretenders, who offer lip service to freedom, while they give their hands
+to whatever work their slaveholding managers may assign them; who sit in
+chains round the crib of governmental patronage, putting on the spaniel,
+and putting off the man, and making their whole lives a miserable lie,
+shrink back from a contrast with the proud and austere dignity of his
+character! What a comment on their own condition is the memory of a man
+who could calmly endure the loss of party favor, the reproaches of his
+friends, the malignant assaults of his enemies, and the fretting evils of
+poverty, in the hope of bequeathing, like the dying testator of Ford,
+
+ "A fame by scandal untouched,
+ To Memory and Time's old daughter, Truth."
+
+The praises which such men are now constrained to bestow upon him are
+their own condemnation. Every stone which they pile upon his grave is
+written over with the record of their hypocrisy.
+
+We have written rather for the living than the dead. As one of that
+proscribed and hunted band of Abolitionists, whose rights were so bravely
+defended by William Leggett, we should, indeed, be wanting in ordinary
+gratitude not to do honor to his memory; but we have been actuated at the
+present time mainly by a hope that the character, the lineaments of which
+we have so imperfectly sketched, may awaken a generous emulation in the
+hearts of the young democracy of our country. Democracy such as William
+Leggett believed and practised, democracy in its full and all-
+comprehensive significance, is destined to be the settled political faith
+of this republic. Because the despotism of slavery has usurped its name,
+and offered the strange incense of human tears and blood on its profaned
+altars, shall we, therefore, abandon the only political faith which
+coincides with the Gospel of Jesus, and meets the aspirations and wants
+of humanity? No. The duty of the present generation in the United
+States is to reduce this faith to practice, to make the beautiful ideal a
+fact.
+
+"Every American," says Leggett, "who in any way countenances slavery is
+derelict to his duty, as a Christian, a patriot, a man; and every one
+does countenance and authorize it who suffers any opportunity of
+expressing his deep abhorrence of its manifold abominations to pass
+unimproved." The whole world has an interest in this matter. The
+influence of our democratic despotism is exerted against the liberties of
+Europe. Political reformers in the Old World, who have testified to
+their love of freedom by serious sacrifices, hold but one language on
+this point. They tell us that American slavery furnishes kings and
+aristocracies with their most potent arguments; that it is a perpetual
+drag on the wheel of political progress.
+
+We have before us, at this time, a letter from Seidensticker, one of the
+leaders of the patriotic movement in behalf of German liberty in 1831.
+It was written from the prison of Celle, where he had been confined for
+eight years. The writer expresses his indignant astonishment at the
+speeches of John C. Calhoun, and others in Congress, on the slavery
+question, and deplores the disastrous influence of our great
+inconsistency upon the cause of freedom throughout the world,--an
+influence which paralyzes the hands of the patriotic reformer, while it
+strengthens those of his oppressor, and deepens around the living martyrs
+and confessors of European democracy the cold shadow of their prisons.
+
+Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham, the President of the British Free Suffrage
+Union, and whose philanthropy and democracy have been vouched for by the
+Democratic Review in this country, has the following passage in an
+address to the citizens of the United States: "Although an admirer of the
+institutions of your country, and deeply lamenting the evils of my own
+government, I find it difficult to reply to those who are opposed to any
+extension of the political rights of Englishmen, when they point to
+America, and say that where all have a control over the legislation but
+those who are guilty of a dark skin, slavery and the slave trade remain,
+not only unmitigated, but continue to extend; and that while there is an
+onward movement in favor of its extinction, not only in England and
+France, but in Cuba and Brazil, American legislators cling to this
+enormous evil, without attempting to relax or mitigate its horrors."
+
+How long shall such appeals, from such sources, be wasted upon us? Shall
+our baleful example enslave the world? Shall the tree of democracy,
+which our fathers intended for "the healing of the nations," be to them
+like the fabled upas, blighting all around it?
+
+The men of the North, the pioneers of the free West, and the non-
+slaveholders of the South must answer these questions. It is for them to
+say whether the present wellnigh intolerable evil shall continue to
+increase its boundaries, and strengthen its hold upon the government, the
+political parties, and the religious sects of our country. Interest and
+honor, present possession and future hope, the memory of fathers, the
+prospects of children, gratitude, affection, the still call of the dead,
+the cry of oppressed nations looking hitherward for the result of all
+their hopes, the voice of God in the soul, in revelation, and in His
+providence, all appeal to them for a speedy and righteous decision. At
+this moment, on the floor of Congress, Democracy and Slavery have met in
+a death-grapple. The South stands firm; it allows no party division on
+the slave question. One of its members has declared that "the slave
+States have no traitors." Can the same be said of the free? Now, as in
+the time of the fatal Missouri Compromise, there are, it is to be feared,
+political peddlers among our representatives, whose souls are in the
+market, and whose consciences are vendible commodities. Through their
+means, the slave power may gain a temporary triumph; but may not the very
+baseness of the treachery arouse the Northern heart? By driving the free
+States to the wall, may it not compel them to turn and take an aggressive
+attitude, clasp hands over the altar of their common freedom, and swear
+eternal hostility to slavery?
+
+Be the issue of the present contest what it may, those who are faithful
+to freedom should allow no temporary reverse to shake their confidence in
+the ultimate triumph of the right. The slave will be free. Democracy in
+America will yet be a glorious reality; and when the topstone of that
+temple of freedom which our fathers left unfinished shall be brought
+forth with shoutings and cries of grace unto it, when our now drooping-
+Liberty lifts up her head and prospers, happy will be he who can say,
+with John Milton, "Among those who have something more than wished her
+welfare, I too have my charter and freehold of rejoicing to me and my
+heirs."
+
+
+
+
+NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.
+
+ "And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
+ Has vanished from his kindly hearth."
+
+So, in one of the sweetest and most pathetic of his poems touching the
+loss of his literary friends, sang Wordsworth. We well remember with
+what freshness and vividness these simple lines came before us, on
+hearing, last autumn, of the death of the warm-hearted and gifted friend
+whose name heads this article; for there was much in his character and
+genius to remind us of the gentle author of Elia. He had the latter's
+genial humor and quaintness; his nice and delicate perception of the
+beautiful and poetic; his happy, easy diction, not the result, as in the
+case of that of the English essayist, of slow and careful elaboration,
+but the natural, spontaneous language in which his conceptions at once
+embodied themselves, apparently without any consciousness of effort. As
+Mark Antony talked, he wrote, "right on," telling his readers often what
+"they themselves did know," yet imparting to the simplest commonplaces of
+life interest and significance, and throwing a golden haze of poetry over
+the rough and thorny pathways of every-day duty. Like Lamb, he loved his
+friends without stint or limit. The "old familiar faces" haunted him.
+Lamb loved the streets and lanes of London--the places where he oftenest
+came in contact with the warm, genial heart of humanity--better than the
+country. Rogers loved the wild and lonely hills and valleys of New
+Hampshire none the less that he was fully alive to the enjoyments of
+society, and could enter with the heartiest sympathy into all the joys
+and sorrows of his friends and neighbors.
+
+In another point of view, he was not unlike Elia. He had the same love
+of home, and home friends, and familiar objects; the same fondness for
+common sights and sounds; the same dread of change; the same shrinking
+from the unknown and the dark. Like him, he clung with a child's love to
+the living present, and recoiled from a contemplation of the great change
+which awaits us. Like him, he was content with the goodly green earth
+and human countenances, and would fain set up his tabernacle here. He
+had less of what might be termed self-indulgence in this feeling than
+Lamb. He had higher views; he loved this world not only for its own
+sake, but for the opportunities it afforded of doing good. Like the
+Persian seer, he beheld the legions of Ormuzd and Ahriman, of Light and
+Darkness, contending for mastery over the earth, as the sunshine and
+shadow of a gusty, half-cloudy day struggled on the green slopes of his
+native mountains; and, mingled with the bright host, he would fain have
+fought on until its banners waved in eternal sunshine over the last
+hiding-place of darkness. He entered into the work of reform with the
+enthusiasm and chivalry of a knight of the crusades. He had faith in
+human progress,--in the ultimate triumph of the good; millennial lights
+beaconed up all along his horizon. In the philanthropic movements of the
+day; in the efforts to remove the evils of slavery, war, intemperance,
+and sanguinary laws; in the humane and generous spirit of much of our
+modern poetry and literature; in the growing demand of the religious
+community, of all sects, for the preaching of the gospel of love and
+humanity, he heard the low and tremulous prelude of the great anthem of
+universal harmony. "The world," said he, in a notice of the music of the
+Hutchinson family, "is out of tune now. But it will be tuned again, and
+all will become harmony." In this faith he lived and acted; working, not
+always, as it seemed to some of his friends, wisely, but bravely,
+truthfully, earnestly, cheering on his fellow-laborers, and imparting to
+the dullest and most earthward looking of them something of his own zeal
+and loftiness of purpose.
+
+"Who was he?" does the reader ask? Naturally enough, too, for his name
+has never found its way into fashionable reviews; it has never been
+associated with tale, or essay, or poem, to our knowledge. Our friend
+Griswold, who, like another Noah, has launched some hundreds of American
+poets and prose writers on the tide of immortality in his two huge arks
+of rhyme and reason, has either overlooked his name, or deemed it
+unworthy of preservation. Then, too, he was known mainly as the editor
+of a proscribed and everywhere-spoken-against anti-slavery paper. It had
+few readers of literary taste and discrimination; plain, earnest men and
+women, intent only upon the thought itself, and caring little for the
+clothing of it, loved the _Herald of Freedom_ for its honestness and
+earnestness, and its bold rebukes of the wrong, its all-surrendering
+homage to what its editor believed to be right. But the literary world
+of authors and critics saw and heard little or nothing of him or his
+writings. "I once had a bit of scholar-craft," he says of himself on one
+occasion, "and had I attempted it in some pitiful sectarian or party or
+literary sheet, I should have stood a chance to get quoted into the
+periodicals. Now, who dares quote from the _Herald of Freedom_?" He
+wrote for humanity, as his biographer justly says, not for fame. "He
+wrote because he had something to say, and true to nature, for to him
+nature was truth; he spoke right on, with the artlessness and simplicity
+of a child."
+
+He was born in Plymouth, New Hampshire, in the sixth month of 1794,--
+a lineal descendant from John Rogers, of martyr-memory. Educated at
+Dartmouth College, he studied law with Hon. Richard Fletcher, of
+Salisbury, New Hampshire, now of Boston, and commenced the practice of it
+in 1819, in his native village. He was diligent and successful in his
+profession, although seldom known as a pleader. About the year 1833, he
+became interested in the anti-slavery movement. His was one of the few
+voices of encouragement and sympathy which greeted the author of this
+sketch on the publication of a pamphlet in favor of immediate
+emancipation. He gave us a kind word of approval, and invited us to his
+mountain home, on the banks of the Pemigewasset,--an invitation which,
+two years afterwards, we accepted. In the early autumn, in company with
+George Thompson, (the eloquent reformer, who has since been elected a
+member of the British Parliament from the Tower Hamlets,) we drove up the
+beautiful valley of the White Mountain tributary of the Merrimac, and,
+just as a glorious sunset was steeping river, valley, and mountain in its
+hues of heaven, were welcomed to the pleasant home and family circle of
+our friend Rogers. We spent two delightful evenings with him. His
+cordiality, his warm-hearted sympathy in our object, his keen wit,
+inimitable humor, and childlike and simple mirthfulness, his full
+appreciation of the beautiful in art and nature, impressed us with the
+conviction that we were the guests of no ordinary man; that we were
+communing with unmistakable genius, such an one as might have added to
+the wit and eloquence of Ben Jonson's famous club at the _Mermaid_, or
+that which Lamb and Coleridge and Southey frequented at the _Salutation
+and Cat_, of Smithfield. "The most brilliant man I have met in America!"
+said George Thompson, as we left the hospitable door of our friend.
+
+In 1838, he gave up his law practice, left his fine outlook at Plymouth
+upon the mountains of the North, Moosehillock and the Haystacks, and took
+up his residence at Concord, for the purpose of editing the _Herald of
+Freedom_, an anti-slavery paper which had been started some three or four
+years before. John Pierpont, than whom there could not be a more
+competent witness, in his brief and beautiful sketch of the life and
+writings of Rogers, does not overestimate the ability with which the
+Herald was conducted, when he says of its editor: "As a newspaper writer,
+we think him unequalled by any living man; and in the general strength,
+clearness, and quickness of his intellect, we think all who knew him well
+will agree with us that he was not excelled by any editor in the
+country." He was not a profound reasoner: his imagination and brilliant
+fancy played the wildest tricks with his logic; yet, considering the way
+by which he reached them, it is remarkable that his conclusions were so
+often correct. The tendency of his mind was to extremes. A zealous
+Calvinistic church-member, he became an equally zealous opponent of
+churches and priests; a warm politician, he became an ultra non-resistant
+and no-government man. In all this, his sincerity was manifest. If, in
+the indulgence of his remarkable powers of sarcasm, in the free antics of
+a humorous fancy, upon whose graceful neck he had flung loose the reins,
+he sometimes did injustice to individuals, and touched, in irreverent
+sport, the hem of sacred garments, it had the excuse, at least, of a
+generous and honest motive. If he sometimes exaggerated, those who best,
+knew him can testify that he "set down naught in malice."
+
+We have before us a printed collection of his writings,--hasty
+editorials, flung off without care or revision, the offspring of sudden
+impulse frequently; always free, artless, unstudied; the language
+transparent as air, exactly expressing the thought. He loved the common,
+simple dialect of the people,--the "beautiful strong old Saxon,--the talk
+words." He had an especial dislike of learned and "dictionary words."
+He used to recommend Cobbett's Works to "every young man and woman who
+has been hurt in his or her talk and writing by going to school."
+
+Our limits will not admit of such extracts from the Collection of his
+writings as would convey to our readers an adequate idea of his thought
+and manner. His descriptions of natural scenery glow with life. One can
+almost see the sunset light flooding the Franconia Notch, and glorifying
+the peaks of Moosehillock, and hear the murmur of the west wind in the
+pines, and the light, liquid voice of Pemigewasset sounding up from its
+rocky channel, through its green hem of maples, while reading them. We
+give a brief extract from an editorial account of an autumnal trip to
+Vermont:
+
+"We have recently journeyed through a portion of this, free State; and it
+is not all imagination in us that sees, in its bold scenery, its
+uninfected inland position, its mountainous but fertile and verdant
+surface, the secret of the noble predisposition of its people. They are
+located for freedom. Liberty's home is on their Green Mountains. Their
+farmer republic nowhere touches the ocean, the highway of the world's
+crimes, as well as its nations. It has no seaport for the importation of
+slavery, or the exportation of its own highland republicanism. Should
+slavery ever prevail over this nation, to its utter subjugation, the last
+lingering footsteps of retiring Liberty will be seen, not, as Daniel
+Webster said, in the proud old Commonwealth of Massachusetts, about
+Bunker Hill and Faneuil Hall; but she will be found wailing, like
+Jephthah's daughter, among the 'hollows' and along the sides of the Green
+Mountains.
+
+"Vermont shows gloriously at this autumn season. Frost has gently laid
+hands on her exuberant vegetation, tinging her rock-maple woods without
+abating the deep verdure of her herbage. Everywhere along her peopled
+hollows and her bold hillslopes and summits the earth is alive with
+green, while her endless hard-wood forests are uniformed with all the
+hues of early fall, richer than the regimentals of the kings that
+glittered in the train of Napoleon on the confines of Poland, when he
+lingered there, on the last outposts of summer, before plunging into the
+snow-drifts of the North; more gorgeous than the array of Saladin's life-
+guard in the wars of the Crusaders, or of 'Solomon in all his glory,'
+decked in, all colors and hues, but still the hues of life. Vegetation
+touched, but not dead, or, if killed, not bereft yet of 'signs of life.'
+'Decay's effacing fingers' had not yet 'swept the hills' 'where beauty
+lingers.' All looked fresh as growing foliage. Vermont frosts don't seem
+to be 'killing frosts.' They only change aspects of beauty. The mountain
+pastures, verdant to the peaks, and over the peaks of the high, steep
+hills, were covered with the amplest feed, and clothed with countless
+sheep; the hay-fields heavy with second crop, in some partly cut and
+abandoned, as if in very weariness and satiety, blooming with
+honeysuckle, contrasting strangely with the colors on the woods; the fat
+cattle and the long-tailed colts and close-built Morgans wallowing in it
+up to the eyes, or the cattle down to rest, with full bellies, by ten in
+the morning. Fine but narrow roads wound along among the hills, free
+almost entirely of stone, and so smooth as to be safe for the most rapid
+driving, made of their rich, dark, powder-looking soil. Beautiful
+villages or scattered settlements breaking upon the delighted view, on
+the meandering way, making the ride a continued scene of excitement and
+admiration. The air fresh, free, and wholesome; the road almost dead
+level for miles and miles, among mountains that lay over the land like
+the great swells of the sea, and looking in the prospect as though there
+could be no passage."
+
+To this autumnal limning, the following spring picture may be a fitting
+accompaniment:--
+
+"At last Spring is here in full flush. Winter held on tenaciously and
+mercilessly, but it has let go. The great sun is high on his northern
+journey, and the vegetation, and the bird-singing, and the loud frog-
+chorus, the tree budding and blowing, are all upon us; and the glorious
+grass--super-best of earth's garniture--with its ever-satisfying green.
+The king-birds have come, and the corn-planter, the scolding bob-o-link.
+'Plant your corn, plant your corn,' says he, as he scurries athwart the
+ploughed ground, hardly lifting his crank wings to a level with his back,
+so self-important is he in his admonitions. The earlier birds have gone
+to housekeeping, and have disappeared from the spray. There has been
+brief period for them, this spring, for scarcely has the deep snow gone,
+but the dark-green grass has come, and first we shall know, the ground
+will be yellow with dandelions.
+
+"I incline to thank Heaven this glorious morning of May 16th for the
+pleasant home from which we can greet the Spring. Hitherto we have had
+to await it amid a thicket of village houses, low down, close together,
+and awfully white. For a prospect, we had the hinder part of an ugly
+meeting-house, which an enterprising neighbor relieved us of by planting
+a dwelling-house, right before our eyes, (on his own land, and he had a
+right to,) which relieved us also of all prospect whatever. And the
+revival spirit of habitation which has come over Concord is clapping up a
+house between every two in the already crowded town; and the prospect is,
+it will be soon all buildings. They are constructing, in quite good
+taste though, small, trim, cottage-like. But I had rather be where I can
+breathe air, and see beyond my own features, than be smothered among the
+prettiest houses ever built. We are on the slope of a hill; it is all
+sand, be sure, on all four sides of us, but the air is free, (and the
+sand, too, at times,) and our water, there is danger of hard drinking to
+live by it. Air and water, the two necessaries of life, and high, free
+play-ground for the small ones. There is a sand precipice hard by, high
+enough, were it only rock and overlooked the ocean, to be as sublime as
+any of the Nahant cliffs. As it is, it is altogether a safer haunt for
+daring childhood, which could hardly break its neck by a descent of some
+hundreds of feet.
+
+"A low flat lies between us and the town, with its State-house, and body-
+guard of well-proportioned steeples standing round. It was marshy and
+wet, but is almost all redeemed by the translation into it of the high
+hills of sand. It must have been a terrible place for frogs, judging
+from what remains of it. Bits of water from the springs hard by lay here
+and there about the low ground, which are peopled as full of singers as
+ever the gallery of the old North Meeting-house was, and quite as
+melodious ones. Such performers I never heard, in marsh or pool. They
+are not the great, stagnant, bull-paddocks, fat and coarse-noted like
+Parson, but clear-water frogs, green, lively, and sweet-voiced. I
+passed their orchestra going home the other evening, with a small lad,
+and they were at it, all parts, ten thousand peeps, shrill, ear-piercing,
+and incessant, coming up from every quarter, accompanied by a second,
+from some larger swimmer with his trombone, and broken in upon, every now
+and then, but not discordantly, with the loud, quick hallo, that
+resembles the cry of the tree-toad. 'There are the Hutchinsons,' cried
+the lad. 'The Rainers,' responded I, glad to remember enough of my
+ancient Latin to know that Rana, or some such sounding word, stood for
+frog. But it was a 'band of music,' as the Miller friends say. Like
+other singers, (all but the Hutchinsons,) these are apt to sing too much,
+all the time they are awake, constituting really too much of a good
+thing. I have wondered if the little reptiles were singing in concert,
+or whether every one peeped on his own hook, their neighbor hood only
+making it a chorus. I incline to the opinion that they are performing
+together, that they know the tune, and each carries his part, self-
+selected, in free meeting, and therefore never discordant. The hour rule
+of Congress might be useful, though far less needed among the frogs than
+among the profane croakers of the fens at Washington."
+
+Here is a sketch of the mountain scenery of New Hampshire, as seen from
+the Holderness Mountain, or North Hill, during a visit which he made to
+his native valley in the autumn of 1841:--
+
+"The earth sphered up all around us, in every quarter of the horizon,
+like the crater of a vast volcano, and the great hollow within the
+mountain circle was as smoky as Vesuvius or Etna in their recess of
+eruption. The little village of Plymouth lay right at our feet, with its
+beautiful expanse of intervale opening on the eye like a lake among the
+woods and hills, and the Pemigewasset, bordered along its crooked way
+with rows of maples, meandering from upland to upland through the
+meadows. Our young footsteps had wandered over these localities. Time
+had cast it all far back that Pemigewasset, with its meadows and border
+trees; that little village whitening in the margin of its inter vale; and
+that one house which we could distinguish, where the mother that watched
+over and endured our wayward childhood totters at fourscore!
+
+"To the south stretched a broken, swelling upland country, but champaign
+from the top of North Hill, patched all over with grain-fields and green
+wood-lots, the roofs of the farm-houses shining in the sun. Southwest,
+the Cardigan Mountain showed its bald forehead among the smokes of a
+thousand fires, kindled in the woods in the long drought. Westward,
+Moosehillock heaved up its long back, black as a whale; and turning the
+eye on northward, glancing down the while on the Baker's River valley,
+dotted over with human dwellings like shingle-bunches for size, you
+behold the great Franconia Range, its Notch and its Haystacks, the
+Elephant Mountain on the left, and Lafayette (Great Haystack) on the
+right, shooting its peak in solemn loneliness high up into the desert
+sky, and overtopping all the neighboring Alps but Mount Washington
+itself. The prospect of these is most impressive and satisfactory. We
+don't believe the earth presents a finer mountain display. The Haystacks
+stand there like the Pyramids on the wall of mountains. One of them
+eminently has this Egyptian shape. It is as accurate a pyramid to the
+eye as any in the old valley of the Nile, and a good deal bigger than any
+of those hoary monuments of human presumption, of the impious tyranny of
+monarchs and priests, and of the appalling servility of the erecting
+multitude. Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh does not more finely resemble a
+sleeping lion than the huge mountain on the left of the Notch does an
+elephant, with his great, overgrown rump turned uncivilly toward the gap
+where the people have to pass. Following round the panorama, you come to
+the Ossipees and the Sandwich Mountains, peaks innumerable and nameless,
+and of every variety of fantastic shape. Down their vast sides are
+displayed the melancholy-looking slides, contrasting with the fathomless
+woods.
+
+"But the lakes,--you see lakes, as well as woods and mountains, from the
+top of North Hill. Newfound Lake in Hebron, only eight miles distant,
+you can't see; it lies too deep among the hills. Ponds show their small
+blue mirrors from various quarters of the great picture. Worthen's Mill-
+Pond and the Hardhack, where we used to fish for trout in truant,
+barefooted days, Blair's Mill-Pond, White Oak Pond, and Long Pond, and
+the Little Squam, a beautiful dark sheet of deep, blue water, about two
+miles long, stretched an id the green hills and woods, with a charming
+little beach at its eastern end, and without an island. And then the
+Great Squam, connected with it on the east by a short, narrow stream, the
+very queen of ponds, with its fleet of islands, surpassing in beauty all
+the foreign waters we have seen, in Scotland or elsewhere,--the islands
+covered with evergreens, which impart their hue to the mass of the lake,
+as it stretches seven miles on east from its smaller sister, towards the
+peerless Winnipesaukee. Great Squam is as beautiful as water and island
+can be. But Winnipesaukee, it is the very 'Smile of the Great Spirit.'
+It looks as if it had a thousand islands; some of them large enough for
+little towns, and others not bigger than a swan or a wild duck swimming
+on its surface of glass."
+
+His wit and sarcasm were generally too good-natured to provoke even their
+unfortunate objects, playing all over his editorials like the thunderless
+lightnings which quiver along the horizon of a night of summer calmness;
+but at times his indignation launched them like bolts from heaven. Take
+the following as a specimen. He is speaking of the gag rule of Congress,
+and commending Southern representatives for their skilful selection of a
+proper person to do their work:--
+
+"They have a quick eye at the South to the character, or, as they would
+say, the points of a slave. They look into him shrewdly, as an old
+jockey does into a horse. They will pick him out, at rifle-shot
+distance, among a thousand freemen. They have a nice eye to detect
+shades of vassalage. They saw in the aristocratic popinjay strut of a
+counterfeit Democrat an itching aspiration to play the slaveholder. They
+beheld it in 'the cut of his jib,' and his extreme Northern position made
+him the very tool for their purpose. The little creature has struck at
+the right of petition. A paltrier hand never struck at a noble right.
+The Eagle Right of Petition, so loftily sacred in the eyes of the
+Constitution that Congress can't begin to 'abridge' it, in its pride of
+place, is hawked at by this crested jay-bird. A 'mousing owl' would have
+seen better at midnoon than to have done it. It is an idiot blue-jay,
+such as you see fooling about among the shrub oaks and dwarf pitch pines
+in the winter. What an ignominious death to the lofty right, were it to
+die by such a hand; but it does not die. It is impalpable to the
+'malicious mockery' of such vain blows.' We are glad it is done--done by
+the South--done proudly, and in slaveholding style, by the hand of a
+vassal. What a man does by another he does by himself, says the maxim.
+But they will disown the honor of it, and cast it on the despised 'free
+nigger' North."
+
+Or this description--not very flattering to the "Old Commonwealth"--of
+the treatment of the agent of Massachusetts in South Carolina:--
+
+"Slavery may perpetrate anything, and New England can't see it. It can
+horsewhip the old Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and spit in her
+governmental face, and she will not recognize it as an offence. She sent
+her agent to Charleston on a State embassy. Slavery caught him, and sent
+him ignominiously home. The solemn great man came back in a hurry. He
+returned in a most undignified trot. He ran; he scampered,--the stately
+official. The Old Bay State actually pulled foot, cleared, dug, as they
+say, like any scamp with a hue and cry after him. Her grave old Senator,
+who no more thought of having to break his stately walk than he had of
+being flogged at school for stealing apples, came back from Carolina upon
+the full run, out of breath and out of dignity. Well, what's the result?
+Why, nothing. She no more thinks of showing resentment about it than she
+would if lightning had struck him. He was sent back 'by the visitation
+of God;' and if they had lynched him to death, and stained the streets of
+Charleston with his blood, a Boston jury, if they could have held inquest
+over him, would have found that he 'died by the visitation of God.' And
+it would have been crowner's quest law, Slavery's crowners."
+
+Here is a specimen of his graceful blending of irony and humor. He is
+expostulating with his neighbor of the New Hampshire Patriot, assuring
+him that he cannot endure the ponderous weight of his arguments, begging
+for a little respite, and, as a means of obtaining it, urging the editor
+to travel. He advises him to go South, to the White Sulphur Springs, and
+thinks that, despite of his dark complexion, he would be safe there from
+being sold for jail fees, as his pro-slavery merits would more than
+counterbalance his colored liabilities, which, after all, were only prima
+facie evidence against him. He suggests Texas, also, as a place where
+"patriots" of a certain class "most do congregate," and continues as
+follows:--
+
+"There is Arkansas, too, all glorious in new-born liberty, fresh and
+unsullied, like Venus out of the ocean,--that newly discovered star, in
+the firmament banner of this Republic. Sister Arkansas, with her bowie-
+knife graceful at her side, like the huntress Diana with her silver bow,
+--oh it would be refreshing and recruiting to an exhausted patriot to go
+and replenish his soul at her fountains. The newly evacuated lands of
+the Cherokee, too, a sweet place now for a lover of his country to visit,
+to renew his self-complacency by wandering among the quenched hearths of
+the expatriated Indians; a land all smoking with the red man's departing
+curse,--a malediction that went to the centre. Yes, and Florida,--
+blossoming and leafy Florida, yet warm with the life-blood of Osceola and
+his warriors, shed gloriously under flag of truce. Why should a patriot
+of such a fancy for nature immure himself in the cells of the city, and
+forego such an inviting and so broad a landscape? Ite viator. Go forth,
+traveller, and leave this mouldy editing to less elastic fancies. We
+would respectfully invite our Colonel to travel. What signifies?
+Journey--wander--go forth--itinerate--exercise--perambulate--roam."
+
+He gives the following ludicrous definition of Congress:--
+
+"But what is Congress? It is the echo of the country at home,--the
+weathercock, that denotes and answers the shifting wind,--a thing of
+tail, nearly all tail, moved by the tail and by the wind, with small
+heading, and that corresponding implicitly in movement with the broad
+sail-like stern, which widens out behind to catch the rum-fraught breath
+of 'the Brotherhood.' As that turns, it turns; when that stops, it stops;
+and in calmish weather looks as steadfast and firm as though it was
+riveted to the centre. The wind blows, and the little popularity-hunting
+head dodges this way and that, in endless fluctuation. Such is Congress,
+or a great portion of it. It will point to the northwest heavens of
+Liberty, whenever the breezes bear down irresistibly upon it, from the
+regions of political fair weather. It will abolish slavery at the
+Capitol, when it has already been doomed to abolition and death
+everywhere else in the country. 'It will be in at the death.'"
+
+Replying to the charge that the Abolitionists of the North were "secret"
+in their movements and designs, he says:--
+
+"'In secret!' Why, our movements have been as prominent and open as the
+house-tops from the beginning. We have striven from the outset to write
+the whole matter cloud-high in the heavens, that the utmost South might
+read it. We have cast an arc upon the horizon, like the semicircle of
+the polar lights, and upon it have bent our motto, 'Immediate
+Emancipation,' glorious as the rainbow. We have engraven it there, on
+the blue table of the cold vault, in letters tall enough for the reading
+of the nations. And why has the far South not read and believed before
+this? Because a steam has gone up--a fog--from New England's pulpit and
+her degenerate press, and hidden the beaming revelation from its vision.
+The Northern hierarchy and aristocracy have cheated the South."
+
+He spoke at times with severity of slaveholders, but far oftener of those
+who, without the excuse of education and habit, and prompted only by a
+selfish consideration of political or sectarian advantage, apologized for
+the wrong, and discountenanced the anti-slavery movement. "We have
+nothing to say," said he, "to the slave. He is no party to his own
+enslavement,--he is none to his disenthralment. We have nothing to say
+to the South. The real holder of slaves is not there. He is in the
+North, the free North. The South alone has not the power to hold the
+slave. It is the character of the nation that binds and holds him. It
+is the Republic that does it, the efficient force of which is north of
+Mason and Dixon's line. By virtue of the majority of Northern hearts and
+voices, slavery lives in the South!"
+
+In 1840, he spent a few weeks in England, Ireland, and Scotland. He has
+left behind a few beautiful memorials of his tour. His Ride over the
+Border, Ride into Edinburgh, Wincobank hall, Ailsa Craig, gave his paper
+an interest in the eyes of many who had no sympathy with his political
+and religious views.
+
+Scattered all over his editorials, like gems, are to be found beautiful
+images, sweet touches of heartfelt pathos,--thoughts which the reader
+pauses over with surprise and delight. We subjoin a few specimens, taken
+almost at random from the book before us:--
+
+"A thunder-storm,--what can match it for eloquence and poetry? That rush
+from heaven of the big drops, in what multitude and succession, and how
+they sound as they strike! How they play on the old home roof and the
+thick tree-tops! What music to go to sleep by, to the tired boy, as he
+lies under the naked roof! And the great, low bass thunder, as it rolls
+off over the hills, and settles down behind them to the very centre, and
+you can feel the old earth jar under your feet!"
+
+"There was no oratory in the speech of the _Learned Blacksmith_, in the
+ordinary sense of that word, no grace of elocution, but mighty thoughts
+radiating off from his heated mind, like sparks from the glowing steel of
+his own anvil."
+
+"The hard hands of Irish labor, with nothing in them,--they ring like
+slabs of marble together, in response to the wild appeals of O'Connell,
+and the British stand conquered before them, with shouldered arms.
+Ireland is on her feet, with nothing in her hands, impregnable,
+unassailable, in utter defencelessness,--the first time that ever a
+nation sprung to its feet unarmed. The veterans of England behold them,
+and forbear to fire. They see no mark. It will not do to fire upon men;
+it will do only to fire upon soldiers. They are the proper mark of the
+murderous gun, but men cannot be shot."
+
+"It is coming to that (abolition of war) the world over; and when it does
+come to it, oh what a long breath of relief the tired world will draw, as
+it stretches itself for the first time out upon earth's greensward, and
+learns the meaning of repose and peaceful sleep!"
+
+"He who vests his labor in the faithful ground is dealing directly with
+God; human fraud or weakness do not intervene between him and his
+requital. No mechanic has a set of customers so trustworthy as God and
+the elements. No savings bank is so sure as the old earth."
+
+"Literature is the luxury of words. It originates nothing, it does
+nothing. It talks hard words about the labor of others, and is reckoned
+more meritorious for it than genius and labor for doing what learning can
+only descant upon. It trades on the capital of unlettered minds. It
+struts in stolen plumage, and it is mere plumage. A learned man
+resembles an owl in more respects than the matter of wisdom. Like that
+solemn bird, he is about all feathers."
+
+"Our Second Advent friends contemplate a grand conflagration about the
+first of April next. I should be willing there should be one, if it
+could be confined to the productions of the press, with which the earth
+is absolutely smothered. Humanity wants precious few books to read, but
+the great living, breathing, immortal volume of Providence. Life,--real
+life,--how to live, how to treat one another, and how to trust God in
+matters beyond our ken and occasion,--these are the lessons to learn, and
+you find little of them in libraries."
+
+"That accursed drum and fife! How they have maddened mankind! And the
+deep bass boom of the cannon, chiming in in the chorus of battle, that
+trumpet and wild charging bugle,--how they set the military devil in a
+man, and make him into a soldier! Think of the human family falling upon
+one another at the inspiration of music! How must God feel at it, to see
+those harp-strings he meant should be waked to a love bordering on
+divine, strung and swept to mortal hate and butchery!"
+
+"Leave off being Jews," (he is addressing Major Noah with regard to his
+appeal to his brethren to return to Judaea,) "and turn mankind. The
+rocks and sands of Palestine have been worshipped long enough.
+Connecticut River or the Merrimac are as good rivers as any Jordan that
+ever run into a dead or live sea, and as holy, for that matter. In
+Humanity, as in Christ Jesus, as Paul says, 'there is neither Jew nor
+Greek.' And there ought to be none. Let Humanity be reverenced with the
+tenderest devotion; suffering, discouraged, down-trodden, hard-handed,
+haggard-eyed, care-worn mankind! Let these be regarded a little. Would
+to God I could alleviate all their sorrows, and leave them a chance to
+laugh! They are, miserable now. They might be as happy as the blackbird
+on the spray, and as full of melody."
+
+"I am sick as death at this miserable struggle among mankind for a
+living. Poor devils! were they born to run such a gauntlet after the
+means of life? Look about you, and see your squirming neighbors,
+writhing and twisting like so many angleworms in a fisher's bait-box, or
+the wriggling animalculae seen in the vinegar drop held to the sun. How
+they look, how they feel, how base it makes them all!"
+
+"Every human being is entitled to the means of life, as the trout is to
+his brook or the lark to the blue sky. Is it well to put a human 'young
+one' here to die of hunger, thirst, and nakedness, or else be preserved
+as a pauper? Is this fair earth but a poor-house by creation and intent?
+Was it made for that?--and these other round things we see dancing in
+the firmament to the music of the spheres, are they all great shining
+poor-houses?"
+
+"The divines always admit things after the age has adopted them. They
+are as careful of the age as the weathercock is of the wind. You might
+as well catch an old experienced weathercock, on some ancient Orthodox
+steeple, standing all day with its tail east in a strong out wind, as the
+divines at odds with the age."
+
+But we must cease quoting. The admirers of Jean Paul Richter might find
+much of the charm and variety of the "Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces" in
+this newspaper collection. They may see, perhaps, as we do, some things
+which they cannot approve of, the tendency of which, however intended, is
+very questionable. But, with us, they will pardon something to the
+spirit of liberty, much to that of love and humanity which breathes
+through all.
+
+Disgusted and heart-sick at the general indifference of Church and clergy
+to the temporal condition of the people,--at their apologies for and
+defences of slavery, war, and capital punishment,--Rogers turned
+Protestant, in the full sense of the term. He spoke of priests and
+"pulpit wizards" as freely as John Milton did two centuries ago,
+although with far less bitterness and rasping satire. He could not
+endure to see Christianity and Humanity divorced. He longed to see the
+beautiful life of Jesus--his sweet humanities, his brotherly love, his
+abounding sympathies--made the example of all men. Thoroughly
+democratic, in his view all men were equal. Priests, stripped of their
+sacerdotal tailoring, were in his view but men, after all. He pitied
+them, he said, for they were in a wrong position,--above life's comforts
+and sympathies,--"up in the unnatural cold, they had better come down
+among men, and endure and enjoy with them." "Mankind," said he, "want
+the healing influences of humanity. They must love one another more.
+Disinterested good will make the world as it should be."
+
+His last visit to his native valley was in the autumn of 1845. In a
+familiar letter to a friend, he thus describes his farewell view of the
+mountain glories of his childhood's home:--
+
+"I went a jaunt, Thursday last, about twenty miles north of this valley,
+into the mountain region, where what I beheld, if I could tell it as I
+saw it, would make your outlawed sheet sought after wherever our Anglo-
+Saxon tongue is spoken in the wide world. I have been many a time among
+those Alps, and never without a kindling of wildest enthusiasm in my
+woodland blood. But I never saw them till last Thursday. They never
+loomed distinctly to my eye before, and the sun never shone on them from
+heaven till then. They were so near me, I could seem to hear the voice
+of their cataracts, as I could count their great slides, streaming adown
+their lone and desolate sides,--old slides, some of them overgrown with
+young woods, like half-healed scars on the breast of a giant. The great
+rains had clothed the valleys of the upper Pemigewasset in the darkest
+and deepest green. The meadows were richer and more glorious in their
+thick 'fall feed' than Queen Anne's Garden, as I saw it from the windows
+of Windsor Castle. And the dark hemlock and hackmatack woods were yet
+darker after the wet season, as they lay, in a hundred wildernesses, in
+the mighty recesses of the mountains. But the peaks,--the eternal, the
+solitary, the beautiful, the glorious and dear mountain peaks, my own
+Moosehillock and my native Haystacks,--these were the things on which eye
+and heart gazed and lingered, and I seemed to see them for the last time.
+It was on my way back that I halted and turned to look at them from a
+high point on the Thornton road. It was about four in the afternoon. It
+had rained among the hills about the Notch, and cleared off. The sun,
+there sombred at that early hour, as towards his setting, was pouring his
+most glorious light upon the naked peaks, and they casting their mighty
+shadows far down among the inaccessible woods that darken the hollows
+that stretch between their bases. A cloud was creeping up to perch and
+rest awhile on the highest top of Great Haystack. Vulgar folks have
+called it Mount Lafayette, since the visit of that brave old Frenchman in
+1825 or 1826. If they had asked his opinion, he would have told them the
+names of mountains couldn't be altered, and especially names like that,
+so appropriate, so descriptive, and so picturesque. A little hard white
+cloud, that looked like a hundred fleeces of wool rolled into one, was
+climbing rapidly along up the northwestern ridge, that ascended to the
+lonely top of Great Haystack. All the others were bare. Four or five of
+them,--as distinct and shapely as so many pyramids; some topped out with
+naked cliff, on which the sun lay in melancholy glory; others clothed
+thick all the way up with the old New Hampshire hemlock or the daring
+hackmatack,--Pierpont's hackmatack. You could see their shadows
+stretching many and many a mile, over Grant and Location, away beyond the
+invading foot of Incorporation,--where the timber-hunter has scarcely
+explored, and where the moose browses now, I suppose, as undisturbed as
+he did before the settlement of the State. I wish our young friend and
+genius, Harrison Eastman, had been with me, to see the sunlight as it
+glared on the tops of those woods, and to see the purple of the
+mountains. I looked at it myself almost with the eye of a painter. If a
+painter looked with mine, though, he never could look off upon his canvas
+long enough to make a picture; he would gaze forever at the original.
+
+"But I had to leave it, and to say in my heart, Farewell! And as I
+travelled on down, and the sun sunk lower and lower towards the summit of
+the western ridge, the clouds came up and formed an Alpine range in the
+evening heavens above it,--like other Haystacks and Moosehillocks,--so
+dark and dense that fancy could easily mistake them for a higher Alps.
+There were the peaks and the great passes; the Franconia Notches among
+the cloudy cliffs, and the great White Mountain Gap."
+
+His health, never robust, had been gradually failing for some time
+previous to his death. He needed more repose and quiet than his duties
+as an editor left him; and to this end he purchased a small and pleasant
+farm in his loved Pennigewasset valley, in the hope that he might there
+recruit his wasted energies. In the sixth month of the year of his
+death, in a letter to us, he spoke of his prospects in language which
+even then brought moisture to our eyes:--
+
+"I am striving to get me an asylum of a farm. I have a wife and seven
+children, every one of them with a whole spirit. I don't want to be
+separated from any of them, only with a view to come together again. I
+have a beautiful little retreat in prospect, forty odd miles north, where
+I imagine I can get potatoes and repose,--a sort of haven or port. I am
+among the breakers, and 'mad for land.' If I get this home,--it is a mile
+or two in among the hills from the pretty domicil once visited by
+yourself and glorious Thompson,--I am this moment indulging the fancy
+that I may see you at it before we die. Why can't I have you come and
+see me? You see, dear W., I don't want to send you anything short of a
+full epistle. Let me end as I begun, with the proffer of my hand in
+grasp of yours extended. My heart I do not proffer,--it was yours
+before,--it shall be yours while I am N. P. ROGERS."
+
+Alas! the haven of a deeper repose than he had dreamed of was close at
+hand. He lingered until the middle of the tenth month, suffering much,
+yet calm and sensible to the last. Just before his death, he desired his
+children to sing at his bedside that touching song of Lover's, _The
+Angel's Whisper_. Turning his eyes towards the open window, through
+which the leafy glory of the season he most loved was visible, he
+listened to the sweet melody. In the words of his friend Pierpont,--
+
+ "The angel's whisper stole in song upon his closing ear;
+ From his own daughter's lips it came, so musical and clear,
+ That scarcely knew the dying man what melody was there--
+ The last of earth's or first of heaven's pervading all the air."
+
+He sleeps in the Concord burial-ground, under the shadow of oaks; the
+very spot he would have chosen, for he looked upon trees with something
+akin to human affection. "They are," he said, "the beautiful handiwork
+and architecture of God, on which the eye never tires. Every one is
+a feather in the earth's cap, a plume in her bonnet, a tress on her
+forehead,--a comfort, a refreshing, and an ornament to her." Spring has
+hung over him her buds, and opened beside him her violets. Summer has
+laid her green oaken garland on his grave, and now the frost-blooms of
+autumn drop upon it. Shall man cast a nettle on that mound? He loved
+humanity,--shall it be less kind to him than Nature? Shall the bigotry
+of sect, and creed, and profession, drive its condemnatory stake into his
+grave? God forbid. The doubts which he sometimes unguardedly expressed
+had relation, we are constrained to believe, to the glosses of
+commentators and creed-makers and the inconsistency of professors, rather
+than to those facts and precepts of Christianity to which he gave the
+constant assent of his practice. He sought not his own. His heart
+yearned with pity and brotherly affection for all the poor and suffering
+in the universe. Of him, the angel of Leigh Hunt's beautiful allegory
+might have written, in the golden book of remembrance, as he did of the
+good Abou Ben Adhem, "He loved his fellow-men."
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT DINSMORE.
+
+The great charm of Scottish poetry consists in its simplicity, and
+genuine, unaffected sympathy with the common joys and sorrows of daily
+life. It is a home-taught, household melody. It calls to mind the
+pastoral bleat on the hillsides, the kirkbells of a summer Sabbath, the
+song of the lark in the sunrise, the cry of the quail in the corn-land,
+the low of cattle, and the blithe carol of milkmaids "when the kye come
+hame" at gloaming. Meetings at fair and market, blushing betrothments,
+merry weddings, the joy of young maternity, the lights and shades of
+domestic life, its bereavements and partings, its chances and changes,
+its holy death-beds, and funerals solemnly beautiful in quiet kirkyards,
+--these furnish the hints of the immortal melodies of Burns, the sweet
+ballads of the Ettrick Shepherd and Allan Cunningham, and the rustic
+drama of Ramsay. It is the poetry of home, of nature, and the
+affections.
+
+All this is sadly wanting in our young literature. We have no songs;
+American domestic life has never been hallowed and beautified by the
+sweet and graceful and tender associations of poetry. We have no Yankee
+pastorals. Our rivers and streams turn mills and float rafts, and are
+otherwise as commendably useful as those of Scotland; but no quaint
+ballad or simple song reminds us that men and women have loved, met, and
+parted on their banks, or that beneath each roof within their valleys the
+tragedy and comedy of life have been enacted. Our poetry is cold and
+imitative; it seems more the product of over-strained intellects than the
+spontaneous outgushing of hearts warm with love, and strongly
+sympathizing with human nature as it actually exists about us, with the
+joys and griefs of the men and women whom we meet daily. Unhappily, the
+opinion prevails that a poet must be also a philosopher, and hence it is
+that much of our poetry is as indefinable in its mysticism as an Indian
+Brahmin's commentary on his sacred books, or German metaphysics subjected
+to homeopathic dilution. It assumes to be prophetical, and its
+utterances are oracular. It tells of strange, vague emotions and
+yearnings, painfully suggestive of spiritual "groanings which cannot be
+uttered." If it "babbles o' green fields" and the common sights and
+sounds of nature, it is only for the purpose of finding some vague
+analogy between them and its internal experiences and longings. It
+leaves the warm and comfortable fireside of actual knowledge and human
+comprehension, and goes wailing and gibbering like a ghost about the
+impassable doors of mystery:--
+
+ "It fain would be resolved
+ How things are done,
+ And who the tailor is
+ That works for the man I' the sun."
+
+How shall we account for this marked tendency in the literature of a
+shrewd, practical people? Is it that real life in New England lacks
+those conditions of poetry and romance which age, reverence, and
+superstition have gathered about it in the Old World? Is it that
+
+ "Ours are not Tempe's nor Arcadia's vales,"
+
+but are more famous for growing Indian corn and potatoes, and the
+manufacture of wooden ware and pedler notions, than for romantic
+associations and legendary interest? That our huge, unshapely shingle
+structures, blistering in the sun and glaring with windows, were
+evidently never reared by the spell of pastoral harmonies, as the walls
+of Thebes rose at the sound of the lyre of Amphion? That the habits of
+our people are too cool, cautious, undemonstrative, to furnish the warp
+and woof of song and pastoral, and that their dialect and figures of
+speech, however richly significant and expressive in the autobiography of
+Sam Slick, or the satire of Hosea Biglow and Ethan Spike, form a very
+awkward medium of sentiment and pathos? All this may be true. But the
+Yankee, after all, is a man, and as such his history, could it be got at,
+must have more or less of poetic material in it; moreover, whether
+conscious of it or not, he also stands relieved against the background of
+Nature's beauty or sublimity. There is a poetical side to the
+commonplace of his incomings and outgoings; study him well, and you may
+frame an idyl of some sort from his apparently prosaic existence. Our
+poets, we must needs think, are deficient in that shiftiness, ready
+adaptation to circumstances, and ability of making the most of things,
+for which, as a people, we are proverbial. Can they make nothing of our
+Thanksgiving, that annual gathering of long-severed friends? Do they
+find nothing to their purpose in our apple-bees, buskings, berry-
+pickings, summer picnics, and winter sleigh-rides? Is there nothing
+available in our peculiarities of climate, scenery, customs, and
+political institutions? Does the Yankee leap into life, shrewd, hard,
+and speculating, armed, like Pallas, for a struggle with fortune? Are
+there not boys and girls, school loves and friendship, courtings and
+match-makings, hope and fear, and all the varied play of human passions,
+--the keen struggles of gain, the mad grasping of ambition,--sin and
+remorse, tearful repentance and holy aspirations? Who shall say that we
+have not all the essentials of the poetry of human life and simple
+nature, of the hearth and the farm-field? Here, then, is a mine
+unworked, a harvest ungathered. Who shall sink the shaft and thrust in
+the sickle?
+
+And here let us say that the mere dilettante and the amateur ruralist may
+as well keep their hands off. The prize is not for them. He who would
+successfully strive for it must be himself what he sings,--part and
+parcel of the rural life of New England,--one who has grown strong amidst
+its healthful influences, familiar with all its details, and capable of
+detecting whatever of beauty, humor, or pathos pertain to it,--one who
+has added to his book-lore the large experience of an active
+participation in the rugged toil, the hearty amusements, the trials, and
+the pleasures he describes.
+
+We have been led to these reflections by an incident which has called up
+before us the homespun figure of an old friend of our boyhood, who had
+the good sense to discover that the poetic element existed in the simple
+home life of a country farmer, although himself unable to give a very
+creditable expression of it. He had the "vision," indeed, but the
+"faculty divine" was wanting; or, if he possessed it in any degree, as
+Thersites says of the wit of Ajax, "it would not out, but lay coldly in
+him like fire in the flint."
+
+While engaged this morning in looking over a large exchange list of
+newspapers, a few stanzas of poetry in the Scottish dialect attracted our
+attention. As we read them, like a wizard's rhyme they seemed to have
+the power of bearing us back to the past. They had long ago graced the
+columns of that solitary sheet which once a week diffused happiness over
+our fireside circle, making us acquainted, in our lonely nook, with the
+goings-on of the great world. The verses, we are now constrained to
+admit, are not remarkable in themselves, truth and simple nature only;
+yet how our young hearts responded to them! Twenty years ago there were
+fewer verse-makers than at present; and as our whole stock of light
+literature consisted of Ellwood's _Davideis_ and the selections of
+_Lindley Murray's English Reader_, it is not improbable that we were in a
+condition to overestimate the contributions to the poet's corner of our
+village newspaper. Be that as it may, we welcome them as we would the
+face of an old friend, for they somehow remind us of the scent of
+haymows, the breath of cattle, the fresh greenery by the brookside, the
+moist earth broken by the coulter and turned up to the sun and winds of
+May. This particular piece, which follows, is entitled _The Sparrow_,
+and was occasioned by the crushing of a bird's-nest by the author while
+ploughing among his corn. It has something of the simple tenderness of
+Burns.
+
+ "Poor innocent and hapless Sparrow
+ Why should my mould-board gie thee sorrow!
+ This day thou'll chirp and mourn the morrow
+ Wi' anxious breast;
+ The plough has turned the mould'ring furrow
+ Deep o'er thy nest!
+
+ "Just I' the middle o' the hill
+ Thy nest was placed wi' curious skill;
+ There I espied thy little bill
+ Beneath the shade.
+ In that sweet bower, secure frae ill,
+ Thine eggs were laid.
+
+ "Five corns o' maize had there been drappit,
+ An' through the stalks thy head was pappit,
+ The drawing nowt could na be stappit
+ I quickly foun';
+ Syne frae thy cozie nest thou happit,
+ Wild fluttering roun'.
+
+ "The sklentin stane beguiled the sheer,
+ In vain I tried the plough to steer;
+ A wee bit stumpie I' the rear
+ Cam' 'tween my legs,
+ An' to the jee-side gart me veer
+ An' crush thine eggs.
+
+ "Alas! alas! my bonnie birdie!
+ Thy faithful mate flits round to guard thee.
+ Connubial love!--a pattern worthy
+ The pious priest!
+ What savage heart could be sae hardy
+ As wound thy breast?
+
+ "Ah me! it was nae fau't o' mine;
+ It gars me greet to see thee pine.
+ It may be serves His great design
+ Who governs all;
+ Omniscience tents wi' eyes divine
+ The Sparrow's fall!
+
+ "How much like thine are human dools,
+ Their sweet wee bairns laid I' the mools?
+ The Sovereign Power who nature rules
+ Hath said so be it
+ But poor blip' mortals are sic fools
+ They canna see it.
+
+ "Nae doubt that He who first did mate us
+ Has fixed our lot as sure as fate is,
+ An' when He wounds He disna hate us,
+ But anely this,
+ He'll gar the ills which here await us
+ Yield lastin' bliss."
+
+In the early part of the eighteenth century a considerable number of
+Presbyterians of Scotch descent, from the north of Ireland, emigrated to
+the New World. In the spring of 1719, the inhabitants of Haverhill, on
+the Merrimac, saw them passing up the river in several canoes, one of
+which unfortunately upset in the rapids above the village. The following
+fragment of a ballad celebrating this event has been handed down to the
+present time, and may serve to show the feelings even then of the old
+English settlers towards the Irish emigrants:--
+
+ "They began to scream and bawl,
+ As out they tumbled one and all,
+ And, if the Devil had spread his net,
+ He could have made a glorious haul!"
+
+The new-comers proceeded up the river, and, landing opposite to the
+Uncanoonuc Hills, on the present site of Manchester, proceeded inland to
+Beaver Pond. Charmed with the appearance of the country, they resolved
+here to terminate their wanderings. Under a venerable oak on the margin
+of the little lake, they knelt down with their minister, Jamie McGregore,
+and laid, in prayer and thanksgiving, the foundation of their settlement.
+In a few years they had cleared large fields, built substantial stone and
+frame dwellings and a large and commodious meeting-house; wealth had
+accumulated around them, and they had everywhere the reputation of a
+shrewd and thriving community. They were the first in New England to
+cultivate the potato, which their neighbors for a long time regarded as a
+pernicious root, altogether unfit for a Christian stomach. Every lover
+of that invaluable esculent has reason to remember with gratitude the
+settlers of Londonderry.
+
+Their moral acclimation in Ireland had not been without its effect upon
+their character. Side by side with a Presbyterianism as austere as that
+of John Knox had grown up something of the wild Milesian humor, love of
+convivial excitement and merry-making. Their long prayers and fierce
+zeal in behalf of orthodox tenets only served, in the eyes of their
+Puritan neighbors, to make more glaring still the scandal of their marked
+social irregularities. It became a common saying in the region round
+about that "the Derry Presbyterians would never give up a pint of
+doctrine or a pint of rum." Their second minister was an old scarred
+fighter, who had signalized himself in the stout defence of Londonderry,
+when James II. and his Papists were thundering at its gates. Agreeably
+to his death-bed directions, his old fellow-soldiers, in their leathern
+doublets and battered steel caps, bore him to his grave, firing over him
+the same rusty muskets which had swept down rank after rank of the men of
+Amalek at the Derry siege.
+
+Erelong the celebrated Derry fair was established, in imitation of those
+with which they had been familiar in Ireland. Thither annually came all
+manner of horse-jockeys and pedlers, gentlemen and beggars, fortune-
+tellers, wrestlers, dancers and fiddlers, gay young farmers and buxom
+maidens. Strong drink abounded. They who had good-naturedly wrestled
+and joked together in the morning not unfrequently closed the day with a
+fight, until, like the revellers of Donnybrook,
+
+ "Their hearts were soft with whiskey,
+ And their heads were soft with blows."
+
+A wild, frolicking, drinking, fiddling, courting, horse-racing, riotous
+merry-making,--a sort of Protestant carnival, relaxing the grimness of
+Puritanism for leagues around it.
+
+In the midst of such a community, and partaking of all its influences,
+Robert Dinsmore, the author of the poem I have quoted, was born, about
+the middle of the last century. His paternal ancestor, John, younger son
+of a Laird of Achenmead, who left the banks of the Tweed for the green
+fertility of Northern Ireland, had emigrated to New England some forty
+years before, and, after a rough experience of Indian captivity in the
+wild woods of Maine, had settled down among his old neighbors in
+Londonderry. Until nine years of age, Robert never saw a school. He was
+a short time under the tuition of an old British soldier, who had strayed
+into the settlement after the French war, "at which time," he says in a
+letter to a friend, "I learned to repeat the shorter and larger
+catechisms. These, with the Scripture proofs annexed to them, confirmed
+me in the orthodoxy of my forefathers, and I hope I shall ever remain an
+evidence of the truth of what the wise man said, 'Train up a child in the
+way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.'" He
+afterwards took lessons with one Master McKeen, who used to spend much of
+his time in hunting squirrels with his pupils. He learned to read and
+write; and the old man always insisted that he should have done well at
+ciphering also, had he not fallen in love with Molly Park. At the age of
+eighteen he enlisted in the Revolutionary army, and was at the battle of
+Saratoga. On his return he married his fair Molly, settled down as a
+farmer in Windham, formerly a part of Londonderry, and before he was
+thirty years of age became an elder in the church, of the creed and
+observances of which he was always a zealous and resolute defender. From
+occasional passages in his poems, it is evident that the instructions
+which he derived from the pulpit were not unlike those which Burns
+suggested as needful for the unlucky lad whom he was commending to his
+friend Hamilton:--
+
+ "Ye 'll catechise him ilka quirk,
+ An' shore him weel wi' hell."
+
+In a humorous poem, entitled Spring's Lament, he thus describes the
+consternation produced in the meeting-house at sermon time by a dog, who,
+in search of his mistress, rattled and scraped at the "west porch
+door:"--
+
+ "The vera priest was scared himsel',
+ His sermon he could hardly spell;
+ Auld carlins fancied they could smell
+ The brimstone matches;
+ They thought he was some imp o' hell,
+ In quest o' wretches."
+
+He lived to a good old age, a home-loving, unpretending farmer,
+cultivating his acres with his own horny hands, and cheering the long
+rainy days and winter evenings with homely rhyme. Most of his pieces
+were written in the dialect of his ancestors, which was well understood
+by his neighbors and friends, the only audience upon which he could
+venture to calculate. He loved all old things, old language, old
+customs, old theology. In a rhyming letter to his cousin Silas,
+he says:--
+
+ "Though Death our ancestors has cleekit,
+ An' under clods then closely steekit,
+ We'll mark the place their chimneys reekit,
+ Their native tongue we yet wad speak it,
+ Wi' accent glib."
+
+He wrote sometimes to amuse his neighbors, often to soothe their sorrow
+under domestic calamity, or to give expression to his own. With little
+of that delicacy of taste which results from the attrition of fastidious
+and refined society, and altogether too truthful and matter-of-fact to
+call in the aid of imagination, he describes in the simplest and most
+direct terms the circumstances in which he found himself, and the
+impressions which these circumstances had made on his own mind. He calls
+things by their right names; no euphuism or transcendentalism,--the
+plainer and commoner the better. He tells us of his farm life, its
+joys and sorrows, its mirth and care, with no embellishment, with no
+concealment of repulsive and ungraceful features. Never having seen a
+nightingale, he makes no attempt to describe the fowl; but he has seen
+the night-hawk, at sunset, cutting the air above him, and he tells of it.
+Side by side with his waving corn-fields and orchard-blooms we have the
+barn-yard and pigsty. Nothing which was necessary to the comfort and
+happiness of his home and avocation was to him "common or unclean."
+Take, for instance, the following, from a poem written at the close of
+autumn, after the death of his wife:--
+
+ "No more may I the Spring Brook trace,
+ No more with sorrow view the place
+ Where Mary's wash-tub stood;
+ No more may wander there alone,
+ And lean upon the mossy stone
+ Where once she piled her wood.
+ 'T was there she bleached her linen cloth,
+ By yonder bass-wood tree
+ From that sweet stream she made her broth,
+ Her pudding and her tea.
+ That stream, whose waters running,
+ O'er mossy root and stone,
+ Made ringing and singing,
+ Her voice could match alone."
+
+We envy not the man who can sneer at this simple picture. It is honest
+as Nature herself. An old and lonely man looks back upon the young years
+of his wedded life. Can we not look with him? The sunlight of a summer
+morning is weaving itself with the leafy shadows of the bass-tree,
+beneath which a fair and ruddy-checked young woman, with her full,
+rounded arms bared to the elbow, bends not ungracefully to her task,
+pausing ever and anon to play with the bright-eyed child beside her, and
+mingling her songs with the pleasant murmurings of gliding water! Alas!
+as the old man looks, he hears that voice, which perpetually sounds to us
+all from the past--no more!
+
+Let us look at him in his more genial mood. Take the opening lines of
+his Thanksgiving Day. What a plain, hearty picture of substantial
+comfort!
+
+ "When corn is in the garret stored,
+ And sauce in cellar well secured;
+ When good fat beef we can afford,
+ And things that 're dainty,
+ With good sweet cider on our board,
+ And pudding plenty;
+
+ "When stock, well housed, may chew the cud,
+ And at my door a pile of wood,
+ A rousing fire to warm my blood,
+ Blest sight to see!
+ It puts my rustic muse in mood
+ To sing for thee."
+
+If he needs a simile, he takes the nearest at hand. In a letter to his
+daughter he says:--
+
+ "That mine is not a longer letter,
+ The cause is not the want of matter,--
+ Of that there's plenty, worse or better;
+ But like a mill
+ Whose stream beats back with surplus water,
+ The wheel stands still."
+
+Something of the humor of Burns gleams out occasionally from the sober
+decorum of his verses. In an epistle to his friend Betton, high sheriff
+of the county, who had sent to him for a peck of seed corn, he says:--
+
+ "Soon plantin' time will come again,
+ Syne may the heavens gie us rain,
+ An' shining heat to bless ilk plain
+ An' fertile hill,
+ An' gar the loads o' yellow grain,
+ Our garrets fill.
+
+ "As long as I has food and clothing,
+ An' still am hale and fier and breathing,
+ Ye 's get the corn--and may be aething
+ Ye'll do for me;
+ (Though God forbid)--hang me for naething
+ An' lose your fee."
+
+And on receiving a copy of some verses written by a lady, he talks in a
+sad way for a Presbyterian deacon:--
+
+ "Were she some Aborigine squaw,
+ Wha sings so sweet by nature's law,
+ I'd meet her in a hazle shaw,
+ Or some green loany,
+ And make her tawny phiz and 'a
+ My welcome crony."
+
+The practical philosophy of the stout, jovial rhymer was but little
+affected by the sour-featured asceticism of the elder. He says:--
+
+ "We'll eat and drink, and cheerful take
+ Our portions for the Donor's sake,
+ For thus the Word of Wisdom spake--
+ Man can't do better;
+ Nor can we by our labors make
+ The Lord our debtor!"
+
+A quaintly characteristic correspondence in rhyme between the Deacon and
+Parson McGregore, evidently "birds o' ane feather," is still in
+existence. The minister, in acknowledging the epistle of his old friend,
+commences his reply as follows:--
+
+ "Did e'er a cuif tak' up a quill,
+ Wha ne'er did aught that he did well,
+ To gar the muses rant and reel,
+ An' flaunt and swagger,
+ Nae doubt ye 'll say 't is that daft chiel
+ Old Dite McGregore!"
+
+The reply is in the same strain, and may serve to give the reader some
+idea of the old gentleman as a religious controversialist:--
+
+ "My reverend friend and kind McGregore,
+ Although thou ne'er was ca'd a bragger,
+ Thy muse I'm sure nave e'er was glegger
+ Thy Scottish lays
+ Might gar Socinians fa' or stagger,
+ E'en in their ways.
+
+ "When Unitarian champions dare thee,
+ Goliah like, and think to scare thee,
+ Dear Davie, fear not, they'll ne'er waur thee;
+ But draw thy sling,
+ Weel loaded frae the Gospel quarry,
+ An' gie 't a fling."
+
+The last time I saw him, he was chaffering in the market-place of my
+native village, swapping potatoes and onions and pumpkins for tea,
+coffee, molasses, and, if the truth be told, New England rum. Threescore
+years and ten, to use his own words,
+
+ "Hung o'er his back,
+ And bent him like a muckle pack,"
+
+yet he still stood stoutly and sturdily in his thick shoes of cowhide,
+like one accustomed to tread independently the soil of his own acres,--
+his broad, honest face seamed by care and darkened by exposure to "all
+the airts that blow," and his white hair flowing in patriarchal glory
+beneath his felt hat. A genial, jovial, large-hearted old man, simple as
+a child, and betraying, neither in look nor manner, that he was
+accustomed to
+
+ "Feed on thoughts which voluntary move
+ Harmonious numbers."
+
+Peace to him! A score of modern dandies and sentimentalists could ill
+supply the place of this one honest man. In the ancient burial-ground of
+Windham, by the side of his "beloved Molly," and in view of the old
+meeting-house, there is a mound of earth, where, every spring, green
+grasses tremble in the wind and the warm sunshine calls out the flowers.
+There, gathered like one of his own ripe sheaves, the farmer poet sleeps
+with his fathers.
+
+
+
+
+PLACIDO, THE SLAVE POET. (1845.)
+
+I have been greatly interested in the fate of Juan Placido, the black
+revolutionist of Cuba, who was executed in Havana, as the alleged
+instigator and leader of an attempted revolt on the part of the slaves in
+that city and its neighborhood.
+
+Juan Placido was born a slave on the estate of Don Terribio de Castro.
+His father was an African, his mother a mulatto. His mistress treated
+him with great kindness, and taught him to read. When he was twelve
+years of age she died, and he fell into other and less compassionate
+hands. At the age of eighteen, on seeing his mother struck with a heavy
+whip, he for the first time turned upon his tormentors. To use his own
+words, "I felt the blow in my heart. To utter a loud cry, and from a
+downcast boy, with the timidity of one weak as a lamb, to become all at
+office like a raging lion, was a thing of a moment." He was, however,
+subdued, and the next morning, together with his mother, a tenderly
+nurtured and delicate woman, severely scourged. On seeing his mother
+rudely stripped and thrown down upon the ground, he at first with tears
+implored the overseer to spare her; but at the sound of the first blow,
+as it cut into her naked flesh, he sprang once more upon the ruffian,
+who, having superior strength, beat him until he was nearer dead than
+alive.
+
+After suffering all the vicissitudes of slavery,--hunger, nakedness,
+stripes; after bravely and nobly bearing up against that slow, dreadful
+process which reduces the man to a thing, the image of God to a piece of
+merchandise, until he had reached his thirty-eighth year, he was
+unexpectedly released from his bonds. Some literary gentlemen in Havana,
+into whose hands two or three pieces of his composition had fallen,
+struck with the vigor, spirit, and natural grace which they manifested,
+sought out the author, and raised a subscription to purchase his freedom.
+He came to Havana, and maintained himself by house-painting, and such
+other employments as his ingenuity and talents placed within his reach.
+He wrote several poems, which have been published in Spanish at Havana,
+and translated by Dr. Madden, under the title of _Poems by a Slave_.
+
+It is not too much to say of these poems that they will bear a comparison
+with most of the productions of modern Spanish literature. The style is
+bold, free, energetic. Some of the pieces are sportive and graceful;
+such is the address to _The Cucuya_, or Cuban firefly. This beautiful
+insect is sometimes fastened in tiny nets to the light dresses of the
+Cuban ladies, a custom to which the writer gallantly alludes in the
+following lines:--
+
+ "Ah!--still as one looks on such brightness and bloom,
+ On such beauty as hers, one might envy the doom
+ Of a captive Cucuya that's destined, like this,
+ To be touched by her hand and revived by her kiss!
+ In the cage which her delicate hand has prepared,
+ The beautiful prisoner nestles unscared,
+ O'er her fair forehead shining serenely and bright,
+ In beauty's own bondage revealing its light!
+ And when the light dance and the revel are done,
+ She bears it away to her alcove alone,
+ Where, fed by her hand from the cane that's most choice,
+ In secret it gleans at the sound of her voice!
+ O beautiful maiden! may Heaven accord
+ Thy care of the captive a fitting reward,
+ And never may fortune the fetters remove
+ Of a heart that is thine in the bondage of love!"
+
+In his Dream, a fragment of some length, Placido dwells in a touching
+manner upon the scenes of his early years. It is addressed to his
+brother Florence, who was a slave near Matanzas, while the author was in
+the same condition at Havana. There is a plaintive and melancholy
+sweetness in these lines, a natural pathos, which finds its way to the
+heart:--
+
+ "Thou knowest, dear Florence, my sufferings of old,
+ The struggles maintained with oppression for years;
+ We shared them together, and each was consoled
+ With the love which was nurtured by sorrow and tears.
+
+ "But now far apart, the sad pleasure is gone,
+ We mingle our sighs and our sorrows no more;
+ The course is a new one which each has to run,
+ And dreary for each is the pathway before.
+
+ "But in slumber our spirits at least shall commune,
+ We will meet as of old in the visions of sleep,
+ In dreams which call back early days, when at noon
+ We stole to the shade of the palm-tree to weep!
+
+ "For solitude pining, in anguish of late
+ The heights of Quintana I sought for repose;
+ And there, in the cool and the silence, the weight
+ Of my cares was forgotten, I felt not any woes.
+
+ "Exhausted and weary, the spell of the place
+ Sank down on my eyelids, and soft slumber stole
+ So sweetly upon me, it left not a trace
+ Of sorrow o'ercasting the light of the soul."
+
+
+The writer then imagines himself borne lightly through the air to the
+place of his birth. The valley of Matanzas lies beneath him, hallowed by
+the graves of his parents. He proceeds:--
+
+ "I gazed on that spot where together we played,
+ Our innocent pastimes came fresh to my mind,
+ Our mother's caress, and the fondness displayed
+ In each word and each look of a parent so kind.
+
+ "I looked on the mountain, whose fastnesses wild
+ The fugitives seek from the rifle and hound;
+ Below were the fields where they suffered and toiled,
+ And there the low graves of their comrades are found.
+
+ "The mill-house was there, and the turmoil of old;
+ But sick of these scenes, for too well were they known,
+ I looked for the stream where in childhood I strolled
+ When a moment of quiet and peace was my own.
+
+ "With mingled emotions of pleasure and pain,
+ Dear Florence, I sighed to behold thee once more;
+ I sought thee, my brother, embraced thee again,
+ But I found thee a slave as I left thee before!"
+
+Some of his devotional pieces evince the fervor and true feeling of the
+Christian poet. His _Ode to Religion_ contains many admirable lines.
+Speaking of the martyrs of the early days of Christianity, he says
+finely:--
+
+ "Still in that cradle, purpled with their blood,
+ The infant Faith waxed stronger day by day."
+
+I cannot forbear quoting the last stanza of this poem:--
+
+ "O God of mercy, throned in glory high,
+ On earth and all its misery look down:
+ Behold the wretched, hear the captive's cry,
+ And call Thy exiled children round Thy throne!
+ There would I fain in contemplation gaze
+ On Thy eternal beauty, and would make
+ Of love one lasting canticle of praise,
+ And every theme but Thee henceforth forsake!"
+
+His best and noblest production is an ode _To Cuba_, written on the
+occasion of Dr. Madden's departure from the island, and presented to that
+gentleman. It was never published in Cuba, as its sentiments would have
+subjected the author to persecution. It breathes a lofty spirit of
+patriotism, and an indignant sense of the wrongs inflicted upon his race.
+Withal, it has something of the grandeur and stateliness of the old
+Spanish muse.
+
+ "Cuba!--of what avail that thou art fair,
+ Pearl of the Seas, the pride of the Antilles,
+ If thy poor sons have still to see thee share
+ The pangs of bondage and its thousand ills?
+ Of what avail the verdure of thy hills,
+ The purple bloom thy coffee-plain displays;
+ The cane's luxuriant growth, whose culture fills
+ More graves than famine, or the sword finds ways
+ To glut with victims calmly as it slays?
+
+ "Of what avail that thy clear streams abound
+ With precious ore, if wealth there's, none to buy
+ Thy children's rights, and not one grain is found
+ For Learning's shrine, or for the altar nigh
+ Of poor, forsaken, downcast Liberty?
+ Of what avail the riches of thy port,
+ Forests of masts and ships from every sea,
+ If Trade alone is free, and man, the sport
+ And spoil of Trade, bears wrongs of every sort?
+
+ "Cuba! O Cuba!---when men call thee fair,
+ And rich, and beautiful, the Queen of Isles,
+ Star of the West, and Ocean's gem most rare,
+ Oh, say to those who mock thee with such wiles:
+ Take off these flowers; and view the lifeless spoils
+ Which wait the worm; behold their hues beneath
+ The pale, cold cheek; and seek for living smiles
+ Where Beauty lies not in the arms of Death,
+ And Bondage taints not with its poison breath!"
+
+The disastrous result of the last rising of the slaves--in Cuba is well
+known. Betrayed, and driven into premature collision with their
+oppressors, the insurrectionists were speedily crushed into subjection.
+Placido was arrested, and after a long hearing was condemned to be
+executed, and consigned to the Chapel of the Condemned.
+
+How far he was implicated in the insurrectionary movement it is now
+perhaps impossible to ascertain. The popular voice at Havana pronounced
+him its leader and projector, and as such he was condemned. His own
+bitter wrongs; the terrible recollections of his life of servitude; the
+sad condition of his relatives and race, exposed to scorn, contumely, and
+the heavy hand of violence; the impunity with which the most dreadful
+outrages upon the persons of slaves were inflicted,--acting upon a mind
+fully capable of appreciating the beauty and dignity of freedom,--
+furnished abundant incentives to an effort for the redemption of his race
+and the humiliation of his oppressors. The Heraldo, of Madrid speaks of
+him as "the celebrated poet, a man of great natural genius, and beloved
+and appreciated by the most respectable young men of Havana." It accuses
+him of wild and ambitious projects, and states that he was intended to be
+the chief of the black race after they had thrown off the yoke of
+bondage.
+
+He was executed at Havana in the seventh month, 1844. According to the
+custom in Cuba with condemned criminals, he was conducted from prison to
+the Chapel of the Doomed. He passed thither with singular composure,
+amidst a great concourse of people, gracefully saluting his numerous
+acquaintances. The chapel was hung with black cloth, and dimly lighted.
+He was seated beside his coffin. Priests in long black robes stood
+around him, chanting in sepulchral voices the service of the dead. It is
+an ordeal under which the stoutest-hearted and most resolute have been
+found to sink. After enduring it for twenty-four hours he was led out to
+execution. He came forth calm and undismayed; holding a crucifix in his
+hand, he recited in a loud, clear voice a solemn prayer in verse, which
+he had composed amidst the horrors of the Chapel. The following is an
+imperfect rendering of a poem which thrilled the hearts of all who heard
+it:--
+
+ "God of unbounded love and power eternal,
+ To Thee I turn in darkness and despair!
+ Stretch forth Thine arm, and from the brow infernal
+ Of Calumny the veil of Justice tear;
+ And from the forehead of my honest fame
+ Pluck the world's brand of infamy and shame!
+
+ "O King of kings!--my fathers' God!--who only
+ Art strong to save, by whom is all controlled,
+ Who givest the sea its waves, the dark and lonely
+ Abyss of heaven its light, the North its cold,
+ The air its currents, the warm sun its beams,
+ Life to the flowers, and motion to the streams!
+
+ "All things obey Thee, dying or reviving
+ As thou commandest; all, apart from Thee,
+ From Thee alone their life and power deriving,
+ Sink and are lost in vast eternity!
+ Yet doth the void obey Thee; since from naught
+ This marvellous being by Thy hand was wrought.
+
+ "O merciful God! I cannot shun Thy presence,
+ For through its veil of flesh Thy piercing eye
+ Looketh upon my spirit's unsoiled essence,
+ As through the pure transparence of the sky;
+ Let not the oppressor clap his bloody hands,
+ As o'er my prostrate innocence he stands!
+
+ "But if, alas, it seemeth good to Thee
+ That I should perish as the guilty dies,
+ And that in death my foes should gaze on me
+ With hateful malice and exulting eyes,
+ Speak Thou the word, and bid them shed my blood,
+ Fully in me Thy will be done, O God!"
+
+On arriving at the fatal spot, he sat down as ordered, on a bench, with
+his back to the soldiers. The multitude recollected that in some
+affecting lines, written by the conspirator in prison, he had said that
+it would be useless to seek to kill him by shooting his body,--that his
+heart must be pierced ere it would cease its throbbings. At the last
+moment, just as the soldiers were about to fire, he rose up and gazed for
+an instant around and above him on the beautiful capital of his native
+land and its sail-flecked bay, on the dense crowds about him, the blue
+mountains in the distance, and the sky glorious with summer sunshine.
+"Adios, mundo!" (Farewell, world!) he said calmly, and sat down. The
+word was given, and five balls entered his body. Then it was that,
+amidst the groans and murmurs of the horror-stricken spectators, he rose
+up once more, and turned his head to the shuddering soldiers, his face
+wearing an expression of superhuman courage. "Will no one pity me?" he
+said, laying his hand over his heart. "Here, fire here!" While he yet
+spake, two balls entered his heart, and he fell dead.
+
+Thus perished the hero poet of Cuba. He has not fallen in vain. His
+genius and his heroic death will doubtless be regarded by his race as
+precious legacies. To the great names of L'Ouverture and Petion the
+colored man can now add that of Juan Placido.
+
+
+
+
+
+PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES
+
+
+
+
+THE FUNERAL OF TORREY.
+
+ Charles T. Torrey, an able young Congregational clergyman, died May
+ 9, 1846, in the state's prison of Maryland, for the offence of
+ aiding slaves to escape from bondage. His funeral in Boston,
+ attended by thousands, was a most impressive occasion. The
+ following is an extract from an article written for the _Essex
+ Transcript_:--
+
+Some seven years ago, we saw Charles T. Torrey for the first time. His
+wife was leaning on his arm,--young, loving, and beautiful; the heart
+that saw them blessed them. Since that time, we have known him as a most
+energetic and zealous advocate of the anti-slavery cause. He had fine
+talents, improved by learning and observation, a clear, intensely active
+intellect, and a heart full of sympathy and genial humanity. It was with
+strange and bitter feelings that we bent over his coffin and looked upon
+his still face. The pity which we had felt for him in his long
+sufferings gave place to indignation against his murderers. Hateful
+beyond the power of expression seemed the tyranny which had murdered him
+with the slow torture of the dungeon. May God forgive us, if for the
+moment we felt like grasping His dread prerogative of vengeance. As we
+passed out of the hall, a friend grasped our hand hard, his eye flashing
+through its tears, with a stern reflection of our own emotions, while he
+whispered through his pressed lips: "It is enough to turn every anti-
+slavery heart into steel." Our blood boiled; we longed to see the wicked
+apologists of slavery--the blasphemous defenders of it in Church and
+State--led up to the coffin of our murdered brother, and there made to
+feel that their hands had aided in riveting the chain upon those still
+limbs, and in shutting out from those cold lips the free breath of
+heaven.
+
+A long procession followed his remains to their resting-place at Mount
+Auburn. A monument to his memory will be raised in that cemetery, in the
+midst of the green beauty of the scenery which he loved in life, and side
+by side with the honored dead of Massachusetts. Thither let the friends
+of humanity go to gather fresh strength from the memory of the martyr.
+There let the slaveholder stand, and as he reads the record of the
+enduring marble commune with his own heart, and feel that sorrow which
+worketh repentance.
+
+The young, the beautiful, the brave!--he is safe now from the malice of
+his enemies. Nothing can harm him more. His work for the poor and
+helpless was well and nobly done. In the wild woods of Canada, around
+many a happy fireside and holy family altar, his name is on the lips of
+God's poor. He put his soul in their souls' stead; he gave his life for
+those who had no claim on his love save that of human brotherhood. How
+poor, how pitiful and paltry, seem our labors! How small and mean our
+trials and sacrifices! May the spirit of the dead be with us, and infuse
+into our hearts something of his own deep sympathy, his hatred of
+injustice, his strong faith and heroic endurance. May that spirit be
+gladdened in its present sphere by the increased zeal and faithfulness of
+the friends he has left behind.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD EVERETT.
+
+A letter to Robert C. Waterston.
+
+Amesbury, 27th 1st Month, 1865.
+
+I acknowledge through thee the invitation of the standing committee of
+the Massachusetts Historical Society to be present at a special meeting
+of the Society for the purpose of paying a tribute to the memory of our
+late illustrious associate, Edward Everett.
+
+It is a matter of deep regret to me that the state of my health will not
+permit me to be with you on an occasion of so much interest.
+
+It is most fitting that the members of the Historical Society of
+Massachusetts should add their tribute to those which have been already
+offered by all sects, parties, and associations to the name and fame of
+their late associate. He was himself a maker of history, and part and
+parcel of all the noble charities and humanizing influences of his State
+and time.
+
+When the grave closed over him who added new lustre to the old and
+honored name of Quincy, all eyes instinctively turned to Edward Everett
+as the last of that venerated class of patriotic civilians who, outliving
+all dissent and jealousy and party prejudice, held their reputation by
+the secure tenure of the universal appreciation of its worth as a common
+treasure of the republic. It is not for me to pronounce his eulogy.
+Others, better qualified by their intimate acquaintance with him, have
+done and will do justice to his learning, eloquence, varied culture, and
+social virtues. My secluded country life has afforded me few
+opportunities of personal intercourse with him, while my pronounced
+radicalism on the great question which has divided popular feeling
+rendered our political paths widely divergent. Both of us early saw the
+danger which threatened the country. In the language of the prophet, we
+"saw the sword coming upon the land," but while he believed in the
+possibility of averting it by concession and compromise, I, on the
+contrary, as firmly believed that such a course could only strengthen and
+confirm what I regarded as a gigantic conspiracy against the rights and
+liberties, the union and the life, of the nation.
+
+Recent events have certainly not tended to change this belief on my part;
+but in looking over the past, while I see little or nothing to retract in
+the matter of opinion, I am saddened by the reflection that through the
+very intensity of my convictions I may have done injustice to the motives
+of those with whom I differed. As respects Edward Everett, it seems to
+me that only within the last four years I have truly known him.
+
+In that brief period, crowded as it is with a whole life-work of
+consecration to the union, freedom, and glory of his country, he not only
+commanded respect and reverence, but concentrated upon himself in a most
+remarkable degree the love of all loyal and generous hearts. We have
+seen, in these years of trial, very great sacrifices offered upon the
+altar of patriotism,--wealth, ease, home, love, life itself. But Edward
+Everett did more than this: he laid on that altar not only his time,
+talents, and culture, but his pride of opinion, his long-cherished views
+of policy, his personal and political predilections and prejudices, his
+constitutional fastidiousness of conservatism, and the carefully
+elaborated symmetry of his public reputation. With a rare and noble
+magnanimity, he met, without hesitation, the demand of the great
+occasion. Breaking away from all the besetments of custom and
+association, he forgot the things that are behind, and, with an eye
+single to present duty, pressed forward towards the mark of the high
+calling of Divine Providence in the events of our time. All honor to
+him! If we mourn that he is now beyond the reach of our poor human
+praise, let us reverently trust that he has received that higher plaudit:
+"Well done, thou good and faithful servant!"
+
+When I last met him, as my colleague in the Electoral College of
+Massachusetts, his look of health and vigor seemed to promise us many
+years of his wisdom and usefulness. On greeting him I felt impelled to
+express my admiration and grateful appreciation of his patriotic labors;
+and I shall never forget how readily and gracefully he turned attention
+from himself to the great cause in which we had a common interest, and
+expressed his thankfulness that he had still a country to serve.
+
+To keep green the memory of such a man is at once a privilege and a duty.
+That stainless life of seventy years is a priceless legacy. His hands
+were pure. The shadow of suspicion never fell on him. If he erred in
+his opinions (and that he did so he had the Christian grace and courage
+to own), no selfish interest weighed in the scale of his judgment against
+truth.
+
+As our thoughts follow him to his last resting-place, we are sadly
+reminded of his own touching lines, written many years ago at Florence.
+The name he has left behind is none the less "pure" that instead of being
+"humble," as he then anticipated, it is on the lips of grateful millions,
+and written ineffaceable on the record of his country's trial and
+triumph:--
+
+ "Yet not for me when I shall fall asleep
+ Shall Santa Croce's lamps their vigils keep.
+ Beyond the main in Auburn's quiet shade,
+ With those I loved and love my couch be made;
+ Spring's pendant branches o'er the hillock wave,
+ And morning's dewdrops glisten on my grave,
+ While Heaven's great arch shall rise above my bed,
+ When Santa Croce's crumbles on her dead,--
+ Unknown to erring or to suffering fame,
+ So may I leave a pure though humble name."
+
+Congratulating the Society on the prospect of the speedy consummation of
+the great objects of our associate's labors,--the peace and permanent
+union of our country,--
+
+I am very truly thy friend.
+
+
+
+
+LEWIS TAPPAN. (1873.)
+
+One after another, those foremost in the antislavery conflict of the last
+half century are rapidly passing away. The grave has just closed over
+all that was mortal of Salmon P. Chase, the kingliest of men, a statesman
+second to no other in our history, too great and pure for the Presidency,
+yet leaving behind him a record which any incumbent of that station might
+envy,--and now the telegraph brings us the tidings of the death of Lewis
+Tappan, of Brooklyn, so long and so honorably identified with the anti-
+slavery cause, and with every philanthropic and Christian enterprise. He
+was a native of Massachusetts, born at Northampton in 1788, of Puritan
+lineage,--one of a family remarkable for integrity, decision of
+character, and intellectual ability. At the very outset, in company with
+his brother Arthur, he devoted his time, talents, wealth, and social
+position to the righteous but unpopular cause of Emancipation, and
+became, in consequence, a mark for the persecution which followed such
+devotion. His business was crippled, his name cast out as evil, his
+dwelling sacked, and his furniture dragged into the street and burned.
+Yet he never, in the darkest hour, faltered or hesitated for a moment.
+He knew he was right, and that the end would justify him; one of the
+cheerfullest of men, he was strong where others were weak, hopeful where
+others despaired. He was wise in counsel, and prompt in action; like
+Tennyson's Sir Galahad,
+
+ "His strength was as the strength of ten,
+ Because his heart was pure."
+
+I met him for the first time forty years ago, at the convention which
+formed the American Anti-Slavery Society, where I chanced to sit by him
+as one of the secretaries. Myself young and inexperienced, I remember
+how profoundly I was impressed by his cool self-possession, clearness of
+perception, and wonderful executive ability. Had he devoted himself to
+party politics with half the zeal which he manifested in behalf of those
+who had no votes to give and no honors to bestow, he could have reached
+the highest offices in the land. He chose his course, knowing all that
+he renounced, and he chose it wisely. He never, at least, regretted it.
+
+And now, at the ripe age of eighty-five years, the brave old man has
+passed onward to the higher life, having outlived here all hatred, abuse,
+and misrepresentation, having seen the great work of Emancipation
+completed, and white men and black men equal before the law. I saw him
+for the last time three years ago, when he was preparing his valuable
+biography of his beloved brother Arthur. Age had begun to tell upon his
+constitution, but his intellectual force was not abated. The old,
+pleasant laugh and playful humor remained. He looked forward to the
+close of life hopefully, even cheerfully, as he called to mind the dear
+friends who had passed on before him, to await his coming.
+
+Of the sixty-three signers of the Anti-Slavery Declaration at the
+Philadelphia Convention in 1833, probably not more than eight or ten are
+now living.
+
+ "As clouds that rake the mountain summits,
+ As waves that know no guiding hand,
+ So swift has brother followed brother
+ From sunshine to the sunless land."
+
+Yet it is a noteworthy fact that the oldest member of that convention,
+David Thurston, D. D., of Maine, lived to see the slaves emancipated, and
+to mingle his voice of thanksgiving with the bells that rang in the day
+of universal freedom.
+
+
+
+
+BAYARD TAYLOR
+
+Read at the memorial meeting in Tremont Temple, Boston, January 10, 1879.
+
+I am not able to attend the memorial meeting in Tremont Temple on the
+10th instant, but my heart responds to any testimonial appreciative of
+the intellectual achievements and the noble and manly life of Bayard
+Taylor. More than thirty years have intervened between my first meeting
+him in the fresh bloom of his youth and hope and honorable ambition, and
+my last parting with him under the elms of Boston Common, after our visit
+to Richard H. Dana, on the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of that
+honored father of American poetry, still living to lament the death of
+his younger disciple and friend. How much he has accomplished in these
+years! The most industrious of men, slowly, patiently, under many
+disadvantages, he built up his splendid reputation. Traveller, editor,
+novelist, translator, diplomatist, and through all and above all poet,
+what he was he owed wholly to himself. His native honesty was satisfied
+with no half tasks. He finished as he went, and always said and did his
+best.
+
+It is perhaps too early to assign him his place in American literature.
+His picturesque books of travel, his Oriental lyrics, his Pennsylvanian
+idyls, his Centennial ode, the pastoral beauty and Christian sweetness of
+Lars, and the high argument and rhythmic marvel of Deukalion are sureties
+of the permanence of his reputation. But at this moment my thoughts
+dwell rather upon the man than the author. The calamity of his death,
+felt in both hemispheres, is to me and to all who intimately knew and
+loved him a heavy personal loss. Under the shadow of this bereavement,
+in the inner circle of mourning, we sorrow most of all that we shall see
+his face no more, and long for "the touch of a vanished hand, and the
+sound of a voice that is still."
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
+
+Read at the dedication of the Channing Memorial Church at Newport, R. I.
+
+DANVERS, MASS., 3d Mo., 13, 1880.
+
+I scarcely need say that I yield to no one in love and reverence for the
+great and good man whose memory, outliving all prejudices of creed, sect,
+and party, is the common legacy of Christendom. As the years go on, the
+value of that legacy will be more and more felt; not so much, perhaps, in
+doctrine as in spirit, in those utterances of a devout soul which are
+above and beyond the affirmation or negation of dogma.
+
+His ethical severity and Christian tenderness; his hatred of wrong and
+oppression, with love and pity for the wrong-doer; his noble pleas for
+self-culture, temperance, peace, and purity; and above all, his precept
+and example of unquestioning obedience to duty and the voice of God in
+his soul, can never become obsolete. It is very fitting that his memory
+should be especially cherished with that of Hopkins and Berkeley in the
+beautiful island to which the common residence of those worthies has lent
+additional charms and interest.
+
+
+
+
+DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD.
+
+A letter written to W. H. B. Currier, of Amesbury, Mass.
+
+DANVERS, MASS., 9th Mo., 24, 1881.
+
+I regret that it is not in my power to join the citizens of Amesbury and
+Salisbury in the memorial services on the occasion of the death of our
+lamented President. But in heart and sympathy I am with you. I share
+the great sorrow which overshadows the land; I fully appreciate the
+irretrievable loss. But it seems to me that the occasion is one for
+thankfulness as well as grief.
+
+Through all the stages of the solemn tragedy which has just closed with
+the death of our noblest and best, I have felt that the Divine Providence
+was overruling the mighty affliction,--that the patient sufferer at
+Washington was drawing with cords of sympathy all sections and parties
+nearer to each other. And now, when South and North, Democrat and
+Republican, Radical and Conservative, lift their voices in one unbroken
+accord of lamentation; when I see how, in spite of the greed of gain, the
+lust of office, the strifes and narrowness of party politics, the great
+heart of the nation proves sound and loyal, I feel a new hope for the
+republic, I have a firmer faith in its stability. It is said that no man
+liveth and no man dieth to himself; and the pure and noble life of
+Garfield, and his slow, long martyrdom, so bravely borne in view of all,
+are, I believe, bearing for us as a people "the peaceable fruits of
+righteousness." We are stronger, wiser, better, for them.
+
+With him it is well. His mission fulfilled, he goes to his grave by the
+Lakeside honored and lamented as man never was before. The whole world
+mourns him. There is no speech nor language where the voice of his
+praise is not heard. About his grave gather, with heads uncovered, the
+vast brotherhood of man.
+
+And with us it is well, also. We are nearer a united people than ever
+before. We are at peace with all; our future is full of promise; our
+industrial and financial condition is hopeful. God grant that, while our
+material interests prosper, the moral and spiritual influence of the
+occasion may be permanently felt; that the solemn sacrament of Sorrow,
+whereof we have been made partakers, may be blest to the promotion of the
+righteousness which exalteth a nation.
+
+
+
+
+LYDIA MARIA CHILD.
+
+ In 1882 a collection of the Letters of Lydia Maria Child was
+ published, for which I wrote the following sketch, as an
+ introduction:--
+
+In presenting to the public this memorial volume, its compilers deemed
+that a brief biographical introduction was necessary; and as a labor of
+love I have not been able to refuse their request to prepare it.
+
+Lydia Maria Francis was born in Medford, Massachusetts, February 11,
+1802. Her father, Convers Francis, was a worthy and substantial citizen
+of that town. Her brother, Convers Francis, afterwards theological
+professor in Harvard College, was some years older than herself, and
+assisted her in her early home studies, though, with the perversity of an
+elder brother, he sometimes mystified her in answering her questions.
+Once, when she wished to know what was meant by Milton's "raven down of
+darkness," which was made to smile when smoothed, he explained that it
+was only the fur of a black cat, which sparkled when stroked! Later in
+life this brother wrote of her, "She has been a dear, good sister to me
+would that I had been half as good a brother to her." Her earliest
+teacher was an aged spinster, known in the village as "Marm Betty,"
+painfully shy, and with many oddities of person and manner, the never-
+forgotten calamity of whose life was that Governor Brooks once saw her
+drinking out of the nose of her tea-kettle. Her school was in her
+bedroom, always untidy, and she was a constant chewer of tobacco but the
+children were fond of her, and Maria and her father always carried her a
+good Sunday dinner. Thomas W. Higginson, in _Eminent Women of the Age_,
+mentions in this connection that, according to an established custom, on
+the night before Thanksgiving "all the humble friends of the Francis
+household--Marm Betty, the washerwoman, wood-sawyer, and journeymen, some
+twenty or thirty in all--were summoned to a preliminary entertainment.
+They there partook of an immense chicken pie, pumpkin pie made in milk-
+pans, and heaps of doughnuts. They feasted in the large, old-fashioned
+kitchen, and went away loaded with crackers and bread and pies, not
+forgetting 'turnovers' for the children. Such plain application of the
+doctrine that it is more blessed to give than receive may have done more
+to mould the character of Lydia Maria Child of maturer years than all the
+faithful labors of good Dr. Osgood, to whom she and her brother used to
+repeat the Assembly's catechism once a month."
+
+Her education was limited to the public schools, with the exception of
+one year at a private seminary in her native town. From a note by her
+brother, Dr. Francis, we learn that when twelve years of age she went to
+Norridgewock, Maine, where her married sister resided. At Dr. Brown's,
+in Skowhegan, she first read _Waverley_. She was greatly excited, and
+exclaimed, as she laid down the book, "Why cannot I write a novel?"
+She remained in Norridgewock and vicinity for several years, and on her
+return to Massachusetts took up her abode with her brother at Watertown.
+He encouraged her literary tastes, and it was in his study that she
+commenced her first story, _Hobomok_, which she published in the twenty-
+first year of her age. The success it met with induced her to give to
+the public, soon after, _The Rebels: a Tale of the Revolution_, which was
+at once received into popular favor, and ran rapidly through several
+editions. Then followed in close succession _The Mother's Book_, running
+through eight American editions, twelve English, and one German, _The
+Girl's Book_, the _History of Women_, and the _Frugal Housewife_, of
+which thirty-five editions were published. Her _Juvenile Miscellany_ was
+commenced in 1826.
+
+It is not too much to say that half a century ago she was the most
+popular literary woman in the United States. She had published
+historical novels of unquestioned power of description and
+characterization, and was widely and favorably known as the editor of the
+_Juvenile Miscellany_, which was probably the first periodical in the
+English tongue devoted exclusively to children, and to which she was by
+far the largest contributor. Some of the tales and poems from her pen
+were extensively copied and greatly admired. It was at this period that
+the _North American Review_, the highest literary authority of the
+country, said of her, "We are not sure that any woman of our country
+could outrank Mrs. Child. This lady has been long before the public as
+an author with much success. And she well deserves it, for in all her
+works nothing can be found which does not commend itself, by its tone of
+healthy morality and good sense. Few female writers, if any, have done
+more or better things for our literature in the lighter or graver
+departments."
+
+Comparatively young, she had placed herself in the front rank of American
+authorship. Her books and her magazine had a large circulation, and were
+affording her a comfortable income, at a time when the rewards of
+authorship were uncertain and at the best scanty.
+
+In 1828 she married David Lee Child, Esq., a young and able lawyer, and
+took up her residence in Boston. In 1831-32 both became deeply
+interested in the subject of slavery, through the writings and personal
+influence of William Lloyd Garrison. Her husband, a member of the
+Massachusetts legislature and editor of the _Massachusetts Journal_, had,
+at an earlier date, denounced the project of the dismemberment of Mexico
+for the purpose of strengthening and extending American slavery. He was
+one of the earliest members of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and
+his outspoken hostility to the peculiar institution greatly and
+unfavorably affected his interests as a lawyer. In 1832 he addressed a
+series of able letters on slavery and the slave-trade to Edward S. Abdy,
+a prominent English philanthropist. In 1836 he published in Philadelphia
+ten strongly written articles on the same subject. He visited England
+and France in 1837, and while in Paris addressed an elaborate memoir to
+the Societe pour l'Abolition d'Esclavage, and a paper on the same subject
+to the editor of the _Eclectic Review_, in London. To his facts and
+arguments John Quincy Adams was much indebted in the speeches which he
+delivered in Congress on the Texas question.
+
+In 1833 the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed by a convention in
+Philadelphia. Its numbers were small, and it was everywhere spoken
+against. It was at this time that Lydia Maria Child startled the country
+by the publication of her noble _Appeal in Behalf of that Class of
+Americans called Africans_. It is quite impossible for any one of the
+present generation to imagine the popular surprise and indignation which
+the book called forth, or how entirely its author cut herself off from
+the favor and sympathy of a large number of those who had previously
+delighted to do her honor. Social and literary circles, which had been
+proud of her presence, closed their doors against her. The sale of her
+books, the subscriptions to her magazine, fell off to a ruinous extent.
+She knew all she was hazarding, and made the great sacrifice, prepared
+for all the consequences which followed. In the preface to her book she
+says, "I am fully aware of the unpopularity of the task I have
+undertaken; but though I expect ridicule and censure, I do not fear them.
+A few years hence, the opinion of the world will be a matter in which I
+have not even the most transient interest; but this book will be abroad
+on its mission of humanity long after the hand that wrote it is mingling
+with the dust. Should it be the means of advancing, even one single
+hour, the inevitable progress of truth and justice, I would not exchange
+the consciousness for all Rothschild's wealth or Sir Walter's fame."
+
+Thenceforth her life was a battle; a constant rowing hard against the
+stream of popular prejudice and hatred. And through it all--pecuniary
+privation, loss of friends and position, the painfulness of being
+suddenly thrust from "the still air of delightful studies" into the
+bitterest and sternest controversy of the age--she bore herself with
+patience, fortitude, and unshaken reliance upon the justice and ultimate
+triumph of the cause she had espoused. Her pen was never idle. Wherever
+there was a brave word to be spoken, her voice was heard, and never
+without effect. It is not exaggeration to say that no man or woman at
+that period rendered more substantial service to the cause of freedom, or
+made such a "great renunciation" in doing it.
+
+A practical philanthropist, she had the courage of her convictions, and
+from the first was no mere closet moralist or sentimental bewailer of the
+woes of humanity. She was the Samaritan stooping over the wounded Jew.
+She calmly and unflinchingly took her place by the side, of the despised
+slave and free man of color, and in word and act protested against the
+cruel prejudice which shut out its victims from the rights and privileges
+of American citizens. Her philanthropy had no taint of fanaticism;
+throughout the long struggle, in which she was a prominent actor, she
+kept her fine sense of humor, good taste, and sensibility to the
+beautiful in art and nature.
+
+ The opposition she met with from those who had shared her confidence
+ and friendship was of course keenly felt, but her kindly and genial
+ disposition remained unsoured. She rarely spoke of her personal
+ trials, and never posed as a martyr. The nearest approach to
+ anything like complaint is in the following lines, the date of which
+ I have not been able to ascertain:--
+
+ THE WORLD THAT I AM PASSING THROUGH.
+
+ Few in the days of early youth
+ Trusted like me in love and truth.
+ I've learned sad lessons from the years,
+ But slowly, and with many tears;
+ For God made me to kindly view
+ The world that I am passing through.
+
+ Though kindness and forbearance long
+ Must meet ingratitude and wrong,
+ I still would bless my fellow-men,
+ And trust them though deceived again.
+ God help me still to kindly view
+ The world that I am passing through.
+
+ From all that fate has brought to me
+ I strive to learn humility,
+ And trust in Him who rules above,
+ Whose universal law is love.
+ Thus only can I kindly view
+ The world that I am passing through.
+
+ When I approach the setting sun,
+ And feel my journey well-nigh done,
+ May Earth be veiled in genial light,
+ And her last smile to me seem bright.
+ Help me till then to kindly view
+ The world that I am passing through.
+
+ And all who tempt a trusting heart
+ From faith and hope to drift apart,
+ May they themselves be spared the pain
+ Of losing power to trust again.
+ God help us all to kindly view
+ The world that we are passing through.
+
+While faithful to the great duty which she felt was laid upon her in an
+especial manner, she was by no means a reformer of one idea, but her
+interest was manifested in every question affecting the welfare of
+humanity. Peace, temperance, education, prison reform, and equality of
+civil rights, irrespective of sex, engaged her attention. Under all the
+disadvantages of her estrangement from popular favor, her charming Greek
+romance of _Philothea_ and her _Lives of Madame Roland_ and the _Baroness
+de Stael_ proved that her literary ability had lost nothing of its
+strength, and that the hand which penned such terrible rebukes had still
+kept its delicate touch, and gracefully yielded to the inspiration of
+fancy and art. While engaged with her husband in the editorial
+supervision of the _Anti-Slavery Standard_, she wrote her admirable
+_Letters from New York_; humorous, eloquent, and picturesque, but still
+humanitarian in tone, which extorted the praise of even a pro-slavery
+community. Her great work, in three octavo volumes, _The Progress of
+Religious Ideas_, belongs, in part, to that period. It is an attempt to
+represent in a candid, unprejudiced manner the rise and progress of the
+great religions of the world, and their ethical relations to each other.
+She availed herself of, and carefully studied, the authorities at that
+time accessible, and the result is creditable to her scholarship,
+industry, and conscientiousness. If, in her desire to do justice to the
+religions of Buddha and Mohammed, in which she has been followed by
+Maurice, Max Muller, and Dean Stanley, she seems at times to dwell upon
+the best and overlook the darker features of those systems, her
+concluding reflections should vindicate her from the charge of
+undervaluing the Christian faith, or of lack of reverent appreciation of
+its founder. In the closing chapter of her work, in which the large
+charity and broad sympathies of her nature are manifest, she thus turns
+with words of love, warm from the heart, to Him whose Sermon on the Mount
+includes most that is good and true and vital in the religions and
+philosophies of the world:--
+
+"It was reserved for Him to heal the brokenhearted, to preach a gospel to
+the poor, to say, 'Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved
+much.' Nearly two thousand years have passed away since these words of
+love and pity were uttered, yet when I read them my eyes fill with tears.
+I thank Thee, O Heavenly Father, for all the messengers thou hast sent to
+man; but, above all, I thank Thee for Him, thy beloved Son! Pure lily
+blossom of the centuries, taking root in the lowliest depths, and
+receiving the light and warmth of heaven in its golden heart! All that
+the pious have felt, all that poets have said, all that artists have
+done, with their manifold forms of beauty, to represent the ministry of
+Jesus, are but feeble expressions of the great debt we owe Him who is
+even now curing the lame, restoring sight to the blind, and raising the
+dead in that spiritual sense wherein all miracle is true."
+
+During her stay in New York, as editor of the _Anti-Slavery Standard_,
+she found a pleasant home at the residence of the genial philanthropist,
+Isaac T. Hopper, whose remarkable life she afterwards wrote. Her
+portrayal of this extraordinary man, so brave, so humorous, so tender and
+faithful to his convictions of duty, is one of the most readable pieces
+of biography in English literature. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in a
+discriminating paper published in 1869, speaks of her eight years'
+sojourn in New York as the most interesting and satisfactory period of
+her whole life. "She was placed where her sympathetic nature found
+abundant outlet and occupation. Dwelling in a house where
+disinterestedness and noble labor were as daily breath, she had great
+opportunities. There was no mere alms-giving; but sin and sorrow must
+be brought home to the fireside and the heart; the fugitive slave, the
+drunkard, the outcast woman, must be the chosen guests of the abode,--
+must be taken, and held, and loved into reformation or hope."
+
+It would be a very imperfect representation of Maria Child which regarded
+her only from a literary point of view. She was wise in counsel; and men
+like Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, Salmon P. Chase, and Governor Andrew
+availed themselves of her foresight and sound judgment of men and
+measures. Her pen was busy with correspondence, and whenever a true man
+or a good cause needed encouragement, she was prompt to give it. Her
+donations for benevolent causes and beneficent reforms were constant and
+liberal; and only those who knew her intimately could understand the
+cheerful and unintermitted self-denial which alone enabled her to make
+them. She did her work as far as possible out of sight, without noise or
+pretension. Her time, talents, and money were held not as her own, but a
+trust from the Eternal Father for the benefit of His suffering children.
+Her plain, cheap dress was glorified by the generous motive for which she
+wore it. Whether in the crowded city among the sin-sick and starving, or
+among the poor and afflicted in the neighborhood of her country home, no
+story of suffering and need, capable of alleviation, ever reached her
+without immediate sympathy and corresponding action. Lowell, one of her
+warmest admirers, in his _Fable for Critics_ has beautifully portrayed
+her abounding benevolence:--
+
+ "There comes Philothea, her face all aglow:
+ She has just been dividing some poor creature's woe,
+ And can't tell which pleases her most, to relieve
+ His want, or his story to hear and believe.
+ No doubt against many deep griefs she prevails,
+ For her ear is the refuge of destitute tales;
+ She knows well that silence is sorrow's best food,
+ And that talking draws off from the heart its black blood."
+
+ "The pole, science tells us, the magnet controls,
+ But she is a magnet to emigrant Poles,
+ And folks with a mission that nobody knows
+ Throng thickly about her as bees round a rose.
+ She can fill up the carets in such, make their scope
+ Converge to some focus of rational hope,
+ And, with sympathies fresh as the morning, their gall
+ Can transmute into honey,--but this is not all;
+ Not only for those she has solace; O, say,
+ Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broadway,
+ Who clingest, with all that is left of thee human,
+ To the last slender spar from the wreck of the woman,
+ Hast thou not found one shore where those tired, drooping feet
+ Could reach firm mother-earth, one full heart on whose beat
+ The soothed head in silence reposing could hear
+ The chimes of far childhood throb back on the ear?"
+
+ "Ah, there's many a beam from the fountain of day
+ That, to reach us unclouded, must pass, on its way,
+ Through the soul of a woman, and hers is wide ope
+ To the influence of Heaven as the blue eyes of Hope;
+ Yes, a great heart is hers, one that dares to go in
+ To the prison, the slave-hut, the alleys of sin,
+ And to bring into each, or to find there, some line
+ Of the never completely out-trampled divine;
+ If her heart at high floods swamps her brain now and then,
+ 'T is but richer for that when the tide ebbs again,
+ As, after old Nile has subsided, his plain
+ Overflows with a second broad deluge of grain;
+ What a wealth would it bring to the narrow and sour,
+ Could they be as a Child but for one little hour!"
+
+After leaving New York, her husband and herself took up their residence
+in the rural town of Wayland, Mass. Their house, plain and
+unpretentious, had a wide and pleasant outlook; a flower garden,
+carefully tended by her own hands, in front, and on the side a fruit
+orchard and vegetable garden, under the special care of her husband. The
+house was always neat, with some appearance of unostentatious decoration,
+evincing at once the artistic taste of the hostess and the conscientious
+economy which forbade its indulgence to any great extent. Her home was
+somewhat apart from the lines of rapid travel, and her hospitality was in
+a great measure confined to old and intimate friends, while her visits to
+the city were brief and infrequent. A friend of hers, who had ample
+opportunities for a full knowledge of her home-life, says, "The domestic
+happiness of Mr. and Mrs. Child seemed to me perfect. Their sympathies,
+their admiration of all things good, and their hearty hatred of all
+things mean and evil were in entire unison. Mr. Child shared his wife's
+enthusiasms, and was very proud of her. Their affection, never paraded,
+was always manifest. After Mr. Child's death, Mrs. Child, in speaking of
+the future life, said, 'I believe it would be of small value to me if I
+were not united to him.'"
+
+In this connection I cannot forbear to give an extract from some
+reminiscences of her husband, which she left among her papers, which,
+better than any words of mine, will convey an idea of their simple and
+beautiful home-life:--
+
+"In 1852 we made a humble home in Wayland, Mass., where we spent twenty-
+two pleasant years entirely alone, without any domestic, mutually serving
+each other, and dependent upon each other for intellectual companionship.
+I always depended on his richly stored mind, which was able and ready to
+furnish needed information on any subject. He was my walking dictionary
+of many languages, my Universal Encyclopaedia.
+
+"In his old age he was as affectionate and devoted as when the lover of
+my youth; nay, he manifested even more tenderness. He was often
+singing,--
+
+ "'There's nothing half so sweet in life
+ As Love's old dream.'
+
+"Very often, when he passed by me, he would lay his hand softly on my
+head and murmur, 'Carum caput.' . . . But what I remember with the
+most tender gratitude is his uniform patience and forbearance with my
+faults. . . . He never would see anything but the bright side of my
+character. He always insisted upon thinking that whatever I said was the
+wisest and the wittiest, and that whatever I did was the best. The
+simplest little jeu d'esprit of mine seemed to him wonderfully witty.
+Once, when he said, 'I wish for your sake, dear, I were as rich as
+Croesus,' I answered, 'You are Croesus, for you are king of Lydia.' How
+often he used to quote that!
+
+"His mind was unclouded to the last. He had a passion for philology, and
+only eight hours before he passed away he was searching out the
+derivation of a word."
+
+Her well-stored mind and fine conversational gifts made her company
+always desirable. No one who listened to her can forget the earnest
+eloquence with which she used to dwell upon the evidences, from history,
+tradition, and experience, of the superhuman and supernatural; or with
+what eager interest she detected in the mysteries of the old religions of
+the world the germs of a purer faith and a holier hope. She loved to
+listen, as in St. Pierre's symposium of _The Coffee-House of Surat_,
+to the confessions of faith of all sects and schools of philosophy,
+Christian and pagan, and gather from them the consoling truth that our
+Father has nowhere left his children without some witness of Himself.
+She loved the old mystics, and lingered with curious interest and
+sympathy over the writings of Bohme, Swedenborg, Molinos, and Woolman.
+Yet this marked speculative tendency seemed not in the slightest degree
+to affect her practical activities. Her mysticism and realism ran in
+close parallel lines without interfering with each other.
+
+With strong rationalistic tendencies from education and conviction, she
+found herself in spiritual accord with the pious introversion of Thomas
+a Kempis and Madame Guion. She was fond of Christmas Eve stories, of
+warnings, signs, and spiritual intimations, her half belief in which
+sometimes seemed like credulity to her auditors. James Russell Lowell,
+in his tender tribute to her, playfully alludes to this characteristic:--
+
+ "She has such a musical taste that she 'll go
+ Any distance to hear one who draws a long bow.
+ She will swallow a wonder by mere might and main."
+
+In 1859 the descent of John Brown upon Harper's Ferry, and his capture,
+trial, and death, startled the nation. When the news reached her that
+the misguided but noble old man lay desperately wounded in prison, alone
+and unfriended, she wrote him a letter, under cover of one to Governor
+Wise, asking permission to go and nurse and care for him. The expected
+arrival of Captain Brown's wife made her generous offer unnecessary. The
+prisoner wrote her, thanking her, and asking her to help his family, a
+request with which she faithfully complied. With his letter came one
+from Governor Wise, in courteous reproval of her sympathy for John Brown.
+To this she responded in an able and effective manner. Her reply found
+its way from Virginia to the New York Tribune, and soon after Mrs. Mason,
+of King George's County, wife of Senator Mason, the author of the
+infamous Fugitive Slave Law, wrote her a vehement letter, commencing with
+threats of future damnation, and ending with assuring her that "no
+Southerner, after reading her letter to Governor Wise, ought to read a
+line of her composition, or touch a magazine which bore her name in its
+list of contributors." To this she wrote a calm, dignified reply,
+declining to dwell on the fierce invectives of her assailant, and wishing
+her well here and hereafter. She would not debate the specific merits or
+demerits of a man whose body was in charge of the courts, and whose
+reputation was sure to be in charge of posterity. "Men," she continues,
+"are of small consequence in comparison with principles, and the
+principle for which John Brown died is the question at issue between us."
+These letters were soon published in pamphlet form, and had the immense
+circulation of 300,000 copies.
+
+In 1867 she published _A Romance of the Republic_, a story of the days of
+slavery; powerful in its delineation of some of the saddest as well as
+the most dramatic conditions of master and slave in the Southern States.
+Her husband, who had been long an invalid, died in 1874. After his death
+her home, in winter especially, became a lonely one, and in 1877 she
+began to spend the cold months in Boston.
+
+Her last publication was in 1878, when her _Aspirations of the World_, a
+book of selections, on moral and religious subjects, from the literature
+of all nations and times, was given to the public. The introduction,
+occupying fifty pages, shows, at threescore and ten, her mental vigor
+unabated, and is remarkable for its wise, philosophic tone and felicity
+of diction. It has the broad liberality of her more elaborate work on
+the same subject, and in the mellow light of life's sunset her words seem
+touched with a tender pathos and beauty. "All we poor mortals," she
+says, "are groping our way through paths that are dim with shadows; and
+we are all striving, with steps more or less stumbling, to follow some
+guiding star. As we travel on, beloved companions of our pilgrimage
+vanish from our sight, we know not whither; and our bereaved hearts utter
+cries of supplication for more light. We know not where Hermes
+Trismegistus lived, or who he was; but his voice sounds plaintively
+human, coming up from the depths of the ages, calling out, 'Thou art God!
+and thy man crieth these things unto Thee!' Thus closely allied in our
+sorrows and limitations, in our aspirations and hopes, surely we ought
+not to be separated in our sympathies. However various the names by
+which we call the Heavenly Father, if they are set to music by brotherly
+love, they can all be sung together."
+
+Her interest in the welfare of the emancipated class at the South and of
+the ill-fated Indians of the West remained unabated, and she watched with
+great satisfaction the experiment of the education of both classes in
+General Armstrong's institution at Hampton, Va. She omitted no
+opportunity of aiding the greatest social reform of the age, which aims
+to make the civil and political rights of women equal to those of men.
+Her sympathies, to the last, went out instinctively to the wronged and
+weak. She used to excuse her vehemence in this respect by laughingly
+quoting lines from a poem entitled _The Under Dog in the Fight_:--
+
+ "I know that the world, the great big world,
+ Will never a moment stop
+ To see which dog may be in the wrong,
+ But will shout for the dog on top.
+
+ "But for me, I never shall pause to ask
+ Which dog may be in the right;
+ For my heart will beat, while it beats at all,
+ For the under dog in the fight."
+
+I am indebted to a gentleman who was at one time a resident of Wayland,
+and who enjoyed her confidence and warm friendship, for the following
+impressions of her life in that place:--
+
+"On one of the last beautiful Indian summer afternoons, closing the past
+year, I drove through Wayland, and was anew impressed with the charm of
+our friend's simple existence there. The tender beauty of the fading
+year seemed a reflection of her own gracious spirit; the lovely autumn of
+her life, whose golden atmosphere the frosts of sorrow and advancing age
+had only clarified and brightened.
+
+"My earliest recollection of Mrs. Child in Wayland is of a gentle face
+leaning from the old stage window, smiling kindly down on the childish
+figures beneath her; and from that moment her gracious motherly presence
+has been closely associated with the charm of rural beauty in that
+village, which until very lately has been quite apart from the line of
+travel, and unspoiled by the rush and worry of our modern steam-car mode
+of living.
+
+"Mrs. Child's life in the place made, indeed, an atmosphere of its own, a
+benison of peace and good-will, which was a noticeable feature to all who
+were acquainted with the social feeling of the little community, refined,
+as it was too, by the elevating influence of its distinguished pastor,
+Dr. Sears. Many are the acts of loving kindness and maternal care which
+could be chronicled of her residence there, were we permitted to do so;
+and numberless are the lives that have gathered their onward impulse from
+her helping hand. But it was all a confidence which she hardly betrayed
+to her inmost self, and I will not recall instances which might be her
+grandest eulogy. Her monument is builded in the hearts which knew her
+benefactions, and it will abide with 'the power that makes for
+righteousness.'
+
+"One of the pleasantest elements of her life in Wayland was the high
+regard she won from the people of the village, who, proud of her literary
+attainment, valued yet more the noble womanhood of the friend who dwelt
+so modestly among them. The grandeur of her exalted personal character
+had, in part, eclipsed for them the qualities which made her fame with
+the world outside.
+
+"The little house on the quiet by-road overlooked broad green meadows.
+The pond behind it, where bloom the lilies whose spotless purity may well
+symbolize her gentle spirit, is a sacred pool to her townsfolk. But
+perhaps the most fitting similitude of her life in Wayland was the quiet
+flow of the river, whose gentle curves make green her meadows, but whose
+powerful energy, joining the floods from distant mountains, moves, with
+resistless might, the busy shuttles of a hundred mills. She was too
+truthful to affect to welcome unwarrantable invaders of her peace, but no
+weary traveller on life's hard ways ever applied to her in vain. The
+little garden plot before her door was a sacred enclosure, not to be
+rudely intruded upon; but the flowers she tended with maternal care were
+no selfish possession, for her own enjoyment only, and many are the lives
+their sweetness has gladdened forever. So she lived among a singularly
+peaceful and intelligent community as one of themselves, industrious,
+wise, and happy; with a frugality whose motive of wider benevolence was
+in itself a homily and a benediction."
+
+In my last interview with her, our conversation, as had often happened
+before, turned upon the great theme of the future life. She spoke, as I
+remember, calmly and not uncheerfully, but with the intense earnestness
+and reverent curiosity of one who felt already the shadow of the unseen
+world resting upon her.
+
+Her death was sudden and quite unexpected. For some months she had been
+troubled with a rheumatic affection, but it was by no means regarded as
+serious. A friend, who visited her a few days before her departure,
+found her in a comfortable condition, apart from lameness. She talked of
+the coming election with much interest, and of her plans for the winter.
+On the morning of her death (October 20, 1880) she spoke of feeling
+remarkably well. Before leaving her chamber she complained of severe
+pain in the region of the heart. Help was called by her companion, but
+only reached her to witness her quiet passing away.
+
+The funeral was, as befitted one like her, plain and simple. Many of her
+old friends were present, and Wendell Phillips paid an affecting and
+eloquent tribute to his old friend and anti-slavery coadjutor. He
+referred to the time when she accepted, with serene self-sacrifice, the
+obloquy which her _Appeal_ had brought upon her, and noted, as one of the
+many ways in which popular hatred was manifested, the withdrawal from her
+of the privileges of the Boston Athenaeum. Her pallbearers were elderly,
+plain farmers in the neighborhood; and, led by the old white-haired
+undertaker, the procession wound its way to the not distant burial-
+ground, over the red and gold of fallen leaves, and tinder the half-
+clouded October sky. A lover of all beautiful things, she was, as her
+intimate friends knew, always delighted by the sight of rainbows, and
+used to so arrange prismatic glasses as to throw the colors on the walls
+of her room. Just after her body was consigned to the earth, a
+magnificent rainbow spanned with its are of glory the eastern sky.
+
+ The incident at her burial is alluded to in a sonnet written by
+ William P. Andrews:--
+
+ "Freedom! she knew thy summons, and obeyed
+ That clarion voice as yet scarce heard of men;
+ Gladly she joined thy red-cross service when
+ Honor and wealth must at thy feet be laid
+ Onward with faith undaunted, undismayed
+ By threat or scorn, she toiled with hand and brain
+ To make thy cause triumphant, till the chain
+ Lay broken, and for her the freedmen prayed.
+ Nor yet she faltered; in her tender care
+ She took us all; and wheresoe'er she went,
+ Blessings, and Faith, and Beauty followed there,
+ E'en to the end, where she lay down content;
+ And with the gold light of a life more fair,
+ Twin bows of promise o'er her grave were blest."
+
+The letters in this collection constitute but a small part of her large
+correspondence. They have been gathered up and arranged by the hands of
+dear relatives and friends as a fitting memorial of one who wrote from
+the heart as well as the head, and who held her literary reputation
+subordinate always to her philanthropic aim to lessen the sum of human
+suffering, and to make the world better for her living. If they
+sometimes show the heat and impatience of a zealous reformer, they may
+well be pardoned in consideration of the circumstances under which they
+were written, and of the natural indignation of a generous nature in view
+of wrong and oppression. If she touched with no very reverent hand the
+garment hem of dogmas, and held to the spirit of Scripture rather than
+its letter, it must be remembered that she lived in a time when the Bible
+was cited in defence of slavery, as it is now in Utah in support of
+polygamy; and she may well be excused for some degree of impatience with
+those who, in the tithing of mint and anise and cummin, neglected the
+weightier matters of the law of justice and mercy.
+
+Of the men and women directly associated with the beloved subject of this
+sketch, but few are now left to recall her single-hearted devotion to
+apprehended duty, her unselfish generosity, her love of all beauty and
+harmony, and her trustful reverence, free from pretence and cant. It is
+not unlikely that the surviving sharers of her love and friendship may
+feel the inadequateness of this brief memorial, for I close it with the
+consciousness of having failed to fully delineate the picture which my
+memory holds of a wise and brave, but tender and loving woman, of whom it
+might well have been said, in the words of the old Hebrew text, "Many,
+daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all."
+
+
+
+
+OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
+
+ On the occasion of the seventy-fifth birthday of Dr. Holmes _The
+ Critic of New York_ collected personal tributes from friends and
+ admirers of that author. My own contribution was as follows:--
+
+Poet, essayist, novelist, humorist, scientist, ripe scholar, and wise
+philosopher, if Dr. Holmes does not, at the present time, hold in popular
+estimation the first place in American literature, his rare versatility
+is the cause. In view of the inimitable prose writer, we forget the
+poet; in our admiration of his melodious verse, we lose sight of _Elsie
+Venner_ and _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_. We laugh over his wit
+and humor, until, to use his own words,
+
+ "We suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot,
+ As if Wisdom's old potato could not flourish at its root;"
+
+and perhaps the next page melts us into tears by a pathos only equalled
+by that of Sterne's sick Lieutenant. He is Montaigne and Bacon under one
+hat. His varied qualities would suffice for the mental furnishing of
+half a dozen literary specialists.
+
+To those who have enjoyed the privilege of his intimate acquaintance, the
+man himself is more than the author. His genial nature, entire freedom
+from jealousy or envy, quick tenderness, large charity, hatred of sham,
+pretence, and unreality, and his reverent sense of the eternal and
+permanent have secured for him something more and dearer than literary
+renown,--the love of all who know him. I might say much more: I could
+not say less. May his life be long in the land.
+
+Amesbury, Mass., 8th Month, 18, 1884.
+
+
+
+
+LONGFELLOW
+
+ Written to the chairman of the committee of arrangements for
+ unveiling the bust of Longfellow at Portland, Maine, on the poet's
+ birthday, February 27, 1885.
+
+I am sorry it is not in my power to accept the invitation of the
+committee to be present at the unveiling of the bust of Longfellow on the
+27th instant, or to write anything worthy of the occasion in metrical
+form.
+
+The gift of the Westminster Abbey committee cannot fail to add another
+strong tie of sympathy between two great English-speaking peoples. And
+never was gift more fitly bestowed. The city of Portland--the poet's
+birthplace, "beautiful for situation," looking from its hills on the
+scenery he loved so well, Deering's Oaks, the many-islanded bay and far
+inland mountains, delectable in sunset--needed this sculptured
+representation of her illustrious son, and may well testify her joy and
+gratitude at its reception, and repeat in so doing the words of the
+Hebrew prophet: "O man, greatly beloved! thou shalt stand in thy place."
+
+
+
+
+OLD NEWBURY.
+
+ Letter to Samuel J. Spalding, D. D., on the occasion of the
+ celebration of the 250th anniversary of the settlement of Newbury.
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND,--I am sorry that I cannot hope to be with you on the
+250th anniversary of the settlement of old Newbury. Although I can
+hardly call myself a son of the ancient town, my grandmother, Sarah
+Greenleaf, of blessed memory, was its daughter, and I may therefore claim
+to be its grandson. Its genial and learned historian, Joshua Coffin, was
+my first school-teacher, and all my life I have lived in sight of its
+green hills and in hearing of its Sabbath bells. Its wealth of natural
+beauty has not been left unsung by its own poets, Hannah Gould, Mrs.
+Hopkins, George Lunt, and Edward A. Washburn, while Harriet Prescott
+Spofford's Plum Island Sound is as sweet and musical as Tennyson's Brook.
+Its history and legends are familiar to me. I seem to have known all its
+old worthies, whose descendants have helped to people a continent, and
+who have carried the name and memories of their birthplace to the Mexican
+gulf and across the Rocky Mountains to the shores of the Pacific. They
+were the best and selectest of Puritanism, brave, honest, God-fearing men
+and women; and if their creed in the lapse of time has lost something of
+its vigor, the influence of their ethical righteousness still endures.
+The prophecy of Samuel Sewall that Christians should be found in Newbury
+so long as pigeons shall roost on its oaks and Indian corn grows in
+Oldtown fields remains still true, and we trust will always remain so.
+Yet, as of old, the evil personage sometimes intrudes himself into
+company too good for him. It was said in the witchcraft trials of 1692
+that Satan baptized his converts at Newbury Falls, the scene, probably,
+of one of Hawthorne's weird _Twice Told Tales_; and there is a tradition
+that, in the midst of a heated controversy between one of Newbury's
+painful ministers and his deacon, who (anticipating Garrison by a
+century) ventured to doubt the propriety of clerical slaveholding, the
+Adversary made his appearance in the shape of a black giant stalking
+through Byfield. It was never, I believe, definitely settled whether he
+was drawn there by the minister's zeal in defence of slavery or the
+deacon's irreverent denial of the minister's right and duty to curse
+Canaan in the person of his negro.
+
+Old Newbury has sometimes been spoken of as ultra-conservative and
+hostile to new ideas and progress, but this is not warranted by its
+history. More than two centuries ago, when Major Pike, just across the
+river, stood up and denounced in open town meeting the law against
+freedom of conscience and worship, and was in consequence fined and
+outlawed, some of Newbury's best citizens stood bravely by him. The town
+took no part in the witchcraft horror, and got none of its old women and
+town charges hanged for witches, "Goody" Morse had the spirit rappings in
+her house two hundred years earlier than the Fox girls did, and somewhat
+later a Newbury minister, in wig and knee-buckles, rode, Bible in hand,
+over to Hampton to lay a ghost who had materialized himself and was
+stamping up and down stairs in his military boots.
+
+Newbury's ingenious citizen, Jacob Perkins, in drawing out diseases with
+his metallic tractors, was quite as successful as modern "faith and mind"
+doctors. The Quakers, whipped at Hampton on one hand and at Salem on the
+other, went back and forth unmolested in Newbury, for they could make no
+impression on its iron-clad orthodoxy. Whitefield set the example, since
+followed by the Salvation Army, of preaching in its streets, and now lies
+buried under one of its churches with almost the honors of sainthood.
+William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newbury. The town must be regarded as
+the Alpha and Omega of anti-slavery agitation, beginning with its
+abolition deacon and ending with Garrison. Puritanism, here as
+elsewhere, had a flavor of radicalism; it had its humorous side, and its
+ministers did not hesitate to use wit and sarcasm, like Elijah before the
+priests of Baal. As, for instance, the wise and learned clergyman,
+Puritan of the Puritans, beloved and reverenced by all, who has just laid
+down the burden of his nearly one hundred years, startled and shamed his
+brother ministers who were zealously for the enforcement of the Fugitive
+Slave Law, by preparing for them a form of prayer for use while engaged
+in catching runaway slaves.
+
+I have, I fear, dwelt too long upon the story and tradition of the old
+town, which will doubtless be better told by the orator of the day. The
+theme is to me full of interest. Among the blessings which I would
+gratefully own is the fact that my lot has been cast in the beautiful
+valley of the Merrimac, within sight of Newbury steeples, Plum Island,
+and Crane Neck and Pipe Stave hills.
+
+Let me, in closing, pay something of the debt I have owed from boyhood,
+by expressing a sentiment in which I trust every son of the ancient town
+will unite: Joshua Coffin, historian of Newbury, teacher, scholar, and
+antiquarian, and one of the earliest advocates of slave emancipation. May
+his memory be kept green, to use the words of Judge Sewall, "so long as
+Plum island keeps its post and a sturgeon leaps in Merrimac River."
+
+Amesbury, 6th Month, 1885.
+
+
+
+
+SCHOOLDAY REMEMBRANCES.
+
+ To Rev. Charles Wingate, Hon. James H. Carleton, Thomas B. Garland,
+ Esq., Committee of Students of Haverhill Academy:
+
+DEAR FRIENDS,--I was most agreeably surprised last evening by receiving
+your carefully prepared and beautiful Haverhill Academy Album, containing
+the photographs of a large number of my old friends and schoolmates. I
+know of nothing which could have given me more pleasure. If the faces
+represented are not so unlined and ruddy as those which greeted each
+other at the old academy, on the pleasant summer mornings so long ago,
+when life was before us, with its boundless horizon of possibilities,
+yet, as I look over them, I see that, on the whole, Time has not been
+hard with us, but has touched us gently. The hieroglyphics he has traced
+upon us may, indeed, reveal something of the cares, trials, and sorrows
+incident to humanity, but they also tell of generous endeavor, beneficent
+labor, developed character, and the slow, sure victories of patience and
+fortitude. I turn to them with the proud satisfaction of feeling that I
+have been highly favored in my early companions, and that I have not been
+disappointed in my school friendships. The two years spent at the
+academy I have always reckoned among the happiest of my life, though I
+have abundant reason for gratitude that, in the long, intervening years,
+I have been blessed beyond my deserving.
+
+It has been our privilege to live in an eventful period, and to witness
+wonderful changes since we conned our lessons together. How little we
+then dreamed of the steam car, electric telegraph, and telephone! We
+studied the history and geography of a world only half explored. Our
+country was an unsolved mystery. "The Great American Desert" was an
+awful blank on our school maps. We have since passed through the
+terrible ordeal of civil war, which has liberated enslaved millions, and
+made the union of the States an established fact, and no longer a
+doubtful theory. If life is to be measured not so much by years as by
+thoughts, emotion, knowledge, action, and its opportunity of a free
+exercise of all our powers and faculties, we may congratulate ourselves
+upon really outliving the venerable patriarchs. For myself, I would not
+exchange a decade of my own life for a century of the Middle Ages, or a
+"cycle of Cathay."
+
+Let me, gentlemen, return my heartiest thanks to you, and to all who have
+interested themselves in the preparation of the Academy Album, and assure
+you of my sincere wishes for your health and happiness.
+
+OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, 12th Month, 25, 1885.
+
+
+
+
+EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE.
+
+I have been pained to learn of the decease of nay friend of many years,
+Edwin P. Whipple. Death, however expected, is always something of a
+surprise, and in his case I was not prepared for it by knowing of any
+serious failure of his health. With the possible exception of Lowell and
+Matthew Arnold, he was the ablest critical essayist of his time, and the
+place he has left will not be readily filled.
+
+Scarcely inferior to Macaulay in brilliance of diction and graphic
+portraiture, he was freer from prejudice and passion, and more loyal to
+the truth of fact and history. He was a thoroughly honest man. He wrote
+with conscience always at his elbow, and never sacrificed his real
+convictions for the sake of epigram and antithesis. He instinctively
+took the right side of the questions that came before him for decision,
+even when by so doing he ranked himself with the unpopular minority. He
+had the manliest hatred of hypocrisy and meanness; but if his language
+had at times the severity of justice, it was never merciless. He "set
+down naught in malice."
+
+Never blind to faults, he had a quick and sympathetic eye for any real
+excellence or evidence of reserved strength in the author under
+discussion.
+
+He was a modest man, sinking his own personality out of sight, and he
+always seemed to me more interested in the success of others than in his
+own. Many of his literary contemporaries have had reason to thank him
+not only for his cordial recognition and generous praise, but for the
+firm and yet kindly hand which pointed out deficiencies and errors of
+taste and judgment. As one of those who have found pleasure and profit
+in his writings in the past, I would gratefully commend them to the
+generation which survives him. His _Literature of the Age of Elizabeth_
+is deservedly popular, but there are none of his Essays which will not
+repay a careful study. "What works of Mr. Baxter shall I read?" asked
+Boswell of Dr. Johnson. "Read any of them," was the answer, "for they
+are all good."
+
+He will have an honored place in the history of American literature. But
+I cannot now dwell upon his authorship while thinking of him as the
+beloved member of a literary circle now, alas sadly broken. I recall the
+wise, genial companion and faithful friend of nearly half a century, the
+memory of whose words and acts of kindness moistens my eyes as I write.
+
+It is the inevitable sorrow of age that one's companions must drop away
+on the right hand and the left with increasing frequency, until we are
+compelled to ask with Wordsworth,--
+
+ "Who next shall fall and disappear?"
+
+But in the case of him who has just passed from us, we have the
+satisfaction of knowing that his life-work has been well and faithfully
+done, and that he leaves behind him only friends.
+
+DANVERS, 6th Month, 18, 1886.
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL PAPERS
+
+
+
+
+DANIEL O'CONNELL.
+
+ In February, 1839, Henry Clay delivered a speech in the United
+ States Senate, which was intended to smooth away the difficulties
+ which his moderate opposition to the encroachments of slavery had
+ erected in his path to the presidency. His calumniation of
+ O'Connell called out the following summary of the career of the
+ great Irish patriot. It was published originally in the
+ Pennsylvania Freeman of Philadelphia, April 25, 1839.
+
+Perhaps the most unlucky portion of the unlucky speech of Henry Clay on
+the slavery question is that in which an attempt is made to hold up to
+scorn and contempt the great Liberator of Ireland. We say an attempt,
+for who will say it has succeeded? Who feels contempt for O'Connell?
+Surely not the slaveholder? From Henry Clay, surrounded by his slave-
+gang at Ashland, to the most miserable and squalid slave-driver and small
+breeder of human cattle in Virginia and Maryland who can spell the name
+of O'Connell in his newspaper, these republican brokers in blood fear and
+hate the eloquent Irishman. But their contempt, forsooth! Talk of the
+sheep-stealer's contempt for the officer of justice who nails his ears to
+the pillory, or sets the branding iron on his forehead!
+
+After denouncing the abolitionists for gratuitously republishing the
+advertisements for runaway slaves, the Kentucky orator says:--
+
+"And like a notorious agitator upon another theatre, they would hunt down
+and proscribe from the pale of civilized society the inhabitants of that
+entire section. Allow me, Mr. President, to say that whilst I recognize
+in the justly wounded feelings of the Minister of the United States at
+the Court of St. James much to excuse the notice which he was provoked to
+take of that agitator, in my humble opinion he would better have
+consulted the dignity of his station and of his country in treating him
+with contemptuous silence. He would exclude us from European society, he
+who himself, can only obtain a contraband admission, and is received with
+scornful repugnance into it! If he be no more desirous of our society
+than we are of his, he may rest assured that a state of perpetual non-
+intercourse will exist between us. Yes, sir, I think the American
+Minister would best have pursued the dictates of true dignity by
+regarding the language of the member of the British House of Commons as
+the malignant ravings of the plunderer of his own country, and the
+libeller of a foreign and kindred people."
+
+The recoil of this attack "followed hard upon" the tones of
+congratulation and triumph of partisan editors at the consummate skill
+and dexterity with which their candidate for the presidency had absolved
+himself from the suspicion of abolitionism, and by a master-stroke of
+policy secured the confidence of the slaveholding section of the
+Union. But the late Whig defeat in New York has put an end to these
+premature rejoicings. "The speech of Mr. Clay in reference to the Irish
+agitator has been made use of against us with no small success," say the
+New York papers. "They failed," says the Daily Evening Star, "to
+convince the Irish voters that Daniel O'Connell was the 'plunderer of his
+country,' or that there was an excuse for thus denouncing him."
+
+The defeat of the Whigs of New York and the cause of it have excited no
+small degree of alarm among the adherents of the Kentucky orator. In
+this city, the delicate _Philadelphia Gazette_ comes magnanimously to the
+aid of Henry Clay,--
+
+ "A tom-tit twittering on an eagle's back."
+
+The learned editor gives it as his opinion that Daniel O'Connell is a
+"political beggar," a "disorganizing apostate;" talks in its pretty way
+of the man's "impudence" and "falsehoods" and "cowardice," etc.; and
+finally, with a modesty and gravity which we cannot but admire, assures
+us that "his weakness of mind is almost beyond calculation!"
+
+We have heard it rumored during the past week, among some of the self-
+constituted organs of the Clay party in this city, that at a late meeting
+in Chestnut Street a committee was appointed to collect, collate, and
+publish the correspondence between Andrew Stevenson and O'Connell, and so
+much of the latter's speeches and writings as relate to American slavery,
+for the purpose of convincing the countrymen of O'Connell of the justice,
+propriety, and, in view of the aggravated circumstances of the case,
+moderation and forbearance of Henry Clay when speaking of a man who has
+had the impudence to intermeddle with the "patriarchal institutions" of
+our country, and with the "domestic relations" of Kentucky and Virginia
+slave-traders.
+
+We wait impatiently for the fruits of the labors of this sagacious
+committee. We should like to see those eloquent and thrilling appeals to
+the sense of shame and justice and honor of America republished. We
+should like to see if any Irishman, not wholly recreant to the interests
+and welfare of the Green Island of his birth, will in consequence of this
+publication give his vote to the slanderer of Ireland's best and noblest
+champion.
+
+But who is Daniel O'Connell? "A demagogue--a ruffian agitator!" say the
+Tory journals of Great Britain, quaking meantime with awe and
+apprehension before the tremendous moral and political power which he is
+wielding,--a power at this instant mightier than that of any potentate of
+Europe. "A blackguard"--a fellow who "obtains contraband admission into
+European society"--a "malignant libeller"--a "plunderer of his country"--
+a man whose "wind should be stopped," say the American slaveholders, and
+their apologists, Clay, Stevenson, Hamilton, and the Philadelphia
+Gazette, and the Democratic Whig Association.
+
+But who is Daniel O'Connell? Ireland now does justice to him, the world
+will do so hereafter. No individual of the present age has done more for
+human liberty. His labors to effect the peaceable deliverance of his own
+oppressed countrymen, and to open to the nations of Europe a new and
+purer and holier pathway to freedom unstained with blood and unmoistened
+by tears, and his mighty instrumentality in the abolition of British
+colonial slavery, have left their impress upon the age. They will be
+remembered and felt beneficially long after the miserable slanders of
+Tory envy and malignity at home, and the clamors of slaveholders abroad,
+detected in their guilt, and writhing in the gaze of Christendom, shall
+have perished forever,--when the Clays and Calhouns, the Peels and
+Wellingtons, the opponents of reform in Great Britain and the enemies of
+slave emancipation in the United States, shall be numbered with those who
+in all ages, to use the words of the eloquent Lamartine, have "sinned
+against the Holy Ghost in opposing the improvement of things,--in an
+egotistical and stupid attempt to draw back the moral and social world
+which God and nature are urging forward."
+
+The character and services of O'Connell have never been fully appreciated
+in this country. Engrossed in our own peculiar interests, and in the
+plenitude of our self-esteem; believing that "we are the people, and that
+wisdom will perish with us," that all patriotism and liberality of
+feeling are confined to our own territory, we have not followed the
+untitled Barrister of Derrynane Abbey, step by step, through the
+development of one of the noblest experiments ever made for the cause
+of liberty and the welfare of man.
+
+The revolution which O'Connell has already partially effected in his
+native land, and which, from the evident signs of cooperation in England
+and Scotland, seems not far from its entire accomplishment, will form a
+new era in the history of the civilized world. Heretofore the patriot
+has relied more upon physical than moral means for the regeneration of
+his country and its redemption from oppression. His revolutions, however
+pure in principle, have ended in practical crime. The great truth was
+yet to be learned that brute force is incompatible with a pure love of
+freedom, inasmuch as it is in itself an odious species of tyranny--the
+relic of an age of slavery and barbarism--the common argument of
+despotism--a game
+
+ "which, were their subjects wise,
+ Kings would not play at."
+
+But the revolution in which O'Connell is engaged, although directed
+against the oppression of centuries, relies with just confidence upon the
+united moral energies of the people: a moral victory of reason over
+prejudice, of justice over oppression; the triumph of intellectual energy
+where the brute appeal to arms had miserably failed; the vindication of
+man's eternal rights, not by the sword fleshed in human hearts, but by
+weapons tempered in the armory of Heaven with truth and mercy and love.
+
+Nor is it a visionary idea, or the untried theory of an enthusiast, this
+triumphant reliance upon moral and intellectual power for the reform of
+political abuses, for the overthrowing of tyranny and the pulling down of
+the strongholds of arbitrary power. The emancipation of the Catholic of
+Great Britain from the thrall of a century, in 1829, prepared the way for
+the bloodless triumph of English reform in 1832. The Catholic
+Association was the germ of those political unions which compelled, by
+their mighty yet peaceful influence, the King of England to yield
+submissively to the supremacy of the people.
+
+ (The celebrated Mr. Attwood has been called the "father of political
+ unions." In a speech delivered by his brother, C. Attwood, Esq., at
+ the Sunderland Reform Meeting, September 10, 1832, I find the
+ following admission: "Gentlemen, the first political union was the
+ Roman Catholic Association of Ireland, and the true founder and
+ father of political unions is Daniel O'Connell.")
+
+Both of these remarkable events, these revolutions shaking nations to
+their centre, yet polluted with no blood and sullied by no crime, were
+effected by the salutary agitations of the public mind, first set in
+motion by the masterspirit of O'Connell, and spreading from around him to
+every portion of the British empire like the undulations from the
+disturbed centre of a lake.
+
+The Catholic question has been but imperfectly understood in this
+country. Many have allowed their just disapprobation of the Catholic
+religion to degenerate into a most unwarrantable prejudice against its
+conscientious followers. The cruel persecutions of the dissenters from
+the Romish Church, the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, the horrors of
+the Inquisition, the crusades against the Albigenses and the simple
+dwellers of the Vaudois valleys, have been regarded as atrocities
+peculiar to the believers in papal infallibility, and the necessary
+consequences of their doctrines; and hence they have looked upon the
+constitutional agitation of the Irish Catholics for relief from grieveous
+disabilities and unjust distinctions as a struggle merely for supremacy
+or power.
+
+Strange, that the truth to which all history so strongly testifies should
+thus be overlooked,--the undeniable truth that religious bigotry and
+intolerance have been confined to no single sect; that the persecuted of
+one century have been the persecutors of another. In our own country,
+it would be well for us to remember that at the very time when in New
+England the Catholic, the Quaker, and the Baptist were banished on pain
+of death, and where some even suffered that dreadful penalty, in Catholic
+Maryland, under the Catholic Lord Baltimore, perfect liberty of
+conscience was established, and Papist and Protestant went quietly
+through the same streets to their respective altars.
+
+At the commencement of O'Connell's labors for emancipation he found the
+people of Ireland divided into three great classes,--the Protestant or
+Church party, the Dissenters, and the Catholics: the Church party
+constituting about one tenth of the population, yet holding in possession
+the government and a great proportion of the landed property of Ireland,
+controlling church and state and law and revenue, the army, navy,
+magistracy, and corporations, the entire patronage of the country,
+holding their property and power by the favor of England, and
+consequently wholly devoted to her interest; the Dissenters, probably
+twice as numerous as the Church party, mostly engaged in trade and
+manufactures,--sustained by their own talents and industry, Irish in
+feeling, partaking in no small degree of the oppression of their Catholic
+brethren, and among the first to resist that oppression in 1782; the
+Catholics constituting at least two thirds of the whole population, and
+almost the entire peasantry of the country, forming a large proportion
+of the mercantile interest, yet nearly excluded from the possession of
+landed property by the tyrannous operation of the penal laws. Justly has
+a celebrated Irish patriot (Theobald Wolfe Tone) spoken of these laws as
+"an execrable and infamous code, framed with the art and malice of demons
+to plunder and degrade and brutalize the Catholics of Ireland. There was
+no disgrace, no injustice, no disqualification, moral, political, or
+religious, civil or military, which it has not heaped upon them."
+
+The following facts relative to the disabilities under which the
+Catholics of the United Kingdom labored previous to the emancipation of
+1829 will serve to show in some measure the oppressive operation of those
+laws which placed the foot of one tenth of the population of Ireland upon
+the necks of the remainder.
+
+A Catholic peer could not sit in the House of Peers, nor a Catholic
+commoner in the House of Commons. A Catholic could not be Lord
+Chancellor, or Keeper, or Commissioner of the Great Seal; Master or
+Keeper of the Rolls; Justice of the King's Bench or of the Common Pleas;
+Baron of the Exchequer; Attorney or Solicitor General; King's Sergeant at
+Law; Member of the King's Council; Master in Chancery, nor Chairman of
+Sessions for the County of Dublin. He could not be the Recorder of a
+city or town; an advocate in the spiritual courts; Sheriff of a county,
+city, or town; Sub-Sheriff; Lord Lieutenant, Lord Deputy, or other
+governor of Ireland; Lord High Treasurer; Governor of a county; Privy
+Councillor; Postmaster General; Chancellor of the Exchequer or Secretary
+of State; Vice Treasurer, Cashier of the Exchequer; Keeper of the Privy
+Seal or Auditor General; Provost or Fellow of Dublin University; nor Lord
+Mayor or Alderman of a corporate city or town. He could not be a member
+of a parish vestry, nor bequeath any sum of money or any lands for the
+maintenance of a clergyman, or for the support of a chapel or a school;
+and in corporate towns he was excluded from the grand juries.
+
+O'Connell commenced his labors for emancipation with the strong
+conviction that nothing short of the united exertions of the Irish people
+could overthrow the power of the existing government, and that a union of
+action could only be obtained by the establishment of something like
+equality between the different religious parties. Discarding all other
+than peaceful means for the accomplishment of his purpose, he placed
+himself and his followers beyond the cognizance of unjust and oppressive
+laws. Wherever he poured the oil of his eloquence upon the maddened
+spirits of his wronged and insulted countrymen, the mercenary soldiery
+found no longer an excuse for violence; and calm, firm, and united, the
+Catholic Association remained secure in the moral strength of its pure
+and peaceful purpose, amid the bayonets of a Tory administration. His
+influence was felt in all parts of the island. Wherever an unlawful
+association existed, his great legal knowledge enabled him at once to
+detect its character, and, by urging its dissolution, to snatch its
+deluded members from the ready fangs of their enemies. In his presence
+the Catholic and the Protestant shook hands together, and the wild Irish
+clansman forgot his feuds. He taught the party in power, and who
+trembled at the dangers around them, that security and peace could only
+be obtained by justice and kindness. He entreated his oppressed Catholic
+brethren to lay aside their weapons, and with pure hearts and naked hands
+to stand firmly together in the calm but determined energy of men, too
+humane for deeds of violence, yet too mighty for the patient endurance of
+wrong.
+
+The spirit of the olden time was awakened, of the day when Flood
+thundered and Curran lightened; the light which shone for a moment in the
+darkness of Ireland's century of wrong burned upwards clearly and
+steadily from all its ancient altars. Shoulder to shoulder gathered
+around him the patriot spirits of his nation,--men unbribed by the golden
+spoils of governmental patronage Shiel with his ardent eloquence, O'Dwyer
+and Walsh, and Grattan and O'Connor, and Steel, the Protestant agitator,
+wearing around him the emblem of national reconciliation, of the reunion
+of Catholic and Protestant,--the sash of blended orange and green, soiled
+and defaced by his patriotic errands, stained with the smoke of cabins,
+and the night rains and rust of weapons, and the mountain mist, and the
+droppings of the wild woods of Clare. He united in one mighty and
+resistless mass the broken and discordant factions, whose desultory
+struggles against tyranny had hitherto only added strength to its
+fetters, and infused into that mass his own lofty principles of action,
+until the solemn tones of expostulation and entreaty, bursting at once
+from the full heart of Ireland, were caught up by England and echoed back
+from Scotland, and the language of justice and humanity was wrung from
+the reluctant lips of the cold and remorseless oppressor of his native
+land, at once its disgrace and glory,--the conqueror of Napoleon; and, in
+the words of his own Curran, the chains of the Catholic fell from around
+him, and he stood forth redeemed and disenthralled by the irresistible
+genius of Universal Emancipation.
+
+On the passage of the bill for Catholic emancipation, O'Connell took his
+seat in the British Parliament. The eyes of millions were upon him.
+Ireland--betrayed so often by those in whom she had placed her
+confidence; brooding in sorrowful remembrance over the noble names and
+brilliant reputations sullied by treachery and corruption, the long and
+dark catalogue of her recreant sons, who, allured by British gold and
+British patronage, had sacrificed on the altar of their ambition Irish
+pride and Irish independence, and lifted their parricidal arms against
+their sorrowing mother, "crownless and voiceless in her woe"--now hung
+with breathless eagerness over the ordeal to which her last great
+champion was subjected.
+
+The crisis in O'Connell's destiny had come.
+
+The glitter of the golden bribe was in his eye; the sound of titled
+magnificence was in his ear; the choice was before him to sit high among
+the honorable, the titled, and the powerful, or to take his humble seat
+in the hall of St. Stephen's as the Irish demagogue, the agitator, the
+Kerry representative. He did not hesitate in his choice. On the first
+occasion that offered he told the story of Ireland's wrongs, and demanded
+justice in the name of his suffering constituents. He had put his hand
+to the plough of reform, and he could not relinquish his hold, for his
+heart was with it.
+
+Determined to give the Whig administration no excuse for neglecting the
+redress of Irish grievances, he entered heart and soul into the great
+measure of English reform, and his zeal, tact, and eloquence contributed
+not a little to its success. Yet even his friends speak of his first
+efforts in the House of Commons as failures. The Irish accent; the harsh
+avowal of purposes smacking of rebellion; the eccentricities and flowery
+luxuriance of an eloquence nursed in the fervid atmosphere of Ireland
+suddenly transplanted to the cold and commonplace one of St. Stephen's;
+the great and illiberal prejudices against him scarcely abated from what
+they were when, as the member from Clare, he was mobbed on his way to
+London, for a time opposed a barrier to the influence of his talents and
+patriotism. But he triumphed at last: the mob-orator of Clare and Kerry,
+the declaimer in the Dublin Rooms of the Political and Trades' Union,
+became one of the most attractive and popular speakers of the British
+Parliament; one whose aid has been courted and whose rebuke has been
+feared by the ablest of England's representatives. Amid the sneers of
+derision and the clamor of hate and prejudice he has triumphed,--on that
+very arena so fatal to Irish eloquence and Irish fame, where even Grattan
+failed to sustain himself, and the impetuous spirit of Flood was stricken
+down.
+
+No subject in which Ireland was not directly interested has received a
+greater share of O'Connell's attention than that of the abolition of
+colonial slavery. Utterly detesting tyranny of all kinds, he poured
+forth his eloquent soul in stern reprobation of a system full at once of
+pride and misery and oppression, and darkened with blood. His speech on
+the motion of Thomas Fowell Buxton for the immediate emancipation of the
+slaves gave a new tone to the discussion of the question. He entered
+into no petty pecuniary details; no miserable computation of the
+shillings and pence vested in beings fashioned in the image of God. He
+did not talk of the expediency of continuing the evil because it had
+grown monstrous. To use his own words, he considered "slavery a crime to
+be abolished; not merely an evil to be palliated." He left Sir Robert
+Peel and the Tories to eulogize the characters and defend the interests
+of the planters, in common with those of a tithe-reaping priesthood,
+building their houses by oppression and their chambers by wrong, and
+spoke of the negro's interest, the negro's claim to justice; demanding
+sympathy for the plundered as well as the plunderers, for the slave as
+well as his master. He trampled as dust under his feet the blasphemy
+that obedience to the law of eternal justice is a principle to be
+acknowledged in theory only, because unsafe in practice. He would,
+he said, enter into no compromise with slavery. He cared not what cast
+or creed or color it might assume, whether personal or political,
+intellectual or spiritual; he was for its total, immediate abolition. He
+was for justice,--justice in the name of humanity and according to the
+righteous law of the living God.
+
+Ardently admiring our free institutions, and constantly pointing to our
+glorious political exaltation as an incentive to the perseverance of his
+own countrymen in their struggle against oppression, he has yet omitted
+no opportunity of rebuking our inexcusable slave system. An enthusiastic
+admirer of Jefferson, he has often regretted that his practice should
+have so illy accorded with his noble sentiments on the subject of
+slavery, which so fully coincided with his own. In truth, wherever man
+has been oppressed by his fellow-man, O'Connell's sympathy has been
+directed: to Italy, chained above the very grave of her ancient
+liberties; to the republics of Southern America; to Greece, dashing the
+foot of the indolent Ottoman from her neck; to France and Belgium; and
+last, not least, to Poland, driven from her cherished nationality, and
+dragged, like his own Ireland, bleeding and violated, to the deadly
+embrace of her oppressor. American slavery but shares in his common
+denunciation of all tyranny; its victims but partake of his common pity
+for the oppressed and persecuted and the trodden down.
+
+In this hasty and imperfect sketch we cannot enter into the details of
+that cruel disregard of Irish rights which was manifested by a Reformed
+Parliament, convoked, to use the language of William IV., "to ascertain
+the sense of the people." It is perhaps enough to say that O'Connell's
+indignant refusal to receive as full justice the measure of reform meted
+out to Ireland was fully justified by the facts of the case. The Irish
+Reform Bill gave Ireland, with one third of the entire population of the
+United Kingdoms, only one sixth of the Parliamentary delegation. It
+diminished instead of increasing the number of voters; in the towns and
+cities it created a high and aristocratic franchise; in many boroughs it
+established so narrow a basis of franchise as to render them liable to
+corruption and abuse as the rotten boroughs of the old system. It threw
+no new power into the hands of the people; and with no little justice has
+O'Connell himself termed it an act to restore to power the Orange
+ascendancy in Ireland, and to enable a faction to trample with impunity
+on the friends of reform and constitutional freedom. (Letters to the
+Reformers of Great Britain, No. 1.)
+
+In May, 1832, O'Connell commenced the publication of his celebrated
+_Letters to the Reformers of Great Britain_. Like Tallien, before the
+French convention, he "rent away the veil" which Hume and Atwood had only
+partially lifted. He held up before the people of Great Britain the new
+indignities which had been added to the long catalogue of Ireland's
+wrongs; he appealed to their justice, their honor, their duty, for
+redress, and cast down before the Whig administration the gauntlet of his
+country's defiance and scorn. There is a fine burst of indignant Irish
+feeling in the concluding paragraphs of his fourth letter:--
+
+"I have demonstrated the contumelious injuries inflicted upon us by this
+Reform Bill. My letters are long before the public. They have been
+unrefuted, uncontradicted in any of their details. And with this case of
+atrocious injustice to Ireland placed before the reformers of Great
+Britain, what assistance, what sympathy, do we receive? Why, I have got
+some half dozen drivelling letters from political unions and political
+characters, asking me whether I advise them to petition or bestir
+themselves in our behalf!
+
+"Reformers of Great Britain! I do not ask you either to petition or be
+silent. I do not ask you to petition or to do any other act in favor of
+the Irish. You will consult your own feelings of justice and generosity,
+unprovoked by any advice or entreaty of mine.
+
+"For my own part, I never despaired of Ireland; I do not, I will not,
+I cannot, despair of my beloved country. She has, in my view, obtained
+freedom of conscience for others, as well as for herself. She has shaken
+off the incubus of tithes while silly legislation was dealing out its
+folly and its falsehoods. She can, and she will, obtain for herself
+justice and constitutional freedom; and although she may sigh at British
+neglect and ingratitude, there is no sound of despair in that sigh, nor
+any want of moral energy on her part to attain her own rights by
+peaceable and legal means."
+
+The tithe system, unutterably odious and full of all injustice, had
+prepared the way for this expression of feeling on the part of the
+people. Ireland had never, in any period of her history, bowed her neck
+peaceably to the ecclesiastical yoke. From the Canon of Cashel, prepared
+by English deputies in the twelfth century, decreeing for the first time
+that tithes should be paid in Ireland, down to the present moment, the
+Church in her borders has relied solely upon the strong arm of the law,
+and literally reaped its tithes with the sword. The decree of the Dublin
+Synod, under Archbishop Comyn, in 1185, could only be enforced within the
+pale of the English settlement. The attempts of Henry VIII. also failed.
+Without the pale all endeavors to collect tithes were met by stern
+opposition. And although from the time of William III. the tithe system
+has been established in Ireland, yet at no period has it been regarded
+otherwise than as a system of legalized robbery by seven eighths of the
+people. An examination of this system cannot fail to excite our wonder,
+not that it has been thus regarded, but that it has been so long endured
+by any people on the face of the earth, least of all by Irishmen. Tithes
+to the amount of L1,000,000 are annually wrung from impoverished Ireland,
+in support of a clergy who can only number about one sixteenth of her
+population as their hearers; and wrung, too, in an undue proportion, from
+the Catholic counties. (See Dr. Doyle's Evidence before Hon. E. G.
+Stanley.) In the southern and middle counties, almost entirely inhabited
+by the Catholic peasantry, every thing they possess is subject to the
+tithe: the cow is seized in the hovel, the potato in the barrel, the coat
+even on the poor man's back. (Speech of T. Reynolds, Esq., at an anti-
+tithe meeting.) The revenues of five of the dignitaries of the Irish
+Church Establishment are as follows: the Primacy L140,000; Derry
+L120,000; Kilmore L100,000; Clogher L100,000; Waterford L70,000. Compare
+these enormous sums with that paid by Scotland for the maintenance of the
+Church, namely L270,000. Yet that Church has 2,000,000 souls under its
+care, while that of Ireland has not above 500,000. Nor are these
+princely livings expended in Ireland by their possessors. The bishoprics
+of Cloyne and Meath have been long held by absentees,--by men who know no
+more of their flocks than the non-resident owner of a West India
+plantation did of the miserable negroes, the fruits of whose thankless
+labor were annually transmitted to him. Out of 1289 benefited clergymen
+in Ireland, between five and six hundred are non-residents, spending in
+Bath and London, or in making the fashionable tour of the Continent, the
+wealth forced from the Catholic peasant and the Protestant dissenter by
+the bayonets of the military. Scorching and terrible was the sarcasm of
+Grattan applied to these locusts of the Church: "A beastly and pompous
+priesthood, political potentates and Christian pastors, full of false
+zeal, full of worldly pride, and full of gluttony, empty of the true
+religion, to their flocks oppressive, to their inferior clergy brutal, to
+their king abject, and to their God impudent and familiar,--they stand on
+the altar as a stepping-stone to the throne, glorying in the ear of
+princes, whom they poison with crooked principles and heated advice; a
+faction against their king when they are not his slaves,--ever the dirt
+under his feet or a poniard to his heart."
+
+For the evils of absenteeism, the non-residence of the wealthy
+landholders, draining from a starving country the very necessaries of
+life, a remedy is sought in a repeal of the union, and the provisions of
+a domestic parliament. In O'Connell's view, a restoration of such a
+parliament can alone afford that adequate protection to the national
+industry so loudly demanded by thousands of unemployed laborers, starving
+amid the ruins of deserted manufactories. During the brief period of
+partial Irish liberty which followed the pacific revolution of '82, the
+manufactures of the country revived and flourished; and the smile of
+contented industry was visible all over the land. In 1797 there were
+15,000 silk-weavers in the city of Dublin alone. There are now but 400.
+Such is the practical effect of the Union, of that suicidal act of the
+Irish Parliament which yielded up in a moment of treachery and terror the
+dearest interests of the country to the legislation of an English
+Parliament and the tender mercies of Castlereagh,--of that Castlereagh
+who, when accused by Grattan of spending L15,000 in purchasing votes for
+the Union, replied with the rare audacity of high-handed iniquity, "We
+did spend L15,000, and we would have spent L15,000,000 if necessary to
+carry the Union; "that Castlereagh who, when 707,000 Irishmen petitioned
+against the Union and 300,000 for it, maintained that the latter
+constituted the majority! Well has it been said that the deep vengeance
+which Ireland owed him was inflicted by the great criminal upon himself.
+The nation which he sold and plundered saw him make with his own hand the
+fearful retribution. The great body of the Irish people never assented
+to the Union. The following extract from a speech of Earl (then Mr.)
+Grey, in 1800, upon the Union question, will show what means were made
+use of to drag Ireland, while yet mourning over her slaughtered children,
+to the marriage altar with England: "If the Parliament of Ireland had
+been left to itself, untempted and unawed, it would without hesitation
+have rejected the resolutions. Out of the 300 members, 120 strenuously
+opposed the measure, 162 voted for it: of these, 116 were placemen; some
+of them were English generals on the staff, without a foot of ground in
+Ireland, and completely dependent on government." "Let us reflect upon
+the arts made use of since the last session of the Irish Parliament to
+pack a majority, for Union, in the House of Commons. All persons holding
+offices under government, if they hesitated to vote as directed, were
+stripped of all their employments. A bill framed for preserving the
+purity of Parliament was likewise abused, and no less than 63 seats were
+vacated by their holders having received nominal offices."
+
+The signs of the times are most favorable to the success of the Irish
+Liberator. The tremendous power of the English political unions is
+beginning to develop itself in favor of Ireland. A deep sympathy is
+evinced for her sufferings, and a general determination to espouse her
+cause. Brute force cannot put down the peaceable and legal agitation of
+the question of her rights and interests. The spirit of the age forbids
+it. The agitation will go on, for it is spreading among men who, to use
+the words of the eloquent Shiel, while looking out upon the ocean, and
+gazing upon the shore, which Nature has guarded with so many of her
+bulwarks, can hear the language of Repeal muttered in the dashing of the
+very waves which separate them from Great Britain by a barrier of God's
+own creation. Another bloodless victory, we trust, awaits O'Connell,--a
+victory worthy of his heart and intellect, unstained by one drop of human
+blood, unmoistened by a solitary tear.
+
+Ireland will be redeemed and disenthralled, not perhaps by a repeal of
+the Union, but by the accomplishment of such a thorough reform in the
+government and policy of Great Britain as shall render a repeal
+unnecessary and impolitic.
+
+The sentiments of O'Connell in regard to the means of effecting his
+object of political reform are distinctly impressed upon all his appeals
+to the people. In his letter of December, 1832, to the Dublin Trades
+Union, he says: "The Repealers must not have our cause stained with
+blood. Far indeed from it. We can, and ought to, carry the repeal only
+in the total absence of offence against the laws of man or crime in the
+sight of God. The best revolution which was ever effected could not be
+worth one drop of human blood." In his speech at the public dinner given
+him by--the citizens of Cork, we find a yet more earnest avowal of
+pacific principles. "It may be stated," said he, "to countervail our
+efforts, that this struggle will involve the destruction of life and
+property; that it will overturn the framework of civil society, and give
+an undue and fearful influence to one rank to the ruin of all others.
+These are awful considerations, truly, if risked. I am one of those who
+have always believed that any political change is too dearly purchased by
+a single drop of blood, and who think that any political superstructure
+based upon other opinion is like the sand-supported fabric,--beautiful in
+the brief hour of sunshine, but the moment one drop of rain touches the
+arid basis melting away in wreck and ruin! I am an accountable being; I
+have a soul and a God to answer to, in another and better world, for my
+thoughts and actions in this. I disclaim here any act of mine which
+would sport with the lives of my fellow-creatures, any amelioration of
+our social condition which must be purchased by their blood. And here,
+in the face of God and of our common country, I protest that if I did not
+sincerely and firmly believe that the amelioration I desire could be
+effected without violence, without any change in the relative scale of
+ranks in the present social condition of Ireland, except that change
+which all must desire, making each better than it was before, and
+cementing all in one solid irresistible mass, I would at once give up the
+struggle which I have always kept with tyranny. I would withdraw from
+the contest which I have hitherto waged with those who would perpetuate
+our thraldom. I would not for one moment dare to venture for that which
+in costing one human life would cost infinitely too dear. But it will
+cost no such price. Have we not had within my memory two great political
+revolutions? And had we them not without bloodshed or violence to the
+social compact? Have we not arrived at a period when physical force and
+military power yield to moral and intellectual energy. Has not the time
+of 'Cedant arma togae' come for us and the other nations of the earth?"
+
+Let us trust that the prediction of O'Connell will be verified; that
+reason and intellect are destined, under God, to do that for the nations
+of the earth which the physical force of centuries and the red sacrifice
+of a thousand battle-fields have failed to accomplish. Glorious beyond
+all others will be the day when "nation shall no more rise up against
+nation;" when, as a necessary consequence of the universal acknowledgment
+of the rights of man, it shall no longer be in the power of an individual
+to drag millions into strife, for the unholy gratification of personal
+prejudice and passion. The reformed governments of Great Britain and
+France, resting, as they do, upon a popular basis, are already tending to
+this consummation, for the people have suffered too much from the warlike
+ambition of their former masters not to have learned that the gains of
+peaceful industry are better than the wages of human butchery.
+
+Among the great names of Ireland--alike conspicuous, yet widely
+dissimilar--stand Wellington and O'Connell. The one smote down the
+modern Alexander upon Waterloo's field of death, but the page of his
+reputation is dim with the tears of the widow and the orphan, and dark
+with the stain of blood. The other, armed only with the weapons of truth
+and reason, has triumphed over the oppression of centuries, and opened a
+peaceful pathway to the Temple of Freedom, through which its Goddess may
+be seen, no longer propitiated with human sacrifices, like some foul idol
+of the East, but clothed in Christian attributes, and smiling in the
+beauty of holiness upon the pure hearts and peaceful hands of its
+votaries. The bloodless victories of the latter have all the sublimity
+with none of the criminality which attaches itself to the triumphs of the
+former. To thunder high truths in the deafened ear of nations, to rouse
+the better spirit of the age, to soothe the malignant passions of.
+assembled and maddened men, to throw open the temple doors of justice to
+the abused, enslaved, and persecuted, to unravel the mysteries of guilt,
+and hold up the workers of iniquity in the severe light of truth stripped
+of their disguise and covered with the confusion of their own vileness,--
+these are victories more glorious than any which have ever reddened the
+earth with carnage:--
+
+ "They ask a spirit of more exalted pitch,
+ And courage tempered with a holier fire."
+
+Of the more recent efforts of O'Connell we need not speak, for no one can
+read the English periodicals and papers without perceiving that O'Connell
+is, at this moment, the leading politician, the master mind of the
+British empire. Attempts have been made to prejudice the American mind
+against him by a republication on this side of the water of the false and
+foul slanders of his Tory enemies, in reference to what is called the
+"O'Connell rent," a sum placed annually in his hands by a grateful
+people, and which he has devoted scrupulously to the great object of
+Ireland's political redemption. He has acquired no riches by his
+political efforts his heart and soul and mind and strength have been
+directed to his suffering country and the cause of universal freedom.
+For this he has deservedly a place in the heart and affections of every
+son of Ireland. One million of ransomed slaves in the British
+dependencies will teach their children to repeat the name of O'Connell
+with that of Wilberforce and Clarkson. And when the stain and caste of
+slavery shall have passed from our own country, he will be regarded as
+our friend and benefactor, whose faithful rebukes and warnings and
+eloquent appeals to our pride of character, borne to us across the
+Atlantic, touched the guilty sensitiveness of the national conscience,
+and through shame prepared the way for repentance.
+
+
+
+
+ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II.
+
+ A review of the first two volumes of Macaulay's _History of England
+ from the Accession of James II_.
+
+In accordance with the labor-saving spirit of the age, we have in these
+volumes an admirable example of history made easy. Had they been
+published in his time, they might have found favor in the eyes of the
+poet Gray, who declared that his ideal of happiness was "to lie on a sofa
+and read eternal new romances."
+
+The style is that which lends such a charm to the author's essays,--
+brilliant, epigrammatic, vigorous. Indeed, herein lies the fault of the
+work, when viewed as a mere detail of historical facts. Its sparkling
+rhetoric is not the safest medium of truth to the simple-minded inquirer.
+A discriminating and able critic has done the author no injustice in
+saying that, in attempting to give effect and vividness to his thoughts
+and diction, he is often overstrained and extravagant, and that his
+epigrammatic style seems better fitted for the glitter of paradox than
+the sober guise of truth. The intelligent and well-informed reader of
+the volume before us will find himself at times compelled to reverse the
+decisions of the author, and deliver some unfortunate personage, sect, or
+class from the pillory of his rhetoric and the merciless pelting of his
+ridicule. There is a want of the repose and quiet which we look for in
+a narrative of events long passed away; we rise from the perusal of the
+book pleased and excited, but with not so clear a conception of the
+actual realities of which it treats as would be desirable. We cannot
+help feeling that the author has been somewhat over-scrupulous in
+avoiding the dulness of plain detail, and the dryness of dates, names,
+and statistics. The freedom, flowing diction, and sweeping generality of
+the reviewer and essayist are maintained throughout; and, with one
+remarkable exception, the _History of England_ might be divided into
+papers of magazine length, and published, without any violence to
+propriety, as a continuation of the author's labors in that department of
+literature in which he confessedly stands without a rival,--historical
+review.
+
+That exception is, however, no unimportant one. In our view, it is the
+crowning excellence of the first volume,--its distinctive feature and
+principal attraction. We refer to the third chapter of the volume, from
+page 260 to page 398,--the description of the condition of England at the
+period of the accession of James II. We know of nothing like it in the
+entire range of historical literature. The veil is lifted up from the
+England of a century and a half ago; its geographical, industrial,
+social, and moral condition is revealed; and, as the panorama passes
+before us of lonely heaths, fortified farm-houses, bands of robbers,
+rude country squires doling out the odds and ends of their coarse fare
+to clerical dependents,--rough roads, serviceable only for horseback
+travelling,--towns with unlighted streets, reeking with filth and offal,
+--and prisons, damp, loathsome, infected with disease, and swarming with
+vermin,--we are filled with wonder at the contrast which it presents to
+the England of our day. We no longer sigh for "the good old days." The
+most confirmed grumbler is compelled to admit that, bad as things now
+are, they were far worse a few generations back. Macaulay, in this
+elaborate and carefully prepared chapter, has done a good service to
+humanity in disabusing well-intentioned ignorance of the melancholy
+notion that the world is growing worse, and in putting to silence the
+cant of blind, unreasoning conservatism.
+
+In 1685 the entire population of England our author estimates at from
+five millions to five millions five hundred thousand. Of the eight
+hundred thousand families at that period, one half had animal food twice
+a week. The other half ate it not at all, or at most not oftener than
+once a week. Wheaten, loaves were only seen at the tables of the
+comparatively wealthy. Rye, barley, and oats were the food of the vast
+majority. The average wages of workingmen was at least one half less
+than is paid in England for the same service at the present day. One
+fifth of the people were paupers, or recipients of parish relief.
+Clothing and bedding were scarce and dear. Education was almost unknown
+to the vast majority. The houses and shops were not numbered in the
+cities, for porters, coachmen, and errand-runners could not read. The
+shopkeeper distinguished his place of business by painted signs and
+graven images. Oxford and Cambridge Universities were little better than
+modern grammar and Latin school in a provincial village. The country
+magistrate used on the bench language too coarse, brutal, and vulgar for
+a modern tap-room. Fine gentlemen in London vied with each other in the
+lowest ribaldry and the grossest profanity. The poets of the time, from
+Dryden to Durfey, ministered to the popular licentiousness. The most
+shameless indecency polluted their pages. The theatre and the brothel
+were in strict unison. The Church winked at the vice which opposed
+itself to the austere morality or hypocrisy of Puritanism. The superior
+clergy, with a few noble exceptions, were self-seekers and courtiers; the
+inferior were idle, ignorant hangerson upon blaspheming squires and
+knights of the shire. The domestic chaplain, of all men living, held the
+most unenviable position. "If he was permitted to dine with the family,
+he was expected to content himself with the plainest fare. He might fill
+himself with the corned beef and carrots; but as soon as the tarts and
+cheese-cakes made their appearance he quitted his seat, and stood aloof
+till he was summoned to return thanks for the repast, from a great part
+of which he had been excluded."
+
+Beyond the Trent the country seems at this period to have been in a state
+of barbarism. The parishes kept bloodhounds for the purpose of hunting
+freebooters. The farm-houses were fortified and guarded. So dangerous
+was the country that persons about travelling thither made their wills.
+Judges and lawyers only ventured therein, escorted by a strong guard of
+armed men.
+
+The natural resources of the island were undeveloped. The tin mines of
+Cornwall, which two thousand years before attracted the ships of the
+merchant princes of Tyre beyond the Pillars of Hercules, were indeed
+worked to a considerable extent; but the copper mines, which now yield
+annually fifteen thousand tons, were entirely neglected. Rock salt was
+known to exist, but was not used to any considerable extent; and only a
+partial supply of salt by evaporation was obtained. The coal and iron of
+England are at this time the stable foundations of her industrial and
+commercial greatness. But in 1685 the great part of the iron used was
+imported. Only about ten thousand tons were annually cast. Now eight
+hundred thousand is the average annual production. Equally great has
+been the increase in coal mining. "Coal," says Macaulay, "though very
+little used in any species of manufacture, was already the ordinary fuel
+in some districts which were fortunate enough to possess large beds, and
+in the capital, which could easily be supplied by water carriage. It
+seems reasonable to believe that at least one half of the quantity then
+extracted from the pits was consumed in London. The consumption of
+London seemed to the writers of that age enormous, and was often
+mentioned by them as a proof of the greatness of the imperial city. They
+scarcely hoped to be believed when they affirmed that two hundred and
+eighty thousand chaldrons--that is to say, about three hundred and fifty
+thousand tons-were, in the last year of the reign of Charles II., brought
+to the Thames. At present near three millions and a half of tons are
+required yearly by the metropolis; and the whole annual produce cannot,
+on the most moderate computation, be estimated at less than twenty
+millions of tons."
+
+After thus passing in survey the England of our ancestors five or six
+generations back, the author closes his chapter with some eloquent
+remarks upon the progress of society. Contrasting the hardness and
+coarseness of the age of which he treats with the softer and more humane
+features of our own, he says: "Nowhere could be found that sensitive and
+restless compassion which has in our time extended powerful protection to
+the factory child, the Hindoo widow, to the negro slave; which pries into
+the stores and water-casks of every emigrant ship; which winces at every
+lash laid on the back of a drunken soldier; which will not suffer the
+thief in the hulks to be ill fed or overworked; and which has repeatedly
+endeavored to save the life even of the murderer. The more we study the
+annals of the past, the more shall we rejoice that we live in a merciful
+age, in an age in which cruelty is abhorred, and in which pain, even when
+deserved, is inflicted reluctantly and from a sense of duty. Every
+class, doubtless, has gained largely by this great moral change; but the
+class which has gained most is the poorest, the most dependent, and the
+most defenceless."
+
+The history itself properly commences at the close of this chapter.
+Opening with the deathscene of the dissolute Charles II., it presents a
+series of brilliant pictures of the events succeeding: The miserable fate
+of Oates and Dangerfield, the perjured inventors of the Popish Plot; the
+trial of Baxter by the infamous Jeffreys; the ill-starred attempt of the
+Duke of Monmouth; the battle of Sedgemoor, and the dreadful atrocities of
+the king's soldiers, and the horrible perversion of justice by the king's
+chief judge in the "Bloody Assizes;" the barbarous hunting of the Scotch
+Dissenters by Claverbouse; the melancholy fate of the brave and noble
+Duke of Argyle,--are described with graphic power unknown to Smollett or
+Hume. Personal portraits are sketched with a bold freedom which at times
+startles us. The "old familiar faces," as we have seen them through the
+dust of a century and a half, start before us with lifelike distinctness
+of outline and coloring. Some of them disappoint us; like the ghost of
+Hamlet's father, they come in a "questionable shape." Thus, for
+instance, in his sketch of William Penn, the historian takes issue with
+the world on his character, and labors through many pages of disingenuous
+innuendoes and distortion of facts to transform the saint of history into
+a pliant courtier.
+
+The second volume details the follies and misfortunes, the decline and
+fall, of the last of the Stuarts. All the art of the author's splendid
+rhetoric is employed in awakening, by turns, the indignation and contempt
+of the reader in contemplating the character of the wrong-headed king.
+In portraying that character, he has brought into exercise all those
+powers of invective and merciless ridicule which give such a savage
+relish to his delineation of Barrere. To preserve the consistency of
+this character, he denies the king any credit for whatever was really
+beneficent and praiseworthy in his government. He holds up the royal
+delinquent in only two lights: the one representing him as a tyrant
+towards his people; the other as the abject slave of foreign priests,--
+a man at once hateful and ludicrous, of whom it is difficult to speak
+without an execration or a sneer.
+
+The events which preceded the revolution of 1688; the undisguised
+adherence of the king to the Church of Rome; the partial toleration of
+the despised Quakers and Anabaptists; the gradual relaxation of the
+severity of the penal laws against Papists and Dissenters, preparing the
+way for the royal proclamation of entire liberty of conscience throughout
+the British realm, allowing the crop-eared Puritan and the Papist priest
+to build conventicles and mass houses under the very eaves of the palaces
+of Oxford and Canterbury; the mining and countermining of Jesuits and
+prelates, are detailed with impartial minuteness. The secret springs of
+the great movements of the time are laid bare; the mean and paltry
+instrumentalities are seen at work in the under world of corruption,
+prejudice, and falsehood. No one, save a blind, unreasoning partisan of
+Catholicism or Episcopacy, can contemplate this chapter in English
+history without a feeling of disgust. However it may have been overruled
+for good by that Providence which takes the wise in their own craftiness,
+the revolution of 1688, in itself considered, affords just as little
+cause for self-congratulation on the part of Protestants as the
+substitution of the supremacy of the crowned Bluebeard, Henry VIII., for
+that of the Pope, in the English Church. It had little in common with
+the revolution of 1642. The field of its action was the closet of
+selfish intrigue,--the stalls of discontented prelates,--the chambers of
+the wanton and adulteress,--the confessional of a weak prince, whose
+mind, originally narrow, had been cramped closer still by the strait-
+jacket of religious bigotry and superstition. The age of nobility and
+heroism had well-nigh passed away. The pious fervor, the self-denial,
+and the strict morality of the Puritanism of the days of Cromwell, and
+the blunt honesty and chivalrous loyalty of the Cavaliers, had both
+measurably given place to the corrupting influences of the licentious and
+infidel court of Charles II.; and to the arrogance, intolerance, and
+shameless self-seeking of a prelacy which, in its day of triumph and
+revenge, had more than justified the terrible denunciations and scathing
+gibes of Milton.
+
+Both Catholic and Protestant writers have misrepresented James II. He
+deserves neither the execrations of the one nor the eulogies of the
+other. The candid historian must admit that he was, after all, a better
+man than his brother Charles II. He was a sincere and bigoted Catholic,
+and was undoubtedly honest in the declaration, which he made in that
+unlucky letter which Burnet ferreted out on the Continent, that he was
+prepared to make large steps to build up the Catholic Church in England,
+and, if necessary, to become a martyr in her cause. He was proud,
+austere, and self-willed. In the treatment of his enemies he partook of
+the cruel temper of his time. He was at once ascetic and sensual,
+alternating between the hair-shirt of penance and the embraces of
+Catharine Sedley. His situation was one of the most difficult and
+embarrassing which can be conceived of. He was at once a bigoted Papist
+and a Protestant pope. He hated the French domination to which his
+brother had submitted; yet his pride as sovereign was subordinated to his
+allegiance to Rome and a superstitious veneration for the wily priests
+with which Louis XIV. surrounded him. As the head of Anglican heretics,
+he was compelled to submit to conditions galling alike to the sovereign
+and the man. He found, on his accession, the terrible penal laws against
+the Papists in full force; the hangman's knife was yet warm with its
+ghastly butcher-work of quartering and disembowelling suspected Jesuits
+and victims of the lie of Titus Oates; the Tower of London had scarcely
+ceased to echo the groans of Catholic confessors stretched on the rack by
+Protestant inquisitors. He was torn by conflicting interests and
+spiritual and political contradictions. The prelates of the Established
+Church must share the responsibility of many of the worst acts of the
+early part of his reign. Oxford sent up its lawned deputations to mingle
+the voice of adulation with the groans of tortured Covenanters, and
+fawning ecclesiastics burned the incense of irreverent flattery under the
+nostrils of the Lord's anointed, while the blessed air of England was
+tainted by the carcasses of the ill-fated followers of Monmouth, rotting
+on a thousand gibbets. While Jeffreys was threatening Baxter and his
+Presbyterian friends with the pillory and whipping-post; while Quakers
+and Baptists were only spared from extermination as game preserves for
+the sport of clerical hunters; while the prisons were thronged with the
+heads of some fifteen thousand beggared families, and Dissenters of every
+name and degree were chased from one hiding-place to another, like David
+among the cliffs of Ziph and the rocks of the wild goats,--the
+thanksgivings and congratulations of prelacy arose in an unbroken strain
+of laudation from all the episcopal palaces of England. What mattered it
+to men, in whose hearts, to use the language of John Milton, "the sour
+leaven of human traditions, mixed with the poisonous dregs of hypocrisy,
+lay basking in the sunny warmth of wealth and promotion, hatching
+Antichrist," that the privileges of Englishmen and the rights secured by
+the great charter were violated and trodden under foot, so long as
+usurpation enured to their own benefit? But when King James issued his
+Declaration of Indulgence, and stretched his prerogative on the side of
+tolerance and charity, the zeal of the prelates for preserving the
+integrity of the British constitution and the limiting of the royal power
+flamed up into rebellion. They forswore themselves without scruple: the
+disciples of Laud, the asserters of kingly infallibility and divine
+right, talked of usurped power and English rights in the strain of the
+very schismatics whom they had persecuted to the death. There is no
+reason to believe that James supposed that, in issuing his declaration
+suspending the penal laws, he had transcended the rightful prerogative of
+his throne. The power which he exercised had been used by his
+predecessors for far less worthy purposes, and with the approbation of
+many of the very men who now opposed him. His ostensible object,
+expressed in language which even those who condemn his policy cannot but
+admire, was a laudable and noble one. "We trust," said he, "that it will
+not be vain that we have resolved to use our utmost endeavors to
+establish liberty of conscience on such just and equal foundations as
+will render it unalterable, and secure to all people the free exercise of
+their religion, by which future ages may reap the benefit of what is so
+undoubtedly the general good of the whole kingdom." Whatever may have
+been the motive of this declaration,--even admitting the suspicions of
+his enemies to have been true, that he advocated universal toleration as
+the only means of restoring Roman Catholics to all the rights and
+privileges of which the penal laws deprived them,--it would seem that
+there could have been no very serious objection on the part of real
+friends of religious toleration to the taking of him at his word and
+placing Englishmen of every sect on an equality before the law. The
+Catholics were in a very small minority, scarcely at that time as
+numerous as the Quakers and Anabaptists. The army, the navy, and nine
+tenths of the people of England were Protestants. Real danger,
+therefore, from a simple act of justice towards their Catholic fellow-
+citizens, the people of England had no ground for apprehending. But the
+great truth, which is even now but imperfectly recognized throughout
+Christendom, that religious opinions rest between man and his Maker, and
+not between man and the magistrate, and that the domain of conscience is
+sacred, was almost unknown to the statesmen and schoolmen of the
+seventeenth century. Milton--ultra liberal as he was--excepted the
+Catholics from his plan of toleration. Locke, yielding to the prejudices
+of the time, took the same ground. The enlightened latitudinarian
+ministers of the Established Church--men whose talents and Christian
+charity redeem in some measure the character of that Church in the day of
+its greatest power and basest apostasy--stopped short of universal
+toleration. The Presbyterians excluded Quakers, Baptists, and Papists
+from the pale of their charity. With the single exception of the sect of
+which William Penn was a conspicuous member, the idea of complete and
+impartial toleration was novel and unwelcome to all sects and classes of
+the English people. Hence it was that the very men whose liberties and
+estates had been secured by the declaration, and who were thereby
+permitted to hold their meetings in peace and quietness, used their newly
+acquired freedom in denouncing the king, because the same key which had
+opened their prison doors had also liberated the Papists and the Quakers.
+Baxter's severe and painful spirit could not rejoice in an act which had,
+indeed, restored him to personal freedom, but which had, in his view,
+also offended Heaven, and strengthened the powers of Antichrist by
+extending the same favor to Jesuits and Ranters. Bunyan disliked the
+Quakers next to the Papists; and it greatly lessened his satisfaction at
+his release from Bedford jail that it had been brought about by the
+influence of the former at the court of a Catholic prince. Dissenters
+forgot the wrongs and persecutions which they had experienced at the
+hands of the prelacy, and joined the bishops in opposition to the
+declaration. They almost magnified into Christian confessors the
+prelates who remonstrated against the indulgence, and actually plotted
+against the king for restoring them to liberty of person and conscience.
+The nightmare fear of Popery overcame their love of religious liberty;
+and they meekly offered their necks to the yoke of prelacy as the only
+security against the heavier one of Papist supremacy. In a far different
+manner the cleareyed and plain-spoken John Milton met the claims and
+demands of the hierarchy in his time. "They entreat us," said he, "that
+we be not weary of the insupportable grievances that our shoulders have
+hitherto cracked under; they beseech us that we think them fit to be our
+justices of peace, our lords, our highest officers of state. They pray
+us that it would please us to let them still haul us and wrong us with
+their bandogs and pursuivants; and that it would please the Parliament
+that they may yet have the whipping, fleecing, and flaying of us in their
+diabolical courts, to tear the flesh from our bones, and into our wide
+wounds, instead of balm, to pour in the oil of tartar, vitriol, and
+mercury. Surely a right, reasonable, innocent, and soft-hearted
+petition! O the relenting bowels of the fathers!"
+
+Considering the prominent part acted by William Penn in the reign of
+James II., and his active and influential support of the obnoxious
+declaration which precipitated the revolution of 1688, it could hardly
+have been otherwise than that his character should suffer from the
+unworthy suspicions and prejudices of his contemporaries. His views of
+religious toleration were too far in advance of the age to be received
+with favor. They were of necessity misunderstood and misrepresented.
+All his life he had been urging them with the earnestness of one whose
+convictions were the result, not so much of human reason as of what he
+regarded as divine illumination. What the council of James yielded upon
+grounds of state policy he defended on those of religious obligation.
+He had suffered in person and estate for the exercise of his religion.
+He had travelled over Holland and Germany, pleading with those in
+authority for universal toleration and charity. On a sudden, on the
+accession of James, the friend of himself and his family, he found
+himself the most influential untitled citizen in the British realm.
+He had free access to the royal ear. Asking nothing for himself or his
+relatives, he demanded only that the good people of England should be no
+longer despoiled of liberty and estate for their religious opinions.
+James, as a Catholic, had in some sort a common interest with his
+dissenting subjects, and the declaration was for their common relief.
+Penn, conscious of the rectitude of his own motives and thoroughly
+convinced of the Christian duty of toleration, welcomed that declaration
+as the precursor of the golden age of liberty and love and good-will to
+men. He was not the man to distrust the motives of an act so fully in
+accordance with his lifelong aspirations and prayers. He was charitable
+to a fault: his faith in his fellow-men was often stronger than a clearer
+insight of their characters would have justified. He saw the errors of
+the king, and deplored them; he denounced Jeffreys as a butcher who had
+been let loose by the priests; and pitied the king, who was, he thought,
+swayed by evil counsels. He remonstrated against the interference of the
+king with Magdalen College; and reproved and rebuked the hopes and aims
+of the more zealous and hot-headed Catholics, advising them to be content
+with simple toleration. But the constitution of his mind fitted him
+rather for the commendation of the good than the denunciation of the bad.
+He had little in common with the bold and austere spirit of the Puritan
+reformers. He disliked their violence and harshness; while, on the other
+hand, he was attracted and pleased by the gentle disposition and mild
+counsels of Locke, and Tillotson, and the latitudinarians of the English
+Church. He was the intimate personal and political friend of Algernon
+Sydney; sympathized with his republican theories, and shared his
+abhorrence of tyranny, civil and ecclesiastical. He found in him a man
+after his own heart,--genial, generous, and loving; faithful to duty and
+the instincts of humanity; a true Christian gentleman. His sense of
+gratitude was strong, and his personal friendships sometimes clouded his
+judgment. In giving his support to the measures of James in behalf of
+liberty of conscience, it must be admitted that he acted in consistency
+with his principles and professions. To have taken ground against them,
+he must have given the lie to his declarations from his youth upward. He
+could not disown and deny his own favorite doctrine because it came from
+the lips of a Catholic king and his Jesuit advisers; and in thus rising
+above the prejudices of his time, and appealing to the reason and
+humanity of the people of England in favor of a cordial indorsement on
+the part of Parliament of the principles of the declaration, he believed
+that he was subserving the best interests of his beloved country and
+fulfilling the solemn obligations of religious duty. The downfall of
+James exposed Penn to peril and obloquy. Perjured informers endeavored
+to swear away his life; and, although nothing could be proved against him
+beyond the fact that he had steadily supported the great measure of
+toleration, he was compelled to live secluded in his private lodgings in
+London for two or three years, with a proclamation for his arrest hanging
+over his head. At length, the principal informer against him having been
+found guilty of perjury, the government warrant was withdrawn; and Lords
+Sidney, Rochester, and Somers, and the Duke of Buckingham, publicly bore
+testimony that nothing had been urged against him save by impostors, and
+that "they had known him, some of them, for thirty years, and had never
+known him to do an ill thing, but many good offices." It is a matter of
+regret that one professing to hold the impartial pen of history should
+have given the sanction of his authority to the slanderous and false
+imputations of such a man as Burnet, who has never been regarded as an
+authentic chronicler. The pantheon of history should not be lightly
+disturbed. A good man's character is the world's common legacy; and
+humanity is not so rich in models of purity and goodness as to be able to
+sacrifice such a reputation as that of William Penn to the point of an
+antithesis or the effect of a paradox.
+
+ Gilbert Burnet, in liberality as a politician and tolerance as a
+ Churchman, was far in advance of his order and time. It is true
+ that he shut out the Catholics from the pale of his charity and
+ barely tolerated the Dissenters. The idea of entire religious
+ liberty and equality shocked even his moderate degree of
+ sensitiveness. He met Penn at the court of the Prince of Orange,
+ and, after a long and fruitless effort to convince the Dissenter
+ that the penal laws against the Catholics should be enforced, and
+ allegiance to the Established Church continue the condition of
+ qualification for offices of trust and honor, and that he and his
+ friends should rest contented with simple toleration, he became
+ irritated by the inflexible adherence of Penn to the principle of
+ entire religious freedom. One of the most worthy sons of the
+ Episcopal Church, Thomas Clarkson, alluding to this discussion, says
+ "Burnet never mentioned him (Penn) afterwards but coldly or
+ sneeringly, or in a way to lower him in the estimation of the
+ reader, whenever he had occasion to speak of him in his History of
+ his Own Times."
+
+ He was a man of strong prejudices; he lived in the midst of
+ revolutions, plots, and intrigues; he saw much of the worst side of
+ human nature; and he candidly admits, in the preface to his great
+ work, that he was inclined to think generally the worst of men and
+ parties, and that the reader should make allowance for this
+ inclination, although he had honestly tried to give the truth. Dr.
+ King, of Oxford, in his Anecdotes of his Own Times, p. 185, says:
+ "I knew Burnet: he was a furious party-man, and easily imposed upon
+ by any lying spirit of his faction; but he was a better pastor than
+ any man who is now seated on the bishops' bench." The Tory writers
+ --Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, and others--have undoubtedly exaggerated
+ the defects of Burnet's narrative; while, on the other hand, his
+ Whig commentators have excused them on the ground of his avowed and
+ fierce partisanship. Dr. Johnson, in his blunt way, says: "I do not
+ believe Burnet intentionally lied; but he was so much prejudiced
+ that he took no pains to find out the truth." On the contrary, Sir
+ James Mackintosh, in the Edinburgh Review, speaks of the Bishop as
+ an honest writer, seldom substantially erroneous, though often
+ inaccurate in points of detail; and Macaulay, who has quite too
+ closely followed him in his history, defends him as at least quite
+ as accurate as his contemporary writers, and says that, "in his
+ moral character, as in his intellectual, great blemishes were more
+ than compensated by great excellences."
+
+
+
+
+THE BORDER WAR OF 1708.
+
+The picturesque site of the now large village of Haverhill, on the
+Merrimac River, was occupied a century and a half ago by some thirty
+dwellings, scattered at unequal distances along the two principal roads,
+one of which, running parallel with the river, intersected the other,
+which ascended the hill northwardly and lost itself in the dark woods.
+The log huts of the first settlers had at that time given place to
+comparatively spacious and commodious habitations, framed and covered
+with sawed boards, and cloven clapboards, or shingles. They were, many
+of them, two stories in front, with the roof sloping off behind to a
+single one; the windows few and small, and frequently so fitted as to be
+opened with difficulty, and affording but a scanty supply of light and
+air. Two or three of the best constructed were occupied as garrisons,
+where, in addition to the family, small companies of soldiers were
+quartered. On the high grounds rising from the river stood the mansions
+of the well-defined aristocracy of the little settlement,--larger and
+more imposing, with projecting upper stories and carved cornices. On the
+front of one of these, over the elaborately wrought entablature of the
+doorway, might be seen the armorial bearings of the honored family of
+Saltonstall. Its hospitable door was now closed; no guests filled its
+spacious hall or partook of the rich delicacies of its ample larder.
+Death had been there; its venerable and respected occupant had just been
+borne by his peers in rank and station to the neighboring graveyard.
+Learned, affable, intrepid, a sturdy asserter of the rights and liberties
+of the Province, and so far in advance of his time as to refuse to yield
+to the terrible witchcraft delusion, vacating his seat on the bench and
+openly expressing his disapprobation of the violent and sanguinary
+proceedings of the court, wise in council and prompt in action,--not his
+own townsmen alone, but the people of the entire Province, had reason to
+mourn the loss of Nathaniel Saltonstall.
+
+Four years before the events of which we are about to speak, the Indian
+allies of the French in Canada suddenly made their appearance in the
+westerly part of the settlement. At the close of a midwinter day six
+savages rushed into the open gate of a garrison-house owned by one
+Bradley, who appears to have been absent at the time. A sentinel,
+stationed in the house, discharged his musket, killing the foremost
+Indian, and was himself instantly shot down. The mistress of the house,
+a spirited young woman, was making soap in a large kettle over the fire.
+--She seized her ladle and dashed the boiling liquid in the faces of the
+assailants, scalding one of them severely, and was only captured after
+such a resistance as can scarcely be conceived of by the delicately
+framed and tenderly nurtured occupants of the places of our great-
+grandmothers. After plundering the house, the Indians started on their
+long winter march for Canada. Tradition says that some thirteen persons,
+probably women and children, were killed outright at the garrison.
+Goodwife Bradley and four others were spared as prisoners. The ground
+was covered with deep snow, and the captives were compelled to carry
+heavy burdens of their plundered household-stuffs; while for many days in
+succession they had no other sustenance than bits of hide, ground-nuts,
+the bark of trees, and the roots of wild onions, and lilies. In this
+situation, in the cold, wintry forest, and unattended, the unhappy young
+woman gave birth to a child. Its cries irritated the savages, who
+cruelly treated it and threatened its life. To the entreaties of the
+mother they replied, that they would spare it on the condition that it
+should be baptized after their fashion. She gave the little innocent
+into their hands, when with mock solemnity they made the sign of the
+cross upon its forehead, by gashing it with their knives, and afterwards
+barbarously put it to death before the eyes of its mother, seeming to
+regard the whole matter as an excellent piece of sport. Nothing so
+strongly excited the risibilities of these grim barbarians as the tears
+and cries of their victims, extorted by physical or mental agony.
+Capricious alike in their cruelties and their kindnesses, they treated
+some of their captives with forbearance and consideration and tormented
+others apparently without cause. One man, on his way to Canada, was
+killed because they did not like his looks, "he was so sour;" another,
+because he was "old and good for nothing." One of their own number, who
+was suffering greatly from the effects of the scalding soap, was derided
+and mocked as a "fool who had let a squaw whip him;" while on the other
+hand the energy and spirit manifested by Goodwife Bradley in her defence
+was a constant theme of admiration, and gained her so much respect among
+her captors as to protect her from personal injury or insult. On her
+arrival in Canada she was sold to a French farmer, by whom she was kindly
+treated.
+
+In the mean time her husband made every exertion in his power to
+ascertain her fate, and early in the next year learned that she was a
+slave in Canada. He immediately set off through the wilderness on foot,
+accompanied only by his dog, who drew a small sled, upon which he carried
+some provisions for his sustenance, and a bag of snuff, which the
+Governor of the Province gave him as a present to the Governor of Canada.
+After encountering almost incredible hardships and dangers with a
+perseverance which shows how well he appreciated the good qualities of
+his stolen helpmate, he reached Montreal and betook himself to the
+Governor's residence. Travel-worn, ragged, and wasted with cold and
+hunger, he was ushered into the presence of M. Vaudreuil. The courtly
+Frenchman civilly received the gift of the bag of snuff, listened to the
+poor fellow's story, and put him in a way to redeem his wife without
+difficulty. The joy of the latter on seeing her husband in the strange
+land of her captivity may well be imagined. They returned by water,
+landing at Boston early in the summer.
+
+There is a tradition that this was not the goodwife's first experience of
+Indian captivity. The late Dr. Abiel Abbott, in his manuscript of Judith
+Whiting's _Recollections of the Indian Wars_, states that she had
+previously been a prisoner, probably before her marriage. After her
+return she lived quietly at the garrison-house until the summer of the
+next year. One bright moonlit-night a party of Indians were seen
+silently and cautiously approaching. The only occupants of the garrison
+at that time were Bradley, his wife and children, and a servant. The
+three adults armed themselves with muskets, and prepared to defend
+themselves. Goodwife Bradley, supposing the Indians had come with the
+intention of again capturing her, encouraged her husband to fight to the
+last, declaring that she had rather die on her own hearth than fall into
+their hands. The Indians rushed upon the garrison, and assailed the
+thick oaken door, which they forced partly open, when a well-aimed shot
+from Goodwife Bradley laid the foremost dead on the threshold. The loss
+of their leader so disheartened them that they made a hasty retreat.
+
+The year 1707 passed away without any attack upon the exposed frontier
+settlement. A feeling of comparative security succeeded to the almost
+sleepless anxiety and terror of the inhabitants; and they were beginning
+to congratulate each other upon the termination of their long and bitter
+trials. But the end was not yet.
+
+Early in the spring of 1708, the principal tribes of Indians in alliance
+with the French held a great council, and agreed to furnish three hundred
+warriors for an expedition to the English frontier.
+
+They were joined by one hundred French Canadians and several volunteers,
+consisting of officers of the French army, and younger sons of the
+nobility, adventurous and unscrupulous. The Sieur de Chaillons, and
+Hertel de Rouville, distinguished as a partisan in former expeditions,
+cruel and unsparing as his Indian allies, commanded the French troops;
+the Indians, marshalled under their several chiefs, obeyed the general
+orders of La Perriere. A Catholic priest accompanied them. De Ronville,
+with the French troops and a portion of the Indians, took the route by
+the River St. Francois about the middle of summer. La Perriere, with the
+French Mohawks, crossed Lake Champlain. The place of rendezvous was Lake
+Nickisipigue. On the way a Huron accidentally killed one of his
+companions; whereupon the tribe insisted on halting and holding a
+council. It was gravely decided that this accident was an evil omen, and
+that the expedition would prove disastrous; and, in spite of the
+endeavors of the French officers, the whole band deserted. Next the
+Mohawks became dissatisfied, and refused to proceed. To the entreaties
+and promises of their French allies they replied that an infectious
+disease had broken out among them, and that, if they remained, it would
+spread through the whole army. The French partisans were not deceived by
+a falsehood so transparent; but they were in no condition to enforce
+obedience; and, with bitter execrations and reproaches, they saw the
+Mohawks turn back on their warpath. The diminished army pressed on to
+Nickisipigue, in the expectation of meeting, agreeably to their promise,
+the Norridgewock and Penobscot Indians. They found the place deserted,
+and, after waiting for some days, were forced to the conclusion that the
+Eastern tribes had broken their pledge of cooperation. Under these
+circumstances a council was held; and the original design of the
+expedition, namely, the destruction of the whole line of frontier towns,
+beginning with Portsmouth, was abandoned. They had still a sufficient
+force for the surprise of a single settlement; and Haverhill, on the
+Merrimac, was selected for conquest.
+
+In the mean time, intelligence of the expedition, greatly exaggerated in
+point of numbers and object, had reached Boston, and Governor Dudley had
+despatched troops to the more exposed out posts of the Provinces of
+Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Forty men, under the command of Major
+Turner and Captains Price and Gardner, were stationed at Haverhill in the
+different garrison-houses. At first a good degree of vigilance was
+manifested; but, as days and weeks passed without any alarm, the
+inhabitants relapsed into their old habits; and some even began to
+believe that the rumored descent of the Indians was only a pretext for
+quartering upon them two-score of lazy, rollicking soldiers, who
+certainly seemed more expert in making love to their daughters, and
+drinking their best ale and cider, than in patrolling the woods or
+putting the garrisons into a defensible state. The grain and hay harvest
+ended without disturbance; the men worked in their fields, and the women
+pursued their household avocations, without any very serious apprehension
+of danger.
+
+Among the inhabitants of the village was an eccentric, ne'er-do-well
+fellow, named Keezar, who led a wandering, unsettled life, oscillating,
+like a crazy pendulum, between Haverhill and Amesbury. He had a
+smattering of a variety of trades, was a famous wrestler, and for a mug
+of ale would leap over an ox-cart with the unspilled beverage in his
+hand. On one occasion, when at supper, his wife complained that she had
+no tin dishes; and, as there were none to be obtained nearer than Boston,
+he started on foot in the evening, travelled through the woods to the
+city, and returned with his ware by sunrise the next morning, passing
+over a distance of between sixty and seventy miles. The tradition of his
+strange habits, feats of strength, and wicked practical jokes is still
+common in his native town. On the morning of the 29th of the eighth
+month he was engaged in taking home his horse, which, according to his
+custom, he had turned into his neighbor's rich clover field the evening
+previous. By the gray light of dawn he saw a long file of men marching
+silently towards the town. He hurried back to the village and gave the
+alarm by firing a gun. Previous to this, however, a young man belonging
+to a neighboring town, who had been spending the night with a young woman
+of the village, had met the advance of the war-party, and, turning back
+in extreme terror and confusion, thought only of the safety of his
+betrothed, and passed silently through a considerable part of the village
+to her dwelling. After he had effectually concealed her he ran out to
+give the alarm. But it was too late. Keezar's gun was answered by the
+terrific yells, whistling, and whooping of the Indians. House after
+house was assailed and captured. Men, women, and children were
+massacred. The minister of the town was killed by a shot through his
+door. Two of his children were saved by the courage and sagacity of his
+negro slave Hagar. She carried them into the cellar and covered them
+with tubs, and then crouched behind a barrel of meat just in time to
+escape the vigilant eyes of the enemy, who entered the cellar and
+plundered it. She saw them pass and repass the tubs under which the
+children lay and take meat from the very barrel which concealed herself.
+Three soldiers were quartered in the house; but they made no defence, and
+were killed while begging for quarter.
+
+The wife of Thomas Hartshorne, after her husband and three sons had
+fallen, took her younger children into the cellar, leaving an infant on a
+bed in the garret, fearful that its cries would betray her place of
+concealment if she took it with her. The Indians entered the garret and
+tossed the child out of the window upon a pile of clapboards, where it
+was afterwards found stunned and insensible. It recovered, nevertheless,
+and became a man of remarkable strength and stature; and it used to be a
+standing joke with his friends that he had been stinted by the Indians
+when they threw him out of the window. Goodwife Swan, armed with a long
+spit, successfully defended her door against two Indians. While the
+massacre went on, the priest who accompanied the expedition, with some of
+the French officers, went into the meeting-house, the walls of which were
+afterwards found written over with chalk. At sunrise, Major Turner, with
+a portion of his soldiers, entered the village; and the enemy made a
+rapid retreat, carrying with them seventeen, prisoners. They were
+pursued and overtaken just as they were entering the woods; and a severe
+skirmish took place, in which the rescue of some of the prisoners was
+effected. Thirty of the enemy were left dead on the field, including the
+infamous Hertel de Rouville. On the part of the villagers, Captains Ayer
+and Wainwright and Lieutenant Johnson, with thirteen others, were killed.
+The intense heat of the weather made it necessary to bury the dead on the
+same day. They were laid side by side in a long trench in the burial-
+ground. The body of the venerated and lamented minister, with those of
+his wife and child, sleep in another part of the burial-ground, where may
+still be seen a rude monument with its almost llegible inscription:--
+
+"_Clauditur hoc tumulo corpus Reverendi pii doctique viri D. Benjamin
+Rolfe, ecclesiae Christi quae est in Haverhill pastoris fidelissimi; qui
+domi suae ab hostibus barbare trucidatus. A laboribus suis requievit
+mane diei sacrae quietis, Aug. XXIX, anno Dom. MDCCVIII. AEtatis suae
+XLVI_."
+
+Of the prisoners taken, some escaped during the skirmish, and two or
+three were sent back by the French officers, with a message to the
+English soldiers, that, if they pursued the party on their retreat to
+Canada, the other prisoners should be put to death. One of them, a
+soldier stationed in Captain Wainwright's garrison, on his return four
+years after, published an account of his captivity. He was compelled to
+carry a heavy pack, and was led by an Indian by a cord round his neck.
+The whole party suffered terribly from hunger. On reaching Canada the
+Indians shaved one side of his head, and greased the other, and painted
+his face. At a fort nine miles from Montreal a council was held in order
+to decide his fate; and he had the unenviable privilege of listening to a
+protracted discussion upon the expediency of burning him. The fire was
+already kindled, and the poor fellow was preparing to meet his doom with
+firmness, when it was announced to him that his life was spared. This
+result of the council by no means satisfied the women and boys, who had
+anticipated rare sport in the roasting of a white man and a heretic. One
+squaw assailed him with a knife and cut off one of his fingers; another
+beat him with a pole. The Indians spent the night in dancing and
+singing, compelling their prisoner to go round the ring with them. In
+the morning one of their orators made a long speech to him, and formally
+delivered him over to an old squaw, who took him to her wigwam and
+treated him kindly. Two or three of the young women who were carried
+away captive married Frenchmen in Canada and never returned. Instances
+of this kind were by no means rare during the Indian wars. The simple
+manners, gayety, and social habits of the French colonists among whom the
+captives were dispersed seem to have been peculiarly fascinating to the
+daughters of the grave and severe Puritans.
+
+At the beginning of the present century, Judith Whiting was the solitary
+survivor of all who witnessed the inroad of the French and Indians in
+1708. She was eight years of age at the time of the attack, and her
+memory of it to the last was distinct and vivid. Upon her old brain,
+from whence a great portion of the records of the intervening years had
+been obliterated, that terrible picture, traced with fire and blood,
+retained its sharp outlines and baleful colors.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT.
+
+ "The Frere into the dark gazed forth;
+ The sounds went onward towards the north
+ The murmur of tongues, the tramp and tread
+ Of a mighty army to battle led."
+ BALLAD OF THE CID.
+
+
+Life's tragedy and comedy are never far apart. The ludicrous and the
+sublime, the grotesque and the pathetic, jostle each other on the stage;
+the jester, with his cap and bells, struts alongside of the hero; the
+lord mayor's pageant loses itself in the mob around Punch and Judy; the
+pomp and circumstance of war become mirth-provoking in a militia muster;
+and the majesty of the law is ridiculous in the mock dignity of a
+justice's court. The laughing philosopher of old looked on one side of
+life and his weeping contemporary on the other; but he who has an eye to
+both must often experience that contrariety of feeling which Sterne
+compares to "the contest in the moist eyelids of an April morning,
+whether to laugh or cry."
+
+The circumstance we are about to relate, may serve as an illustration of
+the way in which the woof of comedy interweaves with the warp of tragedy.
+It occurred in the early stages of the American Revolution, and is part
+and parcel of its history in the northeastern section of Massachusetts.
+
+About midway between Salem and the ancient town of Newburyport, the
+traveller on the Eastern Railroad sees on the right, between him and the
+sea, a tall church-spire, rising above a semicircle of brown roofs and
+venerable elms; to which a long scalloping range of hills, sweeping off
+to the seaside, forms a green background. This is Ipswich, the ancient
+Agawam; one of those steady, conservative villages, of which a few are
+still left in New England, wherein a contemporary of Cotton Mather and
+Governor Endicott, were he permitted to revisit the scenes of his painful
+probation, would scarcely feel himself a stranger. Law and Gospel,
+embodied in an orthodox steeple and a court-house, occupy the steep,
+rocky eminence in its midst; below runs the small river under its
+picturesque stone bridge; and beyond is the famous female seminary, where
+Andover theological students are wont to take unto themselves wives of
+the daughters of the Puritans. An air of comfort and quiet broods over
+the whole town. Yellow moss clings to the seaward sides of the roofs;
+one's eyes are not endangered by the intense glare of painted shingles
+and clapboards. The smoke of hospitable kitchens curls up through the
+overshadowing elms from huge-throated chimneys, whose hearth-stones have
+been worn by the feet of many generations. The tavern was once renowned
+throughout New England, and it is still a creditable hostelry. During
+court time it is crowded with jocose lawyers, anxious clients, sleepy
+jurors, and miscellaneous hangers on; disinterested gentlemen, who have
+no particular business of their own in court, but who regularly attend
+its sessions, weighing evidence, deciding upon the merits of a lawyer's
+plea or a judge's charge, getting up extempore trials upon the piazza or
+in the bar-room of cases still involved in the glorious uncertainty of
+the law in the court-house, proffering gratuitous legal advice to
+irascible plaintiffs and desponding defendants, and in various other ways
+seeing that the Commonwealth receives no detriment. In the autumn old
+sportsmen make the tavern their headquarters while scouring the marshes
+for sea-birds; and slim young gentlemen from the city return thither with
+empty game-bags, as guiltless in respect to the snipes and wagtails as
+Winkle was in the matter of the rooks, after his shooting excursion at
+Dingle Dell. Twice, nay, three times, a year, since third parties have
+been in fashion, the delegates of the political churches assemble in
+Ipswich to pass patriotic resolutions, and designate the candidates whom
+the good people of Essex County, with implicit faith in the wisdom of the
+selection, are expected to vote for. For the rest there are pleasant
+walks and drives around the picturesque village. The people are noted
+for their hospitality; in summer the sea-wind blows cool over its healthy
+hills, and, take it for all in all, there is not a better preserved or
+pleasanter specimen of a Puritan town remaining in the ancient
+Commonwealth.
+
+The 21st of April, 1775, witnessed an awful commotion in the little
+village of Ipswich. Old men, and boys, (the middle-aged had marched to
+Lexington some days before) and all the women in the place who were not
+bedridden or sick, came rushing as with one accord to the green in front
+of the meeting-house. A rumor, which no one attempted to trace or
+authenticate, spread from lip to lip that the British regulars had landed
+on the coast and were marching upon the town. A scene of indescribable
+terror and confusion followed. Defence was out of the question, as the
+young and able-bodied men of the entire region round about had marched to
+Cambridge and Lexington. The news of the battle at the latter place,
+exaggerated in all its details, had been just received; terrible stories
+of the atrocities committed by the dreaded "regulars" had been related;
+and it was believed that nothing short of a general extermination of the
+patriots--men, women, and children--was contemplated by the British
+commander.--Almost simultaneously the people of Beverly, a village a few
+miles distant, were smitten with the same terror. How the rumor was
+communicated no one could tell. It was there believed that the enemy had
+fallen upon Ipswich, and massacred the inhabitants without regard to age
+or sex.
+
+It was about the middle of the afternoon of this day that the people of
+Newbury, ten miles farther north, assembled in an informal meeting, at
+the town-house to hear accounts from the Lexington fight, and to consider
+what action was necessary in consequence of that event. Parson Carey was
+about opening the meeting with prayer when hurried hoof-beats sounded up
+the street, and a messenger, loose-haired and panting for breath, rushed
+up the staircase. "Turn out, turn out, for God's sake," he cried, "or
+you will be all killed! The regulars are marching onus; they are at
+Ipswich now, cutting and slashing all before them!" Universal
+consternation was the immediate result of this fearful announcement;
+Parson Carey's prayer died on his lips; the congregation dispersed over
+the town, carrying to every house the tidings that the regulars had come.
+Men on horseback went galloping up and down the streets, shouting the
+alarm. Women and children echoed it from every corner. The panic became
+irresistible, uncontrollable. Cries were heard that the dreaded invaders
+had reached Oldtown Bridge, a little distance from the village, and that
+they were killing all whom they encountered. Flight was resolved upon.
+All the horses and vehicles in the town were put in requisition; men,
+women, and children hurried as for life towards the north. Some threw
+their silver and pewter ware and other valuables into wells. Large
+numbers crossed the Merrimac, and spent the night in the deserted houses
+of Salisbury, whose inhabitants, stricken by the strange terror, had fled
+into New Hampshire, to take up their lodgings in dwellings also abandoned
+by their owners. A few individuals refused to fly with the multitude;
+some, unable to move by reason of sickness, were left behind by their
+relatives. One old gentleman, whose excessive corpulence rendered
+retreat on his part impossible, made a virtue of necessity; and, seating
+himself in his doorway with his loaded king's arm, upbraided his more
+nimble neighbors, advising them to do as he did, and "stop and shoot the
+devils." Many ludicrous instances of the intensity of the terror might
+be related. One man got his family into a boat to go to Ram Island for
+safety. He imagined he was pursued by the enemy through the dusk of the
+evening, and was annoyed by the crying of an infant in the after part of
+the boat. "Do throw that squalling brat overboard," he called to his
+wife, "or we shall be all discovered and killed!" A poor woman ran four
+or five miles up the river, and stopped to take breath and nurse her
+child, when she found to her great horror that she had brought off the
+cat instead of the baby!
+
+All through that memorable night the terror swept onward towards the
+north with a speed which seems almost miraculous, producing everywhere
+the same results. At midnight a horseman, clad only in shirt and
+breeches, dashed by our grandfather's door, in Haverhill, twenty miles up
+the river. "Turn out! Get a musket! Turn out!" he shouted; "the
+regulars are landing on Plum Island!" "I'm glad of it," responded the
+old gentleman from his chamber window; "I wish they were all there, and
+obliged to stay there." When it is understood that Plum Island is little
+more than a naked sand-ridge, the benevolence of this wish can be readily
+appreciated.
+
+All the boats on the river were constantly employed for several hours in
+conveying across the terrified fugitives. Through "the dead waste and
+middle of the night" they fled over the border into New Hampshire. Some
+feared to take the frequented roads, and wandered over wooded hills and
+through swamps where the snows of the late winter had scarcely melted.
+They heard the tramp and outcry of those behind them, and fancied that
+the sounds were made by pursuing enemies. Fast as they fled, the terror,
+by some unaccountable means, outstripped them. They found houses
+deserted and streets strewn with household stuffs, abandoned in the hurry
+of escape. Towards morning, however, the tide partially turned. Grown
+men began to feel ashamed of their fears. The old Anglo-Saxon hardihood
+paused and looked the terror in its face. Single or in small parties,
+armed with such weapons as they found at hand,--among which long poles,
+sharpened and charred at the end, were conspicuous,--they began to
+retrace their steps. In the mean time such of the good people of Ipswich
+as were unable or unwilling to leave their homes became convinced that
+the terrible rumor which had nearly depopulated their settlement was
+unfounded.
+
+Among those who had there awaited the onslaught of the regulars was a
+young man from Exeter, New Hampshire. Becoming satisfied that the whole
+matter was a delusion, he mounted his horse and followed after the
+retreating multitude, undeceiving all whom he overtook. Late at night
+he reached Newburyport, greatly to the relief of its sleepless
+inhabitants, and hurried across the river, proclaiming as he rode the
+welcome tidings. The sun rose upon haggard and jaded fugitives, worn
+with excitement and fatigue, slowly returning homeward, their
+satisfaction at the absence of danger somewhat moderated by an unpleasant
+consciousness of the ludicrous scenes of their premature night flitting.
+
+Any inference which might be drawn from the foregoing narrative
+derogatory to the character of the people of New England at that day, on
+the score of courage, would be essentially erroneous. It is true, they
+were not the men to court danger or rashly throw away their lives for the
+mere glory of the sacrifice. They had always a prudent and wholesome
+regard to their own comfort and safety; they justly looked upon sound
+heads and limbs as better than broken ones; life was to them too serious
+and important, and their hard-gained property too valuable, to be lightly
+hazarded. They never attempted to cheat themselves by under-estimating
+the difficulty to be encountered, or shutting their eyes to its probable
+consequences. Cautious, wary, schooled in the subtle strategy of Indian
+warfare, where self-preservation is by no means a secondary object, they
+had little in common with the reckless enthusiasm of their French allies,
+or the stolid indifference of the fighting machines of the British
+regular army. When danger could no longer be avoided, they met it with
+firmness and iron endurance, but with a very vivid appreciation of its
+magnitude. Indeed, it must be admitted by all who are familiar with the
+history of our fathers that the element of fear held an important place
+among their characteristics. It exaggerated all the dangers of their
+earthly pilgrimage, and peopled the future with shapes of evil. Their
+fear of Satan invested him with some of the attributes of Omnipotence,
+and almost reached the point of reverence. The slightest shock of an
+earthquake filled all hearts with terror. Stout men trembled by their
+hearths with dread of some paralytic old woman supposed to be a witch.
+And when they believed themselves called upon to grapple with these
+terrors and endure the afflictions of their allotment, they brought to
+the trial a capability of suffering undiminished by the chloroform of
+modern philosophy. They were heroic in endurance. Panics like the one
+we have described might bow and sway them like reeds in the wind; but
+they stood up like the oaks of their own forests beneath the thunder and
+the hail of actual calamity.
+
+It was certainly lucky for the good people of Essex County that no wicked
+wag of a Tory undertook to immortalize in rhyme their ridiculous hegira,
+as Judge Hopkinson did the famous Battle of the Kegs in Philadelphia.
+Like the more recent Madawaska war in Maine, the great Chepatchet
+demonstration in Rhode Island, and the "Sauk fuss" of Wisconsin, it
+remains to this day "unsyllabled, unsung;" and the fast-fading memory of
+age alone preserves the unwritten history of the great Ipswich fright.
+
+
+
+
+POPE NIGHT.
+
+ "Lay up the fagots neat and trim;
+ Pile 'em up higher;
+ Set 'em afire!
+ The Pope roasts us, and we 'll roast him!"
+ Old Song.
+
+The recent attempt of the Romish Church to reestablish its hierarchy in
+Great Britain, with the new cardinal, Dr. Wiseman, at its head, seems to
+have revived an old popular custom, a grim piece of Protestant sport,
+which, since the days of Lord George Gordon and the "No Popery" mob, had
+very generally fallen into disuse. On the 5th of the eleventh month of
+this present year all England was traversed by processions and lighted up
+with bonfires, in commemoration of the detection of the "gunpowder plot"
+of Guy Fawkes and the Papists in 1605. Popes, bishops, and cardinals, in
+straw and pasteboard, were paraded through the streets and burned amid
+the shouts of the populace, a great portion of whom would have doubtless
+been quite as ready to do the same pleasant little office for the Bishop
+of Exeter or his Grace of Canterbury, if they could have carted about and
+burned in effigy a Protestant hierarchy as safely as a Catholic one.
+
+In this country, where every sect takes its own way, undisturbed by legal
+restrictions, each ecclesiastical tub balancing itself as it best may on
+its own bottom, and where bishops Catholic and bishops Episcopal, bishops
+Methodist and bishops Mormon, jostle each other in our thoroughfares, it
+is not to be expected that we should trouble ourselves with the matter at
+issue between the rival hierarchies on the other side of the water. It
+is a very pretty quarrel, however, and good must come out of it, as it
+cannot fail to attract popular attention to the shallowness of the
+spiritual pretensions of both parties, and lead to the conclusion that a
+hierarchy of any sort has very little in common with the fishermen and
+tent-makers of the New Testament.
+
+Pope Night--the anniversary of the discovery of the Papal incendiary Guy
+Fawkes, booted and spurred, ready to touch fire to his powder-train under
+the Parliament House--was celebrated by the early settlers of New
+England, and doubtless afforded a good deal of relief to the younger
+plants of grace in the Puritan vineyard. In those solemn old days, the
+recurrence of the powder-plot anniversary, with its processions, hideous
+images of the Pope and Guy Fawkes, its liberal potations of strong
+waters, and its blazing bonfires reddening the wild November hills, must
+have been looked forward to with no slight degree of pleasure. For one
+night, at least, the cramped and smothered fun and mischief of the
+younger generation were permitted to revel in the wild extravagance
+of a Roman saturnalia or the Christmas holidays of a slave plantation.
+Bigotry--frowning upon the May-pole, with its flower wreaths and sportive
+revellers, and counting the steps of the dancers as so many steps towards
+perdition--recognized in the grim farce of Guy Fawkes's anniversary
+something of its own lineaments, smiled complacently upon the riotous
+young actors, and opened its close purse to furnish tar-barrels to roast
+the Pope, and strong water to moisten the throats of his noisy judges and
+executioners.
+
+Up to the time of the Revolution the powder plot was duly commemorated
+throughout New England. At that period the celebration of it was
+discountenanced, and in many places prohibited, on the ground that it was
+insulting to our Catholic allies from France. In Coffin's History of
+Newbury it is stated that, in 1774, the town authorities of Newburyport
+ordered "that no effigies be carried about or exhibited only in the
+daytime." The last public celebration in that town was in the following
+year. Long before the close of the last century the exhibitions of Pope
+Night had entirely ceased throughout the country, with, as far as we can
+learn, a solitary exception. The stranger who chances to be travelling
+on the road between Newburyport and Haverhill, on the night of the 5th of
+November, may well fancy that an invasion is threatened from the sea, or
+that an insurrection is going on inland; for from all the high hills
+overlooking the river tall fires are seen blazing redly against the cold,
+dark, autumnal sky, surrounded by groups of young men and boys busily
+engaged in urging them with fresh fuel into intenser activity. To feed
+these bonfires, everything combustible which could be begged or stolen
+from the neighboring villages, farm-houses, and fences is put in
+requisition. Old tar-tubs, purloined from the shipbuilders of the
+river-side, and flour and lard barrels from the village-traders, are
+stored away for days, and perhaps weeks, in the woods or in the rain-
+gullies of the hills, in preparation for Pope Night. From the earliest
+settlement of the towns of Amesbury and Salisbury, the night of the
+powder plot has been thus celebrated, with unbroken regularity, down to
+the present time. The event which it once commemorated is probably now
+unknown to most of the juvenile actors. The symbol lives on from
+generation to generation after the significance is lost; and we have seen
+the children of our Catholic neighbors as busy as their Protestant
+playmates in collecting, "by hook or by crook," the materials for Pope-
+Night bonfires. We remember, on one occasion, walking out with a gifted
+and learned Catholic friend to witness the fine effect of the
+illumination on the hills, and his hearty appreciation of its picturesque
+and wild beauty,--the busy groups in the strong relief of the fires, and
+the play and corruscation of the changeful lights on the bare, brown
+hills, naked trees, and autumn clouds.
+
+In addition to the bonfires on the hills, there was formerly a procession
+in the streets, bearing grotesque images of the Pope, his cardinals and
+friars; and behind them Satan himself, a monster with huge ox-horns on
+his head, and a long tail, brandishing his pitchfork and goading them
+onward. The Pope was generally furnished with a movable head, which
+could be turned round, thrown back, or made to bow, like that of a china-
+ware mandarin. An aged inhabitant of the neighborhood has furnished us
+with some fragments of the songs sung on such occasions, probably the
+same which our British ancestors trolled forth around their bonfires two
+centuries ago:--
+
+ "The fifth of November,
+ As you well remember,
+ Was gunpowder treason and plot;
+ And where is the reason
+ That gunpowder treason
+ Should ever be forgot?"
+
+ "When James the First the sceptre swayed,
+ This hellish powder plot was laid;
+ They placed the powder down below,
+ All for Old England's overthrow.
+ Lucky the man, and happy the day,
+ That caught Guy Fawkes in the middle of his play!"
+
+ "Hark! our bell goes jink, jink, jink;
+ Pray, madam, pray, sir, give us something to drink;
+ Pray, madam, pray, sir, if you'll something give,
+ We'll burn the dog, and not let him live.
+ We'll burn the dog without his head,
+ And then you'll say the dog is dead."
+
+ "Look here! from Rome The Pope has come,
+ That fiery serpent dire;
+ Here's the Pope that we have got,
+ The old promoter of the plot;
+ We'll stick a pitchfork in his back,
+ And throw him in the fire!"
+
+There is a slight savor of a Smithfield roasting about these lines, such
+as regaled the senses of the Virgin Queen or Bloody Mary, which entirely
+reconciles us to their disuse at the present time.
+
+It should be the fervent prayer of all good men that the evil spirit of
+religious hatred and intolerance, which on the one hand prompted the
+gunpowder plot, and which on the other has ever since made it the
+occasion of reproach and persecution of an entire sect of professing
+Christians, may be no longer perpetuated. In the matter of exclusiveness
+and intolerance, none of the older sects can safely reproach each other;
+and it becomes all to hope and labor for the coming of that day when the
+hymns of Cowper and the Confessions of Augustine, the humane philosophy
+of Channing and the devout meditations of Thomas a Kempis, the simple
+essays of Woolman and the glowing periods of Bossuet, shall be regarded
+as the offspring of one spirit and one faith,--lights of a common altar,
+and precious stones in the temple of the one universal Church.
+
+
+
+
+THE BOY CAPTIVES. AN INCIDENT OF THE INDIAN WAR OF 1695.
+
+The township of Haverhill, even as late as the close of the seventeenth
+century, was a frontier settlement, occupying an advanced position in the
+great wilderness, which, unbroken by the clearing of a white man,
+extended from the Merrimac River to the French villages on the St.
+Francois. A tract of twelve miles on the river and three or four
+northwardly was occupied by scattered settlers, while in the centre of
+the town a compact village had grown up. In the immediate vicinity there
+were but few Indians, and these generally peaceful and inoffensive. On
+the breaking out of the Narragansett war, the inhabitants had erected
+fortifications and taken other measures for defence; but, with the
+possible exception of one man who was found slain in the woods in 1676,
+none of the inhabitants were molested; and it was not until about the
+year 1689 that the safety of the settlement was seriously threatened.
+Three persons were killed in that year. In 1690 six garrisons were
+established in different parts of the town, with a small company of
+soldiers attached to each. Two of these houses are still standing. They
+were built of brick, two stories high, with a single outside door, so
+small and narrow that but one person could enter at a time; the windows
+few, and only about two and a half feet long by eighteen inches with
+thick diamond glass secured with lead, and crossed inside with bars of
+iron. The basement had but two rooms, and the chamber was entered by a
+ladder instead of stairs; so that the inmates, if driven thither, could
+cut off communication with the rooms below. Many private houses were
+strengthened and fortified. We remember one familiar to our boyhood,--
+a venerable old building of wood, with brick between the weather boards
+and ceiling, with a massive balustrade over the door, constructed of oak
+timber and plank, with holes through the latter for firing upon
+assailants. The door opened upon a stone-paved hall, or entry, leading
+into the huge single room of the basement, which was lighted by two small
+windows, the ceiling black with the smoke of a century and a half; a huge
+fireplace, calculated for eight-feet wood, occupying one entire side;
+while, overhead, suspended from the timbers, or on shelves fastened to
+them, were household stores, farming utensils, fishing-rods, guns,
+bunches of herbs gathered perhaps a century ago, strings of dried apples
+and pumpkins, links of mottled sausages, spareribs, and flitches of
+bacon; the firelight of an evening dimly revealing the checked woollen
+coverlet of the bed in one far-off corner, while in another "the pewter
+plates on the dresser Caught and reflected the flame as shields of armies
+the sunshine."
+
+Tradition has preserved many incidents of life in the garrisons. In
+times of unusual peril the settlers generally resorted at night to the
+fortified houses, taking thither their flocks and herds and such
+household valuables as were most likely to strike the fancy or minister
+to the comfort or vanity of the heathen marauders. False alarms were
+frequent. The smoke of a distant fire, the bark of a dog in the deep
+woods, a stump or bush taking in the uncertain light of stars and moon
+the appearance of a man, were sufficient to spread alarm through the
+entire settlement, and to cause the armed men of the garrison to pass
+whole nights in sleepless watching. It is said that at Haselton's
+garrison-house the sentinel on duty saw, as he thought, an Indian inside
+of the paling which surrounded the building, and apparently seeking to
+gain an entrance. He promptly raised his musket and fired at the
+intruder, alarming thereby the entire garrison. The women and children
+left their beds, and the men seized their guns and commenced firing on
+the suspicious object; but it seemed to bear a charmed life, and remained
+unharmed. As the morning dawned, however, the mystery was solved by the
+discovery of a black quilted petticoat hanging on the clothes-line,
+completely riddled with balls.
+
+As a matter of course, under circumstances of perpetual alarm and
+frequent peril, the duty of cultivating their fields, and gathering their
+harvests, and working at their mechanical avocations was dangerous and
+difficult to the settlers. One instance will serve as an illustration.
+At the garrison-house of Thomas Dustin, the husband of the far-famed Mary
+Dustin, (who, while a captive of the Indians, and maddened by the murder
+of her infant child, killed and scalped, with the assistance of a young
+boy, the entire band of her captors, ten in number,) the business of
+brick-making was carried on. The pits where the clay was found were only
+a few rods from the house; yet no man ventured to bring the clay to the
+yard within the enclosure without the attendance of a file of soldiers.
+An anecdote relating to this garrison has been handed down to the present
+tune. Among its inmates were two young cousins, Joseph and Mary
+Whittaker; the latter a merry, handsome girl, relieving the tedium of
+garrison duty with her light-hearted mirthfulness, and
+
+ "Making a sunshine in that shady place."
+
+Joseph, in the intervals of his labors in the double capacity of brick-
+maker and man-at-arms, was assiduous in his attentions to his fair
+cousin, who was not inclined to encourage him. Growing desperate, he
+threatened one evening to throw himself into the garrison well. His
+threat only called forth the laughter of his mistress; and, bidding her
+farewell, he proceeded to put it in execution. On reaching the well he
+stumbled over a log; whereupon, animated by a happy idea, he dropped the
+wood into the water instead of himself, and, hiding behind the curb,
+awaited the result. Mary, who had been listening at the door, and who
+had not believed her lover capable of so rash an act, heard the sudden
+plunge of the wooden Joseph. She ran to the well, and, leaning over the
+curb and peering down the dark opening, cried out, in tones of anguish
+and remorse, "O Joseph, if you're in the land of the living, I 'll have
+you!" "I'll take ye at your word," answered Joseph, springing up from
+his hiding-place, and avenging himself for her coyness and coldness by a
+hearty embrace.
+
+Our own paternal ancestor, owing to religious scruples in the matter of
+taking arms even for defence of life and property, refused to leave his
+undefended house and enter the garrison. The Indians frequently came to
+his house; and the family more than once in the night heard them
+whispering under the windows, and saw them put their copper faces to the
+glass to take a view of the apartments. Strange as it may seen, they
+never offered any injury or insult to the inmates.
+
+In 1695 the township was many times molested by Indians, and several
+persons were killed and wounded. Early in the fall a small party made
+their appearance in the northerly part of the town, where, finding two
+boys at work in an open field, they managed to surprise and capture them,
+and, without committing further violence, retreated through the woods to
+their homes on the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. Isaac Bradley, aged
+fifteen, was a small but active and vigorous boy; his companion in
+captivity, Joseph Whittaker, was only eleven, yet quite as large in size,
+and heavier in his movements. After a hard and painful journey they
+arrived at the lake, and were placed in an Indian family, consisting of a
+man and squaw and two or three children. Here they soon acquired a
+sufficient knowledge of the Indian tongue to enable them to learn from
+the conversation carried on in their presence that it was designed to
+take them to Canada in the spring. This discovery was a painful one.
+Canada, the land of Papist priests and bloody Indians, was the especial
+terror of the New England settlers, and the anathema maranatha of Puritan
+pulpits. Thither the Indians usually hurried their captives, where they
+compelled them to work in their villages or sold them to the French
+planters. Escape from thence through a deep wilderness, and across lakes
+and mountains and almost impassable rivers, without food or guide, was
+regarded as an impossibility. The poor boys, terrified by the prospect
+of being carried still farther from their home and friends, began to
+dream of escaping from their masters before they started for Canada. It
+was now winter; it would have been little short of madness to have chosen
+for flight that season of bitter cold and deep snows. Owing to exposure
+and want of proper food and clothing, Isaac, the eldest of the boys, was
+seized with a violent fever, from which he slowly recovered in the course
+of the winter. His Indian mistress was as kind to him as her
+circumstances permitted,--procuring medicinal herbs and roots for her
+patient, and tenderly watching over him in the long winter nights.
+Spring came at length; the snows melted; and the ice was broken up on the
+lake. The Indians began to make preparations for journeying to Canada;
+and Isaac, who had during his sickness devised a plan of escape, saw that
+the time of putting it in execution had come. On the evening before he
+was to make the attempt he for the first time informed his younger
+companion of his design, and told him, if he intended to accompany him,
+he must be awake at the time appointed. The boys lay down as usual in
+the wigwam, in the midst of the family. Joseph soon fell asleep; but
+Isaac, fully sensible of the danger and difficulty of the enterprise
+before him, lay awake, watchful for his opportunity. About midnight he
+rose, cautiously stepping over the sleeping forms of the family, and
+securing, as he went, his Indian master's flint, steel, and tinder, and a
+small quantity of dry moose-meat and cornbread. He then carefully
+awakened his companion, who, starting up, forgetful of the cause of his
+disturbance, asked aloud, "What do you want?" The savages began to stir;
+and Isaac, trembling with fear of detection, lay down again and pretended
+to be asleep. After waiting a while he again rose, satisfied, from the
+heavy breathing of the Indians, that they were all sleeping; and fearing
+to awaken Joseph a second time, lest he should again hazard all by his
+thoughtlessness, he crept softly out of the wigwam. He had proceeded but
+a few rods when he heard footsteps behind him; and, supposing himself
+pursued, he hurried into the woods, casting a glance backward. What was
+his joy to see his young companion running after him! They hastened on
+in a southerly direction as nearly as they could determine, hoping to
+reach their distant home. When daylight appeared they found a large
+hollow log, into which they crept for concealment, wisely judging that
+they would be hotly pursued by their Indian captors.
+
+Their sagacity was by no means at fault. The Indians, missing their
+prisoners in the morning, started off in pursuit with their dogs. As the
+young boys lay in the log they could hear the whistle of the Indians and
+the barking of dogs upon their track. It was a trying moment; and even
+the stout heart of the elder boy sank within him as the dogs came up to
+the log and set up a loud bark of discovery. But his presence of mind
+saved him. He spoke in a low tone to the dogs, who, recognizing his
+familiar voice, wagged their tails with delight and ceased barking. He
+then threw to them the morsel of moose-meat he had taken from the wigwam.
+While the dogs were thus diverted the Indians made their appearance. The
+boys heard the light, stealthy sound of their moccasins on the leaves.
+They passed close to the log; and the dogs, having devoured their moose-
+meat, trotted after their masters. Through a crevice in the log the boys
+looked after them and saw them disappear in the thick woods. They
+remained in their covert until night, when they started again on their
+long journey, taking a new route to avoid the Indians. At daybreak they
+again concealed themselves, but travelled the next night and day without
+resting. By this time they had consumed all the bread which they had
+taken, and were fainting from hunger and weariness. Just at the close of
+the third day they were providentially enabled to kill a pigeon and a
+small tortoise, a part of which they ate raw, not daring to make a fire,
+which might attract the watchful eyes of savages. On the sixth day they
+struck upon an old Indian path, and, following it until night, came
+suddenly upon a camp of the enemy. Deep in the heart of the forest,
+under the shelter of a ridge of land heavily timbered, a great fire of
+logs and brushwood was burning; and around it the Indians sat, eating
+their moose-meat and smoking their pipes.
+
+The poor fugitives, starving, weary, and chilled by the cold spring
+blasts, gazed down upon the ample fire; and the savory meats which the
+squaws were cooking by it, but felt no temptation to purchase warmth and
+food by surrendering themselves to captivity. Death in the forest seemed
+preferable. They turned and fled back upon their track, expecting every
+moment to hear the yells of pursuers. The morning found them seated on
+the bank of a small stream, their feet torn and bleeding, and their
+bodies emaciated. The elder, as a last effort, made search for roots,
+and fortunately discovered a few ground-nuts, (glicine apios) which
+served to refresh in some degree himself and his still weaker companion.
+As they stood together by the stream, hesitating and almost despairing,
+it occurred to Isaac that the rivulet might lead to a larger stream of
+water, and that to the sea and the white settlements near it; and he
+resolved to follow it. They again began their painful march; the day
+passed, and the night once more overtook them. When the eighth morning
+dawned, the younger of the boys found himself unable to rise from his bed
+of leaves. Isaac endeavored to encourage him, dug roots, and procured
+water for him; but the poor lad was utterly exhausted. He had no longer
+heart or hope. The elder boy laid him on leaves and dry grass at the
+foot of a tree, and with a heavy heart bade him farewell. Alone he
+slowly and painfully proceeded down the stream, now greatly increased in
+size by tributary rivulets. On the top of a hill, he climbed with
+difficulty into a tree, and saw in the distance what seemed to be a
+clearing and a newly raised frame building. Hopeful and rejoicing, he
+turned back to his young companion, told him what he had seen, and, after
+chafing his limbs awhile, got him upon his feet. Sometimes supporting
+him, and at others carrying him on his back, the heroic boy staggered
+towards the clearing. On reaching it he found it deserted, and was
+obliged to continue his journey. Towards night signs of civilization
+began to appear,--the heavy, continuous roar of water was heard; and,
+presently emerging from the forest, he saw a great river dashing in white
+foam down precipitous rocks, and on its bank the gray walls of a huge
+stone building, with flankers, palisades, and moat, over which the
+British flag was flying. This was the famous Saco Fort, built by
+Governor Phips two years before, just below the falls of the Saco River.
+The soldiers of the garrison gave the poor fellows a kindly welcome.
+Joseph, who was scarcely alive, lay for a long time sick in the fort; but
+Isaac soon regained his strength, and set out for his home in Haverhill,
+which he had the good fortune to arrive at in safety.
+
+Amidst the stirring excitements of the present day, when every thrill of
+the electric wire conveys a new subject for thought or action to a
+generation as eager as the ancient Athenians for some new thing, simple
+legends of the past like that which we have transcribed have undoubtedly
+lost in a great degree their interest. The lore of the fireside is
+becoming obsolete, and with the octogenarian few who still linger among
+us will perish the unwritten history of border life in New England.
+
+
+
+
+THE BLACK MEN IN THE REVOLUTION AND WAR OF 1812.
+
+The return of the festival of our national independence has called our
+attention to a matter which has been very carefully kept out of sight by
+orators and toast-drinkers. We allude to the participation of colored
+men in the great struggle for American freedom. It is not in accordance
+with our taste or our principles to eulogize the shedders of blood even
+in a cause of acknowledged justice; but when we see a whole nation doing
+honor to the memories of one class of its defenders to the total neglect
+of another class, who had the misfortune to be of darker complexion, we
+cannot forego the satisfaction of inviting notice to certain historical
+facts which for the last half century have been quietly elbowed aside,
+as no more deserving of a place in patriotic recollection than the
+descendants of the men to whom the facts in question relate have to a
+place in a Fourth of July procession.
+
+Of the services and sufferings of the colored soldiers of the Revolution
+no attempt has, to our knowledge, been made to preserve a record. They
+have had no historian. With here and there an exception, they have all
+passed away; and only some faint tradition of their campaigns under
+Washington and Greene and Lafayette, and of their cruisings under Decatur
+and Barry, lingers among their, descendants. Yet enough is known to show
+that the free colored men of the United States bore their full proportion
+of the sacrifices and trials of the Revolutionary War.
+
+The late Governor Eustis, of Massachusetts,--the pride and boast of the
+democracy of the East, himself an active participant in the war, and
+therefore a most competent witness,--Governor Morrill, of New Hampshire,
+Judge Hemphill, of Pennsylvania, and other members of Congress, in the
+debate on the question of admitting Missouri as a slave State into the
+Union, bore emphatic testimony to the efficiency and heroism of the black
+troops. Hon. Calvin Goddard, of Connecticut, states that in the little
+circle of his residence he was instrumental in securing, under the act of
+1818, the pensions of nineteen colored soldiers. "I cannot," he says,
+"refrain from mentioning one aged black man, Primus Babcock, who proudly
+presented to me an honorable discharge from service during the war, dated
+at the close of it, wholly in the handwriting of George Washington; nor
+can I forget the expression of his feelings when informed, after his
+discharge had been sent to the War Department, that it could not be
+returned. At his request it was written for, as he seemed inclined to
+spurn the pension and reclaim the discharge." There is a touching
+anecdote related of Baron Stenben on the occasion of the disbandment of
+the American army. A black soldier, with his wounds unhealed, utterly
+destitute, stood on the wharf just as a vessel bound for his distant home
+was getting under way. The poor fellow gazed at the vessel with tears in
+his eyes, and gave himself up to despair. The warm-hearted foreigner
+witnessed his emotion, and, inquiring into the cause of it, took his last
+dollar from his purse and gave it to him, with tears of sympathy
+trickling down his cheeks. Overwhelmed with gratitude, the poor wounded
+soldier hailed the sloop and was received on board. As it moved out from
+the wharf, he cried back to his noble friend on shore, "God Almighty
+bless you, Master Baron!"
+
+"In Rhode Island," says Governor Eustis in his able speech against
+slavery in Missouri, 12th of twelfth month, 1820, "the blacks formed an
+entire regiment, and they discharged their duty with zeal and fidelity.
+The gallant defence of Red Bank, in which the black regiment bore a part,
+is among the proofs of their valor." In this contest it will be
+recollected that four hundred men met and repulsed, after a terrible and
+sanguinary struggle, fifteen hundred Hessian troops, headed by Count
+Donop. The glory of the defence of Red Bank, which has been pronounced
+one of the most heroic actions of the war, belongs in reality to black
+men; yet who now hears them spoken of in connection with it? Among the
+traits which distinguished the black regiment was devotion to their
+officers. In the attack made upon the American lines near Croton River
+on the 13th of the fifth month, 1781, Colonel Greene, the commander of
+the regiment, was cut down and mortally wounded; but the sabres of the
+enemy only reached him through the bodies of his faithful guard of
+blacks, who hovered over him to protect him, every one of whom was
+killed. The late Dr. Harris, of Dunbarton, New Hampshire, a
+Revolutionary veteran, stated, in a speech at Francistown, New Hampshire,
+some years ago, that on one occasion the regiment to which he was
+attached was commanded to defend an important position, which the enemy
+thrice assailed, and from which they were as often repulsed. "There
+was," said the venerable speaker, "a regiment of blacks in the same
+situation,--a regiment of negroes fighting for our liberty and
+independence, not a white man among them but the officers,--in the same
+dangerous and responsible position. Had they been unfaithful or given
+way before the enemy, all would have been lost. Three times in
+succession were they attacked with most desperate fury by well-
+disciplined and veteran troops; and three times did they successfully
+repel the assault, and thus preserve an army. They fought thus through
+the war. They were brave and hardy troops."
+
+In the debate in the New York Convention of 1821 for amending the
+Constitution of the State, on the question of extending the right of
+suffrage to the blacks, Dr. Clarke, the delegate from Delaware County,
+and other members, made honorable mention of the services of the colored
+troops in the Revolutionary army.
+
+The late James Forten, of Philadelphia, well known as a colored man of
+wealth, intelligence, and philanthropy, enlisted in the American navy
+under Captain Decatur, of the Royal Louis, was taken prisoner during his
+second cruise, and, with nineteen other colored men, confined on board
+the horrible Jersey prison-ship; All the vessels in the American service
+at that period were partly manned by blacks. The old citizens of
+Philadelphia to this day remember the fact that, when the troops of the
+North marched through the city, one or more colored companies were
+attached to nearly all the regiments.
+
+Governor Eustis, in the speech before quoted, states that the free
+colored soldiers entered the ranks with the whites. The time of those
+who were slaves was purchased of their masters, and they were induced to
+enter the service in consequence of a law of Congress by which, on
+condition of their serving in the ranks during the war, they were made
+freemen. This hope of liberty inspired them with courage to oppose their
+breasts to the Hessian bayonet at Red Bank, and enabled them to endure
+with fortitude the cold and famine of Valley Forge. The anecdote of the
+slave of General Sullivan, of New Hampshire, is well known. When his
+master told him that they were on the point of starting for the army, to
+fight for liberty, he shrewdly suggested that it would be a great
+satisfaction to know that he was indeed going to fight for his liberty.
+Struck with the reasonableness and justice of this suggestion, General
+Sullivan at once gave him his freedom.
+
+The late Tristam Burgess, of Rhode Island, in a speech in Congress, first
+month, 1828, said "At the commencement of the Revolutionary War, Rhode
+Island had a number of slaves. A regiment of them were enlisted into the
+Continental service, and no braver men met the enemy in battle; but not
+one of them was permitted to be a soldier until he had first been made a
+freeman."
+
+The celebrated Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina, in his speech on the
+Missouri question, and in defence of the slave representation of the
+South, made the following admissions:--
+
+"They (the colored people) were in numerous instances the pioneers, and
+in all the laborers, of our armies. To their hands were owing the
+greatest part of the fortifications raised for the protection of the
+country. Fort Moultrie gave, at an early period of the inexperienced and
+untried valor of our citizens, immortality to the American arms; and in
+the Northern States numerous bodies of them were enrolled, and fought
+side by side with the whites at the battles of the Revolution."
+
+Let us now look forward thirty or forty years, to the last war with Great
+Britain, and see whether the whites enjoyed a monopoly of patriotism at
+that time.
+
+Martindale, of New York, in Congress, 22d of first month, 1828, said:
+"Slaves, or negroes who had been slaves, were enlisted as soldiers in the
+war of the Revolution; and I myself saw a battalion of them, as fine,
+martial-looking men as I ever saw, attached to the Northern army in the
+last war, on its march from Plattsburg to Sackett's Harbor."
+
+Hon. Charles Miner, of Pennsylvania, in Congress, second month, 7th,
+1828, said: "The African race make excellent soldiers. Large numbers of
+them were with Perry, and helped to gain the brilliant victory of Lake
+Erie. A whole battalion of them were distinguished for their orderly
+appearance."
+
+Dr. Clarke, in the convention which revised the Constitution of New York
+in 1821, speaking of the colored inhabitants of the State, said:--
+
+"In your late war they contributed largely towards some of your most
+splendid victories. On Lakes Erie and Champlain, where your fleets
+triumphed over a foe superior in numbers and engines of death, they were
+manned in a large proportion with men of color. And in this very house,
+in the fall of 1814, a bill passed, receiving the approbation of all the
+branches of your government, authorizing the governor to accept the
+services of a corps of two thousand free people of color. Sir, these
+were times which tried men's souls. In these times it was no sporting
+matter to bear arms. These were times when a man who shouldered his
+musket did not know but he bared his bosom to receive a death-wound from
+the enemy ere he laid it aside; and in these times these people were
+found as ready and as willing to volunteer in your service as any other.
+They were not compelled to go; they were not drafted. No; your pride had
+placed them beyond your compulsory power. But there was no necessity for
+its exercise; they were volunteers,--yes, sir, volunteers to defend that
+very country from the inroads and ravages of a ruthless and vindictive
+foe which had treated them with insult, degradation, and slavery."
+
+On the capture of Washington by the British forces, it was judged
+expedient to fortify, without delay, the principal towns and cities
+exposed to similar attacks. The Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia
+waited upon three of the principal colored citizens, namely, James
+Forten, Bishop Allen, and Absalom Jones, soliciting the aid of the people
+of color in erecting suitable defences for the city. Accordingly,
+twenty-five hundred colored then assembled in the State-House yard, and
+from thence marched to Gray's Ferry, where they labored for two days
+almost without intermission. Their labors were so faithful and efficient
+that a vote of thanks was tendered them by the committee. A battalion of
+colored troops was at the same time organized in the city under an
+officer of the United States army; and they were on the point of marching
+to the frontier when peace was proclaimed.
+
+General Jackson's proclamations to the free colored inhabitants of
+Louisiana are well known. In his first, inviting them to take up arms,
+he said:--
+
+"As sons of freedom, you are now called on to defend our most inestimable
+blessings. As Americans, your country looks with confidence to her
+adopted children for a valorous support. As fathers, husbands, and
+brothers, you are summoned to rally round the standard of the eagle, to
+defend all which is dear in existence."
+
+The second proclamation is one of the highest compliments ever paid by a
+military chief to his soldiers:--
+
+"TO THE FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR.
+
+"Soldiers! when on the banks of the Mobile I called you to take up arms,
+inviting you to partake the perils and glory of your white fellow-
+citizens, I expected much from you; for I was not ignorant that you
+possessed qualities most formidable to an invading enemy. I knew with
+what fortitude you could endure hunger, and thirst, and all the fatigues
+of a campaign. I knew well how you loved your native country, and that
+you, as well as ourselves, had to defend what man holds most dear,--his
+parents, wife, children, and property. You have done more than I
+expected. In addition to the previous qualities I before knew you to
+possess, I found among you a noble enthusiasm, which leads to the
+performance of great things.
+
+"Soldiers! the President of the United States shall hear how praiseworthy
+was your conduct in the hour of danger, and the Representatives of the
+American people will give you the praise your exploits entitle you to.
+Your general anticipates them in applauding your noble ardor."
+
+It will thus be seen that whatever honor belongs to the "heroes of the
+Revolution" and the volunteers in "the second war for independence" is to
+be divided between the white and the colored man. We have dwelt upon
+this subject at length, not because it accords with our principles or
+feelings, for it is scarcely necessary for us to say that we are one of
+those who hold that
+
+ "Peace hath her victories
+ No less renowned than war,"
+
+and certainly far more desirable and useful; but because, in popular
+estimation, the patriotism which dares and does on the battle-field takes
+a higher place than the quiet exercise of the duties of peaceful
+citizenship; and we are willing that colored soldiers, with their
+descendants, should have the benefit, if possible, of a public sentiment
+which has so extravagantly lauded their white companions in arms. If
+pulpits must be desecrated by eulogies of the patriotism of bloodshed, we
+see no reason why black defenders of their country in the war for liberty
+should not receive honorable mention as well as white invaders of a
+neighboring republic who have volunteered in a war for plunder and
+slavery extension. For the latter class of "heroes" we have very little
+respect. The patriotism of too many of them forcibly reminds us of Dr.
+Johnson's definition of that much-abused term "Patriotism, sir! 'T is
+the last refuge of a scoundrel."
+
+"What right, I demand," said an American orator some years ago, "have the
+children of Africa to a homestead in the white man's country?" The
+answer will in part be found in the facts which we have presented. Their
+right, like that of their white fellow-citizens, dates back to the dread
+arbitrament of battle. Their bones whiten every stricken field of the
+Revolution; their feet tracked with blood the snows of Jersey; their toil
+built up every fortification south of the Potomac; they shared the famine
+and nakedness of Valley Forge and the pestilential horrors of the old
+Jersey prisonship. Have they, then, no claim to an equal participation
+in the blessings which have grown out of the national independence for
+which they fought? Is it just, is it magnanimous, is it safe, even, to
+starve the patriotism of such a people, to cast their hearts out of the
+treasury of the Republic, and to convert them, by political
+disfranchisement and social oppression, into enemies?
+
+
+
+
+THE SCOTTISH REFORMERS.
+
+ "The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small;
+ Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He
+ all."
+ FRIEDRICH VON LOGAU.
+
+The great impulse of the French Revolution was not confined by
+geographical boundaries. Flashing hope into the dark places of the
+earth, far down among the poor and long oppressed, or startling the
+oppressor in his guarded chambers like that mountain of fire which fell
+into the sea at the sound of the apocalyptic trumpet, it agitated the
+world.
+
+The arguments of Condorcet, the battle-words of Mirabeau, the fierce zeal
+of St. Just, the iron energy of Danton, the caustic wit of Camille
+Desmoulins, and the sweet eloquence of Vergniaud found echoes in all
+lands, and nowhere more readily than in Great Britain, the ancient foe
+and rival of France. The celebrated Dr. Price, of London, and the still
+more distinguished Priestley, of Birmingham, spoke out boldly in defence
+of the great principles of the Revolution. A London club of reformers,
+reckoning among its members such men as Sir William Jones, Earl Grey,
+Samuel Whitbread, and Sir James Mackintosh, was established for the
+purpose of disseminating liberal appeals and arguments throughout the
+United Kingdom.
+
+In Scotland an auxiliary society was formed, under the name of Friends of
+the People. Thomas Muir, young in years, yet an elder in the Scottish
+kirk, a successful advocate at the bar, talented, affable, eloquent, and
+distinguished for the purity of his life and his enthusiasm in the cause
+of freedom, was its principal originator. In the twelfth month of 1792 a
+convention of reformers was held at Edinburgh. The government became
+alarmed, and a warrant was issued for the arrest of Muir. He escaped to
+France; but soon after, venturing to return to his native land, was
+recognized and imprisoned. He was tried upon the charge of lending books
+of republican tendency, and reading an address from Theobald Wolfe Tone
+and the United Irishmen before the society of which he was a member. He
+defended himself in a long and eloquent address, which concluded in the
+following manly strain:--
+
+"What, then, has been my crime? Not the lending to a relation a copy of
+Thomas Paine's works,--not the giving away to another a few numbers of an
+innocent and constitutional publication; but my crime is, for having
+dared to be, according to the measure of my feeble abilities, a strenuous
+and an active advocate for an equal representation of the people in the
+House of the people,--for having dared to accomplish a measure by legal
+means which was to diminish the weight of their taxes and to put an end
+to the profusion of their blood. Gentlemen, from my infancy to this
+moment I have devoted myself to the cause of the people. It is a good
+cause: it will ultimately prevail,--it will finally triumph."
+
+He was sentenced to transportation for fourteen years, and was removed to
+the Edinburgh jail, from thence to the hulks, and lastly to the
+transport-ship, containing eighty-three convicts, which conveyed him to
+Botany Bay.
+
+The next victim was Palmer, a learned and highly accomplished Unitarian
+minister in Dundee. He was greatly beloved and respected as a polished
+gentleman and sincere friend of the people. He was charged with
+circulating a republican tract, and was sentenced to seven years'
+transportation.
+
+But the Friends of the People were not quelled by this summary punishment
+of two of their devoted leaders. In the tenth month, 1793, delegates
+were called together from various towns in Scotland, as well as from
+Birmingham, Sheffield, and other places in England. Gerrald and Margarot
+were sent up by the London society. After a brief sitting, the
+convention was dispersed by the public authorities. Its sessions were
+opened and closed with prayer, and the speeches of its members manifested
+the pious enthusiasm of the old Cameronians and Parliament-men of the
+times of Cromwell. Many of the dissenting clergy were present. William
+Skirving, the most determined of the band, had been educated for the
+ministry, and was a sincerely religious man. Joseph Gerrald was a young
+man of brilliant talents and exemplary character. When the sheriff
+entered the hall to disperse the friends of liberty, Gerrald knelt in
+prayer. His remarkable words were taken down by a reporter on the spot.
+There is nothing in modern history to compare with this supplication,
+unless it be that of Sir Henry Vane, a kindred martyr, at the foot of the
+scaffold, just before his execution. It is the prayer of universal
+humanity, which God will yet hear and answer.
+
+"O thou Governor of the universe, we rejoice that, at all times and in
+all circumstances, we have liberty to approach Thy throne, and that we
+are assured that no sacrifice is more acceptable to Thee than that which
+is made for the relief of the oppressed. In this moment of trial and
+persecution we pray that Thou wouldst be our defender, our counsellor,
+and our guide. Oh, be Thou a pillar of fire to us, as Thou wast to our
+fathers of old, to enlighten and direct us; and to our enemies a pillar
+of cloud, and darkness, and confusion.
+
+"Thou art Thyself the great Patron of liberty. Thy service is perfect
+freedom. Prosper, we beseech Thee, every endeavor which we make to
+promote Thy cause; for we consider the cause of truth, or every cause
+which tends to promote the happiness of Thy creatures, as Thy cause.
+
+"O thou merciful Father of mankind, enable us, for Thy name's sake, to
+endure persecution with fortitude; and may we believe that all trials and
+tribulations of life which we endure shall work together for good to them
+that love Thee; and grant that the greater the evil, and the longer it
+may be continued, the greater good, in Thy holy and adorable providence,
+may be produced therefrom. And this we beg, not for our own merits, but
+through the merits of Him who is hereafter to judge the world in
+righteousness and mercy."
+
+He ceased, and the sheriff, who had been temporarily overawed by the
+extraordinary scene, enforced the warrant, and the meeting was broken up.
+The delegates descended to the street in silence,--Arthur's Seat and
+Salisbury Crags glooming in the distance and night,--an immense and
+agitated multitude waiting around, over which tossed the flaring
+flambeaux of the sheriff's train. Gerrald, who was already under arrest,
+as he descended, spoke aloud, "Behold the funeral torches of Liberty!"
+
+Skirving and several others were immediately arrested. They were tried
+in the first month, 1794, and sentenced, as Muir and Palmer had
+previously been, to transportation. Their conduct throughout was worthy
+of their great and holy cause. Gerrald's defence was that of freedom
+rather than his own. Forgetting himself, he spoke out manfully and
+earnestly for the poor, the oppressed, the overtaxed, and starving
+millions of his countrymen. That some idea may be formed of this noble
+plea for liberty, I give an extract from the concluding paragraphs:--
+
+"True religion, like all free governments, appeals to the understanding
+for its support, and not to the sword. All systems, whether civil or
+moral, can only be durable in proportion as they are founded on truth and
+calculated to promote the good of mankind. This will account to us why
+governments suited to the great energies of man have always outlived the
+perishable things which despotism has erected. Yes, this will account to
+us why the stream of Time, which is continually washing away the
+dissoluble fabrics of superstitions and impostures, passes without injury
+by the adamant of Christianity.
+
+"Those who are versed in the history of their country, in the history of
+the human race, must know that rigorous state prosecutions have always
+preceded the era of convulsion; and this era, I fear, will be accelerated
+by the folly and madness of our rulers. If the people are discontented,
+the proper mode of quieting their discontent is, not by instituting
+rigorous and sanguinary prosecutions, but by redressing their wrongs and
+conciliating their affections. Courts of justice, indeed, may be called
+in to the aid of ministerial vengeance; but if once the purity of their
+proceedings is suspected, they will cease to be objects of reverence to
+the nation; they will degenerate into empty and expensive pageantry, and
+become the partial instruments of vexatious oppression. Whatever may
+become of me, my principles will last forever. Individuals may perish;
+but truth is eternal. The rude blasts of tyranny may blow from every
+quarter; but freedom is that hardy plant which will survive the tempest
+and strike an everlasting root into the most unfavorable soil.
+
+"Gentlemen, I am in your hands. About my life I feel not the slightest
+anxiety: if it would promote the cause, I would cheerfully make the
+sacrifice; for if I perish on an occasion like the present, out of my
+ashes will arise a flame to consume the tyrants and oppressors of my
+country."
+
+Years have passed, and the generation which knew the persecuted reformers
+has given place to another. And now, half a century after William
+Skirving, as he rose to receive his sentence, declared to his judges,
+"You may condemn us as felons, but your sentence shall yet be reversed by
+the people," the names of these men are once more familiar to British
+lips. The sentence has been reversed; the prophecy of Skirving has
+become history. On the 21st of the eighth month, 1853, the corner-stone
+of a monument to the memory of the Scottish martyrs--for which
+subscriptions had been received from such men as Lord Holland, the Dukes
+of Bedford and Norfolk; and the Earls of Essex and Leicester--was laid
+with imposing ceremonies in the beautiful burial-place of Calton Hill,
+Edinburgh, by the veteran reformer and tribune of the people, Joseph
+Hume, M. P. After delivering an appropriate address, the aged radical
+closed the impressive scene by reading the prayer of Joseph Gerrald. At
+the banquet which afterwards took place, and which was presided over by
+John Dunlop, Esq., addresses were made by the president and Dr. Ritchie,
+and by William Skirving, of Kirkaldy, son of the martyr. The Complete
+Suffrage Association of Edinburgh, to the number of five hundred, walked
+in procession to Calton Hill, and in the open air proclaimed unmolested
+the very principles for which the martyrs of the past century had
+suffered.
+
+The account of this tribute to the memory of departed worth cannot fail
+to awaken in generous hearts emotions of gratitude towards Him who has
+thus signally vindicated His truth, showing that the triumph of the
+oppressor is but for a season, and that even in this world a lie cannot
+live forever. Well and truly did George Fox say in his last days,
+
+ "The truth is above all."
+
+Will it be said, however, that this tribute comes too late; that it
+cannot solace those brave hearts which, slowly broken by the long agony
+of colonial servitude, are now cold in strange graves? It is, indeed, a
+striking illustration of the truth that he who would benefit his fellow-
+man must "walk by faith," sowing his seed in the morning, and in the
+evening withholding not his hand; knowing only this, that in God's good
+time the harvest shall spring up and ripen, if not for himself, yet for
+others, who, as they bind the full sheaves and gather in the heavy
+clusters, may perchance remember him with gratitude and set up stones of
+memorial on the fields of his toil and sacrifices. We may regret that in
+this stage of the spirit's life the sincere and self-denying worker is
+not always permitted to partake of the fruits of his toil or receive the
+honors of a benefactor. We hear his good evil spoken of, and his noblest
+sacrifices counted as naught; we see him not only assailed by the wicked,
+but discountenanced and shunned by the timidly good, followed on his hot
+and dusty pathway by the execrations of the hounding mob and the
+contemptuous pity of the worldly wise and prudent; and when at last the
+horizon of Time shuts down between him and ourselves, and the places
+which have known him know him no more forever, we are almost ready to say
+with the regal voluptuary of old, This also is vanity and a great evil;
+"for what hath a man of all his labor and of the vexation of his heart
+wherein he hath labored under the sun?" But is this the end? Has God's
+universe no wider limits than the circle of the blue wall which shuts in
+our nestling-place? Has life's infancy only been provided for, and
+beyond this poor nursery-chamber of Time is there no playground for the
+soul's youth, no broad fields for its manhood? Perchance, could we but
+lift the curtains of the narrow pinfold wherein we dwell, we might see
+that our poor friend and brother whose fate we have thus deplored has by
+no means lost the reward of his labors, but that in new fields of duty he
+is cheered even by the tardy recognition of the value of his services in
+the old. The continuity of life is never broken; the river flows onward
+and is lost to our sight, but under its new horizon it carries the same
+waters which it gathered under ours, and its unseen valleys are made glad
+by the offerings which are borne down to them from the past,--flowers,
+perchance, the germs of which its own waves had planted on the banks of
+Time. Who shall say that the mournful and repentant love with which the
+benefactors of our race are at length regarded may not be to them, in
+their new condition of being, sweet and grateful as the perfume of long-
+forgotten flowers, or that our harvest-hymns of rejoicing may not reach
+the ears of those who in weakness and suffering scattered the seeds of
+blessing?
+
+The history of the Edinburgh reformers is no new one; it is that of all
+who seek to benefit their age by rebuking its popular crimes and exposing
+its cherished errors. The truths which they told were not believed, and
+for that very reason were the more needed; for it is evermore the case
+that the right word when first uttered is an unpopular and denied one.
+Hence he who undertakes to tread the thorny pathway of reform--who,
+smitten with the love of truth and justice, or indignant in view of wrong
+and insolent oppression, is rashly inclined to throw himself at once into
+that great conflict which the Persian seer not untruly represented as a
+war between light and darkness--would do well to count the cost in the
+outset. If he can live for Truth alone, and, cut off from the general
+sympathy, regard her service as its "own exceeding great reward;" if he
+can bear to be counted a fanatic and crazy visionary; if, in all good
+nature, he is ready to receive from the very objects of his solicitude
+abuse and obloquy in return for disinterested and self-sacrificing
+efforts for their welfare; if, with his purest motives misunderstood and
+his best actions perverted and distorted into crimes, he can still hold
+on his way and patiently abide the hour when "the whirligig of Time shall
+bring about its revenges;" if, on the whole, he is prepared to be looked
+upon as a sort of moral outlaw or social heretic, under good society's
+interdict of food and fire; and if he is well assured that he can,
+through all this, preserve his cheerfulness and faith in man,--let him
+gird up his loins and go forward in God's name. He is fitted for his
+vocation; he has watched all night by his armor. Whatever his trial may
+be, he is prepared; he may even be happily disappointed in respect to it;
+flowers of unexpected refreshing may overhang the hedges of his strait
+and narrow way; but it remains to be true that he who serves his
+contemporaries in faithfulness and sincerity must expect no wages from
+their gratitude; for, as has been well said, there is, after all, but one
+way of doing the world good, and unhappily that way the world does not
+like; for it consists in telling it the very thing which it does not wish
+to hear.
+
+Unhappily, in the case of the reformer, his most dangerous foes are those
+of his own household. True, the world's garden has become a desert and
+needs renovation; but is his own little nook weedless? Sin abounds
+without; but is his own heart pure? While smiting down the giants and
+dragons which beset the outward world, are there no evil guests sitting
+by his own hearth-stone? Ambition, envy, self-righteousness, impatience,
+dogmatism, and pride of opinion stand at his door-way ready to enter
+whenever he leaves it unguarded. Then, too, there is no small danger of
+failing to discriminate between a rational philanthropy, with its
+adaptation of means to ends, and that spiritual knight-errantry which
+undertakes the championship of every novel project of reform, scouring
+the world in search of distressed schemes held in durance by common sense
+and vagaries happily spellbound by ridicule. He must learn that,
+although the most needful truth may be unpopular, it does not follow that
+unpopularity is a proof of the truth of his doctrines or the expediency
+of his measures. He must have the liberality to admit that it is barely
+possible for the public on some points to be right and himself wrong, and
+that the blessing invoked upon those who suffer for righteousness is not
+available to such as court persecution and invite contempt; for folly has
+its martyrs as well as wisdom; and he who has nothing better to show of
+himself than the scars and bruises which the popular foot has left upon
+him is not even sure of winning the honors of martyrdom as some
+compensation for the loss of dignity and self-respect involved in the
+exhibition of its pains. To the reformer, in an especial manner, comes
+home the truth that whoso ruleth his own spirit is greater than he who
+taketh a city. Patience, hope, charity, watchfulness unto prayer,--how
+needful are all these to his success! Without them he is in danger of
+ingloriously giving up his contest with error and prejudice at the first
+repulse; or, with that spiteful philanthropy which we sometimes witness,
+taking a sick world by the nose, like a spoiled child, and endeavoring to
+force down its throat the long-rejected nostrums prepared for its relief.
+
+What then? Shall we, in view of these things, call back young, generous
+spirits just entering upon the perilous pathway? God forbid! Welcome,
+thrice welcome, rather. Let them go forward, not unwarned of the dangers
+nor unreminded of the pleasures which belong to the service of humanity.
+Great is the consciousness of right. Sweet is the answer of a good
+conscience. He who pays his whole-hearted homage to truth and duty, who
+swears his lifelong fealty on their altars, and rises up a Nazarite
+consecrated to their holy service, is not without his solace and
+enjoyment when, to the eyes of others, he seems the most lonely and
+miserable. He breathes an atmosphere which the multitude know not of;
+"a serene heaven which they cannot discern rests over him, glorious in
+its purity and stillness." Nor is he altogether without kindly human
+sympathies. All generous and earnest hearts which are brought in contact
+with his own beat evenly with it. All that is good, and truthful, and
+lovely in man, whenever and wherever it truly recognizes him, must sooner
+or later acknowledge his claim to love and reverence. His faith
+overcomes all things. The future unrolls itself before him, with its
+waving harvest-fields springing up from the seed he is scattering; and he
+looks forward to the close of life with the calm confidence of one who
+feels that he has not lived idle and useless, but with hopeful heart and
+strong arm has labored with God and Nature for the best.
+
+And not in vain. In the economy of God, no effort, however small, put
+forth for the right cause, fails of its effect. No voice, however
+feeble, lifted up for truth, ever dies amidst the confused noises of
+time. Through discords of sin and sorrow, pain and wrong, it rises a
+deathless melody, whose notes of wailing are hereafter to be changed to
+those of triumph as they blend with the great harmony of a reconciled
+universe. The language of a transatlantic reformer to his friends is
+then as true as it is hopeful and cheering: "Triumph is certain. We have
+espoused no losing cause. In the body we may not join our shout with the
+victors; but in spirit we may even now. There is but an interval of time
+between us and the success at which we aim. In all other respects the
+links of the chain are complete. Identifying ourselves with immortal and
+immutable principles, we share both their immortality and immutability.
+The vow which unites us with truth makes futurity present with us. Our
+being resolves itself into an everlasting now. It is not so correct to
+say that we shall be victorious as that we are so. When we will in
+unison with the supreme Mind, the characteristics of His will become, in
+some sort, those of ours. What He has willed is virtually done. It may
+take ages to unfold itself; but the germ of its whole history is wrapped
+up in His determination. When we make His will ours, which we do when we
+aim at truth, that upon which we are resolved is done, decided, born.
+Life is in it. It is; and the future is but the development of its
+being. Ours, therefore, is a perpetual triumph. Our deeds are, all of
+them, component elements of success." (Miall's Essays; Nonconformist,
+Vol. iv.)
+
+
+
+
+THE PILGRIMS OF PLYMOUTH.
+
+From a letter on the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the landing
+of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, December 22, 1870.
+
+No one can appreciate more highly than myself the noble qualities of the
+men and women of the Mayflower. It is not of them that I, a descendant
+of the "sect called Quakers," have reason to complain in the matter of
+persecution. A generation which came after them, with less piety and
+more bigotry, is especially responsible for the little unpleasantness
+referred to; and the sufferers from it scarcely need any present
+championship. They certainly did not wait altogether for the revenges of
+posterity. If they lost their ears, it is satisfactory to remember that
+they made those of their mutilators tingle with a rhetoric more sharp
+than polite.
+
+A worthy New England deacon once described a brother in the church as a
+very good man Godward, but rather hard man-ward. It cannot be denied
+that some very satisfactory steps have been taken in the latter
+direction, at least, since the days of the Pilgrims. Our age is tolerant
+of creed and dogma, broader in its sympathies, more keenly sensitive to
+temporal need, and, practically recognizing the brotherhood of the race,
+wherever a cry of suffering is heard its response is quick and generous.
+It has abolished slavery, and is lifting woman from world-old degradation
+to equality with man before the law. Our criminal codes no longer embody
+the maxim of barbarism, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," but
+have regard not only for the safety of the community, but to the reform
+and well-being of the criminal. All the more, however, for this amiable
+tenderness do we need the counterpoise of a strong sense of justice.
+With our sympathy for the wrong-doer we need the old Puritan and Quaker
+hatred of wrongdoing; with our just tolerance of men and opinions a
+righteous abhorrence of sin. All the more for the sweet humanities and
+Christian liberalism which, in drawing men nearer to each other, are
+increasing the sum of social influences for good or evil, we need the
+bracing atmosphere, healthful, if austere, of the old moralities.
+Individual and social duties are quite as imperative now as when they
+were minutely specified in statute-books and enforced by penalties no
+longer admissible. It is well that stocks, whipping-post, and ducking-
+stool are now only matters of tradition; but the honest reprobation of
+vice and crime which they symbolized should by no means perish with them.
+The true life of a nation is in its personal morality, and no excellence
+of constitution and laws can avail much if the people lack purity and
+integrity. Culture, art, refinement, care for our own comfort and that
+of others, are all well, but truth, honor, reverence, and fidelity to
+duty are indispensable.
+
+The Pilgrims were right in affirming the paramount authority of the law
+of God. If they erred in seeking that authoritative law, and passed over
+the Sermon on the Mount for the stern Hebraisms of Moses; if they
+hesitated in view of the largeness of Christian liberty; if they seemed
+unwilling to accept the sweetness and light of the good tidings, let us
+not forget that it was the mistake of men who feared more than they dared
+to hope, whose estimate of the exceeding awfulness of sin caused them to
+dwell upon God's vengeance rather than his compassion; and whose dread of
+evil was so great that, in shutting their hearts against it, they
+sometimes shut out the good. It is well for us if we have learned to
+listen to the sweet persuasion of the Beatitudes; but there are crises in
+all lives which require also the emphatic "Thou shalt not" or the
+Decalogue which the founders wrote on the gate-posts of their
+commonwealth.
+
+Let us then be thankful for the assurances which the last few years have
+afforded us that:
+
+ "The Pilgrim spirit is not dead,
+ But walks in noon's broad light."
+
+We have seen it in the faith and trust which no circumstances could
+shake, in heroic self-sacrifice, in entire consecration to duty. The
+fathers have lived in their sons. Have we not all known the Winthrops
+and Brewsters, the Saltonstalls and Sewalls, of old times, in
+gubernatorial chairs, in legislative halls, around winter camp-fires, in
+the slow martyrdoms of prison and hospital? The great struggle through
+which we have passed has taught us how much we owe to the men and women
+of the Plymouth Colony,--the noblest ancestry that ever a people looked
+back to with love and reverence. Honor, then, to the Pilgrims! Let their
+memory be green forever!
+
+
+
+
+GOVERNOR ENDICOTT.
+
+I am sorry that I cannot respond in person to the invitation of the Essex
+Institute to its commemorative festival on the 18th. I especially regret
+it, because, though a member of the Society of Friends, and, as such,
+regarding with abhorrence the severe persecution of the sect under the
+administration of Governor Endicott, I am not unmindful of the otherwise
+noble qualities and worthy record of the great Puritan, whose misfortune
+it was to live in an age which regarded religious toleration as a crime.
+He was the victim of the merciless logic of his creed. He honestly
+thought that every convert to Quakerism became by virtue of that
+conversion a child of perdition; and, as the head of the Commonwealth,
+responsible for the spiritual as well as temporal welfare of its
+inhabitants, he felt it his duty to whip, banish, and hang heretics to
+save his people from perilous heresy.
+
+The extravagance of some of the early Quakers has been grossly
+exaggerated. Their conduct will compare in this respect favorably with
+that of the first Anabaptists and Independents; but it must be admitted
+that many of them manifested a good deal of that wild enthusiasm which
+has always been the result of persecution and the denial of the rights of
+conscience and worship. Their pertinacious defiance of laws enacted
+against them, and their fierce denunciations of priests and magistrates,
+must have been particularly aggravating to a man as proud and high
+tempered as John Endicott. He had that free-tongued neighbor of his,
+Edward Wharton, smartly whipped at the cart-tail about once a month, but
+it may be questioned whether the governor's ears did not suffer as much
+under Wharton's biting sarcasm and "free speech" as the latter's back did
+from the magisterial whip.
+
+Time has proved that the Quakers had the best of the controversy; and
+their descendants can well afford to forget and forgive an error which
+the Puritan governor shared with the generation in which he lived.
+
+WEST OSSIPEE, N. H., 14th 9th Month, 1878.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN WINTHROP.
+
+On the anniversary of his landing at Salem.
+
+I see by the call of the Essex Institute that some probability is
+suggested that I may furnish a poem for the occasion of its meeting at
+The Willows on the 22d. I would be glad to make the implied probability
+a fact, but I find it difficult to put my thoughts into metrical form,
+and there will be little need of it, as I understand a lady of Essex
+County, who adds to her modern culture and rare poetical gifts the best
+spirit of her Puritan ancestry, has lent the interest of her verse to the
+occasion.
+
+It was a happy thought of the Institute to select for its first meeting
+of the season the day and the place of the landing of the great and good
+governor, and permit me to say, as thy father's old friend, that its
+choice for orator, of the son of him whose genius, statesmanship, and
+eloquence honored the place of his birth, has been equally happy. As I
+look over the list of the excellent worthies of the first emigrations, I
+find no one who, in all respects, occupies a nobler place in the early
+colonial history of Massachusetts than John Winthrop. Like Vane and
+Milton, he was a gentleman as well as a Puritan, a cultured and
+enlightened statesman as well as a God-fearing Christian. It was not
+under his long and wise chief magistracy that religious bigotry and
+intolerance hung and tortured their victims, and the terrible delusion of
+witchcraft darkened the sun at noonday over Essex. If he had not quite
+reached the point where, to use the words of Sir Thomas More, he could
+"hear heresies talked and yet let the heretics alone," he was in charity
+and forbearance far in advance of his generation.
+
+I am sorry that I must miss an occasion of so much interest. I hope you
+will not lack the presence of the distinguished citizen who inherits the
+best qualities of his honored ancestor, and who, as a statesman, scholar,
+and patriot, has added new lustre to the name of Winthrop.
+
+DANVERS, 6th Month, 19, 1880.
+
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME VII. THE CONFLICT WITH SLAVERY, plus POLITICS AND REFORM, THE INNER LIFE and CRITICISM
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS:
+
+ THE CONFLICT WITH SLAVERY
+ JUSTICE AND EXPEDIENCY
+ THE ABOLITIONISTS; THEIR SENTIMENTS AND OBJECTS
+ LETTER TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL
+ JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
+ THE BIBLE AND SLAVERY
+ WHAT IS SLAVERY
+ DEMOCRAT AND SLAVERY
+ THE TWO PROCESSIONS
+ A CHAPTER OF HISTORY
+ THOMAS CARLYLE ON THE SLAVE QUESTION
+ FORMATION OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY
+ THE LESSON AND OUR DUTY
+ CHARLES SUMNER AND THE STATE DEPARTMENT
+ THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1872
+ THE CENSURE OF SUMNER
+ THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION OF 1833
+ KANSAS
+ WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON
+ ANTI-SLAVERY ANNIVERSARY
+ RESPONSE TO THE CELEBRATION OF MY EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY
+
+ REFORM AND POLITICS.
+ UTOPIAN SCHEMES AND POLITICAL THEORISTS
+ PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS OF MASSACHUSETTS
+ LORD ASHLEY AND THE THIEVES
+ WOMAN SUFFRAGE
+ ITALIAN UNITY
+ INDIAN CIVILIZATION
+ READING FOR THE BLIND
+ THE INDIAN QUESTION
+ THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
+ OUR DUMB RELATIONS
+ INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION
+ SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN
+
+ THE INNER LIFE.
+ THE AGENCY OF EVIL
+ HAMLET AMONG THE GRAVES
+ SWEDENBORG
+ THE BETTER LAND
+ DORA GREENWELL
+ THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
+ JOHN WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL
+ THE OLD WAY
+ HAVERFORD COLLEGE
+
+ CRITICISM.
+ EVANGELINE
+ MIRTH AND MEDICINE
+ FAME AND GLORY
+ FANATICISM
+ THE POETRY OF THE NORTH
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CONFLICT WITH SLAVERY
+
+
+
+
+JUSTICE AND EXPEDIENCY
+
+OR, SLAVERY CONSIDERED WITH A VIEW TO ITS RIGHTFUL AND EFFECTUAL REMEDY,
+ABOLITION.
+
+ (1833.)
+
+ "There is a law above all the enactments of human codes, the same
+ throughout the world, the same in all time,--such as it was before
+ the daring genius of Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened
+ to one world the sources of wealth and power and knowledge, to
+ another all unutterable woes; such as it is at this day: it is the
+ law written by the finger of God upon the heart of man; and by that
+ law, unchangeable and eternal while men despise fraud, and loathe
+ rapine, and abhor blood, they shall reject with indignation the wild
+ and guilty fantasy that man can hold property in man."
+ --LORD BROUGHAM.
+
+IT may be inquired of me why I seek to agitate the subject of Slavery in
+New England, where we all acknowledge it to be an evil. Because such an
+acknowledgment is not enough on our part. It is doing no more than the
+slave-master and the slave-trader. "We have found," says James Monroe,
+in his speech on the subject before the Virginia Convention, "that this
+evil has preyed upon the very vitals of the Union; and has been
+prejudicial to all the states in which it has existed." All the states
+in their several Constitutions and declarations of rights have made a
+similar statement. And what has been the consequence of this general
+belief in the evil of human servitude? Has it sapped the foundations of
+the infamous system? No. Has it decreased the number of its victims?
+Quite the contrary. Unaccompanied by philanthropic action, it has been
+in a moral point of view worthless, a thing without vitality, sightless,
+soulless, dead.
+
+But it may be said that the miserable victims of the system have our
+sympathies. Sympathy the sympathy of the Priest and the Levite, looking
+on, and acknowledging, but holding itself aloof from mortal suffering.
+Can such hollow sympathy reach the broken of heart, and does the blessing
+of those who are ready to perish answer it? Does it hold back the lash
+from the slave, or sweeten his bitter bread? One's heart and soul are
+becoming weary of this sympathy, this heartless mockery of feeling; sick
+of the common cant of hypocrisy, wreathing the artificial flowers of
+sentiment over unutterable pollution and unimaginable wrong. It is
+white-washing the sepulchre to make us forget its horrible deposit. It
+is scattering flowers around the charnel-house and over the yet festering
+grave to turn away our thoughts "from the dead men's bones and all
+uncleanness," the pollution and loathsomeness below.
+
+No! let the truth on this subject, undisguised, naked, terrible as it is,
+stand out before us. Let us no longer seek to cover it; let us no longer
+strive to forget it; let us no more dare to palliate it. It is better to
+meet it here with repentance than at the bar of God. The cry of the
+oppressed, of the millions who have perished among us as the brute
+perisheth, shut out from the glad tidings of salvation, has gone there
+before us, to Him who as a father pitieth all His children. Their blood
+is upon us as a nation; woe unto us, if we repent not, as a nation, in
+dust and ashes. Woe unto us if we say in our hearts, "The Lord shall not
+see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it. He that planted the ear,
+shall He not hear? He who formed the eye, shall He not see?"
+
+But it may be urged that New England has no participation in slavery, and
+is not responsible for its wickedness.
+
+Why are we thus willing to believe a lie? New England not responsible!
+Bound by the United States constitution to protect the slave-holder in
+his sins, and yet not responsible! Joining hands with crime, covenanting
+with oppression, leaguing with pollution, and yet not responsible!
+Palliating the evil, hiding the evil, voting for the evil, do we not
+participate in it?
+
+ (Messrs. Harvey of New Hampshire, Mallary of Vermont, and Ripley of
+ Maine, voted in the Congress of 1829 against the consideration of a
+ Resolution for inquiring into the expediency of abolishing slavery
+ in the District of Columbia.)
+
+Members of one confederacy, children of one family, the curse and the
+shame, the sin against our brother, and the sin against our God, all the
+iniquity of slavery which is revealed to man, and all which crieth in the
+ear, or is manifested to the eye of Jehovah, will assuredly be visited
+upon all our people. Why, then, should we stretch out our hands towards
+our Southern brethren, and like the Pharisee thank God we are not like
+them? For so long as we practically recognize the infernal principle
+that "man can hold property in man," God will not hold us guiltless. So
+long as we take counsel of the world's policy instead of the justice of
+heaven, so long as we follow a mistaken political expediency in
+opposition to the express commands of God, so long will the wrongs of the
+slaves rise like a cloud of witnesses against us at the inevitable bar.
+
+Slavery is protected by the constitutional compact, by the standing army,
+by the militia of the free states.
+
+ (J. Q. Adams is the only member of Congress who has ventured to
+ speak plainly of this protection. See also his very able Report
+ from the minority of the Committee on Manufactures. In his speech
+ during the last session, upon the bill of the Committee of Ways and
+ Means, after discussing the constitutional protection of slavery, he
+ says: "But that same interest is further protected by the Laws of
+ the United States. It was protected by the existence of a standing
+ army. If the States of this Union were all free republican States,
+ and none of them possessed any of the machinery of which he had
+ spoken, and if another portion of the Union were not exposed to
+ another danger, from their vicinity to the tribes of Indian savages,
+ he believed it would be difficult to prove to the House any such
+ thing as the necessity of a standing army. What in fact was the
+ occupation of the army? It had been protecting this very same
+ interest. It had been doing so ever since the army existed. Of
+ what use to the district of Plymouth (which he there represented)
+ was the standing army of the United States? Of not one dollar's
+ use, and never had been.")
+
+Let us not forget that should the slaves, goaded by wrongs unendurable,
+rise in desperation, and pour the torrent of their brutal revenge over
+the beautiful Carolinas, or the consecrated soil of Virginia, New England
+would be called upon to arrest the progress of rebellion,--to tread out
+with the armed heel of her soldiery that spirit of freedom, which knows
+no distinction of cast or color; which has been kindled in the heart of
+the black as well as in that of the white.
+
+And what is this system which we are thus protecting and upholding? A
+system which holds two millions of God's creatures in bondage, which
+leaves one million females without any protection save their own feeble
+strength, and which makes even the exercise of that strength in
+resistance to outrage punishable with death! which considers rational,
+immortal beings as articles of traffic, vendible commodities,
+merchantable property,--which recognizes no social obligations, no
+natural relations,--which tears without scruple the infant from the
+mother, the wife from the husband, the parent from the child. In the
+strong but just language of another: "It is the full measure of pure,
+unmixed, unsophisticated wickedness; and scorning all competition or
+comparison, it stands without a rival in the secure, undisputed
+possession of its detestable preeminence."
+
+So fearful an evil should have its remedies. The following are among the
+many which have been from time to time proposed:--
+
+1. Placing the slaves in the condition of the serfs of Poland and
+Russia, fixed to the soil, and without the right on the part of the
+master to sell or remove them. This was intended as a preliminary to
+complete emancipation at some remote period, but it is impossible to
+perceive either its justice or expediency.
+
+2. Gradual abolition, an indefinite term, but which is understood to
+imply the draining away drop by drop, of the great ocean of wrong;
+plucking off at long intervals some, straggling branches of the moral
+Upas; holding out to unborn generations the shadow of a hope which the
+present may never feel gradually ceasing to do evil; gradually refraining
+from robbery, lust, and murder: in brief, obeying a short-sighted and
+criminal policy rather than the commands of God.
+
+3. Abstinence on the part of the people of the free states from the use
+of the known products of slave labor, in order to render that labor
+profitless. Beyond a doubt the example of conscientious individuals may
+have a salutary effect upon the minds of some of the slave-holders; I but
+so long as our confederacy exists, a commercial intercourse with slave
+states and a consumption of their products cannot be avoided.
+
+ (The following is a recorded statement of the venerated Sir William
+ Jones: "Let sugar be as cheap as it may, it is better to eat none,
+ better to eat aloes and colloquintida, than violate a primary law
+ impressed on every heart not imbruted with avarice; than rob one
+ human creature of those eternal rights of which no law on earth can
+ justly deprive him.")
+
+4. Colonization.
+The exclusive object of the American Colonization Society, according to
+the second article of its constitution, is to colonize the free people of
+color residing among us, in Africa or such other place as Congress may
+direct. Steadily adhering to this object it has nothing to do with
+slavery; and I allude to it as a remedy only because some of its friends
+have in view an eventual abolition or an amelioration of the evil.
+
+Let facts speak. The Colonization Society was organized in 1817. It has
+two hundred and eighteen auxiliary societies. The legislatures of
+fourteen states have recommended it. Contributions have poured into its
+treasury from every quarter of the United States. Addresses in its favor
+have been heard from all our pulpits. It has been in operation sixteen
+years. During this period nearly one million human beings have died in
+slavery: and the number of slaves has increased more than half a million,
+or in round numbers, 550,000
+
+The Colonization Society has been busily engaged all this while in
+conveying the slaves to Africa; in other words, abolishing slavery. In
+this very charitable occupation it has carried away of manumitted slaves
+613
+
+Balance against the society . . . . 549,387!
+
+But enough of its abolition tendency. What has it done for amelioration?
+Witness the newly enacted laws of some of the slave states, laws bloody
+as the code of Draco, violating the laws of Cod and the unalienable
+rights of His children?--(It will be seen that the society approves of
+these laws.)--But why talk of amelioration? Amelioration of what? of
+sin, of crime unutterable, of a system of wrong and outrage horrible in
+the eye of God Why seek to mark the line of a selfish policy, a carnal
+expediency between the criminality of hell and that repentance and its
+fruits enjoined of heaven?
+
+For the principles and views of the society we must look to its own
+statements and admissions; to its Annual Reports; to those of its
+auxiliaries; to the speeches and writings of its advocates; and to its
+organ, the African Repository.
+
+1. It excuses slavery and apologizes for slaveholders.
+
+Proof. "Slavery is an evil entailed upon the present generation of
+slave-holders, which they must suffer, whether they will or not!" "The
+existence of slavery among us, though not at all to be objected to our
+Southern brethren as a fault," etc? "It (the society) condemns no man
+because he is a slave-holder." "Recognizing the constitutional and
+legitimate existence of slavery, it seeks not to interfere, either
+directly or indirectly, with the rights it creates. Acknowledging the
+necessity by which its present continuance and the rigorous provisions
+for its maintenance are justified," etc. "They (the Abolitionists)
+confound the misfortunes of one generation with the crimes of another,
+and would sacrifice both individual and public good to an unsubstantial
+theory of the rights of man."
+
+2. It pledges itself not to oppose the system of slavery.
+
+Proof. "Our society and the friends of colonization wish to be
+distinctly understood upon this point. From the beginning they have
+disavowed, and they do yet disavow, that their object is the emancipation
+of slaves."--(Speech of James S. Green, Esq., First Annual Report of the
+New Jersey Colonization Society.)
+
+"This institution proposes to do good by a single specific course of
+measures. Its direct and specific purpose is not the abolition of
+slavery, or the relief of pauperism, or the extension of commerce and
+civilization, or the enlargement of science, or the conversion of the
+heathen. The single object which its constitution prescribes, and to
+which all its efforts are necessarily directed, is African colonization
+from America. It proposes only to afford facilities for the voluntary
+emigration of free people of color from this country to the country of
+their fathers."
+
+"It is no abolition society; it addresses as yet arguments to no master,
+and disavows with horror the idea of offering temptations to any slave.
+It denies the design of attempting emancipation, either partial or
+general."
+
+"The Colonization Society, as such, have renounced wholly the name and
+the characteristics of abolitionists. On this point they have been
+unjustly and injuriously slandered. Into their accounts the subject of
+emancipation does not enter at all."
+
+"From its origin, and throughout the whole period of its existence, it
+has constantly disclaimed all intention of interfering, in the smallest
+degree, with the rights of property, or the object of emancipation,
+gradual or immediate." . . . "The society presents to the American
+public no project of emancipation."--( Mr. Clay's Speech, Idem, vol. vi.
+pp. 13, 17.)
+
+"The emancipation of slaves or the amelioration of their condition, with
+the moral, intellectual, and political improvement of people of color
+within the United States, are subjects foreign to the powers of this
+society."
+
+"The society, as a society, recognizes no principles in reference to the
+slave system. It says nothing, and proposes to do nothing, respecting
+it." . . . "So far as we can ascertain, the supporters of the
+colonization policy generally believe that slavery is in this country a
+constitptional and legitimate system, which they have no inclination,
+interest, nor ability to disturb."
+
+3. It regards God's rational creatures as property.
+
+Proof. "We hold their slaves, as we hold their other property, sacred."
+
+"It is equally plain and undeniable that the society, in the prosecution
+of this work, has never interfered or evinced even a disposition to
+interfere in any way with the rights of proprietors of slaves."
+
+"To the slave-holder, who has charged upon them the wicked design of
+interfering with the rights of property under the specious pretext of
+removing a vicious and dangerous free population, they address themselves
+in a tone of conciliation and sympathy. We know your rights, say they,
+and we respect them."
+
+4. It boasts that its measures are calculated to perpetuate the detested
+system of slavery, to remove the fears of the slave-holder, and increase
+the value of his stock of human beings.
+
+Proof. "They (the Southern slave-holders) will contribute more
+effectually to the continuance and strength of this system (slavery) by
+removing those now free than by any or all other methods which can
+possibly be devised."
+
+"So far from being connected with the abolition of slavery, the measure
+proposed would be one of the greatest securities to enable the master to
+keep in possession his own property."--(Speech of John Randolph at the
+first meeting of the Colonization Society.)
+
+"The tendency of the scheme, and one of its objects, is to secure slave-
+holders, and the whole Southern country, against certain evil
+consequences growing out of the present threefold mixture of our
+population."
+
+"There was but one way (to avert danger), but that might be made
+effectual, fortunately. It was to provide and keep open a drain for the
+excess beyond the occasions of profitable employment. Mr. Archer had
+been stating the case in the supposition, that after the present class of
+free blacks had been exhausted, by the operation of the plan he was
+recommending, others would be supplied for its action, in the proportion
+of the excess of colored population it would be necessary to throw off,
+by the process of voluntary manumission or sale. This effect must result
+inevitably from the depreciating value of the slaves, ensuing their
+disproportionate multiplication. The depreciation would be relieved and
+retarded at the same time by the process. The two operations would aid
+reciprocally, and sustain each other, and both be in the highest degree
+beneficial. It was on the ground of interest, therefore, the most
+indisputable pecuniary interest, that he addressed himself to the people
+and legislatures of the slave-holding states."
+
+"The slave-holder, who is in danger of having his slaves contaminated by
+their free friends of color, will not only be relieved from this danger,
+but the value of his slave will be enhanced."
+
+5. It denies the power of Christian love to overcome an unholy prejudice
+against a portion of our fellow-creatures.
+
+Proof. "The managers consider it clear that causes exist and are
+operating to prevent their (the blacks) improvement and elevation to any
+considerable extent as a class, in this country, which are fixed, not
+only beyond the control of the friends of humanity, but of any human
+power. Christianity will not do for them here what it will do for them
+in Africa. This is not the fault of the colored man, nor Christianity;
+but an ordination of Providence, and no more to be changed than the laws
+of Nature!"--(Last Annual Report of the American Colonization Society.)
+
+"The habits, the feelings, all the prejudices of society--prejudices
+which neither refinement, nor argument, nor education, nor religion
+itself, can subdue--mark the people of color, whether bond or free, as
+the subjects of a degradation inevitable and incurable. The African in
+this country belongs by birth to the very lowest station in society, and
+from that station he can never rise, be his talents, his enterprise, his
+virtues what they may. . . . They constitute a class by themselves, a
+class out of which no individual can be elevated, and below which none
+can be depressed."
+
+"Is it not wise, then, for the free people of color and their friends to
+admit, what cannot reasonably be doubted, that the people of color must,
+in this country, remain for ages, probably forever, a separate and
+inferior caste, weighed down by causes, powerful, universal, inevitable;
+which neither legislation nor Christianity can remove?"
+
+6. It opposes strenuously the education of the blacks in this country as
+useless as well as dangerous.
+
+Proof. "If the free colored people were generally taught to read it
+might be an inducement to them to remain in this country (that is, in
+their native country). We would offer then no such inducement."--
+(Southern Religious Telegraph, February 19, 1831.)
+
+"The public safety of our brethren at the South requires them (the
+slaves) to be kept ignorant and uninstructed."
+
+"It is the business of the free (their safety requires it) to keep the
+slaves in ignorance. But a few days ago a proposition was made in the
+legislature of Georgia to allow them so much instruction as to enable
+them to read the Bible; which was promptly rejected by a large
+majority."--(Proceedings of New York State Colonization Society at its
+second anniversary.)
+
+E. B. Caldwell, the first Secretary of the American Colonization Society,
+in his speech at its formation, recommended them to be kept "in the
+lowest state of ignorance and degradation, for (says he) the nearer you
+bring them to the condition of brutes, the better chance do you give them
+of possessing their apathy."
+
+My limits will not admit of a more extended examination. To the
+documents from whence the above extracts have been made I would call the
+attention of every real friend of humanity. I seek to do the
+Colonization Society no injustice, but I wish the public generally to
+understand its character.
+
+The tendency of the society to abolish the slave-trade by means of its
+African colony has been strenuously urged by its friends. But the
+fallacy of this is now admitted by all: witness the following from the
+reports of the society itself:--
+
+"Some appalling facts in regard to the slave-trade have come to the
+knowledge of the Board of Managers during the last year. With
+undiminished atrocity and activity is this odious traffic now carried on
+all along the African coast. Slave factories are established in the
+immediate vicinity of the colony; and at the Gallinas (between Liberia
+and Sierra Leone) not less than nine hundred slaves were shipped during
+the last summer, in the space of three weeks."
+
+April 6, 1832, the House of Commons of England ordered the printing of a
+document entitled "Slave-Trade, Sierra Leone," containing official
+evidence of the fact that the pirates engaged in the African slave-trade
+are supplied from the stores of Sierra Leone and Liberia with such
+articles as the infernal traffic demands! An able English writer on the
+subject of Colonization thus notices this astounding fact:--
+
+"And here it may be well to observe, that as long as negro slavery lasts,
+all colonies on the African coast, of whatever description, must tend to
+support it, because, in all commerce, the supply is more or less
+proportioned to the demand. The demand exists in negro slavery; the
+supply arises from the African slave-trade. And what greater convenience
+could the African slave-traders desire than shops well stored along the
+coast with the very articles which their trade demands. That the African
+slave-traders do get thus supplied at Sierra Leone and Liberia is matter
+of official evidence; and we know, from the nature of human things, that
+they will get so supplied, in defiance of all law or precaution, as long
+as the demand calls for the supply, and there are free shops stored with
+all they want at hand. The shopkeeper, however honest, would find it
+impossible always to distinguish between the African slave-trader or his
+agents and other dealers. And how many shopkeepers are there anywhere
+that would be over scrupulous in questioning a customer with a full
+purse?"
+
+But we are told that the Colonization Society is to civilize and
+evangelize Africa.
+
+"Each emigrant," says Henry Clay, the ablest advocate which the society
+has yet found, "is a missionary, carrying with him credentials in the
+holy cause of civilization, religion, and free institutions."
+
+Beautiful and heart-cheering idea! But stay who are these emigrants,
+these missionaries?
+
+The free people of color. "They, and they only," says the African
+Repository, the society's organ, "are qualified for colonizing Africa."
+
+What are their qualifications? Let the society answer in its own words:--
+Free blacks are a greater nuisance than even slaves themselves."--
+(African Repository, vol. ii. p. 328.)
+
+"A horde of miserable people--the objects of universal suspicion--
+subsisting by plunder."
+
+"An anomalous race of beings the most debased upon earth."--(African
+Repository, vol. vii. p. 230.)
+
+"Of all classes of our population the most vicious is that of the free
+colored."--(Tenth Annual Report of the Colonization Society.)
+
+I might go on to quote still further from the "credentials" which the
+free people of color are to carry with them to Liberia. But I forbear.
+
+I come now to the only practicable, the only just scheme of emancipation:
+Immediate abolition of slavery; an immediate acknowledgment of the great
+truth, that man cannot hold property in man; an immediate surrender of
+baneful prejudice to Christian love; an immediate practical obedience to
+the command of Jesus Christ: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto
+you, do ye even so to them."
+
+A correct understanding of what is meant by immediate abolition must
+convince every candid mind that it is neither visionary nor dangerous;
+that it involves no disastrous consequences of bloodshed and desolation;
+but, on the, contrary, that it is a safe, practicable, efficient remedy
+for the evils of the slave system.
+
+The term immediate is used in contrast with that of gradual. Earnestly
+as I wish it, I do not expect, no one expects, that the tremendous system
+of oppression can be instantaneously overthrown. The terrible and
+unrebukable indignation of a free people has not yet been sufficiently
+concentrated against it. The friends of abolition have not forgotten the
+peculiar organization of our confederacy, the delicate division of power
+between the states and the general government. They see the many
+obstacles in their pathway; but they know that public opinion can
+overcome them all. They ask no aid of physical coercion. They seek to
+obtain their object not with the weapons of violence and blood, but with
+those of reason and truth, prayer to God, and entreaty to man.
+
+They seek to impress indelibly upon every human heart the true doctrines
+of the rights of man; to establish now and forever this great and
+fundamental truth of human liberty, that man cannot hold property in his
+brother; for they believe that the general admission of this truth will
+utterly destroy the system of slavery, based as that system is upon a
+denial or disregard of it. To make use of the clear exposition of an
+eminent advocate of immediate abolition, our plan of emancipation is
+simply this: "To promulgate the true doctrine of human rights in high
+places and low places, and all places where there are human beings; to
+whisper it in chimney corners, and to proclaim it from the house-tops,
+yea, from the mountain-tops; to pour it out like water from the pulpit
+and the press; to raise it up with all the food of the inner man, from
+infancy to gray hairs; to give 'line upon line, and precept upon
+precept,' till it forms one of the foundation principles and parts
+indestructible of the public soul. Let those who contemn this plan
+renounce, if they have not done it already, the gospel plan of converting
+the world; let them renounce every plan of moral reformation, and every
+plan whatsoever, which does not terminate in the gratification of their
+own animal natures."
+
+The friends of emancipation would urge in the first instance an immediate
+abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and in the Territories
+of Florida and Arkansas.
+
+The number of slaves in these portions of the country, coming under the
+direct jurisdiction of the general government, is as follows:--
+
+ District of Columbia ..... 6,119
+ Territory of Arkansas .... 4,576
+ Territory of Florida .... 15,501
+
+ Total 26,196
+
+Here, then, are twenty-six thousand human beings, fashioned in the image
+of God, the fitted temples of His Holy Spirit, held by the government in
+the abhorrent chains of slavery. The power to emancipate them is clear.
+It is indisputable. It does not depend upon the twenty-five slave votes
+in Congress. It lies with the free states. Their duty is before them:
+in the fear of God, and not of man let them perform it.
+
+Let them at once strike off the grievous fetters. Let them declare that
+man shall no longer hold his fellow-man in bondage, a beast of burden, an
+article of traffic, within the governmental domain. God and truth and
+eternal justice demand this. The very reputation of our fathers, the
+honor of our land, every principle of liberty, humanity, expediency,
+demand it. A sacred regard to free principles originated our
+independence, not the paltry amount of practical evil complained of. And
+although our fathers left their great work unfinished, it is our duty to
+follow out their principles. Short of liberty and equality we cannot
+stop without doing injustice to their memories. If our fathers intended
+that slavery should be perpetual, that our practice should forever give
+the lie to our professions, why is the great constitutional compact so
+guardedly silent on the subject of human servitude? If state necessity
+demanded this perpetual violation of the laws of God and the rights of
+man, this continual solecism in a government of freedom, why is it not
+met as a necessity, incurable and inevitable, and formally and distinctly
+recognized as a settled part of our social system? State necessity, that
+imperial tyrant, seeks no disguise. In the language of Sheridan, "What
+he does, he dares avow, and avowing, scorns any other justification than
+the great motives which placed the iron sceptre in his grasp."
+
+Can it be possible that our fathers felt this state necessity strong upon
+them? No; for they left open the door for emancipation, they left us the
+light of their pure principles of liberty, they framed the great charter
+of American rights, without employing a term in its structure to which in
+aftertimes of universal freedom the enemies of our country could point
+with accusation or reproach.
+
+What, then, is our duty?
+
+To give effect to the spirit of our Constitution; to plant ourselves upon
+the great declaration and declare in the face of all the world that
+political, religious, and legal hypocrisy shall no longer cover as with
+loathsome leprosy the features of American freedom; to loose at once the
+bands of wickedness; to undo the heavy burdens, and let the oppressed go
+free.
+
+We have indeed been authoritatively told in Congress and elsewhere that
+our brethren of the South and West will brook no further agitation of the
+subject of slavery. What then! shall we heed the unrighteous
+prohibition? No; by our duty as Christians, as politicians, by our duty
+to ourselves, to our neighbor, and to God, we are called upon to agitate
+this subject; to give slavery no resting-place under the hallowed aegis
+of a government of freedom; to tear it root and branch, with all its
+fruits of abomination, at least from the soil of the national domain.
+The slave-holder may mock us; the representatives of property,
+merchandise, vendible commodities, may threaten us; still our duty is
+imperative; the spirit of the Constitution should be maintained within
+the exclusive jurisdiction of the government. If we cannot "provide for
+the general welfare," if we cannot "guarantee to each of the states a
+republican form of government," let us at least no longer legislate for a
+free nation within view of the falling whip, and within hearing of the
+execrations of the task-master and the prayer of his slave!
+
+I deny the right of the slave-holder to impose silence on his brother of
+the North in reference to slavery. What! compelled to maintain the
+system, to keep up the standing army which protects it, and yet be denied
+the poor privilege of remonstrance! Ready, at the summons of the master
+to put down the insurrections of his slaves, the outbreaking of that
+revenge which is now, and has been, in all nations, and all times, the
+inevitable consequence of oppression and wrong, and yet like automata to
+act but not speak! Are we to be denied even the right of a slave, the
+right to murmur?
+
+I am not unaware that my remarks may be regarded by many as dangerous and
+exceptionable; that I may be regarded as a fanatic for quoting the
+language of eternal truth, and denounced as an incendiary for
+maintaining, in the spirit as well as the letter, the doctrines of
+American Independence. But if such are the consequences of a simple
+performance of duty, I shall not regard them. If my feeble appeal but
+reaches the hearts of any who are now slumbering in iniquity; if it shall
+have power given it to shake down one stone from that foul temple where
+the blood of human victims is offered to the Moloch of slavery; if under
+Providence it can break one fetter from off the image of God, and enable
+one suffering African
+
+"To feel
+The weight of human misery less, and glide
+Ungroaning to the tomb,"
+
+I shall not have written in vain; my conscience will be satisfied.
+
+Far be it from me to cast new bitterness into the gall and wormwood
+waters of sectional prejudice. No; I desire peace, the peace of
+universal love, of catholic sympathy, the peace of a common interest, a
+common feeling, a common humanity. But so long as slavery is tolerated,
+no such peace can exist. Liberty and slavery cannot dwell in harmony
+together. There will be a perpetual "war in the members" of the
+political Mezentius between the living and the dead. God and man have
+placed between them an everlasting barrier, an eternal separation. No
+matter under what name or law or compact their union is attempted, the
+ordination of Providence has forbidden it, and it cannot stand. Peace!
+there can be no peace between justice and oppression, between robbery and
+righteousness, truth and falsehood, freedom and slavery.
+
+The slave-holding states are not free. The name of liberty is there, but
+the spirit is wanting. They do not partake of its invaluable blessings.
+Wherever slavery exists to any considerable extent, with the exception of
+some recently settled portions of the country, and which have not yet
+felt in a great degree the baneful and deteriorating influences of slave
+labor, we hear at this moment the cry of suffering. We are told of
+grass-grown streets, of crumbling mansions, of beggared planters and
+barren plantations, of fear from without, of terror within. The once
+fertile fields are wasted and tenantless, for the curse of slavery, the
+improvidence of that labor whose hire has been kept back by fraud, has
+been there, poisoning the very earth beyond the reviving influence of the
+early and the latter rain. A moral mildew mingles with and blasts the
+economy of nature. It is as if the finger of the everlasting God had
+written upon the soil of the slave-holder the language of His
+displeasure.
+
+Let, then, the slave-holding states consult their present interest by
+beginning without delay the work of emancipation. If they fear not, and
+mock at the fiery indignation of Him, to whom vengeance belongeth, let
+temporal interest persuade them. They know, they must know, that the
+present state of things cannot long continue. Mind is the same
+everywhere, no matter what may be the complexion of the frame which it
+animates: there is a love of liberty which the scourge cannot eradicate,
+a hatred of oppression which centuries of degradation cannot extinguish.
+The slave will become conscious sooner or later of his brute strength,
+his physical superiority, and will exert it. His torch will be at the
+threshold and his knife at the throat of the planter. Horrible and
+indiscriminate will be his vengeance. Where, then, will be the pride,
+the beauty, and the chivalry of the South? The smoke of her torment will
+rise upward like a thick cloud visible over the whole earth.
+
+ "Belie the negro's powers: in headlong will,
+ Christian, thy brother thou shalt find him still.
+ Belie his virtues: since his wrongs began,
+ His follies and his crimes have stamped him man."
+
+Let the cause of insurrection be removed, then, as speedily as possible.
+Cease to oppress. "Let him that stole steal no more." Let the laborer
+have his hire. Bind him no longer by the cords of slavery, but with
+those of kindness and brotherly love. Watch over him for his good. Pray
+for him; instruct him; pour light into the darkness of his mind.
+
+Let this be done, and the horrible fears which now haunt the slumbers of
+the slave-holder will depart. Conscience will take down its racks and
+gibbets, and his soul will be at peace. His lands will no longer
+disappoint his hopes. Free labor will renovate them.
+
+Historical facts; the nature of the human mind; the demonstrated truths
+of political economy; the analysis of cause and effect, all concur in
+establishing:
+
+1. That immediate abolition is a safe and just and peaceful remedy for
+the evils of the slave system.
+
+2. That free labor, its necessary consequence, is more productive, and
+more advantageous to the planter than slave labor.
+
+In proof of the first proposition it is only necessary to state the
+undeniable fact that immediate emancipation, whether by an individual or
+a community, has in no instance been attended with violence and disorder
+on the part of the emancipated; but that on the contrary it has promoted
+cheerfulness, industry, and laudable ambition in the place of sullen
+discontent, indolence, and despair.
+
+The case of St. Domingo is in point. Blood was indeed shed on that
+island like water, but it was not in consequence of emancipation. It was
+shed in the civil war which preceded it, and in the iniquitous attempt to
+restore the slave system in 1801. It flowed on the sanguine altar of
+slavery, not on the pure and peaceful one of emancipation. No; there, as
+in all the world and in all time, the violence of oppression engendered
+violence on the part of the oppressed, and vengeance followed only upon
+the iron footsteps of wrong. When, where, did justice to the injured
+waken their hate and vengeance? When, where, did love and kindness and
+sympathy irritate and madden the persecuted, the broken-hearted, the
+foully wronged?
+
+In September, 1793, the Commissioner of the French National Convention
+issued his proclamation giving immediate freedom to all the slaves of St.
+Domingo. Did the slaves baptize their freedom in blood? Did they fight
+like unchained desperadoes because they had been made free? Did they
+murder their emancipators? No; they acted, as human beings must act,
+under similar circumstances, by a law as irresistible as those of the
+universe: kindness disarmed them, justice conciliated them, freedom
+ennobled them. No tumult followed this wide and instantaneous
+emancipation. It cost not one drop of blood; it abated not one tittle of
+the wealth or the industry of the island. Colonel Malenfant, a slave
+proprietor residing at the time on the island, states that after the
+public act of abolition, the negroes remained perfectly quiet; they had
+obtained all they asked for, liberty, and they continued to work upon all
+the plantations.--(Malenfant in Memoirs for a History of St. Domingo by
+General Lecroix, 1819.)
+
+"There were estates," he says, "which had neither owners nor managers
+resident upon them, yet upon these estates, though abandoned, the negroes
+continued their labors where there were any, even inferior, agents to
+guide them; and on those estates where no white men were left to direct
+them, they betook themselves to the planting of provisions; but upon all
+the plantations where the whites resided the blacks continued to labor as
+quietly as before." Colonel Malenfant says that when many of his
+neighbors, proprietors or managers, were in prison, the negroes of their
+plantations came to him to beg him to direct them in their work. "If you
+will take care not to talk to them of the restoration of slavery, but
+talk to them of freedom, you may with this word chain them down to their
+labor. How did Toussaint succeed? How did I succeed before his time in
+the plain of the Cul-de-Sac on the plantation of Gouraud, during more
+than eight months after liberty had been granted to the slaves? Let
+those who knew me at that time, let the blacks themselves be asked. They
+will all reply that not a single negro upon that plantation, consisting
+of more than four hundred and fifty laborers, refused to work; and yet
+this plantation was thought to be under the worst discipline and the
+slaves the most idle of any in the plain. I inspired the same activity
+into three other plantations of which I had the management. If all the
+negroes had come from Africa within six months, if they had the love of
+independence that the Indians have, I should own that force must be
+employed; but ninety-nine out of a hundred of the blacks are aware that
+without labor they cannot procure the things that are necessary for them;
+that there is no other method of satisfying their wants and their tastes.
+They know that they must work, they wish to do so, and they will do so."
+
+This is strong testimony. In 1796, three years after the act of
+emancipation, we are told that the colony was flourishing under
+Toussaint, that the whites lived happily and peaceably on their estates,
+and the blacks continued to work for them. Up to 1801 the same happy
+state of things continued. The colony went on as by enchantment;
+cultivation made day by day a perceptible progress, under the
+recuperative energies of free labor.
+
+In 1801 General Vincent, a proprietor of estates in the island, was sent
+by Toussaint to Paris for the purpose of laying before the Directory the
+new Constitution which had been adopted at St. Domingo. He reached
+France just after the peace of Amiens, when Napoleon was fitting out his
+ill-starred armament for the insane purpose of restoring slavery in the
+island. General Vincent remonstrated solemnly and earnestly against an
+expedition so preposterous, so cruel and unnecessary; undertaken at a
+moment when all was peace and quietness in the colony, when the
+proprietors were in peaceful possession of their estates, when
+cultivation was making a rapid progress, and the blacks were industrious
+and happy beyond example. He begged that this beautiful state of things
+might not be reversed. The remonstrance was not regarded, and the
+expedition proceeded. Its issue is well known. Threatened once more
+with the horrors of slavery, the peaceful and quiet laborer became
+transformed into a demon of ferocity. The plough-share and the pruning-
+hook gave way to the pike and the dagger. The white invaders were driven
+back by the sword and the pestilence; and then, and not till then, was
+the property of the planters seized upon by the excited and infuriated
+blacks.
+
+In 1804 Dessalines was proclaimed Emperor of Hayti. The black troops
+were in a great measure disbanded, and they immediately returned to the
+cultivation of the plantations. From that period up to the present there
+has been no want of industry among the inhabitants.
+
+Mr. Harvey, who during the reign of Christophe resided at Cape Francois,
+in describing the character and condition of the inhabitants, says "It
+was an interesting sight to behold this class of the Haytiens, now in
+possession of their freedom, coming in groups to the market nearest which
+they resided, bringing the produce of their industry there for sale; and
+afterwards returning, carrying back the necessary articles of living
+which the disposal of their commodities had enabled them to purchase; all
+evidently cheerful and happy. Nor could it fail to occur to the mind
+that their present condition furnished the most satisfactory answer to
+that objection to the general emancipation of slaves founded on their
+alleged unfitness to value and improve the benefits of liberty. . . .
+As they would not suffer, so they do not require, the attendance of one
+acting in the capacity of a driver with the instrument of punishment in
+his hand. As far as I had an opportunity of ascertaining from what fell
+under my own observation, and from what I gathered from other European
+residents, I am persuaded of one general fact, which on account of its
+importance I shall state in the most explicit terms, namely, that the
+Haytiens employed in cultivating the plantations, as well as the rest of
+the population, perform as much work in a given time as they were
+accustomed to do during their subjection to the French. And if we may
+judge of their future improvement by the change which has been already
+effected, it may be reasonably anticipated that Hayti will erelong
+contain a population not inferior in their industry to that of any
+civilized nation in the world. . . . Every man had some calling to
+occupy his attention; instances of idleness or intemperance were of rare
+occurrence; the most perfect subordination prevailed, and all appeared
+contented and happy. A foreigner would have found it difficult to
+persuade himself, on his first entering the place, that the people he now
+beheld so submissive, industrious, and contented, were the same people
+who a few years before had escaped from the shackles of slavery."
+
+The present condition of Hayti may be judged of from the following well-
+authenticated facts its population is more than 700,000, its resources
+ample, its prosperity and happiness general, its crimes few, its labor
+crowned with abundance, with no paupers save the decrepit and aged, its
+people hospitable, respectful, orderly, and contented.
+
+The manumitted slaves, who to the number of two thousand were settled in
+Nova Scotia by the British Government at the close of the Revolutionary
+War, "led a harmless life, and gained the character of an honest,
+industrious people from their white neighbors." Of the free laborers of
+Trinidad we have the same report. At the Cape of Good Hope, three
+thousand negroes received their freedom, and with scarce a single
+exception betook themselves to laborious employments.
+
+But we have yet stronger evidence. The total abolishment of slavery in
+the southern republics has proved beyond dispute the safety and utility
+of immediate abolition. The departed Bolivar indeed deserves his
+glorious title of Liberator, for he began his career of freedom by
+striking off the fetters of his own slaves, seven hundred in number.
+
+In an official letter from the Mexican Envoy of the British Government,
+dated Mexico, March, 1826, and addressed 'to the Right Hon. George
+Canning, the superiority of free over slave labor is clearly demonstrated
+by the following facts:--
+
+2. It is now carried on exclusively by the labor of free blacks.
+
+3. It was formerly wholly sustained by the forced labor of slaves,
+purchased at Vera Cruz at $300 to $400 each.
+
+4. Abolition in this section was effected not by governmental
+interference, not even from motives of humanity, but from an irresistible
+conviction on the part of the planters that their pecuniary interest
+demanded it.
+
+5. The result has proved the entire correctness of this conviction; and
+the planters would now be as unwilling as the blacks themselves to return
+to the old system.
+
+Let our Southern brethren imitate this example. It is in vain, in the
+face of facts like these, to talk of the necessity of maintaining the
+abominable system, operating as it does like a double curse upon planters
+and slaves. Heaven and earth deny its necessity. It is as necessary as
+other robberies, and no more.
+
+Yes, putting aside altogether the righteous law of the living God--the
+same yesterday, to-day, and forever--and shutting out the clearest
+political truths ever taught by man, still, in human policy selfish
+expediency would demand of the planter the immediate emancipation of his
+slaves.
+
+Because slave labor is the labor of mere machines; a mechanical impulse
+of body and limb, with which the mind of the laborer has no sympathy, and
+from which it constantly and loathingly revolts.
+
+Because slave labor deprives the master altogether of the incalculable
+benefit of the negro's will. That does not cooperate with the forced
+toil of the body. This is but the necessary consequence of all labor
+which does not benefit the laborer. It is a just remark of that profound
+political economist, Adam Smith, that "a slave can have no other interest
+than to eat and waste as much, and work as little, as he can."
+
+To my mind, in the wasteful and blighting influences of slave labor there
+is a solemn and warning moral.
+
+They seem the evidence of the displeasure of Him who created man after
+His own image, at the unnatural attempt to govern the bones and sinews,
+the bodies and souls, of one portion of His children by the caprice, the
+avarice, the lusts of another; at that utter violation of the design of
+His merciful Providence, whereby the entire dependence of millions of His
+rational creatures is made to centre upon the will, the existence, the
+ability, of their fellow-mortals, instead of resting under the shadow of
+His own Infinite Power and exceeding love.
+
+I shall offer a few more facts and observations on this point.
+
+1. A distinguished scientific gentleman, Mr. Coulomb, the superintendent
+of several military works in the French West Indies, gives it as his
+opinion, that the slaves do not perform more than one third of the labor
+which they would do, provided they were urged by their own interests and
+inclinations instead of brute force.
+
+2. A plantation in Barbadoes in 1780 was cultivated by two hundred and
+eighty-eight slaves ninety men, eighty-two women, fifty-six boys, and
+sixty girls. In three years and three months there were on this
+plantation fifty-seven deaths, and only fifteen births. A change was
+then made in the government of the slaves. The use of the whip was
+denied; all severe and arbitrary punishments were abolished; the laborers
+received wages, and their offences were all tried by a sort of negro
+court established among themselves: in short, they were practically free.
+Under this system, in four years and three months there were forty-four
+births, and but forty-one deaths; and the annual net produce of the
+plantation was more than three times what it had been before.--(English
+Quarterly Magazine and Review, April, 1832.)
+
+3. The following evidence was adduced by Pitt in the British Parliament,
+April, 1792. The assembly of Grenada had themselves stated, "that though
+the negroes were allowed only the afternoon of one day in a week, they
+would do as much work in that afternoon, when employed for their own
+benefit, as in the whole day when employed in their master's service."
+"Now after this confession," said Mr. Pitt, "the house might burn all its
+calculations relative to the negro population. A negro, if he worked for
+himself, could no doubt do double work. By an improvement, then, in the
+mode of labor, the work in the islands could be doubled."
+
+4. "In coffee districts it is usual for the master to hire his people
+after they have done the regular task for the day, at a rate varying from
+10d. to 15.8d. for every extra bushel which they pluck from the trees;
+and many, almost all, are found eager to earn their wages."
+
+5. In a report made by the commandant of Castries for the government of
+St. Lucia, in 1822, it is stated, in proof of the intimacy between the
+slaves and the free blacks, that "many small plantations of the latter,
+and occupied by only one man and his wife, are better cultivated and have
+more land in cultivation than those of the proprietors of many slaves,
+and that the labor on them is performed by runaway slaves;" thus clearly
+proving that even runaway slaves, under the all-depressing fears of
+discovery and oppression, labor well, because the fruits of their labor
+are immediately their own.
+
+Let us look at this subject from another point of view. The large sum of
+money necessary for stocking a plantation with slaves has an inevitable
+tendency to place the agriculture of a slave-holding community
+exclusively in the hands of the wealthy, a tendency at war with practical
+republicanism and conflicting with the best maxims of political economy.
+
+Two hundred slaves at $200 per head would cost in the outset $40,000.
+Compare this enormous outlay for the labor of a single plantation with
+the beautiful system of free labor as exhibited in New England, where
+every young laborer, with health and ordinary prudence, may acquire by
+his labor on the farms of others, in a few years, a farm of his own, and
+the stock necessary for its proper cultivation; where on a hard and
+unthankful soil independence and competence may be attained by all.
+
+Free labor is perfectly in accordance with the spirit of our
+institutions; slave labor is a relic of a barbarous, despotic age. The
+one, like the firmament of heaven, is the equal diffusion of similar
+lights, manifest, harmonious, regular; the other is the fiery
+predominance of some disastrous star, hiding all lesser luminaries around
+it in one consuming glare.
+
+Emancipation would reform this evil. The planter would no longer be
+under the necessity of a heavy expenditure for slaves. He would only pay
+a very moderate price for his labor; a price, indeed, far less than the
+cost of the maintenance of a promiscuous gang of slaves, which the
+present system requires.
+
+In an old plantation of three hundred slaves, not more than one hundred
+effective laborers will be found. Children, the old and superannuated,
+the sick and decrepit, the idle and incorrigibly vicious, will be found
+to constitute two thirds of the whole number. The remaining third
+perform only about one third as much work as the same number of free
+laborers.
+
+Now disburden the master of this heavy load of maintenance; let him
+employ free able, industrious laborers only, those who feel conscious of
+a personal interest in the fruits of their labor, and who does not see
+that such a system would be vastly more safe and economical than the
+present?
+
+The slave states are learning this truth by fatal experience. Most of
+them are silently writhing under the great curse. Virginia has uttered
+her complaints aloud. As yet, however, nothing has been done even there,
+save a small annual appropriation for the purpose of colonizing the free
+colored inhabitants of the state. Is this a remedy?
+
+But it may be said that Virginia will ultimately liberate her slaves on
+condition of their colonization in Africa, peacefully if possible,
+forcibly if necessary.
+
+Well, admitting that Virginia may be able and willing at some remote
+period to rid herself of the evil by commuting the punishment of her
+unoffending colored people from slavery to exile, will her fearful remedy
+apply to some of the other slaveholding states?
+
+It is a fact, strongly insisted upon by our Southern brethren as a reason
+for the perpetuation of slavery, that their climate and peculiar
+agriculture will not admit of hard labor on the part of the whites; that
+amidst the fatal malaria of the rice plantations the white man is almost
+annually visited by the country fever; that few of the white overseers of
+these plantations reach the middle period of ordinary life; that the
+owners are compelled to fly from their estates as the hot season
+approaches, without being able to return until the first frosts have
+fallen. But we are told that the slaves remain there, at their work,
+mid-leg in putrid water, breathing the noisome atmosphere, loaded with
+contagion, and underneath the scorching fervor of a terrible sun; that
+they indeed suffer; but, that their habits, constitutions, and their long
+practice enable them to labor, surrounded by such destructive influences,
+with comparative safety.
+
+The conclusive answer, therefore, to those who in reality cherish the
+visionary hope of colonizing all the colored people of the United States
+in Africa or elsewhere, is this single, all-important fact: The labor of
+the blacks will not and cannot be dispensed with by the planter of the
+South.
+
+To what remedy, then, can the friends of humanity betake themselves but
+to that of emancipation?
+
+And nothing but a strong, unequivocal expression of public sentiment is
+needed to carry into effect this remedy, so far as the general government
+is concerned.
+
+And when the voice of all the non-slave-holding states shall be heard on
+this question, a voice of expostulation, rebuke, entreaty--when the full
+light of truth shall break through the night of prejudice, and reveal all
+the foul abominations of slavery, will Delaware still cling to the curse
+which is wasting her moral strength, and still rivet the fetters upon her
+three or four thousand slaves? Let Delaware begin the work, and Maryland
+and Virginia must follow; the example will be contagious; and the great
+object of universal emancipation will be attained. Freemen, Christians,
+lovers of truth and justice Why stand ye idle? Ours is a government of
+opinion, and slavery is interwoven with it. Change the current of
+opinion, and slavery will be swept away. Let the awful sovereignty of
+the people, a power which is limited only by the sovereignty of Heaven,
+arise and pronounce judgment against the crying iniquity. Let each
+individual remember that upon himself rests a portion of that
+sovereignty; a part of the tremendous responsibility of its exercise.
+The burning, withering concentration of public opinion upon the slave
+system is alone needed for its total annihilation. God has given us the
+power to overthrow it; a power peaceful, yet mighty, benevolent, yet
+effectual, "awful without severity," a moral strength equal to the
+emergency.
+
+"How does it happen," inquires an able writer, "that whenever duty is named
+we begin to hear of the weakness of human nature? That same nature which
+outruns the whirlwind in the chase of gain, which rages like a maniac at
+the trumpet call of glory, which laughs danger and death to scorn when
+its least passion is awakened, becomes weak as childhood when reminded of
+the claims of duty." But let no one hope to find an excuse in hypocrisy.
+The humblest individual of the community in one way or another possesses
+influence; and upon him as well as upon the proudest rests the
+responsibility of its rightful exercise and proper direction. The
+overthrow of a great national evil like that of slavery can only be
+effected by the united energies of the great body of the people.
+Shoulder must be put to shoulder and hand linked with hand, the whole
+mass must be put in motion and its entire strength applied, until the
+fabric of oppression is shaken to its dark foundations and not one stone
+is left upon another.
+
+Let the Christian remember that the God of his worship hateth oppression;
+that the mystery of faith can only be held by a pure conscience; and that
+in vain is the tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin, if the weihtier
+matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and truth, are forgotten. Let him
+remember that all along the clouded region of slavery the truths of the
+everlasting gospel are not spoken, that the ear of iniquity is lulled,
+that those who minister between the "porch and the altar" dare not speak
+out the language of eternal justice: "Is not this the fast which I have
+chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and
+to let the oppressed go free?" (Isa. viii. 6.) "He that stealeth a man
+and selleth him; or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to
+death." (Exod. xxi. 16.1) Yet a little while and the voice of impartial
+prayer for humanity will be heard no more in the abiding place of
+slavery. The truths of the gospel, its voice of warning and exhortation,
+will be denounced as incendiary? The night of that infidelity, which
+denies God in the abuse and degradation of man, will settle over the
+land, to be broken only by the upheaving earthquake of eternal
+retribution.
+
+To the members of the religious Society of Friends, I would earnestly
+appeal. They have already done much to put away the evil of slavery in
+this country and Great Britain. The blessings of many who were ready to
+perish have rested upon them. But their faithful testimony must be still
+steadily upborne, for the great work is but begun. Let them not relax
+their exertions, nor be contented with a lifeless testimony, a formal
+protestation against the evil. Active, prayerful, unwearied exertion is
+needed for its overthrow. But above all, let them not aid in excusing
+and palliating it. Slavery has no redeeming qualities, no feature of
+benevolence, nothing pure, nothing peaceful, nothing just. Let them
+carefully keep themselves aloof from all societies and all schemes which
+have a tendency to excuse or overlook its crying iniquity. True to a
+doctrine founded on love and mercy, "peace on earth and good will to
+men," they should regard the suffering slave as their brother, and
+endeavor to "put their souls in his soul's stead." They may earnestly
+desire the civilization of Africa, but they cannot aid in building up the
+colony of Liberia so long as that colony leans for support upon the arm
+of military power; so long as it proselytes to Christianity under the
+muzzles of its cannon; and preaches the doctrines of Christ while
+practising those of Mahomet. When the Sierra Leone Company was formed in
+England, not a member of the Society of Friends could be prevailed upon
+to engage in it, because the colony was to be supplied with cannon and
+other military stores. Yet the Foreign Agent of the Liberia Colony
+Society, to which the same insurmountable objection exists, is a member
+of the Society of Friends, and I understand has been recently employed in
+providing gunpowder, etc., for the use of the colony. There must be an
+awakening on this subject; other Woolmans and other Benezets must arise
+and speak the truth with the meek love of James and the fervent sincerity
+of Paul.
+
+To the women of America, whose sympathies know no distinction of cline,
+or sect, or color, the suffering slave is making a strong appeal. Oh,
+let it not be unheeded! for of those to whom much is given much will be
+required at the last dread tribunal; and never in the strongest terms of
+human eulogy was woman's influence overrated. Sisters, daughters, wives,
+and mothers, your influence is felt everywhere, at the fireside, and in
+the halls of legislation, surrounding, like the all-encircling
+atmosphere, brother and father, husband and son! And by your love of
+them, by every holy sympathy of your bosoms, by every mournful appeal
+which comes up to you from hearts whose sanctuary of affections has been
+made waste and desolate, you are called upon to exert it in the cause of
+redemption from wrong and outrage.
+
+Let the patriot, the friend of liberty and the Union of the States, no
+longer shut his eyes to the great danger, the master-evil before which
+all others dwindle into insignificance. Our Union is tottering to its
+foundation, and slavery is the cause. Remove the evil. Dry up at their
+source the bitter waters. In vain you enact and abrogate your tariffs;
+in vain is individual sacrifice, or sectional concession. The accursed
+thing is with us, the stone of stumbling and the rock of offence remains.
+Drag, then, the Achan into light; and let national repentance atone for
+national sin.
+
+The conflicting interests of free and slave labor furnish the only ground
+for fear in relation to the permanency of the Union. The line of
+separation between them is day by day growing broader and deeper;
+geographically and politically united, we are already, in a moral point
+of view, a divided people. But a few months ago we were on the very
+verge of civil war, a war of brothers, a war between the North and the
+South, between the slave-holder and the free laborer. The danger has
+been delayed for a time; this bolt has fallen without mortal injury to
+the Union, but the cloud from whence it came still hangs above us,
+reddening with the elements of destruction.
+
+Recent events have furnished ample proof that the slave-holding interest
+is prepared to resist any legislation on the part of the general
+government which is supposed to have a tendency, directly or indirectly,
+to encourage and invigorate free labor; and that it is determined to
+charge upon its opposite interest the infliction of all those evils which
+necessarily attend its own operation, "the primeval curse of Omnipotence
+upon slavery."
+
+We have already felt in too many instances the extreme difficulty of
+cherishing in one common course of national legislation the opposite
+interests of republican equality and feudal aristocracy and servitude.
+The truth is, we have undertaken a moral impossibility. These interests
+are from their nature irreconcilable. The one is based upon the pure
+principles of rational liberty; the other, under the name of freedom,
+revives the ancient European system of barons and villains, nobles and
+serfs. Indeed, the state of society which existed among our Anglo-Saxon
+ancestors was far more tolerable than that of many portions of our
+republican confederacy. For the Anglo-Saxon slaves had it in their power
+to purchase their freedom; and the laws of the realm recognized their
+liberation and placed them under legal protection.
+
+ (The diffusion of Christianity in Great Britain was moreover
+ followed by a general manumission; for it would seem that the
+ priests and missionaries of religion in that early and benighted age
+ were more faithful in the performance of their duties than those of
+ the present. "The holy fathers, monks, and friars," says Sir T.
+ Smith, "had in their confessions, and specially in their extreme and
+ deadly sickness, convinced the laity how dangerous a thing it was
+ for one Christian to hold another in bondage; so that temporal men,
+ by reason of the terror in their consciences, were glad to manumit
+ all their villains."--Hilt. Commonwealth, Blackstone, p. 52.)
+
+To counteract the dangers resulting from a state of society so utterly at
+variance with the great Declaration of American freedom should be the
+earnest endeavor of every patriotic statesman. Nothing unconstitutional,
+nothing violent, should be attempted; but the true doctrine of the rights
+of man should be steadily kept in view; and the opposition to slavery
+should be inflexible and constantly maintained. The almost daily
+violations of the Constitution in consequence of the laws of some of the
+slave states, subjecting free colored citizens of New England and
+elsewhere, who may happen to be on board of our coasting vessels, to
+imprisonment immediately on their arrival in a Southern port should be
+provided against. Nor should the imprisonment of the free colored
+citizens of the Northern and Middle states, on suspicion of being
+runaways, subjecting them, even after being pronounced free, to the costs
+of their confinement and trial, be longer tolerated; for if we continue
+to yield to innovations like these upon the Constitution of our fathers,
+we shall erelong have the name only of a free government left us.
+
+Dissemble as we may, it is impossible for us to believe, after fully
+considering the nature of slavery, that it can much longer maintain a
+peaceable existence among us. A day of revolution must come, and it is
+our duty to prepare for it. Its threatened evil may be changed into a
+national blessing. The establishment of schools for the instruction of
+the slave children, a general diffusion of the lights of Christianity,
+and the introduction of a sacred respect for the social obligations of
+marriage and for the relations between parents and children, among our
+black population, would render emancipation not only perfectly safe, but
+also of the highest advantage to the country. Two millions of freemen
+would be added to our population, upon whom in the hour of danger we
+could safely depend; "the domestic foe" would be changed into a firm
+friend, faithful, generous, and ready to encounter all dangers in our
+defence. It is well known that during the last war with Great Britain,
+wherever the enemy touched upon our Southern coast, the slaves in
+multitudes hastened to join them. On the other hand, the free blacks
+were highly serviceable in repelling them. So warm was the zeal of the
+latter, so manifest their courage in the defence of Louisiana, that the
+present Chief Magistrate of the United States publicly bestowed upon them
+one of the highest eulogiums ever offered by a commander to his soldiers.
+
+Let no one seek an apology for silence on the subject of slavery because
+the laws of the land tolerate and sanction it. But a short time ago the
+slave-trade was protected by laws and treaties, and sanctioned by the
+example of men eminent for the reputation of piety and integrity. Yet
+public opinion broke over these barriers; it lifted the curtain and
+revealed the horrors of that most abominable traffic; and unrighteous law
+and ancient custom and avarice and luxury gave way before its
+irresistible authority. It should never be forgotten that human law
+cannot change the nature of human action in the pure eye of infinite
+justice; and that the ordinances of man cannot annul those of God. The
+slave system, as existing in this country, can be considered in no other
+light than as the cause of which the foul traffic in human flesh is the
+legitimate consequence. It is the parent, the fosterer, the sole
+supporter of the slave-trade. It creates the demand for slaves, and the
+foreign supply will always be equal to the demand of consumption. It
+keeps the market open. It offers inducements to the slave-trader which
+no severity of law against his traffic can overcome. By our laws his
+trade is piracy; while slavery, to which alone it owes its existence, is
+protected and cherished, and those engaged in it are rewarded by an
+increase of political power proportioned to the increase of their stock
+of human beings! To steal the natives of Africa is a crime worthy of an
+ignominious death; but to steal and enslave annually nearly one hundred
+thousand of the descendants of these stolen natives, born in this
+country, is considered altogether excusable and proper! For my own part,
+I know no difference between robbery in Africa and robbery at home. I
+could with as quiet a conscience engage in the one as the other.
+
+"There is not one general principle," justly remarks Lord Nugent, "on
+which the slave-trade is to be stigmatized which does not impeach slavery
+itself." Kindred in iniquity, both must fall speedily, fall together,
+and be consigned to the same dishonorable grave. The spirit which is
+thrilling through every nerve of England is awakening America from her
+sleep of death. Who, among our statesmen, would not shrink from the
+baneful reputation of having supported by his legislative influence the
+slave-trade, the traffic in human flesh? Let them then beware; for the
+time is near at hand when the present defenders of slavery will sink
+under the same fatal reputation, and leave to posterity a memory which
+will blacken through all future time, a legacy of infamy.
+
+"Let us not betake us to the common arts and stratagems of nations, but
+fear God, and put away the evil which provokes Him; and trust not in man,
+but in the living God; and it shall go well for England!" This counsel,
+given by the purehearted William Penn, in a former age, is about to be
+followed in the present. An intense and powerful feeling is working in
+the mighty heart of England; it is speaking through the lips of Brougham
+and Buxton and O'Connell, and demanding justice in the name of humanity
+and according to the righteous law of God. The immediate emancipation of
+eight hundred thousand slaves is demanded with an authority which cannot
+much longer be disputed or trifled with. That demand will be obeyed;
+justice will be done; the heavy burdens will be unloosed; the oppressed
+set free. It shall go well for England.
+
+And when the stain on our own escutcheon shall be seen no more; when the
+Declaration of our Independence and the practice of our people shall
+agree; when truth shall be exalted among us; when love shall take the
+place of wrong; when all the baneful pride and prejudice of caste and
+color shall fall forever; when under one common sun of political liberty
+the slave-holding portions of our republic shall no longer sit, like the
+Egyptians of old, themselves mantled in thick darkness, while all around
+them is glowing with the blessed light of freedom and equality, then, and
+not till then, shall it go well for America!
+
+
+
+
+THE ABOLITIONISTS. THEIR SENTIMENTS AND OBJECTS.
+
+Two letters to the 'Jeffersonian and Times', Richmond, Va.
+
+
+ I.
+
+A FRIEND has banded me a late number of your paper, containing a brief
+notice of a pamphlet, which I have recently published on the subject of
+slavery.
+
+From an occasional perusal of your paper, I have formed a favorable
+opinion of your talent and independence. Compelled to dissent from some
+of your political sentiments, I still give you full credit for the lofty
+tone of sincerity and manliness with which these sentiments are avowed
+and defended.
+
+I perceive that since the adjustment of the tariff question a new subject
+of discontent and agitation seems to engross your attention.
+
+The "accursed tariff" has no sooner ceased to be the stone of stumbling
+and the rock of offence, than the "abolition doctrines of the Northern
+enthusiasts," as you are pleased to term the doctrines of your own
+Jefferson, furnish, in your opinion, a sufficient reason for poising the
+"Ancient Dominion" on its sovereignty, and rousing every slaveowner to
+military preparations, until the entire South, from the Potomac to the
+Gulf, shall bristle with bayonets, "like quills upon the fretful
+porcupine."
+
+In proof of a conspiracy against your "vested rights," you have commenced
+publishing copious extracts from the pamphlets and periodicals of the
+abolitionists of New England and New York. An extract from my own
+pamphlet you have headed "The Fanatics," and in introducing it to your
+readers you inform them that "it exhibits, in strong colors, the morbid
+spirit of that false and fanatical philanthropy, which is at work in the
+Northern states, and, to some extent, in the South."
+
+Gentlemen, so far as I am personally concerned in the matter, I feel no
+disposition to take exceptions to any epithets which you may see fit to
+apply to me or my writings. A humble son of New England--a tiller of her
+rugged soil, and a companion of her unostentatious yeomanry--it matters
+little, in any personal consideration of the subject, whether the voice
+of praise or opprobrium reaches me from beyond the narrow limits of my
+immediate neighborhood.
+
+But when I find my opinions quoted as the sentiment of New England, and
+then denounced as dangerous, "false and fanatical;" and especially when I
+see them made the occasion of earnest appeals to the prejudices and
+sectional jealousies of the South, it becomes me to endeavor to establish
+their truths, and defend them from illegitimate influences and unjust
+suspicions.
+
+In the first place, then, let me say, that if it be criminal to publicly
+express a belief that it is in the power of the slave states to
+emancipate their slaves, with profit and safety to themselves, and that
+such is their immediate duty, a majority of the people of New England are
+wholly guiltless. Of course, all are nominally opposed to slavery; but
+upon the little band of abolitionists should the anathemas of the slave-
+holder be directed, for they are the agitators of whom you complain, men
+who are acting under a solemn conviction of duty, and who are bending
+every energy of their minds to the accomplishment of their object.
+
+And that object is the overthrow of slavery in the United States, by such
+means only as are sanctioned by law, humanity, and religion.
+
+I shall endeavor, gentlemen, as briefly as may be, to give you some of
+our reasons for opposing slavery and seeking its abolition; and,
+secondly, to explain our mode of operation; to disclose our plan of
+emancipation, fully and entirely. We wish to do nothing darkly; frank
+republicans, we acknowledge no double-dealing. At this busy season of
+the year, I cannot but regret that I have not leisure for such a
+deliberate examination of the subject as even my poor ability might
+warrant. My remarks, penned in the intervals of labor, must necessarily
+be brief, and wanting in coherence.
+
+We seek the abolishment of slavery
+
+1. Because it is contrary to the law of God.
+
+In your paper of the 2d of 7th mo., the same in which you denounce the
+"false and fanatical philanthropy" of abolitionists, you avow yourselves
+members of the Bible Society, and bestow warm and deserved encomiums on
+the "truly pious undertaking of sending the truth among all nations."
+
+You, therefore, gentlemen, whatever others may do, will not accuse me of
+"fanaticism," if I endeavor to sustain my first great reason for opposing
+slavery by a reference to the volume of inspiration:
+
+"Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you do
+ye even so to them."
+
+"Wherefore now let the fear of the Lord be upon you, take heed and do it;
+for there is no iniquity with the Lord, nor respect of persons."
+
+"Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of
+wickedness; to undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free, and
+that ye break every yoke?"
+
+"If a man be found stealing any of his brethren, and maketh merchandise
+of him, or selling him, that thief shall die."
+
+"Of a truth, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons."
+
+"And he that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his
+hands, he shall surely be put to death."
+
+2. Because it is an open violation of all human equality, of the laws of
+Nature and of nations.
+
+The fundamental principle of all equal and just law is contained in the
+following extract from Blackstone's Commentaries, Introduction, sec. 2.
+
+"The rights which God and Nature have established, and which are
+therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the
+aid of human laws to be more effectually vested in every man than they
+are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by
+municipal laws to be inviolable: on the contrary, no human legislation
+has power to abridge or destroy there, unless the owner shall himself
+commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture."
+
+Has the negro committed such offence? Above all, has his infant child
+forfeited its unalienable right?
+
+Surely it can be no act of the innocent child.
+
+Yet you must prove the forfeiture, or no human legislation can deprive
+that child of its freedom.
+
+Its black skin constitutes the forfeiture!
+
+What! throw the responsibility upon God! Charge the common Father of the
+white and the black, He, who is no respecter of persons, with plundering
+His unoffending children of all which makes the boon of existence
+desirable; their personal liberty!
+
+"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal;
+that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;
+that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."--
+(Declaration of Independence, from the pen of Thomas Jefferson.)
+
+In this general and unqualified declaration, on the 4th of July, 1776,
+all the people of the United States, without distinction of color, were
+proclaimed free, by the delegates of the people of those states assembled
+in their highest sovereign capacity.
+
+For more than half a century we have openly violated that solemn
+declaration.
+
+3. Because it renders nugatory the otherwise beneficial example of our
+free institutions, and exposes us to the scorn and reproach of the
+liberal and enlightened of other nations.
+
+"Chains clank and groans echo around the walls of their spotless
+Congress."--(Francis Jeffrey.)
+
+"Man to be possessed by man! Man to be made property of! The image of
+the Deity to be put under the yoke! Let these usurpers show us their
+title-deeds!"--(Simon Boliver.)
+
+"When I am indulging in my views of American prospects and American
+liberty, it is mortifying to be told that in that very country a large
+portion of the people are slaves! It is a dark spot on the face of the
+nation. Such a state of things cannot always exist."--(Lafayette.)
+
+"I deem it right to raise my humble voice to convince the citizens of
+America that the slaveholding states are held in abomination by all those
+whose opinion ought to be valuable. Man is the property of man in about
+one half of the American States: let them not therefore dare to prate of
+their institutions or of their national freedom, while they hold their
+fellow-men in bondage! Of all men living, the American citizen who is
+the owner of slaves is the most despicable. He is a political hypocrite
+of the very worst description. The friends of humanity and liberty in
+Europe should join in one universal cry of shame on the American slave-
+holders! 'Base wretches!' should we shout in chorus; 'base wretches!
+how dare you profane the temple of national freedom, the sacred fane of
+republican rites, with the presence and the sufferings of human beings in
+chains and slavery!'"--(Daniel O'Connell.)
+
+4. Because it subjects one portion of our American brethren to the
+unrestrained violence and unholy passions of another.
+
+Here, gentlemen, I might summon to my support a cloud of witnesses, a
+host of incontrovertible, damning facts, the legitimate results of a
+system whose tendency is to harden and deprave the heart. But I will not
+descend to particulars. I am willing to believe that the majority of the
+masters of your section of the country are disposed to treat their
+unfortunate slaves with kindness. But where the dreadful privilege of
+slave-holding is extended to all, in every neighborhood, there must be
+individuals whose cupidity is unrestrained by any principle of humanity,
+whose lusts are fiercely indulged, whose fearful power over the bodies,
+nay, may I not say the souls, of their victims is daily and hourly
+abused.
+
+Will the evidence of your own Jefferson, on this point, be admissible?
+
+"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise, of
+the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one
+part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and
+learn to imitate it. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the
+lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller
+slaves, gives loose to the worst of passions; and thus nursed, educated,
+and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot fail to be stamped by it with
+odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his
+morals and manners undepraved by such circumstances."--(Notes on
+Virginia, p. 241.)
+
+"Il n'existe a la verite aucune loi qui protege l'esclave le mauvais
+traitement du maitre," says Achille Murat, himself a Floridian slave-
+holder, in his late work on the United States.
+
+Gentlemen, is not this true? Does there exist even in Virginia any law
+limiting the punishment of a slave? Are there any bounds prescribed,
+beyond which the brutal, the revengeful, the intoxicated slave-master,
+acting in the double capacity of judge and executioner, cannot pass?
+
+You will, perhaps, tell me that the general law against murder applies
+alike to master and slave. True; but will you point out instances of
+masters suffering the penalty of that law for the murder of their slaves?
+If you examine your judicial reports you will find the wilful murder of a
+slave decided to be only a trespass!--(Virginia Reports, vol. v. p. 481,
+Harris versus Nichols.)
+
+It indeed argues well for Virginian pride of character, that latterly,
+the law, which expressly sanctioned the murder of a slave, who in the
+language of Georgia and North Carolina, "died of moderate correction,"
+has been repealed. But, although the letter of the law is changed, its
+practice remains the same. In proof of this, I would refer to
+Brockenborough and Holmes' Virginia Cases, p. 258.
+
+In Georgia and North Carolina the murder of a slave is tolerated and
+justified by law, provided that in the opinion of the court he died "of
+moderate correction!"
+
+In South Carolina the following clause of a law enacted in 1740 is still
+in force:--
+
+"If any slave shall suffer in his life, limbs, or members, when no white
+person shall be present, or being present shall neglect or refuse to give
+evidence concerning the same, in every such case the owner or other
+person who shall have the care and government of the slave shall be
+deemed and taken to be guilty of such offence; unless such owner or other
+person can make the contrary appear by good and sufficient evidence, or
+shall by his own oath clear and exculpate himself, which oath every court
+where such offence shall be tried is hereby empowered to administer and
+to acquit the offender accordingly, if clear proof of the offence be not
+made by two witnesses at least, any law, usage, or custom to the contrary
+notwithstanding."
+
+Is not this offering a reward for perjury? And what shall we think of
+that misnamed court of justice, where it is optional with the witnesses,
+in a case of life and death, to give or withhold their testimony.
+
+5. Because it induces dangerous sectional jealousies, creates of
+necessity a struggle between the opposing interests of free and slave
+labor, and threatens the integrity of the Union.
+
+That sectional jealousies do exist, the tone of your paper, gentlemen, is
+of itself an evidence, if indeed any were needed. The moral sentiment of
+the free states is against slavery. The freeman has declared his
+unwillingness that his labor should be reduced to a level with that of
+slaves. Harsh epithets and harsh threats have been freely exchanged,
+until the beautiful Potomac, wherever it winds its way to the ocean, has
+become the dividing line, not of territory only, but of feeling,
+interest, national pride, a moral division.
+
+What shook the pillars of the Union when the Missouri question was
+agitated? What but a few months ago arrayed in arms a state against the
+Union, and the Union against a state?
+
+From Maine to Florida, gentlemen, the answer must be the same, slavery.
+
+6. Because of its pernicious influence upon national wealth and
+prosperity.
+
+Political economy has been the peculiar study of Virginia. But there are
+some important truths connected with this science which she has hitherto
+overlooked or wantonly disregarded.
+
+Population increasing with the means of subsistence is a fair test of
+national wealth.
+
+By reference to the several censuses of the United States, it will be
+seen that the white population increases nearly twice as fast in states
+where there are few or no slaves as in the slave states.
+
+Again, in the latter states the slave population has increased twice as
+fast as the white. Let us take, for example, the period of twenty years,
+from 1790 to 1810, and compare the increase of the two classes in three
+of the Southern states.
+
+ Per cent. of whites. Per cent. of blacks.
+
+ Maryland 13 31
+ Virginia 24 38
+ North Carolina 30 70
+
+The causes of this disproportionate increase, so inimical to the true
+interests of the country, are very manifest.
+
+A large proportion of the free inhabitants of the United States are
+dependent upon their labor for subsistence. The forced, unnatural system
+of slavery in some of the states renders the demand for free laborers
+less urgent; they are not so readily and abundantly supplied with the
+means of subsistence as those of their own class in the free states, and
+as the necessaries of life diminish population also diminishes.
+
+There is yet another cause for the decline of the white population. In
+the free states labor is reputable. The statesman, whose eloquence has
+electrified a nation, does not disdain in the intervals of the public
+service to handle the axe and the hoe. And the woman whose beauty,
+talents, and accomplishments have won the admiration of all deems it no
+degradation to "look well to her household."
+
+But the slave stamps with indelible ignominy the character of occupation.
+It is a disgrace for a highborn Virginian or chivalrous Carolinian to
+labor, side by side, with the low, despised, miserable black man.
+Wretched must be the condition of the poorer classes of whites in a
+slave-holding community! Compelled to perform the despised offices of
+the slave, they can hardly rise above his level. They become the pariahs
+of society. No wonder, then, that the tide of emigration flows from the
+slave-cursed shores of the Atlantic to the free valleys of the West.
+
+In New England the labor of a farmer or mechanic is worth from $150 to
+$200 per annum. That of a female from $50 to $100. Our entire
+population, with the exception of those engaged in mercantile affairs,
+the professional classes, and a very few moneyed idlers, are working men
+and women. If that of the South were equally employed (and slavery
+apart, there is no reason why they should not be), how large an addition
+would be annually made to the wealth of the country? The truth is, a
+very considerable portion of the national wealth produced by Northern
+labor is taxed to defray the expenses of twenty-five representatives of
+Southern property in Congress, and to maintain an army mainly for the
+protection of the slave-master against the dangerous tendencies of that
+property.
+
+In the early and better days of the Roman Republic, the ancient warriors
+and statesmen cultivated their fields with their own hands; but so soon
+as their agriculture was left to the slaves, it visibly declined, the
+once fertile fields became pastures, and the inhabitants of that garden
+of the world were dependent upon foreign nations for the necessaries of
+life. The beautiful villages, once peopled by free contented laborers,
+became tenantless, and, over the waste of solitude, we see, here and
+there, at weary distances, the palaces of the master, contrasting
+painfully with the wretched cottages and subterranean cells of the slave.
+In speaking of the extraordinary fertility of the soil in the early times
+of the Republic, Pliny inquires, "What was the cause of these abundant
+harvests? It was this, that men of rank employed themselves in the
+culture of the fields; whereas now it is left to wretches loaded with
+fetters, who carry in their countenances the shameful evidence of their
+slavery."
+
+And what was true in the days of the Roman is now written legibly upon
+the soil of your own Virginia. A traveller in your state, in
+contemplating the decline of its agriculture, has justly remarked that,
+"if the miserable condition of the negro had left his mind for
+reflection, he would laugh in his chains to see how slavery has stricken
+the land with ugliness."
+
+Is the rapid increase of a population of slaves in itself no evil? In
+all the slave states the increase of the slaves is vastly more rapid than
+that of the whites or free blacks. When we recollect that they are under
+no natural or moral restraint, careless of providing food or clothing for
+themselves or their children; when, too, we consider that they are raised
+as an article of profitable traffic, like the cattle of New England and
+the hogs of Kentucky; that it is a matter of interest, of dollars and
+cents, to the master that they should multiply as fast as possible, there
+is surely nothing at all surprising in the increase of their numbers.
+Would to heaven there were also nothing alarming!
+
+7. Because, by the terms of the national compact, the free and the slave
+states are alike involved in the guilt of maintaining slavery, and the
+citizens of the former are liable, at any moment, to be called upon to
+aid the latter in suppressing, at the point of the bayonet, the
+insurrection of the slaves.
+
+Slavery is, at the best, an unnatural state. And Nature, when her
+eternal principles are violated, is perpetually struggling to restore
+them to their first estate.
+
+All history, ancient and modern, is full of warning on this point. Need
+I refer to the many revolts of the Roman and Grecian slaves, the bloody
+insurrection of Etruria, the horrible servile wars of Sicily and Capua?
+Or, to come down to later times, to France in the fourteenth century,
+Germany in the sixteenth, to Malta in the last? Need I call to mind the
+untold horrors of St. Domingo, when that island, under the curse of its
+servile war, glowed redly in the view of earth and heaven,--an open hell?
+Have our own peculiar warnings gone by unheeded,--the frequent slave
+insurrections of the South? One horrible tragedy, gentlemen, must still
+be fresh in your recollection,--Southampton, with its fired dwellings and
+ghastly dead! Southampton, with its dreadful associations, of the death
+struggle with the insurgents, the groans of the tortured negroes, the
+lamentations of the surviving whites over woman in her innocence and
+beauty, and childhood, and hoary age!
+
+"The hour of emancipation," said Thomas Jefferson, "is advancing in the
+march of time. It will come. If not brought on by the generous energy
+of our own minds, it will come by the bloody process of St. Domingo!"
+
+To the just and prophetic language of your own great statesman I have but
+a few words to add. They shall be those of truth and soberness.
+
+We regard the slave system in your section of the country as a great
+evil, moral and political,--an evil which, if left to itself for even a
+few years longer, will give the entire South into the hands of the
+blacks.
+
+The terms of the national compact compel us to consider more than two
+millions of our fellow-beings as your property; not, indeed, morally,
+really, de facto, but still legally your property! We acknowledge that
+you have a power derived from the United States Constitution to hold this
+"property," but we deny that you have any moral right to take advantage
+of that power. For truth will not allow us to admit that any human law
+or compact can make void or put aside the ordinance of the living God and
+the eternal laws of Nature.
+
+We therefore hold it to be the duty of the people of the slave-holding
+states to begin the work of emancipation now; that any delay must be
+dangerous to themselves in time and eternity, and full of injustice to
+their slaves and to their brethren of the free states.
+
+Because the slave has never forfeited his right to freedom, and the
+continuance of his servitude is a continuance of robbery; and because, in
+the event of a servile war, the people of the free states would be called
+upon to take a part in its unutterable horrors.
+
+New England would obey that call, for she will abide unto death by the
+Constitution of the land. Yet what must be the feelings of her citizens,
+while engaged in hunting down like wild beasts their fellow-men--brutal
+and black it may be, but still oppressed, suffering human beings,
+struggling madly and desperately for their liberty, if they feel and know
+that the necessity of so doing has resulted from a blind fatality on the
+part of the oppressor, a reckless disregard of the warnings of earth and
+heaven, an obstinate perseverance in a system founded and sustained by
+robbery and wrong?
+
+All wars are horrible, wicked, inexcusable, and truly and solemnly has
+Jefferson himself said that, in a contest of this kind, between the slave
+and the master, "the Almighty has no attribute which could take side with
+us."
+
+Understand us, gentlemen. We only ask to have the fearful necessity
+taken away from us of sustaining the wretched policy of slavery by moral
+influence or physical force. We ask alone to be allowed to wash our
+hands of the blood of millions of your fellow-beings, the cry of whom is
+rising up as a swift witness unto God against us.
+
+8. Because all the facts connected with the subject warrant us in a most
+confident belief that a speedy and general emancipation might be made
+with entire safety, and that the consequences of such an emancipation
+would be highly beneficial to the planters of the South.
+
+Awful as may be their estimate in time and eternity, I will not,
+gentlemen, dwell upon the priceless benefits of a conscience at rest, a
+soul redeemed from the all-polluting influences of slavery, and against
+which the cry of the laborer whose hire has been kept back by fraud does
+not ascend. Nor will I rest the defence of my position upon the fact
+that it can never be unsafe to obey the commands of God. These are the
+old and common arguments of "fanatics" and "enthusiasts," melting away
+like frost-work in the glorious sunshine of expediency and utility. In
+the light of these modern luminaries, then, let us reason together.
+
+A long and careful examination of the subject will I think fully justify
+me in advancing this general proposition.
+
+Wherever, whether in Europe, the East and West Indies, South America, or
+in our own country, a fair experiment has been made of the comparative
+expense of free and slave labor, the result has uniformly been favorable
+to the former.
+
+ (See Brougham's Colonial Policy. Hodgdon's Letter to Jean Baptiste
+ Say. Waleh's Brazil. Official Letter of Hon. Mr. Ward, from
+ Mexico. Dr. Dickson's Mitigation of Slavery. Franklin on The
+ Peopling of Countries. Ramsay's Essay. Botham's Sugar Cultivation
+ in Batavia. Marsden's History of Sumatra. Coxe's Travels. Dr.
+ Anderson's Observations on Slavery. Storch's Political Economy.
+ Adam Smith. J. Jeremies' Essays. Humboldt's Travels, etc., etc.)
+
+Here, gentlemen, the issue is tendered. Standing on your own ground of
+expediency, I am ready to defend my position.
+
+I pass from the utility to the safety of emancipation. And here,
+gentlemen, I shall probably be met at the outset with your supposed
+consequences, bloodshed, rapine, promiscuous massacre!
+
+The facts, gentlemen! In God's name, bring out your facts! If slavery
+is to cast over the prosperity of our country the thick shadow of an
+everlasting curse, because emancipation is dreaded as a remedy worse than
+the disease itself, let us know the real grounds of your fear.
+
+Do you find them in the emancipation of the South American Republics? In
+Hayti? In the partial experiments of some of the West India Islands?
+Does history, ancient or modern, justify your fears? Can you find any
+excuse for them in the nature of the human mind, everywhere maddened by
+injury and conciliated by kindness? No, gentlemen; the dangers of
+slavery are manifest and real, all history lies open for your warning.
+But the dangers of emancipation, of "doing justly and loving mercy,"
+exist only in your imaginations. You cannot produce one fact in
+corroboration of your fears. You cannot point to the stain of a single
+drop of any master's blood shed by the slave he has emancipated.
+
+I have now given some of our reasons for opposing slavery. In my next
+letter I shall explain our method of opposition, and I trust I shall be
+able to show that there is nothing "fanatical," nothing
+"unconstitutional," and nothing unchristian in that method.
+
+In the mean time, gentlemen, I am your friend and well-wisher.
+
+HAVERHILL, MASS., 22d 7th Mo., 1833.
+
+
+
+
+ II.
+
+The abolitionists of the North have been grossly misrepresented. In
+attacking the system of slavery, they have never recommended any measure
+or measures conflicting with the Constitution of the United States.
+
+They have never sought to excite or encourage a spirit of rebellion among
+the slaves: on the contrary, they would hold any such attempt, by
+whomsoever made, in utter and stern abhorrence.
+
+All the leading abolitionists of my acquaintance are, from principle,
+opposed to war of all kinds, believing that the benefits of no war
+whatever can compensate for the sacrifice of one human life by violence.
+
+Consequently, they would be the first to deprecate any physical
+interference with your slave system on the part of the general
+government.
+
+They are, without exception, opposed to any political interposition of
+the government, in regard to slavery as it exists in the states. For,
+although they feel and see that the canker of the moral disease is
+affecting all parts of the confederacy, they believe that the remedy lies
+with yourselves alone. Any such interference they would consider
+unlawful and unconstitutional; and the exercise of unconstitutional
+power, although sanctioned by the majority of a republican government,
+they believe to be a tyranny as monstrous and as odious as the despotism
+of a Turkish Sultan.
+
+Having made this disclaimer on the part of myself and my friends, let me
+inquire from whence this charge of advocating the interference of the
+general government with the sovereign jurisdiction of the states has
+arisen? Will you, gentlemen, will the able editors of the United States
+Telegraph and the Columbian Telescope, explain? For myself, I have
+sought in vain among the writings of our "Northern Enthusiasts," and
+among the speeches of the Northern statesmen and politicians, for some
+grounds for the accusation.
+
+The doctrine, such as it is, does not belong to us. I think it may be
+traced home to the South, to Virginia, to her Convention of 1829, to the
+speech of Ex-President Monroe, on the white basis question.
+
+"As to emancipation," said that distinguished son of your state, "if ever
+that should take place, it cannot be done by the state; it must be done
+by the Union."
+
+Again, "If emancipation can ever be effected, it can only be done with
+the aid of the general government."
+
+Gentlemen, you are welcome to your doctrine. It has no advocates among
+the abolitionists of New England.
+
+We aim to overthrow slavery by the moral influence of an enlightened
+public sentiment;
+
+By a clear and fearless exposition of the guilt of holding property in
+man;
+
+By analyzing the true nature of slavery, and boldly rebuking sin;
+
+By a general dissemination of the truths of political economy, in regard
+to free and slave labor;
+
+By appeals from the pulpit to the consciences of men;
+
+By the powerful influence of the public press;
+
+By the formation of societies whose object shall be to oppose the
+principle of slavery by such means as are consistent with our obligations
+to law, religion, and humanity;
+
+By elevating, by means of education and sympathy, the character of the
+free people of color among us.
+
+Our testimony against slavery is the same which has uniformly, and with
+so much success, been applied to prevailing iniquity in all ages of the
+world, the truths of divine revelation.
+
+Believing that there can be nothing in the Providence of God to which His
+holy and eternal law is not strictly applicable, we maintain that no
+circumstances can justify the slave-holder in a continuance of his
+system.
+
+That the fact that this system did not originate with the present
+generation is no apology for retaining it, inasmuch as crime cannot be
+entailed; and no one is under a necessity of sinning because others have
+done so before him;
+
+That the domestic slave-trade is as repugnant to the laws of God, and
+should be as odious in the eyes of a Christian community, as the foreign;
+
+That the black child born in a slave plantation is not "an entailed
+article of property;" and that the white man who makes of that child a
+slave is a thief and a robber, stealing the child as the sea pirate stole
+his father!
+
+We do not talk of gradual abolition, because, as Christians, we find no
+authority for advocating a gradual relinquishment of sin. We say to
+slaveholders, "Repent now, to-day, immediately;" just as we say to the
+intemperate, "Break off from your vice at once; touch not, taste not,
+handle not, from henceforth forever."
+
+Besides, the plan of gradual abolition has been tried in this country and
+the West Indies, and found wanting. It has been in operation in our
+slave states ever since the Declaration of Independence, and its results
+are before the nation. Let us see.
+
+THE ABOLITIONISTS 79
+
+In 1790 there were in the slave states south of the Potomac and the Ohio
+20,415 free blacks. Their increase for the ten years following was at
+the rate of sixty per cent., their number in 1800 being 32,604. In 1810
+there were 58,046, an increase of seventy-five per cent. This
+comparatively large increase was, in a great measure, owing to the free
+discussions going on in England and in this country on the subject of the
+slave-trade and the rights of man. The benevolent impulse extended to
+the slave-masters, and manumissions were frequent. But the salutary
+impression died away; the hand of oppression closed again upon its
+victims; and the increase for the period of twenty years, 1810 to 1830,
+was only seventy-seven per cent., about one half of what it was in the
+ten years from 1800 to 1810. And this is the practical result of the
+much-lauded plan of gradual abolition.
+
+In 1790, in the states above mentioned, there were only 550,604 slaves,
+but in 1830 there were 1,874,098! And this, too, is gradual abolition.
+
+"What, then!" perhaps you will ask, "do you expect to overthrow our whole
+slave system at once? to turn loose to-day two millions of negroes?"
+
+No, gentlemen; we expect no such thing. Enough for us if in the spirit
+of fraternal duty we point to your notice the commands of God; if we urge
+you by every cherished remembrance of common sacrifices upon a common
+altar, by every consideration of humanity, justice, and expediency, to
+begin now, without a moment's delay, to break away from your miserable
+system,--to begin the work of moral reformation, as God commands you to
+begin, not as selfishness, or worldly policy, or short-sighted political
+expediency, may chance to dictate.
+
+Such is our doctrine of immediate emancipation. A doctrine founded on
+God's eternal truth, plain, simple, and perfect,--the doctrine of
+immediate, unprocrastinated repentance applied to the sin of slavery.
+
+Of this doctrine, and of our plan for crrrying it into effect, I have
+given an exposition, with the most earnest regard to the truth. Does
+either embrace anything false, fanatical, or unconstitutional? Do they
+afford a reasonable protext for your fierce denunciations of your
+Northern brethren? Do they furnish occasion for your newspaper chivalry,
+your stereotyped demonstrations of Southern magnanimity and Yankee
+meanness?--things, let me say, unworthy of Virginians, degrading to
+yourselves, insulting to us.
+
+Gentlemen, it is too late for Virginia, with all her lofty intellect and
+nobility of feeling, to defend and advocate the principle of slavery.
+The death-like silence which for nearly two centuries brooded over her
+execrable system has been broken; light is pouring in upon the minds of
+her citizens; truth is abroad, "searching out and overturning the lies of
+the age." A moral reformation has been already awakened, and it cannot
+now be drugged to sleep by the sophistries of detected sin. A thousand
+intelligences are at work in her land; a thousand of her noblest hearts
+are glowing with the redeeming spirit of that true philanthropy, which is
+moving all the world. No, gentlemen; light is spreading from the hills
+of Western Virginia to the extremest East. You cannot arrest its
+progress. It is searching the consciences; it is exercising the reason;
+it is appealing to the noblest characteristics of intelligent Virginians.
+It is no foreign influence. From every abandoned plantation where the
+profitless fern and thistle have sprung up under the heel of slavery;
+from every falling mansion of the master, through whose windows the fox
+may look out securely, and over whose hearth-stone the thin grass is
+creeping, a warning voice is sinking deeply into all hearts not imbruted
+by avarice, indolence, and the lust of power.
+
+Abolitionist as I am, the intellectual character of Virginia has no
+warmer admirer than myself. Her great names, her moral trophies, the
+glories of her early day, the still proud and living testimonials of her
+mental power, I freely acknowledge and strongly appreciate. And, believe
+me, it is with no other feelings than those of regret and heartfelt
+sorrow that I speak plainly of her great error, her giant crime, a crime
+which is visibly calling down upon her the curse of an offended Deity.
+But I cannot forget that upon some of the most influential and highly
+favored of her sons rests the responsibility at the present time of
+sustaining this fearful iniquity. Blind to the signs of the times,
+careless of the wishes of thousands of their white fellow-citizens and of
+the manifold wrongs of the black man, they have dared to excuse, defend,
+nay, eulogize, the black abominations of slavery.
+
+Against the tottering ark of the idol these strong men have placed their
+shoulders. That ark must fall; that idol must be cast down; what, then,
+will be the fate of their supporters?
+
+When the Convention of 1829 had gathered in its splendid galaxy of
+talents the great names of Virginia, the friends of civil liberty turned
+their eyes towards it in the earnest hope and confidence that it would
+adopt some measures in regard to slavery worthy of the high character of
+its members and of the age in which they lived. I need not say how deep
+and bitter was our disappointment. Western Virginia indeed spoke on that
+occasion, through some of her delegates, the words of truth and humanity.
+But their counsels and warnings were unavailing; the majority turned away
+to listen to the bewildering eloquence of Leigh and Upshur and Randolph,
+as they desecrated their great intellects to the defence of that system
+of oppression under which the whole land is groaning. The memorial of
+the citizens of Augusta County, bearing the signatures of many slave-
+holders, placed the evils of slavery in a strong light before the
+convention. Its facts and arguments could only be arbitrarily thrust
+aside and wantonly disregarded; they could not be disproved.
+
+"In a political point of view," says the memorial, "we esteem slavery an
+evil greater than the aggregate of all the other evils which beset us,
+and we are perfectly willing to bear our proportion of the burden of
+removing it. We ask, further, What is the evil of any such alarm as our
+proposition may excite in minds unnecessarily jealous compared with that
+of the fatal catastrophe which ultimately awaits our country, and the
+general depravation of manners which slavery has already produced and is
+producing?"
+
+I cannot forbear giving one more extract from this paper. The
+memorialists state their belief
+
+"That the labor of slaves is vastly less productive than that of freemen;
+that it therefore requires a larger space to furnish subsistence for a
+given number of the former than of the latter; that the employment of the
+former necessarily excludes that of the latter; that hence our
+population, white and black, averages seventeen, when it ought, and would
+under other circumstances, average, as in New England, at least sixty to
+a square mile; that the possession and management of slaves form a source
+of endless vexation and misery in the house, and of waste and ruin on the
+farm; that the youth of the country are growing up with a contempt of
+steady industry as a low and servile thing, which contempt induces
+idleness and all its attendant effeminacy, vice, and worthlessness; that
+the waste of the products of the land, nay, of the land itself, is
+bringing poverty on all its inhabitants; that this poverty and the
+sparseness of population either prevent the institution of schools
+throughout the country, or keep them in a most languid and inefficient
+condition; and that the same causes most obviously paralyze all our
+schemes and efforts for the useful improvement of the country."
+
+Gentlemen, you have only to look around you to know that this picture has
+been drawn with the pencil of truth. What has made desolate and sterile
+one of the loveliest regions of the whole earth? What mean the signs of
+wasteful neglect, of long improvidence around you: the half-finished
+mansion already falling into decay, the broken-down enclosures, the weed-
+grown garden the slave hut open to the elements, the hillsides galled and
+naked, the fields below them run over with brier and fern? Is all this
+in the ordinary course of nature? Has man husbanded well the good gifts
+of God, and are they nevertheless passing from him, by a process of
+deterioration over which he has no control? No, gentlemen. For more
+than two centuries the cold and rocky soil of New England has yielded its
+annual tribute, and it still lies green and luxuriant beneath the sun of
+our brief summer. The nerved and ever-exercised arm of free labor has
+changed a landscape wild and savage as the night scenery of Salvator Rosa
+into one of pastoral beauty,--the abode of independence and happiness.
+Under a similar system of economy and industry, how would Virginia, rich
+with Nature's prodigal blessings, have worn at this time over all her
+territory the smiles of plenty, the charms of rewarded industry! What a
+change would have been manifest in your whole character! Freemen in the
+place of slaves, industry, reputable economy, a virtue, dissipation
+despised, emigration unnecessary!
+
+ (A late Virginia member of Congress described the Virginia slave-
+ holder as follows: "He is an Eastern Virginian whose good fortune it
+ has been to have been born wealthy, and to have become a profound
+ politician at twenty-one without study or labor. This individual,
+ from birth and habit, is above all labor and exertion. He never
+ moves a finger for any useful purpose; he lives on the labor of his
+ slaves, and even this labor he is too proud and indolent to direct
+ in person. While he is at his ease, a mercenary with a whip in his
+ hand drives his slaves in the field. Their dinner, consisting of a
+ few scraps and lean bones, is eaten in the burning sun. They have
+ no time to go to a shade and be refreshed such easement is reserved
+ for the horses"!--Speech of Hon. P. P. Doddridge in House of
+ Delegates, 1829.)
+
+All this, you will say, comes too late; the curse is upon you, the evil
+in the vitals of your state, the desolation widening day by day. No, it
+is not too late. There are elements in the Virginian character capable
+of meeting the danger, extreme as it is, and turning it aside. Could you
+but forget for a time partisan contest and unprofitable political
+speculations, you might successfully meet the dangerous exigencies of
+your state with those efficient remedies which the spirit of the age
+suggests; you might, and that too without pecuniary loss, relinquish your
+claims to human beings as slaves, and employ them as free laborers, under
+such restraint and supervision as their present degraded condition may
+render necessary. In the language of one of your own citizens, "it is
+useless for you to attempt to linger on the skirts of the age which is
+departed. The action of existing causes and principles is steady and
+progressive. It cannot be retarded, unless you would blow out all the
+moral lights around you; and if you refuse to keep up with it, you will
+be towed in the wake, whether you will or not."--(Speech in Virginia
+legislature, 1832.)
+
+The late noble example of the eloquent statesman of Roanoke, the
+manumission of his slaves, speaks volumes to his political friends. In
+the last hour of existence, when his soul was struggling from his broken
+tenement, his latest effort was the confirmation of this generous act of
+a former period. Light rest the turf upon him beneath his own
+patrimonial oaks! The prayers of many hearts made happy by his
+benevolence shall linger over his grave and bless it.
+
+Gentlemen, in concluding these letters, let me once more assure you that
+I entertain towards you and your political friends none other than kindly
+feelings. If I have spoken at all with apparent harshness, it has been
+of principles rather than of men. But I deprecate no censure. Conscious
+of the honest and patriotic motives which have prompted their avowal, I
+cheerfully leave my sentiments to their fate. Despised and contemned as
+they may be, I believe they cannot be gainsaid. Sustained by the truth
+as it exists in Nature and Revelation, sanctioned by the prevailing
+spirit of the age, they are yet destined to work out the political and
+moral regeneration of our country. The opposition which they meet with
+does not dishearten me. In the lofty confidence of John Milton, I
+believe that "though all the winds of doctrine be let loose upon the
+earth, so Truth be among them, we need not fear. Let her and Falsehood
+grapple; whoever knew her to be put to the worst in a free and open
+encounter?"
+
+HAVERHILL, MASS., 29th of 7th Mo., 1833.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL.
+
+HAVERHILL, 10th of 1st Mo., 1834.
+
+SAMUEL E. SEWALL, ESQ.,
+Secretary New England A. S. Society
+
+DEAR FRIEND,--I regret that circumstances beyond my control will not
+allow of my attendance at the annual meeting of the New England Anti-
+Slavery Society.
+
+I need not say to the members of that society that I am with them, heart
+and soul, in the cause of abolition; the abolition not of physical
+slavery alone, abhorrent and monstrous as it is, but of that intellectual
+slavery, the bondage of corrupt and mistaken opinion, which has fettered
+as with iron the moral energies and intellectual strength of New England.
+
+For what is slavery, after all, but fear,--fear, forcing mind and body
+into unnatural action? And it matters little whether it be the terror of
+the slave-whip on the body, or of the scourge of popular opinion upon the
+inner man.
+
+We all know how often the representatives of the Southern division of the
+country have amused themselves in Congress by applying the opprobrious
+name of "slave" to the free Northern laborer. And how familiar have the
+significant epithets of "white slave" and "dough-face" become!
+
+I fear these epithets have not been wholly misapplied. Have we not been
+told here, gravely and authoritatively, by some of our learned judges,
+divines, and politicians, that we, the free people of New England, have
+no right to discuss the subject of slavery? Freemen, and no right to
+suggest the duty or the policy of a practical adherence to the doctrines
+of that immortal declaration upon which our liberties are founded!
+Christians, enjoying perfect liberty of conscience, yet possessing no
+right to breathe one whisper against a system of adultery and blood,
+which is filling the whole land with abomination and blasphemy! And this
+craven sentiment is echoed by the very men whose industry is taxed to
+defray the expenses of twenty-five representatives of property, vested in
+beings fashioned in the awful image of their Maker; by men whose hard
+earnings aid in supporting a standing army mainly for the protection of
+slaveholding indolence; by men who are liable at any moment to be called
+from the field and workshop to put down by force the ever upward
+tendencies of oppressed humanity, to aid the negro-breeder and the negro-
+trader in the prosecution of a traffic most horrible in the eye of God,
+to wall round with their bayonets two millions of colored Americans,
+children of a common Father and heirs of a common eternity, while the
+broken chain is riveted anew and the thrown-off fetter replaced.
+
+I am for the abolition of this kind of slavery. It must be accomplished
+before we can hope to abolish the negro slavery of the country. The
+people of the free states, with a perfect understanding of their own
+rights and a sacred respect for the rights of others, must put their
+strong shoulders to the work of moral reform, and our statesmen, orators,
+and politicians will follow, floating as they must with the tendency of
+the current, the mere indices of popular sentiment. They cannot be
+expected to lead in this matter. They are but instruments in the hands
+of the people for good or evil:--
+
+ "A breath can make them, as a breath has made."
+
+Be it our task to give tone and direction to these instruments; to turn
+the tide of popular feeling into the pure channels of justice; to break
+up the sinful silence of the nation; to bring the vaunted Christianity of
+our age and country to the test of truth; to try the strength and purity
+of our republicanism. If the Christianity we profess has not power to
+pull down the strongholds of prejudice, and overcome hate, and melt the
+heart of oppression, it is not of God. If our republicanism is based on
+other foundation than justice and humanity, let it fall forever.
+
+No better evidence is needed of the suicidal policy of this nation than
+the death-like silence on the subject of slavery which pervades its
+public documents. Who that peruses the annual messages of the national
+executive would, from their perusal alone, conjecture that such an evil
+as slavery had existence among us? Have the people reflected upon the
+cause of this silence? The evil has grown to be too monstrous to be
+questioned. Its very magnitude has sealed the lips of the rulers.
+Uneasily, and troubled with its dream of guilt, the nation sleeps on.
+The volcano is beneath. God is above us.
+
+At every step of our peaceful and legal agitation of this subject we are
+met with one grave objection. We are told that the system which we are
+conscientiously opposing is recognized and protected by the Constitution.
+For all the benefits of our fathers' patriotism--and they are neither few
+nor trifling--let us be grateful to God and to their memories. But it
+should not be forgotten that the same constitutional compact which now
+sanctions slavery guaranteed protection for twenty years to the foreign
+slave-trade. It threw the shield of its "sanctity" around the now
+universally branded pirate. It legalized the most abhorrent system of
+robbery which ever cursed the family of man.
+
+During those years of sinful compromise the crime of man-robbery less
+atrocious than at present? Because the Constitution permitted, in that
+single crime, the violation of all the commandments of God, was that
+violation less terrible to earth or offensive to heaven?
+
+No one now defends that "constitutional" slavetrade. Loaded with the
+curse of God and man, it stands amidst minor iniquities, like Satan in
+Pandemonium, preeminent and monstrous in crime.
+
+And if the slave-trade has become thus odious, what must be the fate,
+erelong, of its parent, slavery? If the mere consequence be thus
+blackening under the execration of all the world, who shall measure the
+dreadful amount of infamy which must finally settle on the cause itself?
+The titled ecclesiastic and the ambitious statesman should have their
+warning on this point. They should know that public opinion is steadily
+turning to the light of truth. The fountains are breaking up around us,
+and the great deep will soon be in motion. A stern, uncompromising, and
+solemn spirit of inquiry is abroad. It cannot be arrested, and its
+result may be easily foreseen. It will not long be popular to talk of
+the legality of soul-murder, the constitutionality of man-robbery.
+
+One word in relation to our duty to our Southern brethren. If we detest
+their system of slavery in our hearts, let us not play the hypocrite with
+our lips. Let us not pay so poor a compliment to their understandings as
+to suppose that we can deceive them into a compliance with our views of
+justice by ambiguous sophistry, and overcome their sinful practices and
+established prejudices by miserable stratagem. Let us not first do
+violence to our consciences by admitting their moral right to property in
+man, and then go to work like so many vagabond pedlers to cheat them out
+of it. They have a right to complain of such treatment. It is mean, and
+wicked, and dishonorable. Let us rather treat our Southern friends as
+intelligent and high-minded men, who, whatever may be their faults,
+despise unmanly artifice, and loathe cant, and abhor hypocrisy.
+Connected with them, not by political ties alone, but by common
+sacrifices and mutual benefits, let us seek to expostulate with them
+earnestly and openly, to gain at least their confidence in our sincerity,
+to appeal to their consciences, reason, and interests; and, using no
+other weapons than those of moral truth, contend fearlessly with the evil
+system they are cherishing. And if, in an immediate compliance with the
+strict demands of justice, they should need our aid and sympathy, let us
+open to them our hearts and our purses. But in the name of sincerity,
+and for the love of peace and the harmony of the Union, let there be no
+more mining and countermining, no more blending of apology with
+denunciation, no more Janus-like systems of reform, with one face for the
+South and another for the North.
+
+If we steadily adhere to the principles upon which we have heretofore
+acted, if we present our naked hearts to the view of all, if we meet the
+threats and violence of our misguided enemies with the bare bosom and
+weaponless hand of innocence, may we not trust that the arm of our
+Heavenly Father will be under us, to strengthen and support us? And
+although we may not be able to save our country from the awful judgment
+she is provoking, though the pillars of the Union fall and all the
+elements of her greatness perish, still let it be our part to rally
+around the standard of truth and justice, to wash our hands of evil, to
+keep our own souls unspotted, and, bearing our testimony and lifting our
+warning voices to the last, leave the event in the hands of a righteous
+God.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
+
+ In 1837 Isaac Knapp printed Letters from John Quincy Adams to his
+ Constituents of the Twelfth Congressional District in Massachusetts,
+ to which is added his Speech in Congress, delivered February 9,
+ 1837, and the following stood as an introduction to the pamphlet.
+
+THE following letters have been published, within a few weeks, in the
+Quincy (Mass.) 'Patriot'. Notwithstanding the great importance of the
+subjects which they discuss, the intense interest which they are
+calculated to awaken throughout this commonwealth and the whole country,
+and the exalted reputation of their author as a profound statesman and
+powerful writer, they are as yet hardly known beyond the limits of the
+constituency to whom they are particularly addressed. The reason of this
+is sufficiently obvious. John Quincy Adams belongs to neither of the
+prominent political parties, fights no partisan battles, and cannot be
+prevailed upon to sacrifice truth and principle upon the altar of party
+expediency and interest. Hence neither party is interested in defending
+his course, or in giving him an opportunity to defend himself. But
+however systematic may be the efforts of mere partisan presses to
+suppress and hold back from the public eye the powerful and triumphant
+vindication of the Right of Petition, the graphic delineation of the
+slavery spirit in Congress, and the humbling disclosure of Northern
+cowardice and treachery, contained in these letters, they are destined to
+exert a powerful influence upon the public mind. They will constitute
+one of the most striking pages in the history of our times. They will be
+read with avidity in the North and in the South, and throughout Europe.
+Apart from the interest excited by the subjects under discussion, and
+viewed only as literary productions, they may be ranked among the highest
+intellectual efforts of their author. Their sarcasm is Junius-like,--
+cold, keen, unsparing. In boldness, directness, and eloquent appeal,
+they will bear comparison with O'Connell's celebrated 'Letters to the
+Reformers of Great Britain'. They are the offspring of an intellect
+unshorn of its primal strength, and combining the ardor of youth with the
+experience of age.
+
+The disclosure made in these letters of the slavery influence exerted in
+Congress over the representatives of the free states, of the manner in
+which the rights of freemen have been bartered for Southern votes, or
+basely yielded to the threats of men educated in despotism, and stamped
+by the free indulgence of unrestrained tyranny with the "odious
+peculiarities" of slavery, is painful and humiliating in the extreme. It
+will be seen that, in the great struggle for and against the Right of
+Petition, an account of which is given in the following pages, their
+author stood, in a great measure, alone and unsupported by his Northern
+colleagues. On his "gray, discrowned head" the entire fury of slave-
+holding arrogance and wrath was expended. He stood alone, beating back,
+with his aged and single arm, the tide which would have borne down and
+overwhelmed a less sturdy and determined spirit.
+
+We need not solicit for these letters, and the speech which accompanies
+them, a thorough perusal. They deserve, and we trust will receive, a
+circulation throughout the entire country. They will meet a cordial
+welcome from every lover of human liberty, from every friend of justice
+and the rights of man, irrespective of color or condition. The
+principles which they defend, the sentiments which they express, are
+those of Massachusetts, as recently asserted, almost unanimously, by her
+legislature. In both branches of that body, during the discussion of the
+subject of slavery and the right of petition, the course of the ex-
+President was warmly and eloquently commended. Massachusetts will
+sustain her tried and faithful representative; and the time is not far
+distant when the best and worthiest citizens of the entire North will
+proffer him their thanks for his noble defence of their rights as
+freemen, and of the rights of the slave as a man.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIBLE AND SLAVERY.
+
+ From a review of a pro-slavery pamphlet by "Evangelicus" in the
+ Boston Emancipator in 1843.
+
+THE second part of the essay is occupied in proving that the slavery in
+the Roman world, at the time of our Saviour, was similar in all essential
+features to American slavery at the present day; and the third and
+concluding part is devoted to an examination of the apostolical
+directions to slaves and masters, as applicable to the same classes in
+the United States. He thinks the command to give to servants that which
+is just and equal means simply that the masters should treat their slaves
+with equity, and that while the servant is to be profitable to the
+master, the latter is bound in "a fair and equitable manner to provide
+for the slave's subsistence and happiness." Although he professes to
+believe that a faithful adherence to Scriptural injunctions on this point
+would eventually terminate in the emancipation of the slaves, he thinks
+it not necessary to inquire whether the New Testament does or does not
+"tolerate slavery as a permanent institution"!
+
+From the foregoing synopsis it will be seen at once that whatever may
+have been the motives of the writer, the effect of his publication, so
+far as it is at all felt, will be to strengthen the oppressor in his
+guilt, and hold him back from the performance of his immediate duty in
+respect to his slaves, and to shield his conscience from the reproofs of
+that class who, according to "Evangelicus," have "no personal
+acquaintance with the actual domestic state or the social and political
+connections of their Southern fellow-citizens." We look upon it only as
+another vain attempt to strike a balance between Christian duty and
+criminal policy, to reconcile Christ and Belial, the holy philanthropy of
+Him who went about doing good with the most abhorrent manifestation of
+human selfishness, lust, and hatred which ever provoked the divine
+displeasure. There is a grave-stone coldness about it. The author
+manifests as little feeling as if he were solving a question in algebra.
+No sigh of sympathy breathes through its frozen pages for the dumb,
+chained millions, no evidence of a feeling akin to that of Him who at the
+grave of Lazarus
+
+ "Wept, and forgot His power to save;"
+
+no outburst of that indignant reproof with which the Divine Master
+rebuked the devourers of widows' houses and the oppressors of the poor is
+called forth by the writer's stoical contemplation of the tyranny of his
+"Christian brethren" at the South.
+
+"It is not necessary," says Evangelicus, "to inquire whether the New
+Testament does not tolerate slavery as a permanent institution." And
+this is said when the entire slave-holding church has sheltered its
+abominations under the pretended sanction of the gospel; when slavery,
+including within itself a violation of every command uttered amidst the
+thunders of Sinai, a system which has filled the whole South with the
+oppression of Egypt and the pollutions of Sodom, is declared to be an
+institution of the Most High. With all due deference to the author, we
+tell him, and we tell the church, North and South, that this question
+must be met. Once more we repeat the solemn inquiry which has been
+already made in our columns, "Is the Bible to enslave the world?" Has it
+been but a vain dream of ours that the mission of the Author of the
+gospel was to undo the heavy burdens, to open the prison doors, and to
+break the yoke of the captive? Let Andover and Princeton answer. If the
+gospel does sanction the vilest wrong which man can inflict upon his
+fellow-man, if it does rivet the chains which humanity, left to itself,
+would otherwise cast off, then, in humanity's name, let it perish forever
+from the face of the earth. Let the Bible societies dissolve; let not
+another sheet issue from their presses. Scatter not its leaves abroad
+over the dark places of the earth; they are not for the healing of the
+nations. Leave rather to the Persian his Zendavesta, to the Mussulman
+his Koran. We repeat it, this question must be met. Already we have
+heard infidelity exulting over the astute discoveries of bespectacled
+theological professors, that the great Head of the Christian Church
+tolerated the horrible atrocities of Roman slavery, and that His most
+favored apostle combined slave-catching with his missionary labors. And
+why should it not exult? Fouler blasphemy than this was never uttered.
+A more monstrous libel upon the Divine Author of Christianity was never
+propagated by Paine or Voltaire, Kneeland or Owen; and we are constrained
+to regard the professor of theology or the doctor of divinity who tasks
+his sophistry and learning in an attempt to show that the Divine Mind
+looks with complacency upon chattel slavery as the most dangerous enemy
+with which Christianity has to contend. The friends of pure and
+undefiled religion must awake to this danger. The Northern church must
+shake itself clean from its present connection with blasphemers and
+slave-holders, or perish with them.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT IS SLAVERY
+
+
+ Addressed to the Liberty Party Convention at New Bedford in
+ September, 1843.
+
+I HAVE just received your kind invitation to attend the meeting of the
+Liberty Party in New Bedford on the 2d of next month. Believe me, it is
+with no ordinary feelings of regret that I find myself under the
+necessity of foregoing the pleasure of meeting with you on that occasion.
+But I need not say to you, and through you to the convention, that you
+have my hearty sympathy.
+
+I am with the Liberty Party because it is the only party in the country
+which is striving openly and honestly to reduce to practice the great
+truths which lie at the foundation of our republic: all men created
+equal, endowed with rights inalienable; the security of these rights the
+only just object of government; the right of the people to alter or
+modify government until this great object is attained. Precious and
+glorious truths! Sacred in the sight of their Divine Author, grateful
+and beneficent to suffering humanity, essential elements of that ultimate
+and universal government of which God is laying the strong and wide
+foundations, turning and overturning, until He whose right it is shall
+rule. The voice which calls upon us to sustain them is the voice of God.
+In the eloquent language of the lamented Myron Holley, the man who first
+lifted up the standard of the Liberty Party: "He calls upon us to sustain
+these truths in the recorded voice of the holy of ancient times. He
+calls us to sustain them in the sound as of many waters and mighty
+thunderings rising from the fields of Europe, converted into one vast
+Aceldama by the exertions of despots to suppress them; in the persuasive
+history of the best thoughts and boldest deeds of all our brave, self-
+sacrificing ancestors; in the tender, heart-reaching whispers of our
+children, preparing to suffer or enjoy the future, as we leave it for
+them; in the broken and disordered but moving accents of half our race
+yet groping in darkness and galled by the chains of bondage. He calls
+upon us to sustain them by the solemn and considerate use of all the
+powers with which He has invested us." In a time of almost universal
+political scepticism, in the midst of a pervading and growing unbelief in
+the great principles enunciated in the revolutionary declaration, the
+Liberty Party has dared to avow its belief in these truths, and to carry
+them into action as far as it has the power. It is a protest against the
+political infidelity of the day, a recurrence to first principles, a
+summons once more to that deserted altar upon which our fathers laid
+their offerings.
+
+It may be asked why it is that a party resting upon such broad principles
+is directing its exclusive exertions against slavery. "Are there not
+other great interests?" ask all manner of Whig and Democrat editors and
+politicians. "Consider, for instance," say the Democrats, "the mighty
+question which is agitating us, whether a 'Northern man with Southern
+principles' or a Southern man with the principles of a Nero or Caligula
+shall be President." "Or look at us," say the Whigs, "deprived of our
+inalienable right to office by this Tyler-Calhoun administration. And
+bethink you, gentlemen, how could your Liberty Party do better than to
+vote with us for a man who, if he does hold some threescore of slaves,
+and maintain that 'two hundred years of legislation has sanctioned and
+sanctified negro slavery,' is, at the same time, the champion of Greek
+liberty, and Polish liberty, and South American liberty, and, in short,
+of all sorts of liberties, save liberty at home."
+
+Yes, friends, we have considered all this, and more, namely, that one
+sixth part of our entire population are slaves, and that you, with your
+subtreasuries and national banks, propose no relief for them. Nay,
+farther, it is because both of you, when in power, have used your
+authority to rivet closer the chains of unhappy millions, that we have
+been compelled to abandon you, and form a liberty party having for its
+first object the breaking of these chains.
+
+What is slavery? For upon the answer to this question must the Liberty
+Party depend for its justification.
+
+The slave laws of the South tell us that it is the conversion of men into
+articles of property; the transformation of sentient immortal beings into
+"chattels personal." The principle of a reciprocity of benefits, which
+to some extent characterizes all other relations, does not exist in that
+of master and slave. The master holds the plough which turns the soil of
+his plantation, the horse which draws it, and the slave who guides it by
+one and the same tenure. The profit of the master is the great end of
+the slave's existence. For this end he is fed, clothed, and prescribed
+for in sickness. He learns nothing, acquires nothing, for himself. He
+cannot use his own body for his own benefit. His very personality is
+destroyed. He is a mere instrument, a means in the hands of another for
+the accomplishment of an end in which his own interests are not regarded,
+a machine moved not by his own will, but by another's. In him the awful
+distinction between a person and a thing is annihilated: he is thrust
+down from the place which God and Nature assigned him, from the equal
+companionship of rational intelligence's,--a man herded with beasts, an
+immortal nature classed with the wares of the merchant!
+
+The relations of parent and child, master and apprentice, government and
+subject, are based upon the principle of benevolence, reciprocal
+benefits, and the wants of human society; relations which sacredly
+respect the rights and legacies which God has given to all His rational
+creatures. But slavery exists only by annihilating or monopolizing these
+rights and legacies. In every other modification of society, man's
+personal ownership remains secure. He may be oppressed, deprived of
+privileges, loaded with burdens, hemmed about with legal disabilities,
+his liberties restrained. But, through all, the right to his own body
+and soul remains inviolate. He retains his inherent, original possession
+of himself. Even crime cannot forfeit it, for that law which destroys
+his personality makes void its own claims upon him as a moral agent; and
+the power to punish ceases with the accountability of the criminal. He
+may suffer and die under the penalties of the law, but he suffers as a
+man, he perishes as a man, and not as a thing. To the last moments of
+his existence the rights of a moral agent are his; they go with him to
+the grave; they constitute the ground of his accountability at the bar of
+infinite justice,--rights fixed, eternal, inseparable; attributes of all
+rational intelligence in time and eternity; the same in essence, and
+differing in degree only, with those of the highest moral being, of God
+himself.
+
+Slavery alone lays its grasp upon the right of personal ownership, that
+foundation right, the removal of which uncreates the man; a right which
+God himself could not take away without absolving the being thus deprived
+of all moral accountability; and so far as that being is concerned,
+making sin and holiness, crime and virtue, words without significance,
+and the promises and sanctions of revelation, dreams. Hence, the
+crowning horror of slavery, that which lifts it above all other
+iniquities, is not that it usurps the prerogatives of Deity, but that it
+attempts that which even He who has said, "All souls are mine," cannot
+do, without breaking up the foundations of His moral government. Slavery
+is, in fact, a struggle with the Almighty for dominion over His rational
+creatures. It is leagued with the powers of darkness, in wresting man
+from his Maker. It is blasphemy lifting brazen brow and violent hand to
+heaven, attempting a reversal of God's laws. Man claiming the right to
+uncreate his brother; to undo that last and most glorious work, which God
+himself pronounced good, amidst the rejoicing hosts of heaven! Man
+arrogating to himself the right to change, for his own selfish purposes,
+the beautiful order of created existences; to pluck the crown of an
+immortal nature, scarce lower than that of angels, from the brow of his
+brother; to erase the God-like image and superscription stamped upon him
+by the hand of his Creator, and to write on the despoiled and desecrated
+tablet, "A chattel personal!"
+
+This, then, is slavery. Nature, with her thousand voices, cries out
+against it. Against it, divine revelation launches its thunders. The
+voice of God condemns it in the deep places of the human heart. The woes
+and wrongs unutterable which attend this dreadful violation of natural
+justice, the stripes, the tortures, the sunderings of kindred, the
+desolation of human affections, the unchastity and lust, the toil
+uncompensated, the abrogated marriage, the legalized heathenism, the
+burial of the mind, are but the mere incidentals of the first grand
+outrage, that seizure of the entire man, nerve, sinew, and spirit, which
+robs him of his body, and God of his soul. These are but the natural
+results and outward demonstrations of slavery, the crystallizations from
+the chattel principle.
+
+It is against this system, in its active operation upon three millions of
+our countrymen, that the Liberty Party is, for the present, directing all
+its efforts. With such an object well may we be "men of one idea." Nor
+do we neglect "other great interests," for all are colored and controlled
+by slavery, and the removal of this disastrous influence would most
+effectually benefit them.
+
+Political action is the result and immediate object of moral suasion on
+this subject. Action, action, is the spirit's means of progress, its
+sole test of rectitude, its only source of happiness. And should not
+decided action follow our deep convictions of the wrong of slavery?
+Shall we denounce the slave-holders of the states, while we retain our
+slavery in the District of Columbia? Shall we pray that the God of the
+oppressed will turn the hearts of "the rulers" in South Carolina, while
+we, the rulers of the District, refuse to open the prisons and break up
+the slave-markets on its ten miles square? God keep us from such
+hypocrisy! Everybody now professes to be opposed to slavery. The
+leaders of the two great political parties are grievously concerned lest
+the purity of the antislavery enterprise will suffer in its connection
+with politics. In the midst of grossest pro-slavery action, they are
+full of anti-slavery sentiment. They love the cause, but, on the whole,
+think it too good for this world. They would keep it sublimated, aloft,
+out of vulgar reach or use altogether, intangible as Magellan's clouds.
+Everybody will join us in denouncing slavery, in the abstract; not a
+faithless priest nor politician will oppose us; abandon action, and
+forsooth we can have an abolition millennium; the wolf shall lie down
+with the lamb, while slavery in practice clanks, in derision, its three
+millions of unbroken chains. Our opponents have no fear of the harmless
+spectre of an abstract idea. They dread it only when it puts on the
+flesh and sinews of a practical reality, and lifts its right arm in the
+strength which God giveth to do as well as theorize.
+
+As honest men, then, we must needs act; let us do so as becomes men
+engaged in a great and solemn cause. Not by processions and idle parades
+and spasmodic enthusiasms, by shallow tricks and shows and artifices, can
+a cause like ours be carried onward. Leave these to parties contending
+for office, as the "spoils of victory." We need no disguises, nor false
+pretences, nor subterfuges; enough for us to present before our fellow-
+countrymen the holy truths of freedom, in their unadorned and native
+beauty. Dark as the present may seem, let us remember with hearty
+confidence that truth and right are destined to triumph. Let us blot out
+the word "discouragement" from the anti-slavery vocabulary. Let the
+enemies of freedom be discouraged; let the advocates of oppression
+despair; but let those who grapple with wrong and falsehood, in the name
+of God and in the power of His truth, take courage. Slavery must die.
+The Lord hath spoken it. The vials of His hot displeasure, like those
+which chastised the nations in the Apocalyptic vision, are smoking even
+now, above its "habitations of cruelty." It can no longer be borne with
+by Heaven. Universal humanity cries out against it. Let us work, then,
+to hasten its downfall, doing whatsoever our hands find to do, "with all
+our might."
+
+October, 1843.
+
+
+
+
+DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. (1843.)
+
+THE great leader of American Democracy, Thomas Jefferson, was an
+ultra-abolitionist in theory, while from youth to age a slave-holder in
+practice. With a zeal which never abated, with a warmth which the frost
+of years could not chill, he urged the great truths, that each man should
+be the guardian of his own weal; that one man should never have absolute
+control over another. He maintained the entire equality of the race, the
+inherent right of self-ownership, the equal claim of all to a fair
+participation in the enactment of the laws by which they are governed.
+
+He saw clearly that slavery, as it existed in the South and on his own
+plantation, was inconsistent with this doctrine. His early efforts for
+emancipation in Virginia failed of success; but he next turned his
+attention to the vast northwestern territory, and laid the foundation of
+that ordinance of 1787, which, like the flaming sword of the angel at the
+gates of Paradise, has effectually guarded that territory against the
+entrance of slavery. Nor did he stop here. He was the friend and
+admirer of the ultra-abolitionists of revolutionary France; he warmly
+urged his British friend, Dr. Price, to send his anti-slavery pamphlets
+into Virginia; he omitted no opportunity to protest against slavery as
+anti-democratic, unjust, and dangerous to the common welfare; and in his
+letter to the territorial governor of Illinois, written in old age, he
+bequeathed, in earnest and affecting language, the cause of negro
+emancipation to the rising generation. "This enterprise," said he, "is
+for the young, for those who can carry it forward to its consummation.
+It shall have all my prayers, and these are the only weapons of an old
+man."
+
+Such was Thomas Jefferson, the great founder of American Democracy, the
+advocate of the equality of human rights, irrespective of any conditions
+of birth, or climate, or color. His political doctrines, it is strange
+to say, found their earliest recipients and most zealous admirers in the
+slave states of the Union. The privileged class of slaveholders, whose
+rank and station "supersede the necessity of an order of nobility,"
+became earnest advocates of equality among themselves--the democracy of
+aristocracy. With the misery and degradation of servitude always before
+them, in the condition of their own slaves, an intense love of personal
+independence, and a haughty impatience of any control over their actions,
+prepared them to adopt the democratic idea, so far as it might be applied
+to their own order. Of that enlarged and generous democracy, the love,
+not of individual freedom alone, but of the rights and liberties of all
+men, the unselfish desire to give to others the privileges which all men
+value for themselves, we are constrained to believe the great body of
+Thomas Jefferson's slave-holding admirers had no adequate conception.
+They were just such democrats as the patricians of Rome and the
+aristocracy of Venice; lords over their own plantations, a sort of "holy
+alliance" of planters, admitting and defending each other's divine right
+of mastership.
+
+Still, in Virginia, Maryland, and in other sections of the slave states,
+truer exponents and exemplifiers of the idea of democracy, as it existed
+in the mind of Jefferson, were not wanting. In the debate on the
+memorials presented to the first Congress of the United States, praying
+for the abolition of slavery, the voice of the Virginia delegation in
+that body was unanimous in deprecation of slavery as an evil, social,
+moral, and political. In the Virginia constitutional convention--of 1829
+there were men who had the wisdom to perceive and the firmness to declare
+that slavery was not only incompatible with the honor and prosperity of
+the state, but wholly indefensible on any grounds which could be
+consistently taken by a republican people. In the debate on the same
+subject in the legislature in 1832, universal and impartial democracy
+found utterance from eloquent lips. We might say as much of Kentucky,
+the child of Virginia. But it remains true that these were exceptions to
+the general rule. With the language of universal liberty on their lips,
+and moved by the most zealous spirit of democratic propagandism, the
+greater number of the slave-holders of the Union seem never to have
+understood the true meaning, or to have measured the length and breadth
+of that doctrine which they were the first to adopt, and of which they
+have claimed all along to be the peculiar and chosen advocates.
+
+The Northern States were slow to adopt the Democratic creed. The
+oligarchy of New England, and the rich proprietors and landholders of the
+Middle States, turned with alarm and horror from the levelling doctrines
+urged upon them by the "liberty and equality" propagandists of the South.
+The doctrines of Virginia were quite as unpalatable to Massachusetts at
+the beginning of the present century as those of Massachusetts now are to
+the Old Dominion. Democracy interfered with old usages and time-honored
+institutions, and threatened to plough up the very foundations of the
+social fabric. It was zealously opposed by the representatives of New
+England in Congress and in the home legislatures; and in many pulpits
+hands were lifted to God in humble entreaty that the curse and bane of
+democracy, an offshoot of the rabid Jacobinism of revolutionary France,
+might not be permitted to take root and overshadow the goodly heritage of
+Puritanism. The alarmists of the South, in their most fervid pictures of
+the evils to be apprehended from the prevalence of anti-slavery doctrines
+in their midst, have drawn nothing more fearful than the visions of such
+
+ "Prophets of war and harbingers of ill"
+
+as Fisher Ames in the forum and Parish in the desk, when contemplating
+the inroads of Jeffersonian democracy upon the politics, religion, and
+property of the North.
+
+But great numbers of the free laborers of the Northern States, the
+mechanics and small farmers, took a very different view of the matter.
+The doctrines of Jefferson were received as their political gospel. It
+was in vain that federalism denounced with indignation the impertinent
+inconsistency of slave-holding interference in behalf of liberty in the
+free states. Come the doctrine from whom it might, the people felt it to
+be true. State after state revolted from the ranks of federalism, and
+enrolled itself on the side of democracy. The old order of things was
+broken up; equality before the law was established, religious tests and
+restrictions of the right of suffrage were abrogated. Take
+Massachusetts, for example. There the resistance to democratic
+principles was the most strenuous and longest continued. Yet, at this
+time, there is no state in the Union more thorough in its practical
+adoption of them. No property qualifications or religious tests prevail;
+all distinctions of sect, birth, or color, are repudiated, and suffrage
+is universal. The democracy, which in the South has only been held in a
+state of gaseous abstraction, hardened into concrete reality in the cold
+air of the North. The ideal became practical, for it had found lodgment
+among men who were accustomed to act out their convictions and test all
+their theories by actual experience.
+
+While thus making a practical application of the new doctrine, the people
+of the free states could not but perceive the incongruity of democracy
+and slavery.
+
+Selleck Osborn, who narrowly escaped the honor of a Democratic martyr in
+Connecticut, denounced slave-holding, in common with other forms of
+oppression. Barlow, fresh from communion with Gregoire, Brissot, and
+Robespierre, devoted to negro slavery some of the most vigorous and
+truthful lines of his great poem. Eaton, returning from his romantic
+achievements in Tunis for the deliverance of white slaves, improved the
+occasion to read a lecture to his countrymen on the inconsistency and
+guilt of holding blacks in servitude. In the Missouri struggle of 1819-
+20, the people of the free states, with a few ignoble exceptions, took
+issue with the South against the extension of slavery. Some ten years
+later, the present antislavery agitation commenced. It originated,
+beyond a question, in the democratic element. With the words of
+Jefferson on their lips, young, earnest, and enthusiastic men called the
+attention of the community to the moral wrong and political reproach of
+slavery. In the name and spirit of democracy, the moral and political
+powers of the people were invoked to limit, discountenance, and put an
+end to a system so manifestly subversive of its foundation principles.
+It was a revival of the language of Jefferson and Page and Randolph, an
+echo of the voice of him who penned the Declaration of Independence and
+originated the ordinance of 1787.
+
+Meanwhile the South had wellnigh forgotten the actual significance of the
+teachings of its early political prophets, and their renewal in the shape
+of abolitionism was, as might have been expected, strange and unwelcome.
+Pleasant enough it had been to hold up occasionally these democratic
+abstractions for the purpose of challenging the world's admiration and
+cheaply acquiring the character of lovers of liberty and equality.
+Frederick of Prussia, apostrophizing the shades of Cato and Brutus,
+
+ "Vous de la liberte heros que je revere,"
+
+while in the full exercise of his despotic power, was quite as consistent
+as these democratic slaveowners, whose admiration of liberty increased in
+exact ratio with its distance from their own plantations. They had not
+calculated upon seeing their doctrine clothed with life and power, a
+practical reality, pressing for application to their slaves as well as to
+themselves. They had not taken into account the beautiful ordination of
+Providence, that no man can vindicate his own rights, without directly or
+impliedly including in that vindication the rights of all other men. The
+haughty and oppressive barons who wrung from their reluctant monarch the
+Great Charter at Runnymede, acting only for themselves and their class,
+little dreamed of the universal application which has since been made of
+their guaranty of rights and liberties. As little did the nobles of the
+parliament of Paris, when strengthening themselves by limiting the kingly
+prerogative, dream of the emancipation of their own serfs, by a
+revolution to which they were blindly giving the first impulse. God's
+truth is universal; it cannot be monopolized by selfishness.
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO PROCESSIONS. (1844.)
+
+ "Look upon this picture, and on this." HAMLET.
+
+CONSIDERING that we have a slave population of nearly three millions, and
+that in one half of the states of the Republic it is more hazardous to
+act upon the presumption that "all men are created free and equal" than
+it would be in Austria or Russia, the lavish expression of sympathy and
+extravagant jubilation with which, as a people, we are accustomed to
+greet movements in favor of freedom abroad are not a little remarkable.
+We almost went into ecstasies over the first French revolution; we filled
+our papers with the speeches of orator Hunt and the English radicals; we
+fraternized with the United Irishmen; we hailed as brothers in the cause
+of freedom the very Mexicans whom we have since wasted with fire and
+sword; our orators, North and South, grew eloquent and classic over the
+Greek and Polish revolutions. In short, long ere this, if the walls of
+kingcraft and despotism had been, like those of Jericho, destined to be
+overthrown by sound, our Fourth of July cannon-shootings and bell-
+ringings, together with our fierce, grandiloquent speech-makings in and
+out of Congress, on the occasions referred to, would have left no stone
+upon another.
+
+It is true that an exception must be made in the case of Hayti. We fired
+no guns, drank no toasts, made no speeches in favor of the establishment
+of that new republic in our neighborhood. The very mention of the
+possibility that Haytien delegates might ask admittance to the congress
+of the free republics of the New World at Panama "frightened from their
+propriety" the eager propagandists of republicanism in the Senate, and
+gave a death-blow to their philanthropic projects. But as Hayti is a
+republic of blacks who, having revolted from their masters as well as
+from the mother country, have placed themselves entirely without the pale
+of Anglo-Saxon sympathy by their impertinent interference with the
+monopoly of white liberty, this exception by no means disproves the
+general fact, that in the matter of powder-burning, bell-jangling,
+speech-making, toast-drinking admiration of freedom afar off and in the
+abstract we have no rivals. The caricature of our "general sympathizers"
+in Martin Chuzzlewit is by no means a fancy sketch.
+
+The news of the revolution of the three days in Paris, and the triumph of
+the French people over Charles X. and his ministers, as a matter of
+course acted with great effect upon our national susceptibility. We all
+threw up our hats in excessive joy at the spectacle of a king dashed down
+headlong from his throne and chased out of his kingdom by his long-
+suffering and oppressed subjects. We took half the credit of the
+performance to ourselves, inasmuch as Lafayette was a principal actor in
+it. Our editors, from Passamaquoddy to the Sabine, indited paragraphs
+for a thousand and one newspapers, congratulating the Parisian patriots,
+and prophesying all manner of evil to holy alliances, kings, and
+aristocracies. The National Intelligencer for September 27, 1830,
+contains a full account of the public rejoicings of the good people of
+Washington on the occasion. Bells were rung in all the steeples, guns
+were fired, and a grand procession was formed, including the President of
+the United States, the heads of departments, and other public
+functionaries. Decorated with tricolored ribbons, and with tricolored
+flags mingling with the stripes and stars over their heads, and gazed
+down upon by bright eyes from window and balcony, the "general
+sympathizers" moved slowly and majestically through the broad avenue
+towards the Capitol to celebrate the revival of French liberty in a
+manner becoming the chosen rulers of a free people.
+
+What a spectacle was this for the representatives of European kingcraft
+at our seat of government! How the titled agents of Metternich and
+Nicholas must have trembled, in view of this imposing demonstration, for
+the safety of their "peculiar institutions!"
+
+Unluckily, however, the moral effect of this grand spectacle was marred
+somewhat by the appearance of another procession, moving in a contrary
+direction. It was a gang of slaves! Handcuffed in pairs, with the
+sullen sadness of despair in their faces, they marched wearily onward to
+the music of the driver's whip and the clanking iron on their limbs.
+Think of it! Shouts of triumph, rejoicing bells, gay banners, and
+glittering cavalcades, in honor of Liberty, in immediate contrast with
+men and women chained and driven like cattle to market! The editor of
+the American Spectator, a paper published at Washington at that time,
+speaking of this black procession of slavery, describes it as "driven
+along by what had the appearance of a man on horseback." The miserable
+wretches who composed it were doubtless consigned to a slave-jail to
+await their purchase and transportation to the South or Southwest; and
+perhaps formed a part of that drove of human beings which the same editor
+states that he saw on the Saturday following, "males and females chained
+in couples, starting from Robey's tavern, on foot, for Alexandria, to
+embark on board a slave-ship."
+
+At a Virginia camp-meeting, many years ago, one of the brethren,
+attempting an exhortation, stammered, faltered, and finally came to a
+dead stand. "Sit down, brother," said old Father Kyle, the one-eyed
+abolition preacher; "it's no use to try; you can't preach with twenty
+negroes sticking in your throat!" It strikes us that our country is very
+much in the condition of the poor confused preacher at the camp-meeting.
+Slavery sticks in its throat, and spoils its finest performances,
+political and ecclesiastical; confuses the tongues of its evangelical
+alliances; makes a farce of its Fourth of July celebrations; and, as in
+the case of the grand Washington procession of 1830, sadly mars the
+effect of its rejoicings in view of the progress of liberty abroad.
+There is a stammer in all our exhortations; our moral and political
+homilies are sure to run into confusions and contradictions; and the
+response which comes to us from the nations is not unlike that of Father
+Kyle to the planter's attempt at sermonizing: "It's no use, brother
+Jonathan; you can't preach liberty with three millions of slaves in your
+throat!"
+
+
+
+
+A CHAPTER OF HISTORY. (1844.)
+
+THE theory which a grave and learned Northern senator has recently
+announced in Congress, that slavery, like the cotton-plant, is confined
+by natural laws to certain parallels of latitude, beyond which it can by
+no possibility exist, however it may have satisfied its author and its
+auditors, has unfortunately no verification in the facts of the case.
+Slavery is singularly cosmopolitan in its habits. The offspring of
+pride, and lust, and avarice, it is indigenous to the world. Rooted in
+the human heart, it defies the rigors of winter in the steppes of Tartary
+and the fierce sun of the tropics. It has the universal acclimation of
+sin.
+
+The first account we have of negro slaves in New England is from the pen
+of John Josselyn. Nineteen years after the landing at Plymouth, this
+interesting traveller was for some time the guest of Samuel Maverick, who
+then dwelt, like a feudal baron, in his fortalice on Noddle's Island,
+surrounded by retainers and servants, bidding defiance to his Indian
+neighbors behind his strong walls, with "four great guns" mounted
+thereon, and "giving entertainment to all new-comers gratis."
+
+"On the 2d of October, 1639, about nine o'clock in the morning, Mr.
+Maverick's negro woman," says Josselyn, "came to my chamber, and in her
+own country language and tune sang very loud and shrill. Going out to
+her, she used a great deal of respect towards me, and would willingly
+have expressed her grief in English had she been able to speak the
+language; but I apprehended it by her countenance and deportment.
+Whereupon I repaired to my host to learn of him the cause, and resolved
+to entreat him in her behalf; for I had understood that she was a queen
+in her own country, and observed a very dutiful and humble garb used
+towards her by another negro, who was her maid. Mr. Maverick was
+desirous to have a breed of negroes; and therefore, seeing she would not
+yield by persuasions to company with a negro young man he had in his
+house, he commanded him, willed she, nilled she, to go to her bed, which
+was no sooner done than she thrust him out again. This she took in high
+disdain beyond her slavery; and this was the cause of her grief."
+
+That the peculiar domestic arrangements and unfastidious economy of this
+slave-breeding settler were not countenanced by the Puritans of that
+early time we have sufficient evidence. It is but fair to suppose, from
+the silence of all other writers of the time with respect to negroes and
+slaves, that this case was a marked exception to the general habits and
+usage of the Colonists. At an early period a traffic was commenced
+between the New England Colonies and that of Barbadoes; and it is not
+improbable that slaves were brought to Boston from that island. The
+laws, however, discouraged their introduction and purchase, giving
+freedom to all held to service at the close of seven years.
+
+In 1641, two years after Josselyn's adventure on Noddle's Island, the
+code of laws known by the name of the Body of Liberties was adopted by
+the Colony. It was drawn up by Nathaniel Ward, the learned and ingenious
+author of the 'Simple Cobbler of Agawarn', the earliest poetical satire
+of New England. One of its provisions was as follows:--
+
+"There shall be never any bond slaverie, villainage, or captivitie
+amongst us, unless it be lawfull captives taken in just warres and such
+strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us. And these
+shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God
+established in Israel doth morally require."
+
+In 1646, Captain Smith, a Boston church-member, in connection with one
+Keeser, brought home two negroes whom he obtained by the surprise and
+burning of a negro village in Africa and the massacre of many of its
+inhabitants. Sir Richard Saltonstall, one of the assistants, presented a
+petition to the General Court, stating the outrage thereby committed as
+threefold in its nature, namely murder, man-stealing, and Sabbath-
+breaking; inasmuch as the offence of "chasing the negers, as aforesayde,
+upon the Sabbath day (being a servile work, and such as cannot be
+considered under any other head) is expressly capital by the law of God;"
+for which reason he prays that the offenders may be brought to justice,
+"soe that the sin they have committed may be upon their own heads and not
+upon ourselves."
+
+Upon this petition the General Court passed the following order,
+eminently worthy of men professing to rule in the fear and according to
+the law of God,--a terror to evil-doers, and a praise to them that do
+well:--
+
+"The General Court, conceiving themselves bound by the first opportunity
+to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin of man-stealing, as
+also to prescribe such timely redress for what has passed, and such a law
+for the future as may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us to
+have to do in such vile and odious courses, justly abhorred of all good
+and just men, do order that the negro interpreter, and others unlawfully
+taken, be by the first opportunity, at the charge of the country for the
+present, sent to his native country, Guinea, and a letter with him of the
+indignation of the Court thereabout, and justice thereof, desiring our
+honored Governor would please put this order in execution."
+
+There is, so far as we know, no historical record of the actual return of
+these stolen men to their home. A letter is extant, however, addressed
+in behalf of the General Court to a Mr. Williams on the Piscataqua, by
+whom one of the negroes had been purchased, requesting him to send the
+man forthwith to Boston, that he may be sent home, "which this Court do
+resolve to send back without delay."
+
+Three years after, in 1649, the following law was placed upon the
+statute-book of the Massachusetts Colony:--
+
+"If any man stealeth a man, or mankind, he shall surely be put to death."
+
+It will thus be seen that these early attempts to introduce slavery into
+New England were opposed by severe laws and by that strong popular
+sentiment in favor of human liberty which characterized the Christian
+radicals who laid the foundations of the Colonies. It was not the rigor
+of her Northern winter, nor the unkindly soil of Massachusetts, which
+discouraged the introduction of slavery in the first half-century of her
+existence as a colony. It was the Puritan's recognition of the
+brotherhood of man in sin, suffering, and redemption, his estimate of the
+awful responsibilities and eternal destinies of humanity, his hatred of
+wrong and tyranny, and his stern sense of justice, which led him to
+impose upon the African slave-trader the terrible penalty of the Mosaic
+code.
+
+But that brave old generation passed away. The civil contentions in the
+mother country drove across the seas multitudes of restless adventurers
+and speculators. The Indian wars unsettled and demoralized the people.
+Habits of luxury and the greed of gain took the place of the severe self-
+denial and rigid virtues of the fathers. Hence we are not surprised to
+find that Josselyn, in his second visit to New England, some twenty-five
+years after his first, speaks of the great increase of servants and
+negroes. In 1680 Governor Bradstreet, in answer to the inquiries of his
+Majesty's Privy Council, states that two years before a vessel from
+Madagasca "brought into the Colony betwixt forty and fifty negroes,
+mostly women and children, who were sold at a loss to the owner of the
+vessel." "Now and then," he continues, "two or three negroes are brought
+from Barbadoes and other of his Majesty's plantations and sold for twenty
+pounds apiece; so that there may be within the government about one
+hundred or one hundred and twenty, and it may be as many Scots, brought
+hither and sold for servants in the time of the war with Scotland, and
+about half as many Irish."
+
+The owning of a black or white slave, or servant, at this period was
+regarded as an evidence of dignity and respectability; and hence
+magistrates and clergymen winked at the violation of the law by the
+mercenary traders, and supplied themselves without scruple. Indian
+slaves were common, and are named in old wills, deeds, and inventories,
+with horses, cows, and household furniture. As early as the year 1649 we
+find William Hilton, of Newbury, sells to George Carr, "for one quarter
+part of a vessel, James, my Indian, with all the interest I have in him,
+to be his servant forever." Some were taken in the Narragansett war and
+other Indian wars; others were brought from South Carolina and the
+Spanish Main. It is an instructive fact, as illustrating the retributive
+dealings of Providence, that the direst affliction of the Massachusetts
+Colony--the witchcraft terror of 1692--originated with the Indian Tituba,
+a slave in the family of the minister of Danvers.
+
+In the year 1690 the inhabitants of Newbury were greatly excited by the
+arrest of a Jerseyman who had been engaged in enticing Indians and
+negroes to leave their masters. He was charged before the court with
+saying that "the English should be cut off and the negroes set free."
+James, a negro slave, and Joseph, an Indian, were arrested with him.
+Their design was reported to be, to seize a vessel in the port and escape
+to Canada and join the French, and return and lay waste and plunder their
+masters. They were to come back with five hundred Indians and three
+hundred Canadians; and the place of crossing the Merrimac River, and of
+the first encampment on the other side, were even said to be fixed upon.
+When we consider that there could not have been more than a score of
+slaves in the settlement, the excitement into which the inhabitants were
+thrown by this absurd rumor of conspiracy seems not very unlike that of a
+convocation of small planters in a backwoods settlement in South Carolina
+on finding an anti-slavery newspaper in their weekly mail bag.
+
+In 1709 Colonel Saltonstall, of Haverhill, had several negroes, and among
+them a high-spirited girl, who, for some alleged misdemeanor, was
+severely chastised. The slave resolved upon revenge for her injury, and
+soon found the means of obtaining it. The Colonel had on hand, for
+service in the Indian war then raging, a considerable store of gunpowder.
+This she placed under the room in which her master and mistress slept,
+laid a long train, and dropped a coal on it. She had barely time to
+escape to the farm-house before the explosion took place, shattering the
+stately mansion into fragments. Saltonstall and his wife were carried on
+their bed a considerable distance, happily escaping serious injury. Some
+soldiers stationed in the house were scattered in all directions; but no
+lives were lost. The Colonel, on recovering from the effects of his
+sudden overturn, hastened to the farm-house and found his servants all up
+save the author of the mischief, who was snug in bed and apparently in a
+quiet sleep.
+
+In 1701 an attempt was made in the General Court of Massachusetts to
+prevent the increase of slaves. Judge Sewall soon after published a
+pamphlet against slavery, but it seems with little effect. Boston
+merchants and ship-owners became, to a considerable extent, involved in
+the slave-trade. Distilleries, established in that place and in Rhode
+Island, furnished rum for the African market. The slaves were usually
+taken to the West Indies, although occasionally part of a cargo found its
+way to New England, where the wholesome old laws against man-stealing had
+become a dead letter on the statute-book.
+
+In 1767 a bill was brought before the Legislature of Massachusetts to
+prevent "the unwarrantable and unnatural custom of enslaving mankind."
+The Council of Governor Bernard sent it back to the House greatly changed
+and curtailed, and it was lost by the disagreement of the two branches.
+Governor Bernard threw his influence on the side of slavery. In 1774 a
+bill prohibiting the traffic in slaves passed both Houses; but Governor
+Hutchinson withheld his assent and dismissed the Legislature. The
+colored men sent a deputation of their own to the Governor to solicit his
+consent to the bill; but he told them his instructions forbade him. A
+similar committee waiting upon General Gage received the same answer.
+
+In the year 1770 a servant of Richard Lechmere, of Cambridge, stimulated
+by the general discussion of the slavery question and by the advice of
+some of the zealous advocates of emancipation, brought an action against
+his master for detaining him in bondage. The suit was decided in his
+favor two years before the similar decision in the case of Somerset in
+England. The funds necessary for carrying on this suit were raised among
+the blacks themselves. Other suits followed in various parts of the
+Province; and the result was, in every instance, the freedom of the
+plaintiff. In 1773 Caesar Hendrick sued his master, one Greenleaf, of
+Newburyport, for damages, laid at fifty pounds, for holding him as a
+slave. The jury awarded him his freedom and eighteen pounds.
+
+According to Dr. Belknap, whose answers to the queries on the subject,
+propounded by Judge Tucker, of Virginia, have furnished us with many of
+the facts above stated, the principal grounds upon which the counsel of
+the masters depended were, that the negroes were purchased in open
+market, and included in the bills of sale like other property; that
+slavery was sanctioned by usage; and, finally, that the laws of the
+Province recognized its existence by making masters liable for the
+maintenance of their slaves, or servants.
+
+On the part of the blacks, the law and usage of the mother country,
+confirmed by the Great Charter, that no man can be deprived of his
+liberty but by the judgment of his peers, were effectually pleaded. The
+early laws of the Province prohibited slavery, and no subsequent
+legislation had sanctioned it; for, although the laws did recognize its
+existence, they did so only to mitigate and modify an admitted evil.
+
+The present state constitution was established in 1780. The first
+article of the Bill of Rights prohibited slavery by affirming the
+foundation truth of our republic, that "all men are born free and equal."
+The Supreme Court decided in 1783 that no man could hold another as
+property without a direct violation of that article.
+
+In 1788 three free black citizens of Boston were kidnapped and sold into
+slavery in one of the French islands. An intense excitement followed.
+Governor Hancock took efficient measures for reclaiming the unfortunate
+men. The clergy of Boston petitioned the Legislature for a total
+prohibition of the foreign slave-trade. The Society of Friends, and the
+blacks generally, presented similar petitions; and the same year an act
+was passed prohibiting the slave-trade and granting relief to persons
+kidnapped or decoyed out of the Commonwealth. The fear of a burden to
+the state from the influx of negroes from abroad led the Legislature, in
+connection with this law, to prevent those who were not citizens of the
+state or of other states from gaining a residence.
+
+The first case of the arrest of a fugitive slave in Massachusetts under
+the law of 1793 took place in Boston soon after the passage of the law.
+It is the case to which President Quincy alludes in his late letter
+against the fugitive slave law. The populace at the trial aided the
+slave to escape, and nothing further was done about it.
+
+The arrest of George Latimer as a slave, in Boston, and his illegal
+confinement in jail, in 1842, led to the passage of the law of 1843 for
+the "protection of personal liberty," prohibiting state officers from
+arresting or detaining persons claimed as slaves, and the use of the
+jails of the Commonwealth for their confinement. This law was strictly
+in accordance with the decision of the supreme judiciary, in the case of
+Prigg vs. The State of Pennsylvania, that the reclaiming of fugitives was
+a matter exclusively belonging to the general government; yet that the
+state officials might, if they saw fit, carry into effect the law of
+Congress on the subject, "unless prohibited by state legislation."
+
+It will be seen by the facts we have adduced that slavery in
+Massachusetts never had a legal existence. The ermine of the judiciary
+of the Puritan state has never been sullied by the admission of its
+detestable claims. It crept into the Commonwealth like other evils and
+vices, but never succeeded in clothing itself with the sanction and
+authority of law. It stood only upon its own execrable foundation of
+robbery and wrong.
+
+With a history like this to look back upon, is it strange that the people
+of Massachusetts at the present day are unwilling to see their time-
+honored defences of personal freedom, the good old safeguards of Saxon
+liberty, overridden and swept away after the summary fashion of "the
+Fugitive Slave Bill;" that they should loathe and scorn the task which
+that bill imposes upon them of aiding professional slave-hunters in
+seizing, fettering, and consigning to bondage men and women accused only
+of that which commends them to esteem and sympathy, love of liberty and
+hatred of slavery; that they cannot at once adjust themselves to
+"constitutional duties" which in South Carolina and Georgia are reserved
+for trained bloodhounds? Surely, in view of what Massachusetts has been,
+and her strong bias in favor of human freedom, derived from her great-
+hearted founders, it is to be hoped that the Executive and Cabinet at
+Washington will grant her some little respite, some space for turning,
+some opportunity for conquering her prejudices, before letting loose the
+dogs of war upon her. Let them give her time, and treat with forbearance
+her hesitation, qualms of conscience, and wounded pride. Her people,
+indeed, are awkward in the work of slave-catching, and, it would seem,
+rendered but indifferent service in a late hunt in Boston. Whether they
+would do better under the surveillance of the army and navy of the United
+States is a question which we leave with the President and his Secretary
+of State. General Putnam once undertook to drill a company of Quakers,
+and instruct them, by force of arms, in the art and mystery of fighting;
+but not a single pair of drab-colored breeches moved at his "forward
+march;" not a broad beaver wheeled at his word of command; no hand
+unclosed to receive a proffered musket. Patriotic appeal, hard swearing,
+and prick of bayonet had no effect upon these impracticable raw recruits;
+and the stout general gave them up in despair. We are inclined to
+believe that any attempt on the part of the Commander-in-chief of our
+army and navy to convert the good people of Massachusetts into expert
+slave-catchers, under the discipline of West Point and Norfolk, would
+prove as idle an experiment as that of General Putnam upon the Quakers.
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS CARLYLE ON THE SLAVE-QUESTION. (1846.)
+
+A LATE number of Fraser's Magazine contains an article bearing the
+unmistakable impress of the Anglo-German peculiarities of Thomas Carlyle,
+entitled, 'An Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question', which would be
+interesting as a literary curiosity were it not in spirit and tendency so
+unspeakably wicked as to excite in every rightminded reader a feeling of
+amazement and disgust. With a hard, brutal audacity, a blasphemous
+irreverence, and a sneering mockery which would do honor to the devil of
+Faust, it takes issue with the moral sense of mankind and the precepts of
+Christianity. Having ascertained that the exports of sugar and spices
+from the West Indies have diminished since emancipation,--and that the
+negroes, having worked, as they believed, quite long enough without
+wages, now refuse to work for the planters without higher pay than the
+latter, with the thriftless and evil habits of slavery still clinging to
+them, can afford to give,--the author considers himself justified in
+denouncing negro emancipation as one of the "shams" which he was
+specially sent into this world to belabor. Had he confned himself to
+simple abuse and caricature of the self-denying and Christian
+abolitionists of England--"the broad-brimmed philanthropists of Exeter
+Hall"--there would have been small occasion for noticing his splenetic
+and discreditable production. Doubtless there is a cant of philanthropy
+--the alloy of human frailty and folly--in the most righteous reforms,
+which is a fair subject for the indignant sarcasm of a professed hater of
+shows and falsities. Whatever is hollow and hypocritical in politics,
+morals, or religion, comes very properly within the scope of his mockery,
+and we bid him Godspeed in plying his satirical lash upon it. Impostures
+and frauds of all kinds deserve nothing better than detection and
+exposure. Let him blow them up to his heart's content, as Daniel did the
+image of Bell and the Dragon.
+
+But our author, in this matter of negro slavery, has undertaken to apply
+his explosive pitch and rosin, not to the affectation of humanity, but to
+humanity itself. He mocks at pity, scoffs at all who seek to lessen the
+amount of pain and suffering, sneers at and denies the most sacred
+rights, and mercilessly consigns an entire class of the children of his
+Heavenly Father to the doom of compulsory servitude. He vituperates the
+poor black man with a coarse brutality which would do credit to a
+Mississippi slave-driver, or a renegade Yankee dealer in human cattle on
+the banks of the Potomac. His rhetoric has a flavor of the slave-pen and
+auction-block, vulgar, unmanly, indecent, a scandalous outrage upon good
+taste and refined feeling, which at once degrades the author and insults
+his readers.
+
+He assumes (for he is one of those sublimated philosophers who reject the
+Baconian system of induction and depend upon intuition without recourse
+to facts and figures) that the emancipated class in the West India
+Islands are universally idle, improvident, and unfit for freedom; that
+God created them to be the servants and slaves of their "born lords," the
+white men, and designed them to grow sugar, coffee, and spices for their
+masters, instead of raising pumpkins and yams for themselves; and that,
+if they will not do this, "the beneficent whip" should be again employed
+to compel them. He adopts, in speaking of the black class, the lowest
+slang of vulgar prejudice. "Black Quashee," sneers the gentlemanly
+philosopher,--"black Quashee, if he will not help in bringing out the
+spices, will get himself made a slave again (which state will be a little
+less ugly than his present one), and with beneficent whip, since other
+methods avail not, will be compelled to work."
+
+It is difficult to treat sentiments so atrocious and couched in such
+offensive language with anything like respect. Common sense and
+unperverted conscience revolt instinctively against them. The doctrine
+they inculcate is that which underlies all tyranny and wrong of man
+towards man. It is that under which "the creation groaneth and
+travaileth unto this day." It is as old as sin; the perpetual argument
+of strength against weakness, of power against right; that of the Greek
+philosopher, that the barbarians, being of an inferior race, were born to
+be slaves to the Greeks; and of the infidel Hobbes, that every man, being
+by nature at war with every other man, has a perpetual right to reduce
+him to servitude if he has the power. It is the cardinal doctrine of
+what John Quincy Adams has very properly styled the Satanic school of
+philosophy,--the ethics of an old Norse sea robber or an Arab plunderer
+of caravans. It is as widely removed from the sweet humanities and
+unselfish benevolence of Christianity as the faith and practice of the
+East India Thug or the New Zealand cannibal.
+
+Our author does not, however, take us altogether by surprise. He has
+before given no uncertain intimations of the point towards which his
+philosophy was tending. In his brilliant essay upon 'Francia of
+Paraguay', for instance, we find him entering with manifest satisfaction
+and admiration into the details of his hero's tyranny. In his 'Letters
+and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell'--in half a dozen pages of savage and
+almost diabolical sarcasm directed against the growing humanity of the
+age, the "rose-pink sentimentalisms," and squeamishness which shudders at
+the sight of blood and infliction of pain--he prepares the way for a
+justification of the massacre of Drogheda. More recently he has
+intimated that the extermination of the Celtic race is the best way of
+settling the Irish question; and that the enslavement and forcible
+transportation of her poor, to labor under armed taskmasters in the
+colonies, is the only rightful and proper remedy for the political and
+social evils of England. In the 'Discourse on Negro Slavery' we see this
+devilish philosophy in full bloom. The gods, he tells us, are with the
+strong. Might has a divine right to rule,--blessed are the crafty of
+brain and strong of hand! Weakness is crime. "Vae victis!" as Brennus
+said when he threw his sword into the scale,--Woe to the conquered! The
+negro is weaker in intellect than his "born lord," the white man, and has
+no right to choose his own vocation. Let the latter do it for him, and,
+if need be, return to the "beneficent whip." "On the side of the
+oppressor there is power;" let him use it without mercy, and hold flesh
+and blood to the grindstone with unrelenting rigor. Humanity is
+squeamishness; pity for the suffering mere "rose-pink sentimentalism,"
+maudlin and unmanly. The gods (the old Norse gods doubtless) laugh to
+scorn alike the complaints of the miserable and the weak compassions and
+"philanthropisms" of those who would relieve them. This is the substance
+of Thomas Carlyle's advice; this is the matured fruit of his philosophic
+husbandry,--the grand result for which he has been all his life sounding
+unfathomable abysses or beating about in the thin air of
+Transcendentalism. Such is the substitute which he offers us for the
+Sermon on the Mount.
+
+He tells us that the blacks have no right to use the islands of the West
+Indies for growing pumpkins and garden stuffs for their own use and
+behoof, because, but for the wisdom and skill of the whites, these
+islands would have been productive only of "jungle, savagery, and swamp
+malaria." The negro alone could never have improved the islands or
+civilized himself; and therefore their and his "born lord," the white
+man, has a right to the benefits of his own betterments of land and "two-
+legged cattle!" "Black Quashee" has no right to dispose of himself and
+his labor because he owes his partial civilization to others! And pray
+how has it been with the white race, for whom our philosopher claims the
+divine prerogative of enslaving? Some twenty and odd centuries ago, a
+pair of half-naked savages, daubed with paint, might have been seen
+roaming among the hills and woods of the northern part of the British
+island, subsisting on acorns and the flesh of wild animals, with an
+occasional relish of the smoked hams and pickled fingers of some
+unfortunate stranger caught on the wrong side of the Tweed. This
+interesting couple reared, as they best could, a family of children, who,
+in turn, became the heads of families; and some time about the beginning
+of the present century one of their descendants in the borough of
+Ecclefechan rejoiced over the birth of a man child now somewhat famous as
+"Thomas Carlyle, a maker of books." Does it become such a one to rave
+against the West India negro's incapacity for self-civilization? Unaided
+by the arts, sciences, and refinements of the Romans, he might have been,
+at this very day, squatted on his naked haunches in the woods of
+Ecclefechan, painting his weather-hardened epidermis in the sun like his
+Piet ancestors. Where, in fact, can we look for unaided self-improvement
+and spontaneous internal development, to any considerable extent, on the
+part of any nation or people? From people to people the original God-
+given impulse towards civilization and perfection has been transmitted,
+as from Egypt to Greece, and thence to the Roman world.
+
+But the blacks, we are told, are indolent and insensible to the duty of
+raising sugar and coffee and spice for the whites, being mainly careful
+to provide for their own household and till their own gardens for
+domestic comforts and necessaries. The exports have fallen off somewhat.
+And what does this prove? Only that the negro is now a consumer of
+products, of which, under the rule of the whip, he was a producer merely.
+As to indolence, under the proper stimulus of fair wages we have reason
+to believe that the charge is not sustained. If unthrifty habits and
+lack of prudence on the part of the owners of estates, combined with the
+repeal of duties on foreign sugars by the British government, have placed
+it out of their power to pay just and reasonable wages for labor, who can
+blame the blacks if they prefer to cultivate their own garden plots
+rather than raise sugar and spice for their late masters upon terms
+little better than those of their old condition, the "beneficent whip"
+always excepted? The despatches of the colonial governors agree in
+admitting that the blacks have had great cause for complaint and
+dissatisfaction, owing to the delay or non-payment of their wages. Sir
+C. E. Gray, writing from Jamaica, says, that "in a good many instances
+the payment of the wages they have earned has been either very
+irregularly made, or not at all, probably on account of the inability of
+the employers." He says, moreover:--
+
+"The negroes appear to me to be generally as free from rebellious
+tendencies or turbulent feelings and malicious thoughts as any race of
+laborers I ever saw or heard of. My impression is, indeed, that under a
+system of perfectly fair dealing and of real justice they will come to be
+an admirable peasantry and yeomanry; able-bodied, industrious, and hard-
+working, frank, and well-disposed."
+
+It must, indeed, be admitted that, judging by their diminished exports
+and the growing complaints of the owners of estates, the condition of the
+islands, in a financial point of view, is by no means favorable. An
+immediate cause of this, however, must be found in the unfortunate Sugar
+Act of 1846. The more remote, but for the most part powerful, cause of
+the present depression is to be traced to the vicious and unnatural
+system of slavery, which has been gradually but surely preparing the way
+for ruin, bankruptcy, and demoralization. Never yet, by a community or
+an individual, have the righteous laws of God been violated with
+impunity. Sooner or later comes the penalty which the infinite justice
+has affixed to sin. Partial and temporary evils and inconveniences have
+undoubtedly resulted from the emancipation of the laborers; and many
+years must elapse before the relations of the two heretofore antagonistic
+classes can be perfectly adjusted and their interests brought into entire
+harmony. But that freedom is not to be held mainly accountable for the
+depression of the British colonies is obvious from the fact that Dutch
+Surinam, where the old system of slavery remains in its original rigor,
+is in an equally depressed condition. The 'Paramaribo Neuws en
+Advertentie Blad', quoted in the Jamaica Gazette, says, under date of
+January 2, 1850: "Around us we hear nothing but complaints. People seek
+and find matter in everything to picture to themselves the lot of the
+place in which they live as bitterer than that of any other country. Of
+a large number of flourishing plantations, few remain that can now be
+called such. So deteriorated has property become within the last few
+years, that many of these estates have not been able to defray their
+weekly expenses. The colony stands on the brink of a yawning abyss, into
+which it must inevitably plunge unless some new and better system is
+speedily adopted. It is impossible that our agriculture can any longer
+proceed on its old footing; our laboring force is dying away, and the
+social position they held must undergo a revolution."
+
+The paper from which we have quoted, the official journal of the colony,
+thinks the condition of the emancipated British colonies decidedly
+preferable to that of Surinam, where the old slave system has continued
+in force, and insists that the Dutch government must follow the example
+of Great Britain. The actual condition of the British colonies since
+emancipation is perfectly well known in Surinam: three of them,
+Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice, being its immediate neighbors, whatever
+evils and inconveniences have resuited from emancipation must be well
+understood by the Dutch slave-holders; yet we find them looking towards
+emancipation as the only prospect of remedy for the greater evils of
+their own system.
+
+This fact is of itself a sufficient answer to the assumption of Carlyle
+and others, that what they call "the ruin of the colonies" has been
+produced by the emancipation acts of 1833 and 1838.
+
+We have no fears whatever of the effect of this literary monstrosity,
+which we have been considering upon the British colonies. Quashee, black
+and ignorant as he may be, will not "get himself made a slave again."
+The mission of the "beneficent whip" is there pretty well over; and it
+may now find its place in museums and cabinets of ghastly curiosities,
+with the racks, pillories, thumbscrews, and branding-irons of old days.
+What we have feared, however, is, that the advocates and defenders of
+slave-holding in this country might find in this discourse matter of
+encouragement, and that our anti-christian prejudices against the colored
+man might be strengthened and confirmed by its malignant vituperation and
+sarcasm. On this point we have sympathized with the forebodings of an
+eloquent writer in the London Enquirer:--
+
+"We cannot imagine a more deadly moral poison for the American people
+than his (Carlyle's) last composition. Every cruel practice of social
+exclusion will derive from it new sharpness and venom. The slave-holder,
+of course, will exult to find himself, not apologized for, but
+enthusiastically cheered, upheld, and glorified, by a writer of European
+celebrity. But it is not merely the slave who will feel Mr. Carlyle's
+hand in the torture of his flesh, the riveting of his fetters, and the
+denial of light to his mind. The free black will feel him, too, in the
+more contemptuous and abhorrent scowl of his brother man, who will easily
+derive from this unfortunate essay the belief that his inhuman feelings
+are of divine ordination. It is a true work of the Devil, the fostering
+of a tyrannical prejudice. Far and wide over space, and long into the
+future, the winged words of evil counsel will go. In the market-place,
+in the house, in the theatre, and in the church,--by land and by sea, in
+all the haunts of men,--their influence will be felt in a perennial
+growth of hate and scorn, and suffering and resentment. Amongst the
+sufferers will be many to whom education has given every refined
+susceptibility that makes contempt and exclusion bitter. Men and women,
+faithful and diligent, loving and worthy to be loved, and bearing, it may
+be, no more than an almost imperceptible trace of African descent, will
+continue yet longer to be banished from the social meal of the white man,
+and to be spurned from his presence in the house of God, because a writer
+of genius has lent the weight of his authority and his fame, if not of
+his power, to the perpetuation of a prejudice which Christianity was
+undermining."
+
+A more recent production, 'Latter Day Pamphlets', in which man's
+capability of self-government is more than doubted, democracy somewhat
+contemptuously sneered at, and the "model republic" itself stigmatized as
+a "nation of bores," may have a salutary effect in restraining our
+admiration and in lessening our respect for the defender and eulogist of
+slavery. The sweeping impartiality with which in this latter production
+he applies the principle of our "peculiar institution" to the laboring
+poor man, irrespective of color, recognizing as his only inalienable
+right "the right of being set to labor" for his "born lords," will, we
+imagine, go far to neutralize the mischief of his Discourse upon Negro
+Slavery. It is a sad thing to find so much intellectual power as Carlyle
+really possesses so little under the control of the moral sentiments. In
+some of his earlier writings--as, for instance, his beautiful tribute to
+the Corn Law Rhymer--we thought we saw evidence of a warm and generous
+sympathy with the poor and the wronged, a desire to ameliorate human
+suffering, which would have done credit to the "philanthropisms of Exeter
+Hall" and the "Abolition of Pain Society." Latterly, however, like
+Moliere's quack, he has "changed all that;" his heart has got upon the
+wrong side; or rather, he seems to us very much in the condition of the
+coal-burner in the German tale, who had swapped his heart of flesh for a
+cobblestone.
+
+
+
+
+FORMATION OF THE AMERICAN ANTISLAVERY SOCIETY.
+
+ A letter to William Lloyd Garrison, President of the Society.
+
+ AMESBURY, 24th 11th mo., 1863.
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND,--I have received thy kind letter, with the accompanying
+circular, inviting me to attend the commemoration of the thirtieth
+anniversary of the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society, at
+Philadelphia. It is with the deepest regret that I am compelled, by the
+feeble state of my health, to give up all hope of meeting thee and my
+other old and dear friends on an occasion of so much interest. How much
+it costs me to acquiesce in the hard necessity thy own feelings will tell
+thee better than any words of mine.
+
+I look back over thirty years, and call to mind all the circumstances of
+my journey to Philadelphia, in company with thyself and the excellent Dr.
+Thurston of Maine, even then, as we thought, an old man, but still
+living, and true as ever to the good cause. I recall the early gray
+morning when, with Samuel J. May, our colleague on the committee to
+prepare a Declaration of Sentiments for the convention, I climbed to the
+small "upper chamber" of a colored friend to hear thee read the first
+draft of a paper which will live as long as our national history. I see
+the members of the convention, solemnized by the responsibility, rise one
+by one, and solemnly affix their names to that stern pledge of fidelity
+to freedom. Of the signers, many have passed away from earth, a few have
+faltered and turned back, but I believe the majority still live to
+rejoice over the great triumph of truth and justice, and to devote what
+remains of time and strength to the cause to which they consecrated their
+youth and manhood thirty years ago.
+
+For while we may well thank God and congratulate one another on the
+prospect of the speedy emancipation of the slaves of the United States,
+we must not for a moment forget that, from this hour, new and mighty
+responsibilities devolve upon us to aid, direct, and educate these
+millions, left free, indeed, but bewildered, ignorant, naked, and
+foodless in the wild chaos of civil war. We have to undo the accumulated
+wrongs of two centuries; to remake the manhood which slavery has well-
+nigh unmade; to see to it that the long-oppressed colored man has a fair
+field for development and improvement; and to tread under our feet the
+last vestige of that hateful prejudice which has been the strongest
+external support of Southern slavery. We must lift ourselves at once to
+the true Christian altitude where all distinctions of black and white are
+overlooked in the heartfelt recognition of the brotherhood of man.
+
+I must not close this letter without confessing that I cannot be
+sufficiently thankful to the Divine Providence which, in a great measure
+through thy instrumentality, turned me away so early from what Roger
+Williams calls "the world's great trinity, pleasure, profit, and honor,"
+to take side with the poor and oppressed. I am not insensible to
+literary reputation. I love, perhaps too well, the praise and good-will
+of my fellow-men; but I set a higher value on my name as appended to the
+Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833 than on the title-page of any book.
+Looking over a life marked by many errors and shortcomings, I rejoice
+that I have been able to maintain the pledge of that signature, and that,
+in the long intervening years,
+
+ "My voice, though not the loudest, has been heard Wherever Freedom
+ raised her cry of pain."
+
+Let me, through thee, extend a warm greeting to the friends, whether of
+our own or the new generation, who may assemble on the occasion of
+commemoration. There is work yet to be done which will task the best
+efforts of us all. For thyself, I need not say that the love and esteem
+of early boyhood have lost nothing by the test of time; and
+
+ I am, very cordially, thy friend,
+
+ JOHN G. WHITTIER
+
+
+
+
+THE LESSON AND OUR DUTY.
+
+ From the Amesbury Villager.
+
+ (1865.)
+
+
+IN the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the unspeakably brutal
+assault upon Secretary Seward slavery has made another revelation of
+itself. Perhaps it was needed. In the magnanimity of assured victory we
+were perhaps disposed to overlook, not so much the guilty leaders and
+misguided masses of the great rebellion as the unutterable horror and sin
+of slavery which prompted it.
+
+How slowly we of the North have learned the true character of this mighty
+mischief! How our politicians bowed their strong shoulders under its
+burthens! How our churches reverenced it! How our clergy contrasted the
+heresy-tolerating North with the purely orthodox and Scriptural type of
+slave-holding Christianity! How all classes hunted down, not merely the
+fugitive slave, but the few who ventured to give him food and shelter and
+a Godspeed in his flight from bondage! How utterly ignored was the
+negro's claim of common humanity! How readily was the decision of the
+slave-holding chief justice acquiesced in, that "the black man had no
+rights which the white man is bound to respect"!
+
+We saw a senator of the United States, world-known and honored for his
+learning, talents, and stainless integrity, beaten down and all but
+murdered at his official desk by a South Carolina slave-holder, for the
+crime of speaking against the extension of slavery; and we heard the
+dastardly deed applauded throughout the South, while its brutal
+perpetrator was rewarded with orations and gifts and smiles of beauty as
+a chivalrous gentleman. We saw slavery enter Kansas, with bowieknife in
+hand and curses on its lips; we saw the life of the Union struck at by
+secession and rebellion; we heard of the bones of sons and brothers,
+fallen in defence of freedom and law, dug up and wrought into ornaments
+for the wrists and bosoms of slave-holding women; we looked into the open
+hell of Andersonville, upon the deliberate, systematic starvation of
+helpless prisoners; we heard of Libby Prison underlaid with gunpowder,
+for the purpose of destroying thousands of Union prisoners in case of the
+occupation of Richmond by our army; we saw hundreds of prisoners
+massacred in cold blood at Fort Pillow, and the midnight sack of Lawrence
+and the murder of its principal citizens. The flames of our merchant
+vessels, seized by pirates, lighted every sea; we heard of officers of
+the rebel army and navy stealing into our cities, firing hotels filled
+with sleeping occupants, and laying obstructions on the track of rail
+cars, for the purpose of killing and mangling their passengers. Yet in
+spite of these revelations of the utterly barbarous character of slavery
+and its direful effect upon all connected with it, we were on the very
+point of trusting to its most criminal defenders the task of
+reestablishing the state governments of the South, leaving the real Union
+men, white as well as black, at the mercy of those who have made hatred a
+religion and murder a sacrament. The nation needed one more terrible
+lesson. It has it in the murder of its beloved chief magistrate and the
+attempted assassination of its honored prime minister, the two men of all
+others prepared to go farthest to smooth the way of defeated rebellion
+back to allegiance.
+
+Even now the lesson of these terrible events seems but half learned. In
+the public utterances I hear much of punishing and hanging leading
+traitors, fierce demands for vengeance, and threats of the summary
+chastisement of domestic sympathizers with treason, but comparatively
+little is said of the accursed cause, the prolific mother of
+abominations, slavery. The government is exhorted to remember that it
+does not bear the sword in vain, the Old Testament is ransacked for texts
+of Oriental hatred and examples of the revenges of a semi-barbarous
+nation; but, as respects the four millions of unmistakably loyal people
+of the South, the patient, the long-suffering, kind-hearted victims of
+oppressions, only here and there a voice pleads for their endowment with
+the same rights of citizenship which are to be accorded to the rank and
+file of disbanded rebels. The golden rule of the Sermon on the Mount is
+not applied to them. Much is said of executing justice upon rebels;
+little of justice to loyal black men. Hanging a few ringleaders of
+treason, it seems to be supposed, is all that is needed to restore and
+reestablish the revolted states. The negro is to be left powerless in
+the hands of the "white trash," who hate him with a bitter hatred,
+exceeding that of the large slave-holders. In short, four years of
+terrible chastisement, of God's unmistakable judgments, have not taught
+us, as a people, their lesson, which could scarcely be plainer if it had
+been written in letters of fire on the sky. Why is it that we are so
+slow to learn, so unwilling to confess that slavery is the accursed thing
+which whets the knife of murder, and transforms men, with the exterior of
+gentlemen and Christians, into fiends? How pitiful is our exultation
+over the capture of the wretched Booth and his associates! The great
+criminal, of whom he and they were but paltry instruments, still stalks
+abroad in the pine woods of Jersey, where the state has thrown around him
+her legislative sanction and protection. He is in Pennsylvania,
+thrusting the black man from public conveyances. Wherever God's children
+are despised, insulted, and abused on account of their color, there is
+the real assassin of the President still at large. I do not wonder at
+the indignation which has been awakened by the late outrage, for I have
+painfully shared it. But let us see to it that it is rightly directed.
+The hanging of a score of Southern traitors will not restore Abraham
+Lincoln nor atone for the mighty loss. In wreaking revenge upon these
+miserable men, we must see to it that we do not degrade ourselves and do
+dishonor to the sacred memory of the dead. We do well to be angry; and,
+if need be, let our wrath wax seven times hotter, until that which "was a
+murderer from the beginning" is consumed from the face of the earth. As
+the people stand by the grave of Lincoln, let them lift their right hands
+to heaven and take a solemn vow upon their souls to give no sleep to
+their eyes nor slumber to their eyelids until slavery is hunted from its
+last shelter, and every man, black and white, stands equal before the
+law.
+
+In dealing with the guilty leaders and instigators of the rebellion we
+should beware how we take counsel of passion. Hatred has no place beside
+the calm and awful dignity of justice. Human life is still a very sacred
+thing; Christian forbearance and patience are still virtues. For my own
+part, I should be satisfied to see the chiefs of the great treason go out
+from among us homeless, exiled, with the mark of Cain on their foreheads,
+carrying with them, wherever they go, the avenging Nemesis of conscience.
+We cannot take lessons, at this late day, in their school of barbarism;
+we cannot starve and torture them as they have starved and tortured our
+soldiers. Let them live. Perhaps that is, after all, the most terrible
+penalty. For wherever they hide themselves the story of their acts will
+pursue them; they can have no rest nor peace save in that deep repentance
+which, through the mercy of God, is possible for all.
+
+I have no disposition to stand between these men and justice. If
+arrested, they can have no claim to exemption from the liabilities of
+criminals. But it is not simply a question of deserts that is to be
+considered; we are to take into account our own reputation as a Christian
+people, the wishes of our best friends abroad, and the humane instincts
+of the age, which forbid all unnecessary severity. Happily we are not
+called upon to take counsel of our fears. Rabbinical writers tell us
+that evil spirits who are once baffled in a contest with human beings
+lose from thenceforth all power of further mischief. The defeated rebels
+are in the precise condition of these Jewish demons. Deprived of
+slavery, they are like wasps that have lost their stings.
+
+As respects the misguided masses of the South, the shattered and crippled
+remnants of the armies of treason, the desolate wives, mothers, and
+children mourning for dear ones who have fallen in a vain and hopeless
+struggle, it seems to me our duty is very plain. We must forgive their
+past treason, and welcome and encourage their returning loyalty. None
+but cowards will insult and taunt the defeated and defenceless. We must
+feed and clothe the destitute, instruct the ignorant, and, bearing
+patiently with the bitterness and prejudice which will doubtless for a
+time thwart our efforts and misinterpret our motives, aid them in
+rebuilding their states on the foundation of freedom. Our sole enemy was
+slavery, and slavery is dead. We have now no quarrel with the people of
+the South, who have really more reason than we have to rejoice over the
+downfall of a system which impeded their material progress, perverted
+their religion, shut them out from the sympathies of the world, and
+ridged their land with the graves of its victims.
+
+We are victors, the cause of all this evil and suffering is removed
+forever, and we can well afford to be magnanimous. How better can we
+evince our gratitude to God for His great mercy than in doing good to
+those who hated us, and in having compassion on those who have
+despitefully used us? The hour is hastening for us all when our sole
+ground of dependence will be the mercy and forgiveness of God. Let us
+endeavor so to feel and act in our relations to the people of the South
+that we can repeat in sincerity the prayer of our Lord: "Forgive us our
+trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," reverently
+acknowledging that He has indeed "led captivity captive and received
+gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might
+dwell among them."
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES SUMNER AND THE STATE-DEPARTMENT. (1868.)
+
+
+THE wise reticence of the President elect in the matter of his cabinet
+has left free course to speculation and conjecture as to its composition.
+That he fully comprehends the importance of the subject, and that he will
+carefully weigh the claims of the possible candidates on the score of
+patriotic services, ability, and fitness for specific duties, no one who
+has studied his character, and witnessed his discretion, clear insight,
+and wise adaptation of means to ends, under the mighty responsibilities
+of his past career, can reasonably doubt.
+
+It is not probable that the distinguished statesman now at the head of
+the State Department will, under the circumstances, look for a
+continuance in office. History will do justice to his eminent services
+in the Senate and in the cabinet during the first years of the rebellion,
+but the fact that he has to some extent shared the unpopularity of the
+present chief magistrate seems to preclude the idea of his retention in
+the new cabinet. In looking over the list of our public men in search of
+a successor, General Grant is not likely to be embarrassed by the number
+of individuals fitted by nature, culture, and experience for such an
+important post. The newspaper press, in its wide license of conjecture
+and suggestion, has, as far as I have seen, mentioned but three or four
+names in this connection. Allusions have been made to Senator Fessenden
+of Maine, ex-Minister Motley, General Dix, ex-Secretary Stanton, and
+Charles Sumner of Massachusetts.
+
+Without disparaging in any degree his assumed competitors, the last-named
+gentleman is unquestionably preeminently fitted for the place. He has
+had a lifelong education for it. The entire cast of his mind, the bent
+of his studies, the habit and experience of his public life, his profound
+knowledge of international law and the diplomatic history of his own and
+other countries, his well-earned reputation as a statesman and
+constitutional lawyer, not only at home, but wherever our country has
+relations of amity and commerce, the honorable distinction which he
+enjoys of having held a foremost place in the great conflict between
+freedom and slavery, union and rebellion, all mark him as the man for the
+occasion. There seems, indeed, a certain propriety in assigning to the
+man who struck the heaviest blows at secession and slavery in the
+national Senate the first place under him who, in the field, made them
+henceforth impossible. The great captain and the great senator united in
+war should not be dissevered in peace.
+
+I am not unaware that there are some, even in the Republican party, who
+have failed to recognize in Senator Sumner the really wise and practical
+statesmanship which a careful review of his public labors cannot but make
+manifest. It is only necessary to point such to the open record of his
+senatorial career. Few men have had the honor of introducing and
+defending with exhaustive ability and thoroughness so many measures of
+acknowledged practical importance to his immediate constituents, the
+country at large, and the wider interests of humanity and civilization.
+In what exigency has he been found wanting? What legislative act of
+public utility for the last eighteen years has lacked his encouragement?
+At the head of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, his clearness of vision,
+firmness, moderation, and ready comprehension of the duties of his time
+and place must be admitted by all parties. It was shrewdly said by Burke
+that "men are wise with little reflection and good with little self-
+denial, in business of all times except their own." But Charles Sumner,
+the scholar, loving the "still air of delightful studies," has shown
+himself as capable of thoroughly comprehending and digesting the events
+transpiring before his eyes as of pronouncing judgment upon those
+recorded in history. Far in advance of most of his contemporaries, he
+saw and enunciated the true doctrine of reconstruction, the early
+adoption of which would have been of incalculable service to the country.
+One of the ablest statesmen and jurists of the Democratic party has had
+the rare magnanimity to acknowledge that in this matter the Republican
+senator was right, and himself and his party wrong.
+
+The Republicans of Massachusetts will make no fractious or importunate
+demand upon the new President. They are content to leave to his unbiased
+and impartial judgment the selection of his cabinet. But if, looking to
+the best interests of the country, he shall see fit to give their
+distinguished fellow-citizen the first place in it, they will feel no
+solicitude as to the manner in which the duties of the office will be
+discharged. They will feel that "the tools are with him who can use
+them." Nothing more directly affects the reputation of a country than
+the character of its diplomatic correspondence and its foreign
+representatives. We have suffered in times past from sad mismanagement
+abroad, and intelligent Americans have too often been compelled to hang
+their heads with shame to see the flag of their country floating over the
+consular offices of worthless, incompetent agents. There can be no
+question that so far as they are entrusted to Senator Sumner's hands, the
+interest, honor, and dignity of the nation will be safe.
+
+In a few weeks Charles Summer will be returned for his fourth term in the
+United States Senate by the well-nigh unanimous vote of both branches of
+the legislature of Massachusetts. Not a syllable of opposition to his
+reelection is heard from any quarter. There is not a Republican in the
+legislature who could have been elected unless he had been virtually
+pledged to his support. No stronger evidence of the popular estimate of
+his ability and integrity than this could be offered. As a matter of
+course, the marked individuality of his intense convictions, earnestness,
+persistence, and confident reliance upon the justice of his conclusions,
+naturally growing out of the consciousness of having brought to his
+honest search after truth all the lights of his learning and experience,
+may, at times, have brought him into unpleasant relations with some of
+his colleagues; but no one, friend or foe, has questioned his ability and
+patriotism, or doubted his fidelity to principle. He has lent himself to
+no schemes of greed. While so many others have taken advantage of the
+facilities of their official stations to fill, directly or indirectly,
+their own pockets or those of their relatives and retainers, it is to the
+honor of Massachusetts that her representatives in the Senate have not
+only "shaken their hands from the holding of bribes," but have so borne
+themselves that no shadow of suspicion has ever rested on them.
+
+In this connection it may be proper to state that, in the event of a
+change in the War Department, the claims of General Wilson, to whose
+services in the committee on military affairs the country is deeply
+indebted, may be brought under consideration. In that case Massachusetts
+would not, if it were in her power, discriminate between her senators.
+Both have deserved well of her and of the country. In expressing thus
+briefly my opinion, I do not forget that after all the choice and
+responsibility rest with General Grant alone. There I am content to
+leave them. I am very far from urging any sectional claim. Let the
+country but have peace after its long discord, let its good faith and
+financial credit be sustained, and all classes of its citizens everywhere
+protected in person and estate, and it matters very little to me whether
+Massachusetts is represented at the Executive Council board, or not.
+Personally, Charles Sumner would gain nothing by a transfer from the
+Senate Chamber to the State Department. He does not need a place in the
+American cabinet any more than John Bright does in the British. The
+highest ambition might well be satisfied with his present position, from
+which, looking back upon an honorable record, he might be justified in
+using Milton's language of lofty confidence in the reply to Salmasius: "I
+am not one who has disgraced beauty of sentiment by deformity of conduct,
+or the maxims of a freeman by the actions of a slave, but, by the grace
+of God, I have kept my life unsullied."
+
+
+
+
+THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1872.
+
+ The following letter was written on receiving a request from a
+ committee of colored voters for advice as to their action at the
+ presidential election of 1872.
+
+ AMESBURY, 9th mo. 3d, 1872.
+
+DEAR FRIENDS,--I have just received your letter of the 29th ult. asking
+my opinion of your present duty as colored voters in the choice between
+General Grant and Horace Greeley for the presidency. You state that you
+have been confused by the contradictory advice given you by such friends
+of your people as Charles Sumner on one hand, and William L. Garrison and
+Wendell Phillips on the other; and you ask me, as one whom you are
+pleased to think "free from all bias," to add my counsel to theirs.
+
+I thank you for the very kind expression of your confidence and your
+generous reference to my endeavors to serve the cause of freedom; but I
+must own that I would fain have been spared the necessity of adding to
+the already too long list of political epistles. I have felt it my duty
+in times past to take an active part--often very distasteful to me--in
+political matters, having for my first object the deliverance of my
+country from the crime and curse of slavery. That great question being
+now settled forever, I have been more than willing to leave to younger
+and stronger hands the toils and the honors of partisan service. Pained
+and saddened by the bitter and unchristian personalities of the canvass
+now in progress, I have hitherto held myself aloof from it as far as
+possible, unwilling to sanction in the slightest degree the criminations
+and recriminations of personal friends whom I have every reason to love
+and respect, and in whose integrity I have unshaken confidence. In the
+present condition of affairs I have not been able to see that any special
+action as an abolitionist was required at my hands. Both of the great
+parties, heretofore widely separated, have put themselves on
+substantially the same platform. The Republican party, originally
+pledged only to the non-extension of slavery, and whose most illustrious
+representative, President Lincoln, avowed his willingness to save the
+Union without abolishing slavery, has been, under Providence, mainly
+instrumental in the total overthrow of the detestable system; while the
+Democratic party, composed largely of slave-holders, and, even at the
+North, scarcely willing to save the Union at the expense of the slave
+interest upon which its success depended, shattered and crippled by the
+civil war and its results, has at last yielded to the inexorable logic of
+events, abandoned a position no longer tenable, and taken its "new
+departure" with an abolitionist as its candidate. As a friend of the
+long-oppressed colored man, and for the sake of the peace and prosperity
+of the country, I rejoice at this action of the Democratic party. The
+underlying motives of this radical change are doubtless somewhat mixed
+and contradictory, honest conviction on the part of some, and party
+expediency and desire of office on the part of others; but the change
+itself is real and irrevocable; the penalty of receding would be swift
+and irretrievable ruin. In any point of view the new order of things is
+desirable; and nothing more fully illustrates "the ways that are dark and
+the tricks that are vain" of party politics than the attempt of professed
+friends of the Union and equal rights for all to counteract it by giving
+aid and comfort to a revival of the worst characteristics of the old
+party in the shape of a straight-out Democratic convention.
+
+As respects the candidates now before us, I can see no good reason why
+colored voters as such should oppose General Grant, who, though not an
+abolitionist and not even a member of the Republican party previous to
+his nomination, has faithfully carried out the laws of Congress in their
+behalf. Nor, on the other hand, can I see any just grounds for distrust
+of such a man as Horace Greeley, who has so nobly distinguished himself
+as the advocate of human rights irrespective of race or color, and who by
+the instrumentality of his press has been for thirty years the educator
+of the people in the principles of justice, temperance, and freedom.
+Both of these men have, in different ways, deserved too well of the
+country to be unnecessarily subjected to the brutalities of a
+presidential canvass; and, so far as they are personally concerned, it
+would doubtless have been better if the one had declined a second term of
+uncongenial duties, and the other continued to indite words of wisdom in
+the shades of Chappaqua. But they have chosen otherwise; and I am
+willing, for one, to leave my colored fellow-citizens to the unbiased
+exercise of their own judgment and instincts in deciding between them.
+The Democratic party labors under the disadvantage of antecedents not
+calculated to promote a rapid growth of confidence; and it is no matter
+of surprise that the vote of the emancipated class is likely to be
+largely against it. But if, as will doubtless be the case, that vote
+shall be to some extent divided between the two candidates, it will have
+the effect of inducing politicians of the rival parties to treat with
+respect and consideration this new element of political power, from self-
+interest if from no higher motive. The fact that at this time both
+parties are welcoming colored orators to their platforms, and that, in
+the South, old slave-masters and their former slaves fraternize at caucus
+and barbecue, and vote for each other at the polls, is full of
+significance. If, in New England, the very men who thrust Frederick
+Douglass from car and stage-coach, and mobbed and hunted him like a wild
+beast, now crowd to shake his hand and cheer him, let us not despair of
+seeing even the Ku-Klux tarried into decency, and sitting "clothed in
+their right minds" as listeners to their former victims. The colored man
+is to-day the master of his own destiny. No power on earth can deprive
+him of his rights as an American citizen. And it is in the light of
+American citizenship that I choose to regard my colored friends, as men
+having a common stake in the welfare of the country; mingled with, and
+not separate from, their white fellow-citizens; not herded together as a
+distinct class to be wielded by others, without self-dependence and
+incapable of self-determination. Thanks to such men as Sumner and Wilson
+and their compeers, nearly all that legislation can do for them has
+already been done. We can now only help them to help themselves.
+Industry, economy, temperance, self-culture, education for their
+children,--these things, indispensable to their elevation and progress,
+are in a great measure in their own hands.
+
+You will, therefore, my friends and fellow-citizens, pardon me if I
+decline to undertake to decide for you the question of your political
+duty as respects the candidates for the presidency,--a question which you
+have probably already settled in your own minds. If it had been apparent
+to me that your rights and liberties were really in danger from the
+success of either candidate, your letter would not have been needed to
+call forth my opinion. In the long struggle of well-nigh forty years, I
+can honestly say that no consideration of private interest, nor my
+natural love of peace and retirement and the good-will of others, have
+kept me silent when a word could be fitly spoken for human rights. I
+have not so long acted with the class to which you belong without
+acquiring respect for your intelligence and capacity for judging wisely
+for yourselves. I shall abide your decision with confidence, and
+cheerfully acquiesce in it.
+
+If, on the whole, you prefer to vote for the reelection of General Grant,
+let me hope you will do so without joining with eleventh-hour friends in
+denouncing and reviling such an old and tried friend as Charles Sumner,
+who has done and suffered so much in your behalf. If, on the other hand,
+some of you decide to vote for Horace Greeley, you need not in so doing
+forget your great obligations to such friends as William Lloyd Garrison,
+Wendell Phillips, and Lydia Maria Child. Agree or disagree with them,
+take their advice or reject it, but stand by them still, and teach the
+parties with which you are connected to respect your feelings towards
+your benefactors.
+
+
+
+
+THE CENSURE OF SUMNER.
+
+
+ A letter to the Boston Daily Advertiser in reference to the petition
+ for the rescinding of the resolutions censuring Senator Sumner for
+ his motion to erase from the United States flags the record of the
+ battles of the civil war.
+
+
+I BEG leave to occupy a small space in the columns of the Advertiser for
+the purpose of noticing a charge which has been brought against the
+petitioners for rescinding the resolutions of the late extra session
+virtually censuring the Hon. Charles Sumner. It is intimated that the
+action of these petitioners evinces a lack of appreciation of the
+services of the soldiers of the Union, and that not to censure Charles
+Sumner is to censure the volunteers of Massachusetts.
+
+As a matter of fact, the petitioners express no opinion as to the policy
+or expediency of the senator's proposition. Some may believe it not only
+right in itself, but expedient and well-timed; others that it was
+inexpedient or premature. None doubt that, sooner or later, the thing
+which it contemplates must be done, if we are to continue a united
+people. What they feel and insist upon is that the proposition is one
+which implies no disparagement of the soldiers of Massachusetts and the
+Union; that it neither receives nor merits the "unqualified condemnation
+of the people" of the state; and that it furnishes no ground whatever for
+legislative interference or censure. A single glance at the names of the
+petitioners is a sufficient answer to the insinuation that they are
+unmindful of that self-sacrifice and devotion, the marble and granite
+memorials of which, dotting the state from the Merrimac to the
+Connecticut, testify the gratitude of the loyal heart of Massachusetts.
+
+I have seen no soldier yet who considered himself wronged or "insulted"
+by the proposition. In point of fact the soldiers have never asked for
+such censure of the brave and loyal statesman who was the bosom friend
+and confidant of Secretary Stanton (the great war-minister, second, if at
+all, only to Carnot) and of John A. Andrew, dear to the heart of every
+Massachusetts soldier, and whose tender care and sympathy reached them
+wherever they struggled or died for country and freedom. The proposal of
+Senator Sumner, instead of being an "insult," was, in fact, the highest
+compliment which could be paid to brave men; for it implied that they
+cherished no vindictive hatred of fallen foes; that they were too proudly
+secure of the love and gratitude of their countrymen to need above their
+heads the flaunting blazon of their achievements; that they were as
+magnanimous in peace and victory as they were heroic and patient through
+the dark and doubtful arbitrament of war. As such they understand it. I
+should be sorry to think there existed a single son of Massachusetts weak
+enough to believe that his reputation and honor as a soldier needed this
+censure of Charles Sumner. I have before me letters from men, ranking
+from orderly sergeant to general, who have looked at death full in the
+face on every battlefield where the flag of Massachusetts floated, and
+they all thank me for my efforts to rescind this uncalled-for censure,
+and pledge me their hearty support. They cordially indorse the noble
+letter of Vice-President Wilson offering his signature to the petition
+for rescinding the obnoxious resolutions; and if these resolutions are
+not annulled, it will not be the fault of Massachusetts volunteers, but
+rather of the mistaken zeal of men more familiar with the drill of the
+caucus than with that of the camp.
+
+I am no blind partisan of Charles Sumner. I have often differed from him
+in opinion. I regretted deeply the position which he thought it his duty
+to take during the late presidential campaign. He felt the atmosphere
+about him thick and foul with corruption and bribery and greed; he saw
+the treasury ringed about like Saturn with unscrupulous combinations and
+corporations; and it is to be regretted more than wondered at if he
+struck out wildly in his indignation, and that his blows fell sometimes
+upon the wrong object. But I did not intend to act the part of his
+apologist. The twenty years of his senatorial life are crowded with
+memorials of his loyalty to truth and free dom and humanity, which will
+be enduring as our history. He is no party to this movement, in which my
+name has been more prominent than I could have wished, and no word of his
+prompted or suggested it. From its inception to the present time he has
+remained silent in his chamber of pain, waiting to bequeath, like the
+testator of the dramatist,
+
+ "A fame by scandal untouched
+ To Memory and Time's old daughter Truth."
+
+He can well afford to wait, and the issue of the present question before
+our legislature is of far less consequence to him than to us. To use the
+words of one who stood by him in the dark days of the Fugitive Slave Law,
+the Chief Justice of the United States,--"Time and the wiser thought will
+vindicate the illustrious statesman to whom Massachusetts, the country,
+and humanity owe so much, but the state can ill afford the damage to its
+own reputation which such a censure of such a man will inflict."
+
+AMESBURY, 3d month, 8, 1873.
+
+
+
+
+THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION OF 1833. (1874.)
+
+In the gray twilight of a chill day of late November, forty years ago, a
+dear friend of mine, residing in Boston, made his appearance at the old
+farm-house in East Haverhill. He had been deputed by the abolitionists
+of the city, William L. Garrison, Samuel E. Sewall, and others, to
+inform me of my appointment as a delegate to the Convention about to be
+held in Philadelphia for the formation of an American Anti-Slavery
+Society, and to urge upon me the necessity of my attendance.
+
+Few words of persuasion, however, were needed. I was unused to
+travelling; my life had been spent on a secluded farm; and the journey,
+mostly by stage-coach, at that time was really a formidable one.
+Moreover, the few abolitionists were everywhere spoken against, their
+persons threatened, and in some instances a price set on their heads by
+Southern legislators. Pennsylvania was on the borders of slavery, and it
+needed small effort of imagination to picture to one's self the breaking
+up of the Convention and maltreatment of its members. This latter
+consideration I do not think weighed much with me, although I was better
+prepared for serious danger than for anything like personal indignity. I
+had read Governor Trumbull's description of the tarring and feathering of
+his hero MacFingal, when, after the application of the melted tar, the
+feather-bed was ripped open and shaken over him, until
+
+ "Not Maia's son, with wings for ears,
+ Such plumes about his visage wears,
+ Nor Milton's six-winged angel gathers
+ Such superfluity of feathers,"
+
+and I confess I was quite unwilling to undergo a martyrdom which my best
+friends could scarcely refrain from laughing at. But a summons like that
+of Garrison's bugle-blast could scarcely be unheeded by one who, from
+birth and education, held fast the traditions of that earlier
+abolitionism which, under the lead of Benezet and Woolman, had effaced
+from the Society of Friends every vestige of slave-holding. I had thrown
+myself, with a young man's fervid enthusiasm, into a movement which
+commended itself to my reason and conscience, to my love of country, and
+my sense of duty to God and my fellow-men. My first venture in
+authorship was the publication, at my own expense, in the spring of 1833,
+of a pamphlet entitled Justice and Expediency, on the moral and political
+evils of slavery, and the duty of emancipation. Under such circumstances
+I could not hesitate, but prepared at once for my journey. It was
+necessary that I should start on the morrow, and the intervening time,
+with a small allowance for sleep, was spent in providing for the care of
+the farm and homestead during my absence.
+
+So the next morning I took the stage for Boston, stopping at the ancient
+hostelry known as the Eastern Stage Tavern; and on the day following, in
+company with William Lloyd Garrison, I left for New York. At that city
+we were joined by other delegates, among them David Thurston, a
+Congregational minister from Maine. On our way to Philadelphia, we took,
+as a matter of necessary economy, a second-class conveyance, and found
+ourselves, in consequence, among rough and hilarious companions, whose
+language was more noteworthy for strength than refinement. Our worthy
+friend the clergyman bore it awhile in painful silence, but at last felt
+it his duty to utter words of remonstrance and admonition. The leader of
+the young roisterers listened with a ludicrous mock gravity, thanked him
+for his exhortation, and, expressing fears that the extraordinary effort
+had exhausted his strength, invited him to take a drink with him. Father
+Thurston buried his grieved face in his cloak-collar, and wisely left the
+young reprobates to their own devices.
+
+On reaching Philadelphia, we at once betook, ourselves to the humble
+dwelling on Fifth Street occupied by Evan Lewis, a plain, earnest man and
+lifelong abolitionist, who had been largely interested in preparing the
+way for the Convention. In one respect the time of our assembling seemed
+unfavorable. The Society of Friends, upon whose cooperation we had
+counted, had but recently been rent asunder by one of those unhappy
+controversies which so often mark the decline of practical righteousness.
+The martyr-age of the society had passed, wealth and luxury had taken the
+place of the old simplicity, there was a growing conformity to the maxims
+of the world in trade and fashion, and with it a corresponding
+unwillingness to hazard respectability by the advocacy of unpopular
+reforms. Unprofitable speculation and disputation on one hand, and a
+vain attempt on the other to enforce uniformity of opinion, had
+measurably lost sight of the fact that the end of the gospel is love, and
+that charity is its crowning virtue. After a long and painful struggle
+the disruption had taken place; the shattered fragments, under the name
+of Orthodox and Hicksite, so like and yet so separate in feeling,
+confronted each other as hostile sects, and
+
+ "Never either found another
+ To free the hollow heart from paining;
+ They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
+ Like cliffs that have been torn asunder
+ A dreary sea now flows between;
+ But neither rain, nor frost, nor thunder,
+ Can wholly do away, I ween,
+ The marks of that which once has been."
+
+We found about forty members assembled in the parlors of our friend
+Lewis, and, after some general conversation, Lewis Tappan was asked to
+preside over an informal meeting, preparatory to the opening of the
+Convention. A handsome, intellectual-looking man, in the prime of life,
+responded to the invitation, and in a clear, well-modulated voice, the
+firm tones of which inspired hope and confidence, stated the objects of
+our preliminary council, and the purpose which had called us together, in
+earnest and well-chosen words. In making arrangements for the
+Convention, it was thought expedient to secure, if possible, the services
+of some citizen of Philadelphia, of distinction and high social standing,
+to preside over its deliberations. Looking round among ourselves in vain
+for some titled civilian or doctor of divinity, we were fain to confess
+that to outward seeming we were but "a feeble folk," sorely needing the
+shield of a popular name. A committee, of which I was a member, was
+appointed to go in search of a president of this description. We visited
+two prominent gentlemen, known as friendly to emancipation and of high
+social standing. They received us with the dignified courtesy of the old
+school, declined our proposition in civil terms, and bowed us out with a
+cool politeness equalled only by that of the senior Winkle towards the
+unlucky deputation of Pickwick and his unprepossessing companions. As we
+left their doors we could not refrain from smiling in each other's faces
+at the thought of the small inducement our proffer of the presidency held
+out to men of their class. Evidently our company was not one for
+respectability to march through Coventry with.
+
+On the following morning we repaired to the Adelphi Building, on Fifth
+Street, below Walnut, which had been secured for our use. Sixty-two
+delegates were found to be in attendance. Beriah Green, of the Oneida
+(New York) Institute, was chosen president, a fresh-faced, sandy-haired,
+rather common-looking man, but who had the reputation of an able and
+eloquent speaker. He had already made himself known to us as a resolute
+and self-sacrificing abolitionist. Lewis Tappan and myself took our
+places at his side as secretaries, on the elevation at the west end of
+the hall.
+
+Looking over the assembly, I noticed that it was mainly composed of
+comparatively young men, some in middle age, and a few beyond that
+period. They were nearly all plainly dressed, with a view to comfort
+rather than elegance. Many of the faces turned towards me wore a look of
+expectancy and suppressed enthusiasm; all had the earnestness which might
+be expected of men engaged in an enterprise beset with difficulty and
+perhaps with peril. The fine, intellectual head of Garrison, prematurely
+bald, was conspicuous; the sunny-faced young man at his side, in whom all
+the beatitudes seemed to find expression, was Samuel J. May, mingling in
+his veins the best blood of the Sewalls and Quincys,--a man so
+exceptionally pure and large-hearted, so genial, tender, and loving, that
+he could be faithful to truth and duty without making an enemy.
+
+ "The de'il wad look into his face,
+ And swear he couldna wrang him."
+
+That tall, gaunt, swarthy man, erect, eagle-faced, upon whose somewhat
+martial figure the Quaker coat seemed a little out of place, was Lindley
+Coates, known in all eastern Pennsylvania as a stern enemy of slavery;
+that slight, eager man, intensely alive in every feature and gesture, was
+Thomas Shipley, who for thirty years had been the protector of the free
+colored people of Philadelphia, and whose name was whispered reverently
+in the slave cabins of Maryland as the friend of the black man, one of a
+class peculiar to old Quakerism, who in doing what they felt to be duty,
+and walking as the Light within guided them, knew no fear and shrank from
+no sacrifice. Braver men the world has not known. Beside him, differing
+in creed, but united with him in works of love and charity, sat Thomas
+Whitson, of the Hicksite school of Friends, fresh from his farm in
+Lancaster County, dressed in plainest homespun, his tall form surmounted
+by a shock of unkempt hair, the odd obliquity of his vision contrasting
+strongly with he clearness and directness of his spiritual insight.
+Elizur Wright, the young professor of a Western college, who had lost his
+place by his bold advocacy of freedom, with a look of sharp concentration
+in keeping with an intellect keen as a Damascus blade, closely watched
+the proceedings through his spectacles, opening his mouth only to speak
+directly to the purpose. The portly form of Dr. Bartholomew Russell, the
+beloved physician, from that beautiful land of plenty and peace which
+Bayard Taylor has described in his Story of Kennett, was not to be
+overlooked. Abolitionist in heart and soul, his house was known as the
+shelter of runaway slaves, and no sportsman ever entered into the chase
+with such zest as he did into the arduous and sometimes dangerous work of
+aiding their escape and baffling their pursuers. The youngest man
+present was, I believe, James Miller McKim, a Presbyterian minister from
+Columbia, afterwards one of our most efficient workers. James Mott, E.
+L. Capron, Arnold Buffum, and Nathan Winslow, men well known in the anti-
+slavery agitation, were conspicuous members. Vermont sent down from her
+mountains Orson S. Murray, a man terribly in earnest, with a zeal that
+bordered on fanaticism, and who was none the more genial for the mob-
+violence to which he had been subjected. In front of me, awakening
+pleasant associations of the old homestead in Merrimac valley, sat my
+first school-teacher, Joshua Coffin, the learned and worthy antiquarian
+and historian of Newbury. A few spectators, mostly of the Hicksite
+division of Friends, were present, in broad brims and plain bonnets,
+among them Esther Moore and Lucretia Mott.
+
+Committees were chosen to draft a constitution for a national Anti-
+Slavery Society, nominate a list of officers, and prepare a declaration
+of principles to be signed by the members. Dr. A. L. Cox of New York,
+while these committees were absent, read something from my pen eulogistic
+of William Lloyd Garrison; and Lewis Tappan and Amos A. Phelps, a
+Congregational clergyman of Boston, afterwards one of the most devoted
+laborers in the cause, followed in generous commendation of the zeal,
+courage, and devotion of the young pioneer. The president, after calling
+James McCrummell, one of the two or three colored members of the
+Convention, to the chair, made some eloquent remarks upon those editors
+who had ventured to advocate emancipation. At the close of his speech a
+young man rose to speak, whose appearance at once arrested my attention.
+I think I have never seen a finer face and figure, and his manner, words,
+and bearing were in keeping. "Who is he?" I asked of one of the
+Pennsylvania delegates. "Robert Purvis, of this city, a colored man,"
+was the answer. He began by uttering his heart-felt thanks to the
+delegates who had convened for the deliverance of his people. He spoke
+of Garrison in terms of warmest eulogy, as one who had stirred the heart
+of the nation, broken the tomblike slumber of the church, and compelled
+it to listen to the story of the slave's wrongs. He closed by declaring
+that the friends of colored Americans would not be forgotten. "Their
+memories," he said, "will be cherished when pyramids and monuments shall
+have crumbled in dust. The flood of time which is sweeping away the
+refuge of lies is bearing on the advocates of our cause to a glorious
+immortality."
+
+The committee on the constitution made their report, which after
+discussion was adopted. It disclaimed any right or intention of
+interfering, otherwise than by persuasion and Christian expostulation,
+with slavery as it existed in the states, but affirming the duty of
+Congress to abolish it in the District of Columbia and territories, and
+to put an end to the domestic slave-trade. A list of officers of the new
+society was then chosen: Arthur Tappan of New York, president, and Elizur
+Wright, Jr., William Lloyd Garrison, and A. L. Cox, secretaries. Among
+the vice-presidents was Dr. Lord of Dartmouth College, then professedly
+in favor of emancipation, but who afterwards turned a moral somersault, a
+self-inversion which left him ever after on his head instead of his feet.
+
+He became a querulous advocate of slavery as a divine institution, and
+denounced woe upon the abolitionists for interfering with the will and
+purpose of the Creator. As the cause of freedom gained ground, the poor
+man's heart failed him, and his hope for church and state grew fainter
+and fainter. A sad prophet of the evangel of slavery, he testified in
+the unwilling ears of an unbelieving generation, and died at last
+despairing of a world which seemed determined that Canaan should no
+longer be cursed, nor Onesimus sent back to Philemon.
+
+The committee on the declaration of principles, of which I was a member,
+held a long session, discussing the proper scope and tenor of the
+document. But little progress being made, it was finally decided to
+entrust the matter to a sub-committee, consisting of William L.
+Garrison, S. J. May, and myself; and after a brief consultation and
+comparison of each other's views, the drafting of the important paper was
+assigned to the former gentleman. We agreed to meet him at his lodgings
+in the house of a colored friend early the next morning. It was still
+dark when we climbed up to his room, and the lamp was still burning by
+the light of which he was writing the last sentence of the declaration.
+We read it carefully, made a few verbal changes, and submitted it to the
+large committee, who unanimously agreed to report it to the Convention.
+
+The paper was read to the Convention by Dr. Atlee, chairman of the
+committee, and listened to with the profoundest interest.
+
+Commencing with a reference to the time, fifty-seven years before, when,
+in the same city of Philadelphia, our fathers announced to the world
+their Declaration of Independence,--based on the self-evident truths of
+human equality and rights,--and appealed to arms for its defence, it
+spoke of the new enterprise as one "without which that of our fathers is
+incomplete," and as transcending theirs in magnitude, solemnity, and
+probable results as much "as moral truth does physical force." It spoke
+of the difference of the two in the means and ends proposed, and of the
+trifling grievances of our fathers compared with the wrongs and
+sufferings of the slaves, which it forcibly characterized as unequalled
+by any others on the face of the earth. It claimed that the nation was
+bound to repent at once, to let the oppressed go free, and to admit them
+to all the rights and privileges of others; because, it asserted, no man
+has a right to enslave or imbrute his brother; because liberty is
+inalienable; because there is no difference, in principle, between slave-
+holding and man-stealing, which the law brands as piracy; and because no
+length of bondage can invalidate man's claim to himself, or render slave
+laws anything but "an audacious usurpation."
+
+It maintained that no compensation should be given to planters
+emancipating slaves, because that would be a surrender of fundamental
+principles; "slavery is a crime, and is, therefore, not an article to be
+sold;" because slave-holders are not just proprietors of what they claim;
+because emancipation would destroy only nominal, not real property; and
+because compensation, if given at all, should be given to the slaves.
+
+It declared any "scheme of expatriation" to be "delusive, cruel, and
+dangerous." It fully recognized the right of each state to legislate
+exclusively on the subject of slavery within its limits, and conceded
+that Congress, under the present national compact, had no right to
+interfere; though still contending that it had the power, and should
+exercise it, "to suppress the domestic slave-trade between the several
+states," and "to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and in
+those portions of our territory which the Constitution has placed under
+its exclusive jurisdiction."
+
+After clearly and emphatically avowing the principles underlying the
+enterprise, and guarding with scrupulous care the rights of persons and
+states under the Constitution, in prosecuting it, the declaration closed
+with these eloquent words:--
+
+We also maintain that there are, at the present time, the highest
+obligations resting upon the people of the free states to remove slavery
+by moral and political action, as prescribed in the Constitution of the
+United States. They are now living under a pledge of their tremendous
+physical force to fasten the galling fetters of tyranny upon the limbs of
+millions in the Southern states; they are liable to be called at any
+moment to suppress a general insurrection of the slaves; they authorize
+the slave-owner to vote on three fifths of his slaves as property, and
+thus enable him to perpetuate his oppression; they support a standing
+army at the South for its protection; and they seize the slave who has
+escaped into their territories, and send him back to be tortured by an
+enraged master or a brutal driver. This relation to slavery is criminal
+and full of danger. It must be broken up.
+
+"These are our views and principles,--these our designs and measures.
+With entire confidence in the overruling justice of God, we plant
+ourselves upon the Declaration of Independence and the truths of divine
+revelation as upon the everlasting rock.
+
+"We shall organize anti-slavery societies, if possible, in every city,
+town, and village in our land.
+
+"We shall send forth agents to lift up the voice of remonstrance, of
+warning, of entreaty and rebuke.
+
+"We shall circulate unsparingly and extensively anti-slavery tracts and
+periodicals.
+
+"We shall enlist the pulpit and the press in the cause of the suffering
+and the dumb.
+
+"We shall aim at a purification of the churches from all participation in
+the guilt of slavery.
+
+"We shall encourage the labor of freemen over that of the slaves, by
+giving a preference to their productions; and
+
+"We shall spare no exertions nor means to bring the whole nation to
+speedy repentance.
+
+"Our trust for victory is solely in God. We may be personally defeated,
+but our principles never. Truth, justice, reason, humanity, must and
+will gloriously triumph. Already a host is coming up to the help of the
+Lord against the mighty, and the prospect before us is full of
+encouragement.
+
+"Submitting this declaration to the candid examination of the people of
+this country, and of the friends of liberty all over the world, we hereby
+affix our signatures to it; pledging ourselves that, under the guidance
+and by the help of Almighty God, we will do all that in us lies,
+consistently with this declaration of our principles, to overthrow the
+most execrable system of slavery that has ever been witnessed upon earth,
+to deliver our land from its deadliest curse, to wipe out the foulest
+stain which rests upon our national escutcheon, and to secure to the
+colored population of the United States all the rights and privileges
+which belong to them as men and as Americans, come what may to our
+persons, our interests, or our reputations, whether we live to witness
+the triumph of justice, liberty, and humanity, or perish untimely as
+martyrs in this great, benevolent, and holy cause."
+
+The reading of the paper was followed by a discussion which lasted
+several hours. A member of the Society of Friends moved its immediate
+adoption. "We have," he said, "all given it our assent: every heart here
+responds to it. It is a doctrine of Friends that these strong and deep
+impressions should be heeded." The Convention, nevertheless, deemed it
+important to go over the declaration carefully, paragraph by paragraph.
+During the discussion, one of the spectators asked leave to say a few
+words. A beautiful and graceful woman, in the prime of life, with a face
+beneath her plain cap as finely intellectual as that of Madame Roland,
+offered some wise and valuable suggestions, in a clear, sweet voice, the
+charm of which I have never forgotten. It was Lucretia Mott of
+Philadelphia. The president courteously thanked her, and encouraged her
+to take a part in the discussion. On the morning of the last day of our
+session, the declaration, with its few verbal amendments, carefully
+engrossed on parchment, was brought before the Convention. Samuel J. May
+rose to read it for the last time. His sweet, persuasive voice faltered
+with the intensity of his emotions as he repeated the solemn pledges of
+the concluding paragraphs. After a season of silence, David Thurston of
+Maine rose as his name was called by one of the secretaries, and affixed
+his name to the document. One after another passed up to the platform,
+signed, and retired in silence. All felt the deep responsibility of the
+occasion the shadow and forecast of a life-long struggle rested upon
+every countenance.
+
+Our work as a Convention was now done. President Green arose to make the
+concluding address. The circumstances under which it was uttered may
+have lent it an impressiveness not its own; but as I now recall it, it
+seems to me the most powerful and eloquent speech to which I have ever
+listened. He passed in review the work that had been done, the
+constitution of the new society, the declaration of sentiments, and the
+union and earnestness which had marked the proceedings. His closing
+words will never be forgotten by those who heard them:--
+
+"Brethren, it has been good to be here. In this hallowed atmosphere I
+have been revived and refreshed. This brief interview has more than
+repaid me for all that I have ever suffered. I have here met congenial
+minds; I have rejoiced in sympathies delightful to the soul. Heart has
+beat responsive to heart, and the holy work of seeking to benefit the
+outraged and despised has proved the most blessed employment.
+
+"But now we must retire from these balmy influences and breathe another
+atmosphere. The chill hoar-frost will be upon us. The storm and tempest
+will rise, and the waves of persecution will dash against our souls. Let
+us be prepared for the worst. Let us fasten ourselves to the throne of
+God as with hooks of steel. If we cling not to Him, our names to that
+document will be but as dust.
+
+"Let us court no applause, indulge in no spirit of vain boasting. Let us
+be assured that our only hope in grappling with the bony monster is in an
+Arm that is stronger than ours. Let us fix our gaze on God, and walk in
+the light of His countenance. If our cause be just--and we know it is--
+His omnipotence is pledged to its triumph. Let this cause be entwined
+around the very fibres of our hearts. Let our hearts grow to it, so that
+nothing but death can sunder the bond."
+
+He ceased, and then, amidst a silence broken only by the deep-drawn
+breath of emotion in the assembly, lifted up his voice in a prayer to
+Almighty God, full of fervor and feeling, imploring His blessing and
+sanctification upon the Convention and its labors. And with the
+solemnity of this supplication in our hearts we clasped hands in
+farewell, and went forth each man to his place of duty, not knowing the
+things that should befall us as individuals, but with a confidence, never
+shaken by abuse and persecution, in the certain triumph of our cause.
+
+
+
+
+KANSAS
+
+Read at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the state of
+Kansas.
+
+ BEAR CAMP HOUSE, WEST OSSIPEE, N. H.,
+ Eighth month, 29th, 1879.
+
+To J. S. EMERY, R. MORROW, AND C. W. SMITH, COMMITTEE:
+
+I HAVE received your invitation to the twenty-fifth anniversary
+celebration of the first settlement of Kansas. It would give me great
+pleasure to visit your state on an occasion of such peculiar interest,
+and to make the acquaintance of its brave and self-denying pioneers, but
+I have not health and strength for the journey. It is very fitting that
+this anniversary should be duly recognized. No one of your sister states
+has such a record as yours,--so full of peril and adventure, fortitude,
+self-sacrifice, and heroic devotion to freedom. Its baptism of martyr
+blood not only saved the state to liberty, but made the abolition of
+slavery everywhere possible. Barber and Stillwell and Colpetzer and
+their associates did not die in vain. All through your long, hard
+struggle I watched the course of events in Kansas with absorbing
+interest. I rejoiced, while I marvelled at the steady courage which no
+danger could shake, at the firm endurance which outwearied the
+brutalities of your slaveholding invaders, and at that fidelity to right
+and duty which the seduction of immediate self-interest could not swerve,
+nor the military force of a proslavery government overawe. All my
+sympathies were with you in that stern trial of your loyalty to God and
+humanity. And when, in the end, you had conquered peace, and the last of
+the baffled border ruffians had left your territory, I felt that the doom
+of the accursed institution was sealed, and that its abolition was but a
+question of time. A state with such a record will, I am sure, be true to
+its noble traditions, and will do all in its power to aid the victims of
+prejudice and oppression who may be compelled to seek shelter within its
+borders. I will not for a moment distrust the fidelity of Kansas to her
+foundation principle. God bless and prosper her! Thanking you for the
+kind terms of your invitation, I am, gentlemen, very truly your friend.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
+
+An Introduction to Oliver Johnson's "William Lloyd Garrison and his
+Times."
+
+ (1879.)
+
+I no not know that any word of mine can give additional interest to this
+memorial of William Lloyd Garrison from the pen of one of his earliest
+and most devoted friends, whose privilege it has been to share his
+confidence and his labors for nearly half a century; but I cannot well
+forego the opportunity afforded me to add briefly my testimony to the
+tribute to the memory of the great Reformer, whose friendship I have
+shared, and with whom I have been associated in a common cause from youth
+to age.
+
+My acquaintance with him commenced in boyhood. My father was a
+subscriber to his first paper, the Free Press, and the humanitarian tone
+of his editorials awakened a deep interest in our little household, which
+was increased by a visit which he made us. When he afterwards edited the
+Journal of the Times, at Bennington, Vt., I ventured to write him a
+letter of encouragement and sympathy, urging him to continue his labors
+against slavery, and assuring him that he could "do great things," an
+unconscious prophecy which has been fulfilled beyond the dream of my
+boyish enthusiasm. The friendship thus commenced has remained unbroken
+through half a century, confirming my early confidence in his zeal and
+devotion, and in the great intellectual and moral strength which he
+brought to the cause with which his name is identified.
+
+During the long and hard struggle in which the abolitionists were
+engaged, and amidst the new and difficult questions and side-issues which
+presented themselves, it could scarcely be otherwise than that
+differences of opinion and action should arise among them. The leader
+and his disciples could not always see alike. My friend, the author of
+this book, I think, generally found himself in full accord with him,
+while I often decidedly dissented. I felt it my duty to use my right of
+citizenship at the ballot-box in the cause of liberty, while Garrison,
+with equal sincerity, judged and counselled otherwise. Each acted under
+a sense of individual duty and responsibility, and our personal relations
+were undisturbed. If, at times, the great anti-slavery leader failed to
+do justice to the motives of those who, while in hearty sympathy with his
+hatred of slavery, did not agree with some of his opinions and methods,
+it was but the pardonable and not unnatural result of his intensity of
+purpose, and his self-identification with the cause he advocated; and,
+while compelled to dissent, in some particulars, from his judgment of men
+and measures, the great mass of the antislavcry people recognized his
+moral leadership. The controversies of old and new organization,
+nonresistance and political action, may now be looked upon by the parties
+to them, who still survive, with the philosophic calmness which follows
+the subsidence of prejudice and passion. We were but fallible men, and
+doubtless often erred in feeling, speech, and action. Ours was but the
+common experience of reformers in all ages.
+
+ "Never in Custom's oiled grooves
+ The world to a higher level moves,
+ But grates and grinds with friction hard
+ On granite bowlder and flinty shard.
+ Ever the Virtues blush to find
+ The Vices wearing their badge behind,
+ And Graces and Charities feel the fire
+ Wherein the sins of the age expire."
+
+It is too late now to dwell on these differences. I choose rather, with
+a feeling of gratitude to God, to recall the great happiness of laboring
+with the noble company of whom Garrison was the central figure. I love
+to think of him as he seemed to me, when in the fresh dawn of manhood he
+sat with me in the old Haverhill farmhouse, revolving even then schemes
+of benevolence; or, with cheery smile, welcoming me to his frugal meal of
+bread and milk in the dingy Boston printing-room; or, as I found him in
+the gray December morning in the small attic of a colored man, in
+Philadelphia, finishing his night-long task of drafting his immortal
+Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society; or, as I
+saw him in the jail of Leverett Street, after his almost miraculous
+escape from the mob, playfully inviting me to share the safe lodgings
+which the state had provided for him; and in all the varied scenes and
+situations where we acted together our parts in the great endeavor and
+success of Freedom.
+
+The verdict of posterity in his case may be safely anticipated. With the
+true reformers and benefactors of his race he occupies a place inferior
+to none other. The private lives of many who fought well the battles of
+humanity have not been without spot or blemish. But his private
+character, like his public, knew no dishonor. No shadow of suspicion
+rests upon the white statue of a life, the fitting garland of which
+should be the Alpine flower that symbolizes noble purity.
+
+
+
+
+ANTI-SLAVERY ANNIVERSARY.
+
+Read at the semi-centennial celebration of the American Anti-Slavery
+Society at Philadelphia, on the 3d December, 1883.
+
+ OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, MASS.,
+ 11th mo., 30, 1883.
+
+I NEED not say how gladly I would be with you at the semi-centennial of
+the American Anti-Slavery Society. I am, I regret to say, quite unable
+to gratify this wish, and can only represent myself by a letter.
+
+Looking back over the long years of half a century, I can scarcely
+realize the conditions under which the convention of 1833 assembled.
+Slavery was predominant. Like Apollyon in Pilgrim's Progress, it
+"straddled over the whole breadth of the way." Church and state, press
+and pulpit, business interests, literature, and fashion were prostrate at
+its feet. Our convention, with few exceptions, was composed of men
+without influence or position, poor and little known, strong only in
+their convictions and faith in the justice of their cause. To onlookers
+our endeavor to undo the evil work of two centuries and convert a nation
+to the "great renunciation" involved in emancipation must have seemed
+absurd in the last degree. Our voices in such an atmosphere found no
+echo. We could look for no response but laughs of derision or the
+missiles of a mob.
+
+But we felt that we had the strength of truth on our side; we were right,
+and all the world about us was wrong. We had faith, hope, and
+enthusiasm, and did our work, nothing doubting, amidst a generation who
+first despised and then feared and hated us. For myself I have never
+ceased to be grateful to the Divine Providence for the privilege of
+taking a part in that work.
+
+And now for more than twenty years we have had a free country. No slave
+treads its soil. The anticipated dangerous consequences of complete
+emancipation have not been felt. The emancipated class, as a whole, have
+done wisely, and well under circumstances of peculiar difficulty. The
+masters have learned that cotton can be raised better by free than by
+slave labor, and nobody now wishes a return to slave-holding. Sectional
+prejudices are subsiding, the bitterness of the civil war is slowly
+passing away. We are beginning to feel that we are one people, with no
+really clashing interests, and none more truly rejoice in the growing
+prosperity of the South than the old abolitionists, who hated slavery as
+a curse to the master as well as to the slave.
+
+In view of this commemorative semi-centennial occasion, many thoughts
+crowd upon me; memory recalls vanished faces and voices long hushed. Of
+those who acted with me in the convention fifty years ago nearly all have
+passed into another state of being. We who remain must soon follow; we
+have seen the fulfilment of our desire; we have outlived scorn and
+persecution; the lengthening shadows invite us to rest. If, in looking
+back, we feel that we sometimes erred through impatient zeal in our
+contest with a great wrong, we have the satisfaction of knowing that we
+were influenced by no merely selfish considerations. The low light of
+our setting sun shines over a free, united people, and our last prayer
+shall be for their peace, prosperity, and happiness.
+
+
+
+
+RESPONSE TO THE CELEBRATION OF MY EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY
+
+BY THE COLORED CITIZENS OF WASHINGTON D. C.
+
+To R. H. TERRELL AND GEORGE W. WILLIAMS, ESQUIRES.
+
+GENTLEMEN,--Among the great number of tokens of interest and good-will
+which reached me on my birthday, none have touched me more deeply than
+the proceedings of the great meeting of the colored citizens of the
+nation's capital, of which you are the representatives. The resolutions
+of that meeting came to me as the voice of millions of my fellow-
+countrymen. That voice was dumb in slavery when, more than half a
+century ago, I put forth my plea for the freedom of the slave.
+
+It could not answer me from the rice swamp and cotton field, but now, God
+be praised, it speaks from your great meeting in Washington and from all
+the colleges and schools where the youth of your race are taught. I
+scarcely expected then that the people for whom I pleaded would ever know
+of my efforts in their behalf. I cannot be too thankful to the Divine
+Providence that I have lived to hear their grateful response.
+
+I stand amazed at the rapid strides which your people have made since
+emancipation, at your industry, your acquisition of property and land,
+your zeal for education, your self-respecting but unresentful attitude
+toward those who formerly claimed to be your masters, your pathetic but
+manly appeal for just treatment and recognition. I see in all this the
+promise that the time is not far distant when, in common with the white
+race, you will have the free, undisputed rights of American citizenship
+in all parts of the Union, and your rightful share in the honors as well
+as the protection of the government.
+
+Your letter would have been answered sooner if it had been possible. I
+have been literally overwhelmed with letters and telegrams, which, owing
+to illness, I have been in a great measure unable to answer or even read.
+
+I tender to you, gentlemen, and to the people you represent my heartfelt
+thanks, and the assurance that while life lasts you will find me, as I
+have been heretofore, under more difficult circumstances, your faithful
+friend.
+
+OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, MASS.,
+first mo., 9, 1888.
+
+
+
+
+REFORM AND POLITICS. UTOPIAN SCHEMES AND POLITICAL THEORISTS.
+
+THERE is a large class of men, not in Europe alone, but in this country
+also, whose constitutional conservatism inclines them to regard any
+organic change in the government of a state or the social condition of
+its people with suspicion and distrust. They admit, perhaps, the evils
+of the old state of things; but they hold them to be inevitable, the
+alloy necessarily mingled with all which pertains to fallible humanity.
+Themselves generally enjoying whatever of good belongs to the political
+or social system in which their lot is cast, they are disposed to look
+with philosophic indifference upon the evil which only afflicts their
+neighbors. They wonder why people are not contented with their
+allotments; they see no reason for change; they ask for quiet and peace
+in their day; being quite well satisfied with that social condition which
+an old poet has quaintly described:--
+
+ "The citizens like pounded pikes;
+ The lesser feed the great;
+ The rich for food seek stomachs,
+ And the poor for stomachs meat."
+
+This class of our fellow-citizens have an especial dislike of theorists,
+reformers, uneasy spirits, speculators upon the possibilities of the
+world's future, constitution builders, and believers in progress. They
+are satisfied; the world at least goes well enough with them; they sit as
+comfortable in it as Lafontaine's rat in the cheese; and why should those
+who would turn it upside down come hither also? Why not let well enough
+alone? Why tinker creeds, constitutions, and laws, and disturb the good
+old-fashioned order of things in church and state? The idea of making
+the world better and happier is to them an absurdity. He who entertains
+it is a dreamer and a visionary, destitute of common sense and practical
+wisdom. His project, whatever it may be, is at once pronounced to be
+impracticable folly, or, as they are pleased to term it, _Utopian._
+
+The romance of Sir Thomas More, which has long afforded to the
+conservatives of church and state a term of contempt applicable to all
+reformatory schemes and innovations, is one of a series of fabulous
+writings, in which the authors, living in evil times and unable to
+actualize their plans for the well-being of society, have resorted to
+fiction as a safe means of conveying forbidden truths to the popular
+mind. Plato's "Timaeus," the first of the series, was written after the
+death of Socrates and the enslavement of the author's country. In this
+are described the institutions of the Island of Atlantis,--the writer's
+ideal of a perfect commonwealth. Xenophon, in his "Cyropaedia," has also
+depicted an imaginary political society by overlaying with fiction
+historical traditions. At a later period we have the "New Atlantis" of
+Lord Bacon, and that dream of the "City of the Sun" with which Campanella
+solaced himself in his long imprisonment.
+
+The "Utopia" of More is perhaps the best of its class. It is the work of
+a profound thinker, the suggestive speculations and theories of one who
+could
+
+ "Forerun his age and race, and let
+ His feet millenniums hence be set
+ In midst of knowledge dreamed not yet."
+
+Much of what he wrote as fiction is now fact, a part of the frame-work of
+European governments, and the political truths of his imaginary state are
+now practically recognized in our own democratic system. As might be
+expected, in view of the times in which the author wrote, and the
+exceedingly limited amount of materials which he found ready to his hands
+for the construction of his social and political edifice, there is a want
+of proportion and symmetry in the structure. Many of his theories are no
+doubt impracticable and unsound. But, as a whole, the work is an
+admirable one, striding in advance of the author's age, and prefiguring a
+government of religious toleration and political freedom. The following
+extract from it was doubtless regarded in his day as something worse than
+folly or the dream of a visionary enthusiast:--
+
+"He judged it wrong to lay down anything rashly, and seemed to doubt
+whether these different forms of religion might not all come from God,
+who might inspire men in a different manner, and be pleased with the
+variety. He therefore thought it to be indecent and foolish for any man
+to threaten and terrify another, to make him believe what did not strike
+him as true."
+
+Passing by the "Telemachus" of Fenelon, we come to the political romance
+of Harrington, written in the time of Cromwell. "Oceana" is the name by
+which the author represents England; and the republican plan of
+government which he describes with much minuteness is such as he would
+have recommended for adoption in case a free commonwealth had been
+established. It deals somewhat severely with Cromwell's usurpation; yet
+the author did not hesitate to dedicate it to that remarkable man, who,
+after carefully reading it, gave it back to his daughter, Lady Claypole,
+with the remark, full of characteristic bluntness, that "the gentleman
+need not think to cheat him of his power and authority; for what he had
+won with the sword he would never suffer himself to be scribbled out of."
+
+Notwithstanding the liberality and freedom of his speculations upon
+government and religion in his Utopia, it must be confessed that Sir
+Thomas More, in after life, fell into the very practices of intolerance
+and bigotry which he condemned. When in the possession of the great seal
+under that scandal of kingship, Henry VIII., he gave his countenance to
+the persecution of heretics. Bishop Burnet says of him, that he caused a
+gentleman of the Temple to be whipped and put to the rack in his
+presence, in order to compel him to discover those who favored heretical
+opinions. In his Utopia he assailed the profession of the law with
+merciless satire; yet the satirist himself finally sat upon the
+chancellor's woolsack; and, as has been well remarked by Horace Smith,
+"if, from this elevated seat, he ever cast his eyes back upon his past
+life, he must have smiled at the fond conceit which could imagine a
+permanent Utopia, when he himself, certainly more learned, honest, and
+conscientious than the mass of men has ever been, could in the course of
+one short life fall into such glaring and frightful rebellion against his
+own doctrines."
+
+Harrington, on the other hand, as became the friend of Milton and Marvel,
+held fast, through good and evil report, his republican faith. He
+published his work after the Restoration, and defended it boldly and ably
+from the numerous attacks made upon it. Regarded as too dangerous an
+enthusiast to be left at liberty, he was imprisoned at the instance of
+Lord Chancellor Hyde, first in the Tower, and afterwards on the Island of
+St. Nicholas, where disease and imprudent remedies brought on a partial
+derangement, from which he never recovered.
+
+Bernardin St. Pierre, whose pathetic tale of "Paul and Virginia" has
+found admirers in every language of the civilized world, in a fragment,
+entitled "Arcadia," attempted to depict an ideal republic, without
+priest, noble, or slave, where all are so religious that each man is the
+pontiff of his family, where each man is prepared to defend his country,
+and where all are in such a state of equality that there are no such
+persons as servants. The plan of it was suggested by his friend Rousseau
+during their pleasant walking excursions about the environs of Paris, in
+which the two enthusiastic philosophers, baffled by the evil passions and
+intractable materials of human nature as manifested in existing society,
+comforted themselves by appealing from the actual to the possible, from
+the real to the imaginary. Under the chestnut-trees of the Bois de
+Boulogne, through long summer days, the two friends, sick of the noisy
+world about them, yet yearning to become its benefactors,--gladly
+escaping from it, yet busy with schemes for its regeneration and
+happiness,--at once misanthropes and philanthropists,--amused and solaced
+themselves by imagining a perfect and simple state of society, in which
+the lessons of emulation and selfish ambition were never to be taught;
+where, on the contrary, the young were to obey their parents, and to
+prefer father, mother, brother, sister, wife, and friend to themselves.
+They drew beautiful pictures of a country blessed with peace, indus try,
+and love, covered with no disgusting monuments of violence and pride and
+luxury, without columns, triumphal arches, hospitals, prisons, or
+gibbets; but presenting to view bridges over torrents, wells on the arid
+plain, groves of fruit-trees, and houses of shelter for the traveller in
+desert places, attesting everywhere the sentiment of humanity. Religion
+was to speak to all hearts in the eternal language of Nature. Death was
+no longer to be feared; perspectives of holy consolation were to open
+through the cypress shadows of the tomb; to live or to die was to be
+equally an object of desire.
+
+The plan of the "Arcadia" of St. Pierre is simply this: A learned young
+Egyptian, educated at Thebes by the priests of Osiris, desirous of
+benefiting humanity, undertakes a voyage to Gaul for the purpose of
+carrying thither the arts and religion of Egypt. He is shipwrecked on
+his return in the Gulf of Messina, and lands upon the coast, where he is
+entertained by an Arcadian, to whom he relates his adventures, and from
+whom he receives in turn an account of the simple happiness and peace of
+Arcadia, the virtues and felicity of whose inhabitants are beautifully
+exemplified in the lives and conversation of the shepherd and his
+daughter. This pleasant little prose poem closes somewhat abruptly.
+Although inferior in artistic skill to "Paul and Virginia" or the "Indian
+Cottage", there is not a little to admire in the simple beauty of its
+pastoral descriptions. The closing paragraph reminds one of Bunyan's
+upper chamber, where the weary pilgrim's windows opened to the sunrising
+and the singing of birds:--
+
+"Tyrteus conducted his guests to an adjoining chamber. It had a window
+shut by a curtain of rushes, through the crevices of which the islands of
+the Alpheus might be seen in the light of the moon. There were in this
+chamber two excellent beds, with coverlets of warm and light wool.
+
+"Now, as soon as Amasis was left alone with Cephas, he spoke with joy of
+the delight and tranquillity of the valley, of the goodness of the
+shepherd, and the grace of his young daughter, to whom he had seen none
+worthy to be compared, and of the pleasure which he promised himself the
+next day, at the festival on Mount Lyceum, of beholding a whole people as
+happy as this sequestered family. Converse so delightful might have
+charmed away the night without the aid of sleep, had they not been
+invited to repose by the mild light of the moon shining through the
+window, the murmuring wind in the leaves of the poplars, and the distant
+noise of the Achelous, which falls roaring from the summit of Mount
+Lyceum."
+
+The young patrician wits of Athens doubtless laughed over Plato's ideal
+republic. Campanella's "City of the Sun" was looked upon, no doubt, as
+the distempered vision of a crazy state prisoner. Bacon's college, in
+his "New Atlantis," moved the risibles of fat-witted Oxford. More's
+"Utopia," as we know, gave to our language a new word, expressive of the
+vagaries and dreams of fanatics and lunatics. The merciless wits,
+clerical and profane, of the court of Charles II. regarded Harrington's
+romance as a perfect godsend to their vocation of ridicule. The gay
+dames and carpet knights of Versailles made themselves merry with the
+prose pastoral of St. Pierre; and the poor old enthusiast went down to
+his grave without finding an auditory for his lectures upon natural
+society.
+
+The world had its laugh over these romances. When unable to refute their
+theories, it could sneer at the authors, and answer them to the
+satisfaction of the generation in which they lived, at least by a general
+charge of lunacy. Some of their notions were no doubt as absurd as those
+of the astronomer in "Rasselas", who tells Imlac that he has for five
+years possessed the regulation of the weather, and has got the secret of
+making to the different nations an equal and impartial dividend of rain
+and sunshine. But truth, even when ushered into the world through the
+medium of a dull romance and in connection with a vast progeny of errors,
+however ridiculed and despised at first, never fails in the end of
+finding a lodging-place in the popular mind. The speculations of the
+political theorists whom we have noticed have not all proved to be of
+
+ "such stuff
+ As dreams are made of, and their little life
+ Rounded with sleep."
+
+They have entered into and become parts of the social and political
+fabrics of Europe and America. The prophecies of imagination have been
+fulfilled; the dreams of romance have become familiar realities.
+
+What is the moral suggested by this record? Is it not that we should
+look with charity and tolerance upon the schemes and speculations of the
+political and social theorists of our day; that, if unprepared to venture
+upon new experiments and radical changes, we should at least consider
+that what was folly to our ancestors is our wisdom, and that another
+generation may successfully put in practice the very theories which now
+seem to us absurd and impossible? Many of the evils of society have been
+measurably removed or ameliorated; yet now, as in the days of the
+Apostle, "the creation groaneth and travaileth in pain;" and although
+quackery and empiricism abound, is it not possible that a proper
+application of some of the remedies proposed might ameliorate the general
+suffering? Rejecting, as we must, whatever is inconsistent with or
+hostile to the doctrines of Christianity, on which alone rests our hope
+for humanity, it becomes us to look kindly upon all attempts to apply
+those doctrines to the details of human life, to the social, political,
+and industrial relations of the race. If it is not permitted us to
+believe all things, we can at least hope them. Despair is infidelity and
+death. Temporally and spiritually, the declaration of inspiration holds
+good, "We are saved by hope."
+
+
+
+
+PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS OF MASSACHUSETTS. (1851.)
+
+BERNARDIN ST. PIERRE, in his Wishes of a Solitary, asks for his country
+neither wealth, nor military glory, nor magnificent palaces and
+monuments, nor splendor of court nobility, nor clerical pomp. "Rather,"
+he says, "O France, may no beggar tread thy plains, no sick or suffering
+man ask in vain for relief; in all thy hamlets may every young woman find
+a lover and every lover a true wife; may the young be trained arightly
+and guarded from evil; may the old close their days in the tranquil hope
+of those who love God and their fellow-men."
+
+We are reminded of the amiable wish of the French essayist--a wish even
+yet very far from realization, we fear, in the empire of Napoleon III.--
+by the perusal of two documents recently submitted to the legislature of
+the State of Massachusetts. They indicate, in our view, the real glory
+of a state, and foreshadow the coming of that time when Milton's
+definition of a true commonwealth shall be no longer a prophecy, but the
+description of an existing fact,--"a huge Christian personage, a mighty
+growth and stature of an honest man, moved by the purpose of a love of
+God and of mankind."
+
+Some years ago, the Legislature of Massachusetts, at the suggestion of
+several benevolent gentlemen whose attention had been turned to the
+subject, appointed a commission to inquire into the condition of the
+idiots of the Commonwealth, to ascertain their numbers, and whether
+anything could be done in their behalf.
+
+The commissioners were Dr. Samuel G. Howe, so well and honorably known
+for his long and arduous labors in behalf of the blind, Judge Byington,
+and Dr. Gilman Kimball. The burden of the labor fell upon the chairman,
+who entered upon it with the enthusiasm, perseverance, and practical
+adaptation of means to ends which have made him so efficient in his
+varied schemes of benevolence. On the 26th of the second month, 1848, a
+full report of the results of this labor was made to the Governor,
+accompanied by statistical tables and minute details. One hundred towns
+had been visited by the chairman or his reliable agent, in which five
+hundred and seventy-five persons in a state of idiocy were discovered.
+These were examined carefully in respect to their physical as well as
+mental condition, no inquiry being omitted which was calculated to throw
+light upon the remote or immediate causes of this mournful imperfection
+in the creation of God. The proximate causes Dr. Howe mentions are to be
+found in the state of the bodily organization, deranged and
+disproportioned by some violation of natural law on the part of the
+parents or remoter ancestors of the sufferers. Out of 420 cases of
+idiocy, he had obtained information respecting the condition of the
+progenitors of 359; and in all but four of these eases he found that one
+or the other, or both, of their immediate progenitors had in some way
+departed widely from the condition of health; they were scrofulous, or
+predisposed to affections of the brain, and insanity, or had intermarried
+with blood-relations, or had been intemperate, or guilty of sensual
+excesses.
+
+Of the 575 cases, 420 were those of idiocy from birth, and 155 of idiocy
+afterwards. Of the born idiots, 187 were under twenty-five years of age,
+and all but 13 seemed capable of improvement. Of those above twenty-five
+years of age, 73 appeared incapable of improvement in their mental
+condition, being helpless as children at seven years of age; 43 out of
+the 420 seemed as helpless as children at two years of age; 33 were in
+the condition of mere infants; and 220 were supported at the public
+charge in almshouses. A large proportion of them were found to be given
+over to filthy and loathsome habits, gluttony, and lust, and constantly
+sinking lower towards the condition of absolute brutishness.
+
+Those in private houses were found, if possible, in a still more
+deplorable state. Their parents were generally poor, feeble in mind and
+body, and often of very intemperate habits. Many of them seemed scarcely
+able to take care of themselves, and totally unfit for the training of
+ordinary children. It was the blind leading the blind, imbecility
+teaching imbecility. Some instances of the experiments of parental
+ignorance upon idiotic offspring, which fell under the observation of Dr.
+Howe, are related in his report Idiotic children were found with their
+heads covered over with cold poultices of oak-bark, which the foolish
+parents supposed would tan the brain and harden it as the tanner does his
+ox-hides, and so make it capable of retaining impressions and remembering
+lessons. In other cases, finding that the child could not be made to
+comprehend anything, the sagacious heads of the household, on the
+supposition that its brain was too hard, tortured it with hot poultices
+of bread and milk to soften it. Others plastered over their children's
+heads with tar. Some administered strong doses of mercury, to "solder up
+the openings" in the head and make it tight and strong. Others
+encouraged the savage gluttony of their children, stimulating their
+unnatural and bestial appetites, on the ground that "the poor creatures
+had nothing else to enjoy but their food, and they should have enough of
+that!"
+
+In consequence of this report, the legislature, in the spring of 1848,
+made an annual appropriation of twenty-five hundred dollars, for three
+years, for the purpose of training and teaching ten idiot children, to be
+selected by the Governor and Council. The trustees of the Asylum for the
+Blind, under the charge of Dr. Howe, made arrangements for receiving
+these pupils. The school was opened in the autumn of 1848; and its first
+annual report, addressed to the Governor and printed by order of the
+Senate, is now before us.
+
+Of the ten pupils, it appears that not one had the usual command of
+muscular motion,--the languid body obeyed not the service of the imbecile
+will. Some could walk and use their limbs and hands in simple motions;
+others could make only make slight use of their muscles; and two were
+without any power of locomotion.
+
+One of these last, a boy six years of age, who had been stupefied on the
+day of his birth by the application of hot rum to his head, could
+scarcely see or notice objects, and was almost destitute of the sense of
+touch. He could neither stand nor sit upright, nor even creep, but would
+lie on the floor in whatever position he was placed. He could not feed
+himself nor chew solid food, and had no more sense of decency than an
+infant. His intellect was a blank; he had no knowledge, no desires, no
+affections. A more hopeless object for experiment could scarcely have
+been selected.
+
+A year of patient endeavor has nevertheless wrought a wonderful change in
+the condition of this miserable being. Cold bathing, rubbing of the
+limbs, exercise of the muscles, exposure to the air, and other appliances
+have enabled him to stand upright, to sit at table and feed himself, and
+chew his food, and to walk about with slight assistance. His habits are
+no longer those of a brute; he observes decency; his eye is brighter; his
+cheeks glow with health; his countenance, is more expressive of thought.
+He has learned many words and constructs simple sentences; his affections
+begin to develop; and there is every prospect that he will be so far
+renovated as to be able to provide for himself in manhood.
+
+In the case of another boy, aged twelve years, the improvement has been
+equally remarkable. The gentleman who first called attention to him, in
+a recent note to Dr. Howe, published in the report, thus speaks of his
+present condition: "When I remember his former wild and almost frantic
+demeanor when approached by any one, and the apparent impossibility of
+communicating with him, and now see him standing in his class, playing
+with his fellows, and willingly and familiarly approaching me, examining
+what I gave him,--and when I see him already selecting articles named by
+his teacher, and even correctly pronouncing words printed on cards,--
+improvement does not convey the idea presented to my mind; it is
+creation; it is making him anew."
+
+All the pupils have more or less advanced. Their health and habits have
+improved; and there is no reason to doubt that the experiment, at the
+close of its three years, will be found to have been quite as successful
+as its most sanguine projectors could have anticipated. Dr. Howe has
+been ably seconded by an accomplished teacher, James B. Richards, who has
+devoted his whole time to the pupils. Of the nature and magnitude of
+their task, an idea may be formed only by considering the utter
+listlessness of idiocy, the incapability of the poor pupil to fix his
+attention upon anything, and his general want of susceptibility to
+impressions. All his senses are dulled and perverted. Touch, hearing,
+sight, smell, are all more or less defective. His gluttony is
+unaccompanied with the gratification of taste,--the most savory viands
+and the offal which he shares with the pigs equally satisfy him. His
+mental state is still worse than his physical. Thought is painful and
+irksome to him.
+
+His teacher can only engage his attention by strenuous efforts, loud,
+earnest tones, gesticulations and signs, and a constant presentation of
+some visible object of bright color and striking form. The eye wanders,
+and the spark of consciousness and intelligence which has been fanned
+into momentary brightness darkens at the slightest relaxation of the
+teacher's exertions. The names of objects presented to him must
+sometimes be repeated hundreds of times before he can learn them. Yet
+the patience and enthusiasm of the teacher are rewarded by a progress,
+slow and unequal, but still marked and manifest. Step by step, often
+compelled to turn back and go over the inch of ground he had gained, the
+idiot is still creeping forward; and by almost imperceptible degrees his
+sick, cramped, and prisoned spirit casts off the burden of its body of
+death, breath as from the Almighty--is breathed into him, and he becomes
+a living soul.
+
+After the senses of the idiot are trained to take note
+of their appropriate objects, the various perceptive faculties are next
+to be exercised. The greatest possible number of facts are to be
+gathered up through the medium of these faculties into the storehouse of
+memory, from whence eventually the higher faculties of mind may draw the
+material of general ideas. It has been found difficult, if not
+impossible, to teach the idiot to read by the letters first, as in the
+ordinary method; but while the varied powers of the three letters, h, a,
+t, could not be understood by him, he could be made to comprehend the
+complex sign of the word hat, made by uniting the three.
+
+The moral nature of the idiot needs training and development as well as
+his physical and mental. All that can be said of him is, that he has the
+latent capacity for moral development and culture. Uninstructed and left
+to himself, he has no ideas of regulated appetites and propensities, of
+decency and delicacy of affection and social relations. The germs of
+these ideas, which constitute the glory and beauty of humanity,
+undoubtedly exist in him; but there can be no growth without patient and
+persevering culture. Where this is afforded, to use the language of the
+report, "the idiot may learn what love is, though he may not know the
+word which expresses it; he may feel kindly affections while unable to
+understand the simplest virtuous principle; and he may begin to live
+acceptably to God before he has learned the name by which men call him."
+
+In the facts and statistics presented in the report, light is shed upon
+some of the dark pages of God's providence, and it is seen that the
+suffering and shame of idiocy are the result of sin, of a violation of
+the merciful laws of God and of the harmonies of His benign order. The
+penalties which are ordained for the violators of natural laws are
+inexorable and certain. For the transgressor of the laws of life there
+is, as in the case of Esau, "no place for repentance, though he seek it
+earnestly and with tears." The curse cleaves to him and his children.
+In this view, how important becomes the subject of the hereditary
+transmission of moral and physical disease and debility! and how
+necessary it is that there should be a clearer understanding of, and a
+willing obedience, at any cost, to the eternal law which makes the parent
+the blessing or the curse of the child, giving strength and beauty, and
+the capacity to know and do the will of God, or bequeathing
+loathsomeness, deformity, and animal appetite, incapable of the
+restraints of the moral faculties! Even if the labors of Dr. Howe and
+his benevolent associates do not materially lessen the amount of present
+actual evil and suffering in this respect, they will not be put forth in
+vain if they have the effect of calling public attention to the great
+laws of our being, the violation of which has made this goodly earth a
+vast lazarhouse of pain and sorrow.
+
+The late annual message of the Governor of Massachusetts invites our
+attention to a kindred institution of charity. The chief magistrate
+congratulates the legislature, in language creditable to his mind and
+heart, on the opening of the Reform School for Juvenile Criminals,
+established by an act of a previous legislature. The act provides that,
+when any boy under sixteen years of age shall be convicted of crime
+punishable by imprisonment other than such an offence as is punished by
+imprisonment for life, he may be, at the discretion of the court or
+justice, sent to the State Reform School, or sentenced to such
+imprisonment as the law now provides for his offence. The school is
+placed under the care of trustees, who may either refuse to receive a boy
+thus sent there, or, after he has been received, for reasons set forth in
+the act, may order him to be committed to prison under the previous penal
+law of the state. They are also authorized to apprentice the boys, at
+their discretion, to inhabitants of the Commonwealth. And whenever any
+boy shall be discharged, either as reformed or as having reached the age
+of twenty-one years, his discharge is a full release from his sentence.
+
+It is made the duty of the trustees to cause the boys to be instructed in
+piety and morality, and in branches of useful knowledge, in some regular
+course of labor, mechanical, agricultural, or horticultural, and such
+other trades and arts as may be best adapted to secure the amendment,
+reformation, and future benefit of the boys. The class of offenders for
+whom this act provides are generally the offspring of parents depraved by
+crime or suffering from poverty and want,--the victims often of
+circumstances of evil which almost constitute a necessity,--issuing from
+homes polluted and miserable, from the sight and hearing of loathsome
+impurities and hideous discords, to avenge upon society the ignorance,
+and destitution, and neglect with which it is too often justly
+chargeable. In 1846 three hundred of these youthful violators of law
+were sentenced to jails and other places of punishment in Massachusetts,
+where they incurred the fearful liability of being still more thoroughly
+corrupted by contact with older criminals, familiar with atrocity, and
+rolling their loathsome vices "as a sweet morsel under the tongue." In
+view of this state of things the Reform School has been established,
+twenty-two thousand dollars having been contributed to the state for that
+purpose by an unknown benefactor of his race. The school is located in
+Westboro', on a fine farm of two hundred acres. The buildings are in the
+form of a square, with a court in the centre, three stories in front,
+with wings. They are constructed with a degree of architectural taste,
+and their site is happily chosen,--a gentle eminence, overlooking one of
+the loveliest of the small lakes which form a pleasing feature in New
+England scenery. From this place the atmosphere and associations of the
+prison are excluded. The discipline is strict, as a matter of course;
+but it is that of a well-regulated home or school-room,--order, neatness,
+and harmony within doors; and without, the beautiful 'sights and sounds
+and healthful influences of Nature. One would almost suppose that the
+poetical dream of Coleridge, in his tragedy of Remorse, had found its
+realization in the Westboro' School, and that, weary of the hopelessness
+and cruelty of the old penal system, our legislators had embodied in
+their statutes the idea of the poet:--
+
+ "With other ministrations thou, O Nature,
+ Healest thy wandering and distempered child
+ Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,
+ Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,
+ Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,
+ Till he relent, and can no more endure
+ To be a jarring and a dissonant thing
+ Amidst this general dance and minstrelsy."
+
+Thus it is that the Christian idea of reformation, rather than revenge,
+is slowly but surely incorporating itself in our statute books. We have
+only to look back but a single century to be able to appreciate the
+immense gain for humanity in the treatment of criminals which has been
+secured in that space of time. Then the use of torture was common
+throughout Europe. Inability to comprehend and believe certain religious
+dogmas was a crime to be expiated by death, or confiscation of estate, or
+lingering imprisonment. Petty offences against property furnished
+subjects for the hangman. The stocks and the whipping-post stood by the
+side of the meeting-house. Tongues were bored with redhot irons and ears
+shorn off. The jails were loathsome dungeons, swarming with vermin,
+unventilated, unwarmed. A century and a half ago the populace of
+Massachusetts were convulsed with grim merriment at the writhings of a
+miserable woman scourged at the cart-tail or strangling in the ducking-
+stool; crowds hastened to enjoy the spectacle of an old man enduring the
+unutterable torment of the 'peine forte et dare,'--pressed slowly to
+death under planks,--for refusing to plead to an indictment for
+witchcraft. What a change from all this to the opening of the State
+Reform School, to the humane regulations of prisons and penitentiaries,
+to keen-eyed benevolence watching over the administration of justice,
+which, in securing society from lawless aggression, is not suffered to
+overlook the true interest and reformation of the criminal, nor to forget
+that the magistrate, in the words of the Apostle, is to be indeed "the
+minister of God to man for good!"
+
+
+
+
+LORD ASHLEY AND THE THIEVES.
+
+"THEY that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick," was
+the significant answer of our Lord to the self-righteous Pharisees who
+took offence at his companions,--the poor, the degraded, the weak, and
+the sinful. "Go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and
+not sacrifice; for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to
+repentance."
+
+The great lesson of duty inculcated by this answer of the Divine Teacher
+has been too long overlooked by individuals and communities professedly
+governed by His maxims. The phylacteries of our modern Pharisees are as
+broad as those of the old Jewish saints. The respectable Christian
+detests his vicious and ill-conditioned neighbors as heartily as the
+Israelite did the publicans and sinners of his day. He folds his robe of
+self-righteousness closely about him, and denounces as little better than
+sinful weakness all commiseration for the guilty; and all attempts to
+restore and reclaim the erring violators of human law otherwise than by
+pains and penalties as wicked collusion with crime, dangerous to the
+stability and safety of society, and offensive in the sight of God. And
+yet nothing is more certain than that, just in proportion as the example
+of our Lord has been followed in respect to the outcast and criminal, the
+effect has been to reform and elevate,--to snatch as brands from the
+burning souls not yet wholly given over to the service of evil. The
+wonderful influence for good exerted over the most degraded and reckless
+criminals of London by the excellent and self-denying Elizabeth Fry, the
+happy results of the establishment of houses of refuge, and reformation,
+and Magdalen asylums, all illustrate the wisdom of Him who went about
+doing good, in pointing out the morally diseased as the appropriate
+subjects of the benevolent labors of His disciples. No one is to be
+despaired of. We have no warrant to pass by any of our fellow-creatures
+as beyond the reach of God's grace and mercy; for, beneath the most
+repulsive and hateful outward manifestation, there is always a
+consciousness of the beauty of goodness and purity, and of the
+loathsomeness of sin,--one chamber of the heart as yet not wholly
+profaned, whence at times arises the prayer of a burdened and miserable
+spirit for deliverance. Deep down under the squalid exterior,
+unparticipative in the hideous merriment and recklessness of the
+criminal, there is another self,--a chained and suffering inner man,--
+crying out, in the intervals of intoxication and brutal excesses, like
+Jonah from the bosom of hell. To this lingering consciousness the
+sympathy and kindness of benevolent and humane spirits seldom appeal in
+vain; for, whatever may be outward appearances, it remains true that the
+way of the transgressor is hard, and that sin and suffering are
+inseparable. Crime is seldom loved or persevered in for its own sake;
+but, when once the evil path is entered upon, a return is in reality
+extremely difficult to the unhappy wanderer, and often seems as well nigh
+impossible. The laws of social life rise up like insurmountable barriers
+between him and escape. As he turns towards the society whose rights he
+has outraged, its frown settles upon him; the penalties of the laws he
+has violated await him; and he falls back despairing, and suffers the
+fetters of the evil habit to whose power he has yielded himself to be
+fastened closer and heavier upon him. O for some good angel, in the form
+of a brother-man and touched with a feeling of his sins and infirmities,
+to reassure his better nature and to point out a way of escape from its
+body of death!
+
+We have been led into these remarks by an account, given in the London
+Weekly Chronicle, of a most remarkable interview between the professional
+thieves of London and Lord Ashley,--a gentleman whose best patent of
+nobility is to be found in his generous and untiring devotion to the
+interests of his fellow-men. It appears that a philanthropic gentleman
+in London had been applied to by two young thieves, who had relinquished
+their evil practices and were obtaining a precarious but honest
+livelihood by picking up bones and rags in the streets, their loss of
+character closing against them all other employments. He had just been
+reading an address of Lord Ashley's in favor of colonial emigration, and
+he was led to ask one of the young men how he would like to emigrate.
+
+"I should jump at the chance!" was the reply. Not long after the
+gentleman was sent for to visit one of those obscure and ruinous courts
+of the great metropolis where crime and poverty lie down together,--
+localities which Dickens has pictured with such painful distinctness.
+Here, to his surprise, he met a number of thieves and outlaws, who
+declared themselves extremely anxious to know whether any hope could be
+held out to them of obtaining an honest living, however humble, in the
+colonies, as their only reason for continuing in their criminal course
+was the impossibility of extricating themselves. He gave them such
+advice and encouragement as he was able, and invited them to assemble
+again, with such of their companions as they could persuade to do so, at
+the room of the Irish Free School, for the purpose of meeting Lord
+Ashley. On the 27th of the seventh month last the meeting took place.
+At the hour appointed, Lord Ashley and five or six other benevolent
+gentlemen, interested in emigration as a means of relief and reformation
+to the criminal poor, entered the room, which was already well-nigh
+filled. Two hundred and seven professed thieves were present. "Several
+of the most experienced thieves were stationed at the door to prevent the
+admission of any but thieves. Some four or five individuals, who were
+not at first known, were subjected to examination, and only allowed to
+remain on stating that they were, and being recognized as, members of the
+dishonest fraternity; and before the proceedings of the evening commenced
+the question was very carefully put, and repeated several times, whether
+any one was in the room of whom others entertained doubts as to who he
+was. The object of this care was, as so many of them were in danger of
+'getting into trouble,' or, in other words, of being taken up for their
+crimes, to ascertain if any who might betray them were present; and
+another intention of this scrutiny was, to give those assembled, who
+naturally would feel considerable fear, a fuller confidence in opening
+their minds."
+
+What a novel conference between the extremes of modern society! All that
+is beautiful in refinement and education, moral symmetry and Christian
+grace, contrasting with the squalor, the ignorance, the lifelong
+depravity of men living "without God in the world,"--the pariahs of
+civilization,--the moral lepers, at the sight of whom decency covers its
+face, and cries out, "Unclean!" After a prayer had been offered, Lord
+Ashley spoke at considerable length, making a profound impression on his
+strange auditory as they listened to his plans of emigration, which
+offered them an opportunity to escape from their miserable condition and
+enter upon a respectable course of life. The hard heart melted and the
+cold and cruel eye moistened. With one accord the wretched felons
+responded to the language of Christian love and good-will, and declared
+their readiness to follow the advice of their true friend. They looked
+up to him as to an angel of mercy, and felt the malignant spirits which
+had so long tormented them disarmed of all power of evil in the presence
+of simple goodness. He stood in that felon audience like Spenser's Una
+amidst the satyrs; unassailable and secure in the "unresistible might of
+meekness," and panoplied in that "noble grace which dashed brute violence
+with sudden adoration and mute awe."
+
+Twenty years ago, when Elizabeth Fry ventured to visit those "spirits in
+prison,"--the female tenants of Newgate,--her temerity was regarded with
+astonishment, and her hope of effecting a reformation in the miserable
+objects of her sympathy was held to be wholly visionary. Her personal
+safety and the blessed fruits of her labors, nevertheless, confirmed the
+language of her Divine Master to His disciples when He sent them forth as
+lambs among wolves: "Behold, I give unto you power over all the power of
+the enemy." The still more unpromising experiment of Lord Ashley, thus
+far, has been equally successful; and we hail it as the introduction of a
+new and more humane method of dealing with the victims of sin and
+ignorance, and the temptations growing out of the inequalities and vices
+of civilization.
+
+
+
+
+WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
+
+ Letter to the Newport Convention.
+
+ AMESBURY, MASS., 12th, 8th Month, 1869.
+
+I HAVE received thy letter inviting me to attend the Convention in behalf
+of Woman's Suffrage, at Newport, R. I., on the 25th inst. I do not see
+how it is possible for me to accept the invitation; and, were I to do so,
+the state of my health would prevent me from taking such a part in the
+meeting as would relieve me from the responsibility of seeming to
+sanction anything in its action which might conflict with my own views of
+duty or policy. Yet I should do myself great injustice if I did not
+embrace this occasion to express my general sympathy with the movement.
+I have seen no good reason why mothers, wives, and daughters should not
+have the same right of person, property, and citizenship which fathers,
+husbands, and brothers have.
+
+The sacred memory of mother and sister; the wisdom and dignity of women
+of my own religious communion who have been accustomed to something like
+equality in rights as well as duties; my experience as a co-worker with
+noble and self-sacrificing women, as graceful and helpful in their
+household duties as firm and courageous in their public advocacy of
+unpopular truth; the steady friendships which have inspired and
+strengthened me, and the reverence and respect which I feel for human
+nature, irrespective of sex, compel me to look with something more than
+acquiescence on the efforts you are making. I frankly confess that I am
+not able to forsee all the consequences of the great social and political
+change proposed, but of this I am, at least, sure, it is always safe to
+do right, and the truest expediency is simple justice. I can understand,
+without sharing, the misgivings of those who fear that, when the vote
+drops from woman's hand into the ballot-box, the beauty and sentiment,
+the bloom and sweetness, of womankind will go with it. But in this
+matter it seems to me that we can trust Nature. Stronger than statutes
+or conventions, she will be conservative of all that the true man loves
+and honors in woman. Here and there may be found an equivocal, unsexed
+Chevalier D'Eon, but the eternal order and fitness of things will remain.
+I have no fear that man will be less manly or woman less womanly when
+they meet on terms of equality before the law.
+
+On the other hand, I do not see that the exercise of the ballot by woman
+will prove a remedy for all the evils of which she justly complains. It
+is her right as truly as mine, and when she asks for it, it is something
+less than manhood to withhold it. But, unsupported by a more practical
+education, higher aims, and a deeper sense of the responsibilities of
+life and duty, it is not likely to prove a blessing in her hands any more
+than in man's.
+
+With great respect and hearty sympathy, I am very truly thy friend.
+
+
+
+
+ITALIAN UNITY
+
+ AMESBURY, MASS., 1st Mo., 4th, 1871.
+
+ Read at the great meeting in New York, January, 1871, in celebration
+ of the freedom of Rome and complete unity of Italy.
+
+IT would give me more than ordinary satisfaction to attend the meeting on
+the 12th instant for the celebration of Italian Unity, the emancipation
+of Rome, and its occupation as the permanent capital of the nation.
+
+For many years I have watched with deep interest and sympathy the popular
+movement on the Italian peninsula, and especially every effort for the
+deliverance of Rome from a despotism counting its age by centuries. I
+looked at these struggles of the people with little reference to their
+ecclesiastical or sectarian bearings. Had I been a Catholic instead of a
+Protestant, I should have hailed every symptom of Roman deliverance from
+Papal rule, occupying, as I have, the standpoint of a republican radical,
+desirous that all men, of all creeds, should enjoy the civil liberty
+which I prized so highly for myself.
+
+I lost all confidence in the French republic of 1849, when it forfeited
+its own right to exist by crushing out the newly formed Roman republic
+under Mazzini and Garibaldi. From that hour it was doomed, and the
+expiation of its monstrous crime is still going on. My sympathies are
+with Jules Favre and Leon Gambetta in their efforts to establish and
+sustain a republic in France, but I confess that the investment of Paris
+by King William seems to me the logical sequence of the bombardment of
+Rome by Oudinot. And is it not a significant fact that the terrible
+chassepot, which made its first bloody experiment upon the halfarmed
+Italian patriots without the walls of Rome, has failed in the hands of
+French republicans against the inferior needle-gun of Prussia? It was
+said of a fierce actor in the old French Revolution that he demoralized
+the guillotine. The massacre at Mentana demoralized the chassepot.
+
+It is a matter of congratulation that the redemption of Rome has been
+effected so easily and bloodlessly. The despotism of a thousand years
+fell at a touch in noiseless rottenness. The people of Rome, fifty to
+one, cast their ballots of condemnation like so many shovelfuls of earth
+upon its grave. Outside of Rome there seems to be a very general
+acquiescence in its downfall. No Peter the Hermit preaches a crusade in
+its behalf. No one of the great Catholic powers of Europe lifts a finger
+for it. Whatever may be the feelings of Isabella of Spain and the
+fugitive son of King Bomba, they are in no condition to come to its
+rescue. It is reserved for American ecclesiastics, loud-mouthed in
+professions of democracy, to make solemn protest against what they call
+an "outrage," which gives the people of Rome the right of choosing their
+own government, and denies the divine right of kings in the person of Pio
+Nono.
+
+The withdrawal of the temporal power of the Pope will prove a blessing to
+the Catholic Church, as well as to the world. Many of its most learned
+and devout priests and laymen have long seen the necessity of such a
+change, which takes from it a reproach and scandal that could no longer
+be excused or tolerated. A century hence it will have as few apologists
+as the Inquisition or the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
+
+In this hour of congratulation let us not forget those whose suffering
+and self-sacrifice, in the inscrutable wisdom of Providence, prepared the
+way for the triumph which we celebrate. As we call the long, illustrious
+roll of Italian patriotism--the young, the brave, and beautiful; the
+gray-haired, saintly confessors; the scholars, poets, artists, who, shut
+out from human sympathy, gave their lives for God and country in the
+slow, dumb agony of prison martyrdom--let us hope that they also rejoice
+with us, and, inaudible to earthly ears, unite in our thanksgiving:
+"Alleluia! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth! He hath avenged the
+blood of his servants!"
+
+In the belief that the unity of Italy and the overthrow of Papal rule
+will strengthen the cause of liberty throughout the civilized' world, I
+am very truly thy friend.
+
+
+
+
+INDIAN CIVILIZATION.
+
+THE present condition and future prospects of the remnants of the
+aboriginal inhabitants of this continent can scarcely be a matter of
+indifference to any class of the people of the United States. Apart from
+all considerations of justice and duty, a purely selfish regard to our
+own well-being would compel attention to the subject. The irreversible
+laws of God's moral government, and the well-attested maxims of political
+and social economy, leave us in no doubt that the suffering, neglect, and
+wrong of one part of the community must affect all others. A common
+responsibility rests upon each and all to relieve suffering, enlighten
+ignorance, and redress wrong, and the penalty of neglect in this respect
+no nation has ever escaped.
+
+It is only within a comparatively recent period that the term Indian
+Civilization could be appropriately used in this country. Very little
+real progress bad been made in this direction, up to the time when
+Commissioner Lang in 1844 visited the tribes now most advanced. So
+little had been done, that public opinion had acquiesced in the
+assumption that the Indians were not susceptible of civilization and
+progress. The few experiments had not been calculated to assure a
+superficial observer.
+
+The unsupported efforts of Elliot in New England were counteracted by the
+imprisonment, and in some instances the massacre of his "praying
+Indians," by white men under the exasperation of war with hostile tribes.
+The salutary influence of the Moravians and Friends in Pennsylvania was
+greatly weakened by the dreadful massacre of the unarmed and blameless
+converts of Gnadenhutten. But since the first visit of Commissioner
+Lang, thirty-three years ago, the progress of education, civilization,
+and conversion to Christianity, has been of a most encouraging nature,
+and if Indian civilization was ever a doubtful problem, it has been
+practically solved.
+
+The nomadic habits and warlike propensities of the native tribes are
+indeed formidable but not insuperable difficulties in the way of their
+elevation. The wildest of them may compare not unfavorably with those
+Northern barbarian hordes that swooped down upon Christian Europe, and
+who were so soon the docile pupils and proselytes of the peoples they had
+conquered. The Arapahoes and Camanches of our day are no further removed
+from the sweetness and light of Christian culture than were the
+Scandinavian Sea Kings of the middle centuries, whose gods were patrons
+of rapine and cruelty, their heaven a vast, cloud-built ale-house, where
+ghostly warriors drank from the skulls of their victims, and whose hell
+was a frozen horror of desolation and darkness, to be avoided only by
+diligence in robbery and courage in murder. The descendants of these
+human butchers are now among the best exponents of the humanizing
+influence of the gospel of Christ. The report of the Superintendent of
+the remnants of the once fierce and warlike Six Nations, now peaceable
+and prosperous in Canada, shows that the Indian is not inferior to the
+Norse ancestors of the Danes and Norwegians of our day in capability of
+improvement.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say, what is universally conceded, that the
+wars waged by the Indians against the whites have, in nearly every
+instance, been provoked by violations of solemn treaties and systematic
+disregard of their rights of person, property, and life. The letter of
+Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota, to the New York Tribune of second month,
+1877, calls attention to the emphatic language of Generals Sherman,
+Harney, Terry, and Augur, written after a full and searching
+investigation of the subject: "That the Indian goes to war is not
+astonishing: he is often compelled to do so: wrongs are borne by him in
+silence, which never fail to drive civilized men to deeds of violence.
+The best possible way to avoid war is to do no injustice."
+
+It is not difficult to understand the feelings of the unfortunate pioneer
+settlers on the extreme borders of civilization, upon whom the blind
+vengeance of the wronged and hunted Indians falls oftener than upon the
+real wrong-doers. They point to terrible and revolting cruelties as
+proof that nothing short of the absolute extermination of the race can
+prevent their repetition. But a moment's consideration compels us to
+admit that atrocious cruelty is not peculiar to the red man. "All wars
+are cruel," said General Sherman, and for eighteen centuries Christendom
+has been a great battle-field. What Indian raid has been more dreadful
+than the sack of Magdeburg, the massacre of Glencoe, the nameless
+atrocities of the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, the murders of St.
+Bartholomew's day, the unspeakable agonies of the South of France under
+the demoniac rule of revolution! All history, black with crime and red
+with blood, is but an awful commentary upon "man's inhumanity to man,"
+and it teaches us that there is nothing exceptional in the Indian's
+ferocity and vindictiveness, and that the alleged reasons for his
+extermination would, at one time or another, have applied with equal
+force to the whole family of man.
+
+A late lecture of my friend, Stanley Pumphrey, comprises more of valuable
+information and pertinent suggestions on the Indian question than I have
+found in any equal space; and I am glad of the opportunity to add to it
+my hearty endorsement, and to express the conviction that its general
+circulation could not fail to awaken a deeper and more kindly interest in
+the condition of the red man, and greatly aid in leading the public mind
+to a fuller appreciation of the responsibility which rests upon us as a
+people to rectify, as far as possible, past abuses, and in our future
+relations to the native owners of the soil to "deal justly and love
+mercy."
+
+
+
+
+READING FOR THE BLIND. (1880.)
+
+To Mary C. Moore, teacher in the Perkins Asylum.
+
+DEAR FRIEND,--It gives me great pleasure to know that the pupils in thy
+class at the Institution for the Blind have the opportunity afforded them
+to read through the sense of touch some of my writings, and thus hold
+what I hope will prove a pleasant communion with me. Very glad I shall
+be if the pen-pictures of nature, and homely country firesides, which I
+have tried to make, are understood and appreciated by those who cannot
+discern them by natural vision. I shall count it a great privilege to
+see for them, or rather to let them see through my eyes. It is the mind
+after all that really sees, shapes, and colors all things. What visions
+of beauty and sublimity passed before the inward and spiritual sight of
+blind Milton and Beethoven!
+
+I have an esteemed friend, Morrison Hendy, of Kentucky, who is deaf and
+blind; yet under these circumstances he has cultivated his mind to a high
+degree, and has written poems of great beauty, and vivid descriptions of
+scenes which have been witnessed only by the "light within."
+
+I thank thee for thy letter, and beg of thee to assure the students that
+I am deeply interested in their welfare and progress, and that my prayer
+is that their inward and spiritual eyes may become so clear that they can
+well dispense with the outward and material ones.
+
+
+
+
+THE INDIAN QUESTION.
+
+Read at the meeting in Boston, May, 1883, for the consideration of the
+condition of the Indians in the United States.
+
+AMESBURY, 4th mo., 1883.
+
+I REGRET that I cannot be present at the meeting called in reference to
+the pressing question of the day, the present condition and future
+prospects of the Indian race in the United States. The old policy,
+however well intended, of the government is no longer available. The
+westward setting tide of immigration is everywhere sweeping over the
+lines of the reservations. There would seem to be no power in the
+government to prevent the practical abrogation of its solemn treaties and
+the crowding out of the Indians from their guaranteed hunting grounds.
+Outbreaks of Indian ferocity and revenge, incited by wrong and robbery on
+the part of the whites, will increasingly be made the pretext of
+indiscriminate massacres. The entire question will soon resolve itself
+into the single alternative of education and civilization or
+extermination.
+
+The school experiments at Hampton, Carlisle, and Forest Grove in Oregon
+have proved, if such proof were ever needed, that the roving Indian can
+be enlightened and civilized, taught to work and take interest and
+delight in the product of his industry, and settle down on his farm or in
+his workshop, as an American citizen, protected by and subject to the
+laws of the republic. What is needed is that not only these schools
+should be more liberally supported, but that new ones should be opened
+without delay. The matter does not admit of procrastination. The work
+of education and civilization must be done. The money needed must be
+contributed with no sparing hand. The laudable example set by the
+Friends and the American Missionary Association should be followed by
+other sects and philanthropic societies. Christianity, patriotism, and
+enlightened self interest have a common stake in the matter. Great and
+difficult as the work may be the country is strong enough, rich enough,
+wise enough, and, I believe, humane and Christian enough to do it.
+
+
+
+
+THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
+
+Read at a meeting of the Essex Club, in Boston,
+November, 1885.
+
+AMESBURY, 11th Mo., 10, 1885.
+
+I AM sorry that I cannot accept thy invitation to attend the meeting of
+the Essex Club on the 14th inst. I should be glad to meet my old
+Republican friends and congratulate them on the results of the election
+in Massachusetts, and especially in our good old county of Essex.
+
+Some of our friends and neighbors, who have been with us heretofore, last
+year saw fit to vote with the opposite party. I would be the last to
+deny their perfect right to do so, or to impeach their motives, but I
+think they were mistaken in expecting that party to reform the abuses and
+evils which they complained of. President Cleveland has proved himself
+better than his party, and has done and said some good things which I
+give him full credit for, but the instincts of his party are against him,
+and must eventually prove too strong for him, and, instead of his
+carrying the party, it will be likely to carry him. It has already
+compelled him to put his hands in his pockets for electioneering
+purposes, and travel all the way from Washington to Buffalo to give his
+vote for a spoilsman and anti-civil service machine politician. I would
+not like to call it a case of "offensive partisanship," but it looks a
+good deal like it.
+
+As a Republican from the outset, I am proud of the noble record of the
+party, but I should rejoice to see its beneficent work taken up by the
+Democratic party and so faithfully carried on as to make our organization
+no longer necessary. But, as far as we can see, the Republican party has
+still its mission and its future. When labor shall everywhere have its
+just reward, and the gains of it are made secure to the earners; when
+education shall be universal, and, North and South, all men shall have
+the free and full enjoyment of civil rights and privileges, irrespective
+of color or former condition; when every vice which debases the community
+shall be discouraged and prohibited, and every virtue which elevates it
+fostered and strengthened; when merit and fitness shall be the conditions
+of office; and when sectional distrust and prejudice shall give place to
+well-merited confidence in the loyalty and patriotism of all, then will
+the work of the Republican party, as a party, be ended, and all political
+rivalries be merged in the one great party of the people, with no other
+aim than the common welfare, and no other watchwords than peace, liberty,
+and union. Then may the language which Milton addressed to his
+countrymen two centuries ago be applied to the United States, "Go on,
+hand in hand, O peoples, never to be disunited; be the praise and heroic
+song of all posterity. Join your invincible might to do worthy and
+godlike deeds; and then he who seeks to break your Union, a cleaving
+curse be his inheritance."
+
+
+
+
+OUR DUMB RELATIONS. (1886.)
+
+IT was said of St. Francis of Assisi, that he had attained, through the
+fervor of his love, the secret of that deep amity with God and His
+creation which, in the language of inspiration, makes man to be in league
+with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field to be at peace
+with him. The world has never been without tender souls, with whom the
+golden rule has a broader application than its letter might seem to
+warrant. The ancient Eastern seers recognized the rights of the brute
+creation, and regarded the unnecessary taking of the life of the humblest
+and meanest as a sin; and in almost all the old religions of the world
+there are legends of saints, in the depth of whose peace with God and
+nature all life was sacredly regarded as the priceless gift of heaven,
+and who were thus enabled to dwell safely amidst lions and serpents.
+
+It is creditable to human nature and its unperverted instincts that
+stories and anecdotes of reciprocal kindness and affection between men
+and animals are always listened to with interest and approval. How
+pleasant to think of the Arab and his horse, whose friendship has been
+celebrated in song and romance. Of Vogelwied, the Minnesinger, and his
+bequest to the birds. Of the English Quaker, visited, wherever he went,
+by flocks of birds, who with cries of joy alighted on his broad-brimmed
+hat and his drab coat-sleeves. Of old Samuel Johnson, when half-blind
+and infirm, groping abroad of an evening for oysters for his cat. Of
+Walter Scott and John Brown, of Edinburgh, and their dogs. Of our own
+Thoreau, instinctively recognized by bird and beast as a friend. Emerson
+says of him: "His intimacy with animals suggested what Thomas Fuller
+records of Butler, the apologist, that either he had told the bees
+things, or the bees had told him. Snakes coiled round his legs; the
+fishes swam into his hand; he pulled the woodchuck out of his hole by his
+tail, and took foxes under his protection from the hunters."
+
+In the greatest of the ancient Hindu poems--the sacred book of the
+Mahabharata--there is a passage of exceptional beauty and tenderness,
+which records the reception of King Yudishthira at the gate of Paradise.
+A pilgrim to the heavenly city, the king had travelled over vast spaces,
+and, one by one, the loved ones, the companions of his journey, had all
+fallen and left him alone, save his faithful dog, which still followed.
+He was met by Indra, and invited to enter the holy city. But the king
+thinks of his friends who have fallen on the way, and declines to go in
+without them. The god tells him they are all within waiting for him.
+Joyful, he is about to seek them, when he looks upon the poor dog, who,
+weary and wasted, crouches at his feet, and asks that he, too, may enter
+the gate. Indra refuses, and thereupon the king declares that to abandon
+his faithful dumb friend would be as great a sin as to kill a Brahmin.
+
+ "Away with that felicity whose price is to abandon the faithful!
+ Never, come weal or woe, will I leave my faithful dog.
+ The poor creature, in fear and distress, has trusted in my power to
+ save him;
+ Not, therefore, for life itself, will I break my plighted word."
+
+In full sight of heaven he chooses to go to hell with his dog, and
+straightway descends, as he supposes, thither. But his virtue and
+faithfulness change his destination to heaven, and he finds himself
+surrounded by his old friends, and in the presence of the gods, who thus
+honor and reward his humanity and unselfish love.
+
+
+
+
+INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.
+
+Read at the reception in Boston of the English delegation representing
+more than two hundred members of the British Parliament who favor
+international arbitration.
+
+AMESBURY, 11th Mo., 9, 1887.
+
+IT is a very serious disappointment to me not to be able to be present at
+the welcome of the American Peace Society to the delegation of more than
+two hundred members of the British Parliament who favor international
+arbitration. Few events have more profoundly impressed me than the
+presentation of this peaceful overture to the President of the United
+States. It seems to me that every true patriot who seeks the best
+interests of his country and every believer in the gospel of Christ must
+respond to the admirable address of Sir Lyon Playfair and that of his
+colleagues who represented the workingmen of England. We do not need to
+be told that war is always cruel, barbarous, and brutal; whether used by
+professed Christians with ball and bayonet, or by heathen with club and
+boomerang. We cannot be blind to its waste of life and treasure and the
+demoralization which follows in its train; nor cease to wonder at the
+spectacle of Christian nations exhausting all their resources in
+preparing to slaughter each other, with only here and there a voice, like
+Count Tolstoi's in the Russian wilderness, crying in heedless ears that
+the gospel of Christ is peace, not war, and love, not hatred.
+
+The overture which comes to us from English advocates of arbitration is a
+cheering assurance that the tide of sentiment is turning in favor of
+peace among English speaking peoples. I cannot doubt that whatever stump
+orators and newspapers may say for party purposes, the heart of America
+will respond to the generous proposal of our kinsfolk across the water.
+No two nations could be more favorably conditioned than England and the
+United States for making the "holy experiment of arbitration."
+
+In our associations and kinship, our aims and interests, our common
+claims in the great names and achievements of a common ancestry, we are
+essentially one people. Whatever other nations may do, we at least
+should be friends. God grant that the noble and generous attempt shall
+not be in vain! May it hasten the time when the only rivalry between us
+shall be the peaceful rivalry of progress and the gracious interchange of
+good.
+
+ "When closer strand shall lean to strand,
+ Till meet beneath saluting flags,
+ The eagle of our mountain crags,
+ The lion of our mother land!"
+
+
+
+
+SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN.
+
+Read at the Woman's Convention at Washington.
+
+OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, MASS., Third Mo., 8, 1888.
+
+I THANK thee for thy kind letter. It would be a great satisfaction to be
+able to be present at the fortieth anniversary of the Woman's Suffrage
+Association. But, as that is not possible, I can only reiterate my
+hearty sympathy with the object of the association, and bid it take heart
+and assurance in view of all that has been accomplished. There is no
+easy royal road to a reform of this kind, but if the progress has been
+slow there has been no step backward. The barriers which at first seemed
+impregnable in the shape of custom and prejudice have been undermined and
+their fall is certain. A prophecy of your triumph at no distant day is
+in the air; your opponents feel it and believe it. They know that yours
+is a gaining and theirs a losing cause. The work still before you
+demands on your part great patience, steady perseverance, a firm,
+dignified, and self-respecting protest against the injustice of which you
+have so much reason to complain, and of serene confidence which is not
+discouraged by temporary checks, nor embittered by hostile criticism, nor
+provoked to use any weapons of retort, which, like the boomerang, fall
+back on the heads of those who use them. You can afford
+in your consciousness of right to be as calm and courteous as the
+archangel Michael, who, we are told in Scripture in his controversy with
+Satan himself, did not bring a railing accusation against him. A wise
+adaptation of means to ends is no yielding of principle, but care should
+be taken to avoid all such methods as have disgraced political and
+religious parties of the masculine sex. Continue to make it manifest
+that all which is pure and lovely and of good repute in womanhood is
+entirely compatible with the exercise of the rights of citizenship, and
+the performance of the duties which we all owe to our homes and our
+country. Confident that you will do this, and with no doubt or misgiving
+as to your success, I bid you Godspeed. I find I have written to the
+association rather than to thyself, but as one of the principal
+originators and most faithful supporters, it was very natural that I
+should identify thee with it.
+
+
+
+
+THE INNER LIFE
+
+THE AGENCY OF EVIL.
+
+From the Supernaturalism of New England, in the Democratic Review for
+1843.
+
+IN this life of ours, so full of mystery, so hung about with wonders, so
+written over with dark riddles, where even the lights held by prophets
+and inspired ones only serve to disclose the solemn portals of a future
+state of being, leaving all beyond in shadow, perhaps the darkest and
+most difficult problem which presents itself is that of the origin of
+evil,--the source whence flow the black and bitter waters of sin and
+suffering and discord,--the wrong which all men see in others and feel
+in themselves,--the unmistakable facts of human depravity and misery. A
+superficial philosophy may attempt to refer all these dark phenomena of
+man's existence to his own passions, circumstances, and will; but the
+thoughtful observer cannot rest satisfied with secondary causes. The
+grossest materialism, at times, reveals something of that latent dread
+of an invisible and spiritual influence which is inseparable from our
+nature. Like Eliphaz the Temanite, it is conscious of a spirit passing
+before its face, the form whereof is not discerned.
+
+It is indeed true that our modern divines and theologians, as if to atone
+for the too easy credulity of their order formerly, have unceremoniously
+consigned the old beliefs of Satanic agency, demoniacal possession, and
+witchcraft, to Milton's receptacle of exploded follies and detected
+impostures,
+
+ "Over the backside of the world far off,
+ Into a limbo broad and large, and called
+ The paradise of fools,"--
+
+that indeed, out of their peculiar province, and apart from the routine
+of their vocation, they have become the most thorough sceptics and
+unbelievers among us. Yet it must be owned that, if they have not the
+marvellous themselves, they are the cause of it in others. In certain
+states of mind, the very sight of a clergyman in his sombre professional
+garb is sufficient to awaken all the wonderful within us. Imagination
+goes wandering back to the subtle priesthood of mysterious Egypt. We
+think of Jannes and Jambres; of the Persian magi; dim oak groves, with
+Druid altars, and priests, and victims, rise before us. For what is the
+priest even of our New England but a living testimony to the truth of the
+supernatural and the reality of the unseen,--a man of mystery, walking in
+the shadow of the ideal world,--by profession an expounder of spiritual
+wonders? Laugh he may at the old tales of astrology and witchcraft and
+demoniacal possession; but does he not believe and bear testimony to his
+faith in the reality of that dark essence which Scripture more than hints
+at, which has modified more or less all the religious systems and
+speculations of the heathen world,--the Ahriman of the Parsee, the Typhon
+of the Egyptian, the Pluto of the Roman mythology, the Devil of Jew,
+Christian, and Mussulman, the Machinito of the Indian,--evil in the
+universe of goodness, darkness in the light of divine intelligence,--in
+itself the great and crowning mystery from which by no unnatural process
+of imagination may be deduced everything which our forefathers believed
+of the spiritual world and supernatural agency? That fearful being with
+his tributaries and agents,--"the Devil and his angels,"--how awfully he
+rises before us in the brief outline limning of the sacred writers! How
+he glooms, "in shape and gesture proudly eminent," on the immortal canvas
+of Milton and Dante! What a note of horror does his name throw into the
+sweet Sabbath psalmody of our churches. What strange, dark fancies are
+connected with the very language of common-law indictments, when grand
+juries find under oath that the offence complained of has been committed
+"at the instigation of the Devil"!
+
+How hardly effaced are the impressions of childhood! Even at this day,
+at the mention of the evil angel, an image rises before me like that with
+which I used especially to horrify myself in an old copy of Pilgrim's
+Progress. Horned, hoofed, scaly, and fire-breathing, his caudal
+extremity twisted tight with rage, I remember him, illustrating the
+tremendous encounter of Christian in the valley where "Apollyon straddled
+over the whole breadth of the way." There was another print of the enemy
+which made no slight impression upon me. It was the frontispiece of an
+old, smoked, snuff-stained pamphlet, the property of an elderly lady,
+(who had a fine collection of similar wonders, wherewith she was kind
+enough to edify her young visitors,) containing a solemn account of the
+fate of a wicked dancing-party in New Jersey, whose irreverent
+declaration, that they would have a fiddler if they had to send to the
+lower regions after him, called up the fiend himself, who forthwith
+commenced playing, while the company danced to the music incessantly,
+without the power to suspend their exercise, until their feet and legs
+were worn off to the knees! The rude wood-cut represented the demon
+fiddler and his agonized companions literally stumping it up and down in
+"cotillons, jigs, strathspeys, and reels." He would have answered very
+well to the description of the infernal piper in Tam O'Shanter.
+
+To this popular notion of the impersonation of the principle of evil we
+are doubtless indebted for the whole dark legacy of witchcraft and
+possession. Failing in our efforts to solve the problem of the origin of
+evil, we fall back upon the idea of a malignant being,--the antagonism of
+good. Of this mysterious and dreadful personification we find ourselves
+constrained to speak with a degree of that awe and reverence which are
+always associated with undefined power and the ability to harm. "The
+Devil," says an old writer, "is a dignity, though his glory be somewhat
+faded and wan, and is to be spoken of accordingly."
+
+The evil principle of Zoroaster was from eternity self-created and
+existent, and some of the early Christian sects held the same opinion.
+The gospel, however, affords no countenance to this notion of a divided
+sovereignty of the universe. The Divine Teacher, it is true, in
+discoursing of evil, made use of the language prevalent in His time, and
+which was adapted to the gross conceptions of His Jewish bearers; but He
+nowhere presents the embodiment of sin as an antagonism to the absolute
+power and perfect goodness of God, of whom, and through whom, and to whom
+are all things. Pure himself, He can create nothing impure. Evil,
+therefore, has no eternity in the past. The fact of its present actual
+existence is indeed strongly stated; and it is not given us to understand
+the secret of that divine alchemy whereby pain, and sin, and discord
+become the means to beneficent ends worthy of the revealed attributes of
+the Infinite Parent. Unsolved by human reason or philosophy, the dark
+mystery remains to baffle the generations of men; and only to the eye of
+humble and childlike faith can it ever be reconciled to the purity,
+justice, and mercy of Him who is "light, and in whom is no darkness at
+all."
+
+"Do you not believe in the Devil?" some one once asked the Non-conformist
+Robinson. "I believe in God," was the reply; "don't you?"
+
+Henry of Nettesheim says "that it is unanimously maintained that devils
+do wander up and down in the earth; but what they are, or how they are,
+ecclesiasticals have not clearly expounded." Origen, in his Platonic
+speculations on this subject, supposed them to be spirits who, by
+repentance, might be restored, that in the end all knees might be bowed
+to the Father of spirits, and He become all in all. Justin Martyr was of
+the opinion that many of them still hoped for their salvation; and the
+Cabalists held that this hope of theirs was well founded. One is
+irresistibly reminded here of the closing verse of the _Address to the
+Deil_, by Burns:--
+
+ "But fare ye weel, Auld Nickie ben!
+ Gin ye wad take a thought and mend,
+ Ye aiblins might--I dinna ken--
+ Still has a stake
+ I'm was to think upon yon den
+ Fen for your sake."
+
+The old schoolmen and fathers seem to agree that the Devil and his
+ministers have bodies in some sort material, subject to passions and
+liable to injury and pain. Origen has a curious notion that any evil
+spirit who, in a contest with a human being, is defeated, loses from
+thenceforth all his power of mischief, and may be compared to a wasp who
+has lost his sting.
+
+"The Devil," said Samson Occum, the famous Indian preacher, in a
+discourse on temperance, "is a gentleman, and never drinks."
+Nevertheless it is a remarkable fact, and worthy of the serious
+consideration of all who "tarry long at the wine," that, in that state of
+the drunkard's malady known as delirium tremens, the adversary, in some
+shape or other, is generally visible to the sufferers, or at least, as
+Winslow says of the Powahs, "he appeareth more familiarly to them than to
+others." I recollect a statement made to me by a gentleman who has had
+bitter experience of the evils of intemperance, and who is at this time
+devoting his fine talents to the cause of philanthropy and mercy, as the
+editor of one of our best temperance journals, which left a most vivid
+impression on my mind. He had just returned from a sea-voyage; and, for
+the sake of enjoying a debauch, unmolested by his friends, took up his
+abode in a rum-selling tavern in a somewhat lonely location on the
+seaboard. Here he drank for many days without stint, keeping himself the
+whole time in a state of semi-intoxication. One night he stood leaning
+against a tree, looking listlessly and vacantly out upon the ocean; the
+waves breaking on the beach, and the white sails of passing vessels
+vaguely impressing him like the pictures of a dream. He was startled by
+a voice whispering hoarsely in his ear, _"You have murdered a man; the
+officers of justice are after you; you must fly for your life!"_ Every
+syllable was pronounced slowly and separately; and there was something in
+the hoarse, gasping sound of the whisper which was indescribably
+dreadful. He looked around him, and seeing nothing but the clear
+moonlight on the grass, became partially sensible that he was the victim
+of illusion, and a sudden fear of insanity thrilled him with a momentary
+horror. Rallying himself, he returned to the tavern, drank another glass
+of brandy, and retired to his chamber. He had scarcely lain his head on
+the pillow when he heard that hoarse, low, but terribly distinct whisper,
+repeating the same words. He describes his sensations at this time as
+inconceivably fearful. Reason was struggling with insanity; but amidst
+the confusion and mad disorder one terrible thought evolved itself. Had
+he not, in a moment of mad frenzy of which his memory made no record,
+actually murdered some one? And was not this a warning from Heaven?
+Leaving his bed and opening his door, he heard the words again repeated,
+with the addition, in a tone of intense earnestness, "Follow me!" He
+walked forward in the direction of the sound, through a long entry, to
+the head of the staircase, where he paused for a moment, when again he
+heard the whisper, half-way down the stairs, "Follow me!"
+
+Trembling with terror, he passed down two flights of stairs, and found
+himself treading on the cold brick floor of a large room in the basement,
+or cellar, where he had never been before. The voice still beckoned him
+onward; and, groping after it, his hand touched an upright post, against
+which he leaned for a moment. He heard it again, apparently only two or
+three yards in front of him "You have murdered a man; the officers are
+close behind you; follow me!" Putting one foot forward while his hand
+still grasped the post, it fell upon empty air, and he with difficulty
+recovered himself. Stooping down and feeling with his hands, he found
+himself on the very edge of a large uncovered cistern, or tank, filled
+nearly to the top with water. The sudden shock of this discovery broke
+the horrible enchantment. The whisperer was silent. He believed, at the
+time, that he had been the subject, and well-nigh the victim, of a
+diabolical delusion; and he states that, even now, with the recollection
+of that strange whisper is always associated a thought of the universal
+tempter.
+
+Our worthy ancestors were, in their own view of the matter, the advance
+guard and forlorn hope of Christendom in its contest with the bad angel.
+The New World, into which they had so valiantly pushed the outposts of
+the Church militant, was to them, not God's world, but the Devil's. They
+stood there on their little patch of sanctified territory like the
+gamekeeper of Der Freischutz in the charmed circle; within were prayer
+and fasting, unmelodious psalmody and solemn hewing of heretics, "before
+the Lord in Gilgal;" without were "dogs and sorcerers, red children of
+perdition, Powah wizards," and "the foul fiend." In their grand old
+wilderness, broken by fair, broad rivers and dotted with loveliest lakes,
+hanging with festoons of leaf, and vine, and flower, the steep sides of
+mountains whose naked tops rose over the surrounding verdure like altars
+of a giant world,--with its early summer greenness and the many-colored
+wonder of its autumn, all glowing as if the rainbows of a summer shower
+had fallen upon it, under the clear, rich light of a sun to which the
+misty day of their cold island was as moonlight,--they saw no beauty,
+they recognized no holy revelation. It was to them terrible as the
+forest which Dante traversed on his way to the world of pain. Every
+advance step they made was upon the enemy's territory. And one has only
+to read the writings of the two Mathers to perceive that that enemy was
+to them no metaphysical abstraction, no scholastic definition, no figment
+of a poetical fancy, but a living, active reality, alternating between
+the sublimest possibilities of evil and the lowest details of mean
+mischief; now a "tricksy spirit," disturbing the good-wife's platters or
+soiling her newwashed linen, and anon riding the storm-cloud and pointing
+its thunder-bolts; for, as the elder Mather pertinently inquires, "how
+else is it that our meeting-houses are burned by the lightning?" What
+was it, for instance, but his subtlety which, speaking through the lips
+of Madame Hutchinson, confuted the "judges of Israel" and put to their
+wits' end the godly ministers of the Puritan Zion? Was not his evil
+finger manifested in the contumacious heresy of Roger Williams? Who else
+gave the Jesuit missionaries--locusts from the pit as they were--such a
+hold on the affections of those very savages who would not have scrupled
+to hang the scalp of pious Father Wilson himself from their girdles? To
+the vigilant eye of Puritanism was he not alike discernible in the light
+wantonness of the May-pole revellers, beating time with the cloven foot
+to the vain music of obscene dances, and in the silent, hat-canopied
+gatherings of the Quakers, "the most melancholy of the sects," as Dr.
+Moore calls them? Perilous and glorious was it, under these
+circumstances, for such men as Mather and Stoughton to gird up their
+stout loins and do battle with the unmeasured, all-surrounding terror.
+Let no man lightly estimate their spiritual knight-errantry. The heroes
+of old romance, who went about smiting dragons, lopping giants' heads,
+and otherwise pleasantly diverting themselves, scarcely deserve mention
+in comparison with our New England champions, who, trusting not to carnal
+sword and lance, in a contest with principalities and powers, "spirits
+that live throughout, Vital in every part, not as frail man,"--
+encountered their enemies with weapons forged by the stern spiritual
+armorer of Geneva. The life of Cotton Mather is as full of romance as
+the legends of Ariosto or the tales of Beltenebros and Florisando in
+Amadis de Gaul. All about him was enchanted ground; devils glared on him
+in his "closet wrestlings;" portents blazed in the heavens above him;
+while he, commissioned and set apart as the watcher, and warder, and
+spiritual champion of "the chosen people," stood ever ready for battle,
+with open eye and quick ear for the detection of the subtle approaches of
+the enemy. No wonder is it that the spirits of evil combined against
+him; that they beset him as they did of old St. Anthony; that they shut
+up the bowels of the General Court against his long-cherished hope of the
+presidency of Old Harvard; that they even had the audacity to lay hands
+on his anti-diabolical manuscripts, or that "ye divil that was in ye girl
+flewe at and tore" his grand sermon against witches. How edifying is his
+account of the young bewitched maiden whom he kept in his house for the
+purpose of making experiments which should satisfy all "obstinate
+Sadducees"! How satisfactory to orthodoxy and confounding to heresy is
+the nice discrimination of "ye divil in ye girl," who was choked in
+attempting to read the Catechism, yet found no trouble with a pestilent
+Quaker pamphlet; who was quiet and good-humored when the worthy Doctor
+was idle, but went into paroxysms of rage when he sat down to indite his
+diatribes against witches and familiar spirits!
+
+ (The Quakers appear to have, at a comparatively early period,
+ emancipated themselves in a great degree from the grosser
+ superstitions of their times. William Penn, indeed, had a law in
+ his colony against witchcraft; but the first trial of a person
+ suspected of this offence seems to have opened his eyes to its
+ absurdity. George Fox, judging from one or two passages in his
+ journal, appears to have held the common opinions of the day on the
+ subject; yet when confined in Doomsdale dungeon, on being told that
+ the place was haunted and that the spirits of those who had died
+ there still walked at night in his room, he replied, "that if all
+ the spirits and devils in hell were there, he was over them in the
+ power of God, and feared no such thing."
+
+ The enemies of the Quakers, in order to account for the power and
+ influence of their first preachers, accused them of magic and
+ sorcery. "The Priest of Wakefield," says George Fox (one trusts he
+ does not allude to our old friend the Vicar), "raised many wicked
+ slanders upon me, as that I carried bottles with me and made people
+ drink, and that made them follow me; that I rode upon a great black
+ horse, and was seen in one county upon my black horse in one hour,
+ and in the same hour in another county fourscore miles off." In his
+ account of the mob which beset him at Walney Island, he says: "When
+ I came to myself I saw James Lancaster's wife throwing stones at my
+ face, and her husband lying over me to keep off the blows and
+ stones; for the people had persuaded her that I had bewitched her
+ husband."
+
+ Cotton Mather attributes the plague of witchcraft in New England in
+ about an equal degree to the Quakers and Indians. The first of the
+ sect who visited Boston, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher,--the latter a
+ young girl,--were seized upon by Deputy-Governor Bellingham, in the
+ absence of Governor Endicott, and shamefully stripped naked for the
+ purpose of ascertaining whether they were witches with the Devil's
+ mark on them. In 1662 Elizabeth Horton and Joan Broksop, two
+ venerable preachers of the sect, were arrested in Boston, charged by
+ Governor Endicott with being witches, and carried two days' journey
+ into the woods, and left to the tender mercies of Indians and
+ wolves.)
+
+All this is pleasant enough now; we can laugh at the Doctor and his
+demons; but little matter of laughter was it to the victims on Salem
+Hill; to the prisoners in the jails; to poor Giles Corey, tortured with
+planks upon his breast, which forced the tongue from his mouth and his
+life from his old, palsied body; to bereaved and quaking families; to a
+whole community, priest-ridden and spectresmitten, gasping in the sick
+dream of a spiritual nightmare and given over to believe a lie. We may
+laugh, for the grotesque is blended with the horrible; but we must also
+pity and shudder. The clear-sighted men who confronted that delusion in
+its own age, disenchanting, with strong good sense and sharp ridicule,
+their spell-bound generation,--the German Wierus, the Italian D'Apone,
+the English Scot, and the New England Calef,--deserve high honors as the
+benefactors of their race. It is true they were branded through life as
+infidels and "damnable Sadducees;" but the truth which they uttered
+lived after them, and wrought out its appointed work, for it had a Divine
+commission and Godspeed.
+
+ "The oracles are dumb;
+ No voice nor hideous hum
+
+Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving;
+
+ Apollo from his shrine
+ Can now no more divine,
+
+With hollow shriek the steep of Delphus leaving."
+
+Dimmer and dimmer, as the generations pass away, this tremendous terror,
+this all-pervading espionage of evil, this active incarnation of
+motiveless malignity, presents itself to the imagination. The once
+imposing and solemn rite of exorcism has become obsolete in the Church.
+Men are no longer, in any quarter of the world, racked or pressed under
+planks to extort a confession of diabolical alliance. The heretic now
+laughs to scorn the solemn farce of the Church which, in the name of the
+All-Merciful, formally delivers him over to Satan. And for the sake of
+abused and long-cheated humanity let us rejoice that it is so, when we
+consider how for long, weary centuries the millions of professed
+Christendom stooped, awestricken, under the yoke of spiritual and
+temporal despotism, grinding on from generation to generation in a
+despair which had passed complaining, because superstition, in alliance
+with tyranny, had filled their upward pathway to freedom with shapes of
+terror,--the spectres of God's wrath to the uttermost, the fiend, and
+that torment the smoke of which rises forever. Through fear of a Satan
+of the future,--a sort of ban-dog of priestcraft, held in its leash and
+ready to be let loose upon the disputers of its authority,--our toiling
+brothers of past ages have permitted their human taskmasters to convert
+God's beautiful world, so adorned and fitted for the peace and happiness
+of all, into a great prison-house of suffering, filled with the actual
+terrors which the imagination of the old poets gave to the realm of
+Rhadamanthus. And hence, while I would not weaken in the slightest
+degree the influence of that doctrine of future retribution,--the
+accountability of the spirit for the deeds done in the body,--the truth
+of which reason, revelation, and conscience unite in attesting as the
+necessary result of the preservation in another state of existence of the
+soul's individuality and identity, I must, nevertheless, rejoice that the
+many are no longer willing to permit the few, for their especial benefit,
+to convert our common Father's heritage into a present hell, where, in
+return for undeserved suffering and toil uncompensated, they can have
+gracious and comfortable assurance of release from a future one. Better
+is the fear of the Lord than the fear of the Devil; holier and more
+acceptable the obedience of love and reverence than the submission of
+slavish terror. The heart which has felt the "beauty of holiness," which
+has been in some measure attuned to the divine harmony which now, as of
+old in the angel-hymn of the Advent, breathes of "glory to God, peace on
+earth, and good-will to men," in the serene atmosphere of that "perfect
+love which casteth out fear," smiles at the terrors which throng the sick
+dreams of the sensual, which draw aside the nightcurtains of guilt, and
+startle with whispers of revenge the oppressor of the poor.
+
+There is a beautiful moral in one of Fouque's miniature romances,--_Die
+Kohlerfamilie_. The fierce spectre, which rose giant-like, in its
+bloodred mantle, before the selfish and mercenary merchant, ever
+increasing in size and, terror with the growth of evil and impure thought
+in the mind of the latter, subdued by prayer, and penitence, and patient
+watchfulness over the heart's purity, became a loving and gentle
+visitation of soft light and meekest melody; "a beautiful radiance, at
+times hovering and flowing on before the traveller, illuminating the
+bushes and foliage of the mountain-forest; a lustre strange and lovely,
+such as the soul may conceive, but no words express. He felt its power
+in the depths of his being,--felt it like the mystic breathing of the
+Spirit of God."
+
+The excellent Baxter and other pious men of his day deprecated in all
+sincerity and earnestness the growing disbelief in witchcraft and
+diabolical agency, fearing that mankind, losing faith in a visible Satan
+and in the supernatural powers of certain paralytic old women, would
+diverge into universal skepticism. It is one of the saddest of sights to
+see these good men standing sentry at the horn gate of dreams; attempting
+against the most discouraging odds to defend their poor fallacies from
+profane and irreverent investigation; painfully pleading doubtful
+Scripture and still more doubtful tradition in behalf of detected and
+convicted superstitions tossed on the sharp horns of ridicule, stretched
+on the rack of philosophy, or perishing under the exhausted receiver of
+science. A clearer knowledge of the aspirations, capacities, and
+necessities of the human soul, and of the revelations which the infinite
+Spirit makes to it, not only through the senses by the phenomena of
+outward nature, but by that inward and direct communion which, under
+different names, has been recognized by the devout and thoughtful of
+every religious sect and school of philosophy, would have saved them much
+anxious labor and a good deal of reproach withal in their hopeless
+championship of error. The witches of Baxter and "the black man" of
+Mather have vanished; belief in them is no longer possible on the part of
+sane men. But this mysterious universe, through which, half veiled in
+its own shadow, our dim little planet is wheeling, with its star worlds
+and thought-wearying spaces, remains. Nature's mighty miracle is still
+over and around us; and hence awe, wonder, and reverence remain to be the
+inheritance of humanity; still are there beautiful repentances and holy
+deathbeds; and still over the soul's darkness and confusion rises,
+starlike, the great idea of duty. By higher and better influences than
+the poor spectres of superstition, man must henceforth be taught to
+reverence the Invisible, and, in the consciousness of his own weakness,
+and sin, and sorrow, to lean with childlike trust on the wisdom and mercy
+of an overruling Providence,--walking by faith through the shadow and
+mystery, and cheered by the remembrance that, whatever may be his
+apparent allotment,--
+
+ "God's greatness flows around our incompleteness;
+ Round our restlessness His rest."
+
+It is a sad spectacle to find the glad tidings of the Christian faith and
+its "reasonable service" of devotion transformed by fanaticism and
+credulity into superstitious terror and wild extravagance; but, if
+possible, there is one still sadder. It is that of men in our own time
+regarding with satisfaction such evidences of human weakness, and
+professing to find in them new proofs of their miserable theory of a
+godless universe, and new occasion for sneering at sincere devotion as
+cant, and humble reverence as fanaticism. Alas! in comparison with
+such, the religious enthusiast, who in the midst of his delusion still
+feels that he is indeed a living soul and an heir of immortality, to whom
+God speaks from the immensities of His universe, is a sane man. Better
+is it, in a life like ours, to be even a howling dervis or a dancing
+Shaker, confronting imaginary demons with Thalaba's talisman of faith,
+than to lose the consciousness of our own spiritual nature, and look upon
+ourselves as mere brute masses of animal organization,--barnacles on a
+dead universe; looking into the dull grave with no hope beyond it; earth
+gazing into earth, and saying to corruption, "Thou art my father," and to
+the worm, "Thou art my sister."
+
+
+
+
+HAMLET AMONG THE GRAVES. (1844.)
+
+AN amiable enthusiast, immortal in his beautiful little romance of Paul
+and Virginia, has given us in his Miscellanies a chapter on the Pleasures
+of Tombs,--a title singular enough, yet not inappropriate; for the meek-
+spirited and sentimental author has given, in his own flowing and
+eloquent language, its vindication. "There is," says he, "a voluptuous
+melancholy arising from the contemplation of tombs; the result, like
+every other attractive sensation, of the harmony of two opposite
+principles,--from the sentiment of our fleeting life and that of our
+immortality, which unite in view of the last habitation of mankind. A
+tomb is a monument erected on the confines of two worlds. It first
+presents to us the end of the vain disquietudes of life and the image of
+everlasting repose; it afterwards awakens in us the confused sentiment of
+a blessed immortality, the probabilities of which grow stronger and
+stronger in proportion as the person whose memory is recalled was a
+virtuous character.
+
+"It is from this intellectual instinct, therefore, in favor of virtue,
+that the tombs of great men inspire us with a veneration so affecting.
+From the same sentiment, too, it is that those which contain objects that
+have been lovely excite so much pleasing regret; for the attractions of
+love arise entirely out of the appearances of virtue. Hence it is that
+we are moved at the sight of the small hillock which covers the ashes of
+an infant, from the recollection of its innocence; hence it is that we
+are melted into tenderness on contemplating the tomb in which is laid to
+repose a young female, the delight and the hope of her family by reason
+of her virtues. In order to give interest to such monuments, there is no
+need of bronzes, marbles, and gildings. The more simple they are, the
+more energy they communicate to the sentiment of melancholy. They
+produce a more powerful effect when poor rather than rich, antique rather
+than modern, with details of misfortune rather than titles of honor, with
+the attributes of virtue rather than with those of power. It is in the
+country principally that their impression makes itself felt in a very
+lively manner. A simple, unornamented grave there causes more tears to
+flow than the gaudy splendor of a cathedral interment. There it is that
+grief assumes sublimity; it ascends with the aged yews in the churchyard;
+it extends with the surrounding hills and plains; it allies itself with
+all the effects of Nature,--with the dawning of the morning, with the
+murmuring of wind, with the setting of the sun, and with the darkness of
+the night."
+
+Not long since I took occasion to visit the cemetery near this city. It
+is a beautiful location for a "city of the dead,"--a tract of some forty
+or fifty acres on the eastern bank of the Concord, gently undulating, and
+covered with a heavy growth of forest-trees, among which the white oak is
+conspicuous. The ground beneath has been cleared of undergrowth, and is
+marked here and there with monuments and railings enclosing "family
+lots." It is a quiet, peaceful spot; the city, with its crowded mills,
+its busy streets and teeming life, is hidden from view; not even a
+solitary farm-house attracts the eye. All is still and solemn, as befits
+the place where man and nature lie down together; where leaves of the
+great lifetree, shaken down by death, mingle and moulder with the frosted
+foliage of the autumnal forest.
+
+Yet the contrast of busy life is not wanting. The Lowell and Boston
+Railroad crosses the river within view of the cemetery; and, standing
+there in the silence and shadow, one can see the long trains rushing
+along their iron pathway, thronged with living, breathing humanity,--the
+young, the beautiful, the gay,--busy, wealth-seeking manhood of middle
+years, the child at its mother's knee, the old man with whitened hairs,
+hurrying on, on,--car after car,--like the generations of man sweeping
+over the track of time to their last 'still resting-place.
+
+It is not the aged and the sad of heart who make this a place of favorite
+resort. The young, the buoyant, the light-hearted, come and linger among
+these flower-sown graves, watching the sunshine falling in broken light
+upon these cold, white marbles, and listening to the song of birds in
+these leafy recesses. Beautiful and sweet to the young heart is the
+gentle shadow of melancholy which here falls upon it, soothing, yet sad,
+--a sentiment midway between joy and sorrow. How true is it, that, in the
+language of Wordsworth,--
+
+ "In youth we love the darkling lawn,
+ Brushed by the owlet's wing;
+ Then evening is preferred to dawn,
+ And autumn to the spring.
+ Sad fancies do we then affect,
+ In luxury of disrespect
+ To our own prodigal excess
+ Of too familiar happiness."
+
+The Chinese, from the remotest antiquity, have adorned and decorated
+their grave-grounds with shrubs and sweet flowers, as places of popular
+resort. The Turks have their graveyards planted with trees, through
+which the sun looks in upon the turban stones of the faithful, and
+beneath which the relatives of the dead sit in cheerful converse through
+the long days of summer, in all the luxurious quiet and happy
+indifference of the indolent East. Most of the visitors whom I met at
+the Lowell cemetery wore cheerful faces; some sauntered laughingly along,
+apparently unaffected by the associations of the place; too full,
+perhaps, of life, and energy, and high hope to apply to themselves the
+stern and solemn lesson which is taught even by these flower-garlanded
+mounds. But, for myself, I confess that I am always awed by the presence
+of the dead. I cannot jest above the gravestone. My spirit is silenced
+and rebuked before the tremendous mystery of which the grave reminds me,
+and involuntarily pays:
+
+ "The deep reverence taught of old,
+ The homage of man's heart to death."
+
+Even Nature's cheerful air, and sun, and birdvoices only serve to remind
+me that there are those beneath who have looked on the same green leaves
+and sunshine, felt the same soft breeze upon their cheeks, and listened
+to the same wild music of the woods for the last time. Then, too, comes
+the saddening reflection, to which so many have given expression, that
+these trees will put forth their leaves, the slant sunshine still fall
+upon green meadows and banks of flowers, and the song of the birds and
+the ripple of waters still be heard after our eyes and ears have closed
+forever. It is hard for us to realize this. We are so accustomed to
+look upon these things as a part of our life environment that it seems
+strange that they should survive us. Tennyson, in his exquisite
+metaphysical poem of the Two Voices, has given utterance to this
+sentiment:--
+
+ "Alas! though I should die, I know
+ That all about the thorn will blow
+ In tufts of rosy-tinted snow.
+
+ "Not less the bee will range her cells,
+ The furzy prickle fire the dells,
+ The foxglove cluster dappled bells."
+
+"The pleasures of the tombs!" Undoubtedly, in the language of the
+Idumean, seer, there are many who "rejoice exceedingly and are glad when
+they can find the grave;" who long for it "as the servant earnestly
+desireth the shadow." Rest, rest to the sick heart and the weary brain,
+to the long afflicted and the hopeless,--rest on the calm bosom of our
+common mother. Welcome to the tired ear, stunned and confused with
+life's jarring discords, the everlasting silence; grateful to the weary
+eyes which "have seen evil, and not good," the everlasting shadow.
+
+Yet over all hangs the curtain of a deep mystery,--a curtain lifted only
+on one side by the hands of those who are passing under its solemn
+shadow. No voice speaks to us from beyond it, telling of the unknown
+state; no hand from within puts aside the dark drapery to reveal the
+mysteries towards which we are all moving. "Man giveth up the ghost; and
+where is he?"
+
+Thanks to our Heavenly Father, He has not left us altogether without an
+answer to this momentous question. Over the blackness of darkness a
+light is shining. The valley of the shadow of death is no longer "a land
+of darkness and where the light is as darkness." The presence of a
+serene and holy life pervades it. Above its pale tombs and crowded
+burial-places, above the wail of despairing humanity, the voice of Him
+who awakened life and beauty beneath the grave-clothes of the tomb at
+Bethany is heard proclaiming, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." We
+know not, it is true, the conditions of our future life; we know not what
+it is to pass fromm this state of being to another; but before us in that
+dark passage has gone the Man of Nazareth, and the light of His footsteps
+lingers in the path. Where He, our Brother in His humanity, our Redeemer
+in His divine nature, has gone, let us not fear to follow. He who
+ordereth all aright will uphold with His own great arm the frail spirit
+when its incarnation is ended; and it may be, that, in language which I
+have elsewhere used,
+
+ --when Time's veil shall fall asunder,
+ The soul may know
+ No fearful change nor sudden wonder,
+ Nor sink the weight of mystery under,
+ But with the upward rise and with the vastness grow.
+
+ And all we shrink from now may seem
+ No new revealing;
+ Familiar as our childhood's stream,
+ Or pleasant memory of a dream,
+ The loved and cherished past upon the new life stealing.
+
+ Serene and mild the untried light
+ May have its dawning;
+ As meet in summer's northern night
+ The evening gray and dawning white,
+ The sunset hues of Time blend with the soul's new morning.
+
+
+
+
+SWEDENBORG (1844.)
+
+THERE are times when, looking only on the surface of things, one is
+almost ready to regard Lowell as a sort of sacred city of Mammon,--the
+Benares of gain: its huge mills, temples; its crowded dwellings, lodging-
+places of disciples and "proselytes within the gate;" its warehouses,
+stalls for the sale of relics. A very mean idol-worship, too, unrelieved
+by awe and reverence,--a selfish, earthward-looking devotion to the
+"least-erected spirit that fell from paradise." I grow weary of seeing
+man and mechanism reduced to a common level, moved by the same impulse,
+answering to the same bell-call. A nightmare of materialism broods over
+all. I long at times to hear a voice crying through the streets like
+that of one of the old prophets proclaiming the great first truth,--that
+the Lord alone is God.
+
+Yet is there not another side to the picture? High over sounding
+workshops spires glisten in the sun,--silent fingers pointing heavenward.
+The workshops themselves are instinct with other and subtler processes
+than cotton-spinning or carpet-weaving. Each human being who watches
+beside jack or power loom feels more or less intensely that it is a
+solemn thing to live. Here are sin and sorrow, yearnings for lost peace,
+outgushing gratitude of forgiven spirits, hopes and fears, which stretch
+beyond the horizon of time into eternity. Death is here. The graveyard
+utters its warning. Over all bends the eternal heaven in its silence and
+mystery. Nature, even here, is mightier than Art, and God is above all.
+Underneath the din of labor and the sounds of traffic, a voice, felt
+rather than beard, reaches the heart, prompting the same fearful
+questions which stirred the soul of the world's oldest poet,--"If a man
+die, shall he live again?" "Man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?"
+Out of the depths of burdened and weary hearts comes up the agonizing
+inquiry, "What shall I do to be saved?" "Who shall deliver me from the
+body of this death?"
+
+As a matter of course, in a city like this, composed of all classes of
+our many-sided population, a great variety of religious sects have their
+representatives in Lowell. The young city is dotted over with "steeple
+houses," most of them of the Yankee order of architecture. The
+Episcopalians have a house of worship on Merrimac Street,--a pile of dark
+stone, with low Gothic doors and arched windows. A plat of grass lies
+between it and the dusty street; and near it stands the dwelling-house
+intended for the minister, built of the same material as the church and
+surrounded by trees and shrubbery. The attention of the stranger is also
+attracted by another consecrated building on the hill slope of
+Belvidere,--one of Irving's a "shingle palaces," painted in imitation of
+stone,--a great wooden sham, "whelked and horned" with pine spires and
+turrets, a sort of whittled representation of the many-beaded beast of
+the Apocalypse.
+
+In addition to the established sects which have reared their visible
+altars in the City of Spindles, there are many who have not yet marked
+the boundaries or set up the pillars and stretched out the curtains of
+their sectarian tabernacles; who, in halls and "upper chambers" and in
+the solitude of their own homes, keep alive the spirit of devotion, and,
+wrapping closely around them the mantles of their order, maintain the
+integrity of its peculiarities in the midst of an unbelieving generation.
+
+Not long since, in company with a friend who is a regular attendant, I
+visited the little meeting of the disciples of Emanuel Swedenborg.
+Passing over Chapel Hill and leaving the city behind us, we reached the
+stream which winds through the beautiful woodlands at the Powder Mills
+and mingles its waters with the Concord. The hall in which the followers
+of the Gothland seer meet is small and plain, with unpainted seats, like
+those of "the people called Quakers," and looks out upon the still woods
+and that "willowy stream which turns a mill." An organ of small size,
+yet, as it seemed to me, vastly out of proportion with the room, filled
+the place usually occupied by the pulpit, which was here only a plain
+desk, placed modestly by the side of it. The congregation have no
+regular preacher, but the exercises of reading the Scriptures, prayers,
+and selections from the Book of Worship were conducted by one of the lay
+members. A manuscript sermon, by a clergyman of the order in Boston, was
+read, and apparently listened to with much interest. It was well written
+and deeply imbued with the doctrines of the church. I was impressed by
+the gravity and serious earnestness of the little audience. There were
+here no circumstances calculated to excite enthusiasm, nothing of the
+pomp of religious rites and ceremonies; only a settled conviction of the
+truth of the doctrines of their faith could have thus brought them
+together. I could scarcely make the fact a reality, as I sat among them,
+that here, in the midst of our bare and hard utilities, in the very
+centre and heart of our mechanical civilization, were devoted and
+undoubting believers in the mysterious and wonderful revelations of the
+Swedish prophet,--revelations which look through all external and outward
+manifestations to inward realities; which regard all objects in the world
+of sense only as the types and symbols of the world of spirit; literally
+unmasking the universe and laying bare the profoundest mysteries of life.
+
+The character and writings of Emanuel Swedenborg constitute one of the
+puzzles and marvels of metaphysics and psychology. A man remarkable for
+his practical activities, an ardent scholar of the exact sciences, versed
+in all the arcana of physics, a skilful and inventive mechanician, he has
+evolved from the hard and gross materialism of his studies a system of
+transcendent spiritualism. From his aggregation of cold and apparently
+lifeless practical facts beautiful and wonderful abstractions start forth
+like blossoms on the rod of the Levite. A politician and a courtier, a
+man of the world, a mathematician engaged in the soberest details of the
+science, he has given to the world, in the simplest and most natural
+language, a series of speculations upon the great mystery of being:
+detailed, matter-of-fact narratives of revelations from the spiritual
+world, which at once appall us by their boldness, and excite our wonder
+at their extraordinary method, logical accuracy, and perfect consistency.
+These remarkable speculations--the workings of a mind in which a powerful
+imagination allied itself with superior reasoning faculties, the
+marvellous current of whose thought ran only in the diked and guarded
+channels of mathematical demonstration--he uniformly speaks of as
+"facts." His perceptions of abstractions were so intense that they seem
+to have reached that point where thought became sensible to sight as well
+as feeling. What he thought, that he saw.
+
+He relates his visions of the spiritual world as he would the incidents
+of a walk round his own city of Stockholm. One can almost see him in his
+"brown coat and velvet breeches," lifting his "cocked hat" to an angel,
+or keeping an unsavory spirit at arm's length with that "gold-headed
+cane" which his London host describes as his inseparable companion in
+walking. His graphic descriptions have always an air of naturalness and
+probability; yet there is a minuteness of detail at times almost
+bordering on the ludicrous. In his Memorable Relations he manifests
+nothing of the imagination of Milton, overlooking the closed gates of
+paradise, or following the "pained fiend" in his flight through chaos;
+nothing of Dante's terrible imagery appalls us; we are led on from heaven
+to heaven very much as Defoe leads us after his shipwrecked Crusoe. We
+can scarcely credit the fact that we are not traversing our lower planet;
+and the angels seem vastly like our common acquaintances. We seem to
+recognize the "John Smiths," and "Mr. Browns," and "the old familiar
+faces" of our mundane habitation. The evil principle in Swedenborg's
+picture is, not the colossal and massive horror of the Inferno, nor that
+stern wrestler with fate who darkens the canvas of Paradise Lost, but an
+aggregation of poor, confused spirits, seeking rest and finding none save
+in the unsavory atmosphere of the "falses." These small fry of devils
+remind us only of certain unfortunate fellows whom we have known, who
+seem incapable of living in good and wholesome society, and who are
+manifestly given over to believe a lie. Thus it is that the very
+"heavens" and "hells" of the Swedish mystic seem to be "of the earth,
+earthy." He brings the spiritual world into close analogy with the
+material one.
+
+In this hurried paper I have neither space nor leisure to attempt an
+analysis of the great doctrines which underlie the "revelations" of
+Swedenborg. His remarkably suggestive books are becoming familiar to the
+reading and reflecting portion of the community. They are not unworthy
+of study; but, in the language of another, I would say, "Emulate
+Swedenborg in his exemplary life, his learning, his virtues, his
+independent thought, his desire for wisdom, his love of the good and
+true; aim to be his equal, his superior, in these things; but call no man
+your master."
+
+
+
+
+THE BETTER LAND. (1844.)
+
+"THE shapings of our heavens are the modifications of our constitution,"
+said Charles Lamb, in his reply to Southey's attack upon him in the
+Quarterly Review.
+
+He who is infinite in love as well as wisdom has revealed to us the fact
+of a future life, and the fearfully important relation in which the
+present stands to it. The actual nature and conditions of that life He
+has hidden from us,--no chart of the ocean of eternity is given us,--no
+celestial guidebook or geography defines, localizes, and prepares us for
+the wonders of the spiritual world. Hence imagination has a wide field
+for its speculations, which, so long as they do not positively contradict
+the revelation of the Scriptures, cannot be disproved.
+
+We naturally enough transfer to our idea of heaven whatever we love and
+reverence on earth. Thither the Catholic carries in his fancy the
+imposing rites and time-honored solemnities of his worship. There the
+Methodist sees his love-feasts and camp-meetings in the groves and by the
+still waters and green pastures of the blessed abodes. The Quaker, in
+the stillness of his self-communing, remembers that there was "silence in
+heaven."
+
+The Churchman, listening to the solemn chant of weal music or the deep
+tones of the organ, thinks of the song of the elders and the golden harps
+of the New Jerusalem.
+
+The heaven of the northern nations of Europe was a gross and sensual
+reflection of the earthly life of a barbarous and brutal people.
+
+The Indians of North America had a vague notion of a sunset land, a
+beautiful paradise far in the west, mountains and forests filled with
+deer and buffalo, lakes and streams swarming with fishes,--the happy
+hunting-ground of souls. In a late letter from a devoted missionary
+among the Western Indians (Paul Blohm, a converted Jew) we have noticed a
+beautiful illustration of this belief. Near the Omaha mission-house, on
+a high luff, was a solitary Indian grave. "One evening,"
+says the missionary, "having come home with some cattle which I had been
+seeking, I heard some one wailing; and, looking in the direction from
+whence I proceeded, I found it to be from the grave near our house. In a
+moment after a mourner rose up from a kneeling or lying posture, and,
+turning to the setting sun, stretched forth his arms in prayer and
+supplication with an intensity and earnestness as though he would detain
+the splendid luminary from running his course. With his body leaning
+forward and his arms stretched towards the sun, he presented a most
+striking figure of sorrow and petition. It was solemnly awful. He
+seemed to me to be one of the ancients come forth to teach me how to
+pray."
+
+A venerable and worthy New England clergyman, on his death-bed, just
+before the close of his life, declared that he was only conscious of an
+awfully solemn and intense curiosity to know the great secret of death
+and eternity.
+
+The excellent Dr. Nelson, of Missouri, was one who, while on earth,
+seemed to live another and higher life in the contemplation of infinite
+purity and happiness. A friend once related an incident concerning him
+which made a deep impression upon my mind. They had been travelling
+through a summer's forenoon in the prairie, and had lain down to rest
+beneath a solitary tree. The Doctor lay for a long time, silently
+looking upwards through the openings of the boughs into the still
+heavens, when he repeated the following lines, in a low tone, as if
+communing with himself in view of the wonders he described:--
+
+ "O the joys that are there mortal eye bath not seen!
+ O the songs they sing there, with hosannas between!
+ O the thrice-blessed song of the Lamb and of Moses!
+ O brightness on brightness! the pearl gate uncloses!
+ O white wings of angels! O fields white with roses!
+ O white tents of peace, where the rapt soul reposes
+ O the waters so still, and the pastures so green!"
+
+The brief hints afforded us by the sacred writings concerning the better
+land are inspiring and beautiful. Eye hath not seen, nor the ear heard,
+neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive of the good in
+store for the righteous. Heaven is described as a quiet habitation,--a
+rest remaining for the people of God. Tears shall be wiped away from all
+eyes; there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither
+shall there be any more pain. To how many death-beds have these words
+spoken peace! How many failing hearts have gathered strength from them
+to pass through the dark valley of shadows!
+
+Yet we should not forget that "the kingdom of heaven is within;" that it
+is the state and affections of the soul, the answer of a good conscience,
+the sense of harmony with God, a condition of time as well as of
+eternity. What is really momentous and all-important with us is the
+present, by which the future is shaped and colored. A mere change of
+locality cannot alter the actual and intrinsic qualities of the soul.
+Guilt and remorse would make the golden streets of Paradise intolerable
+as the burning marl of the infernal abodes; while purity and innocence
+would transform hell itself into heaven.
+
+
+
+
+DORA GREEN WELL.
+
+First published as an introduction to an American edition of that
+author's _The Patience of Hope_.
+
+THERE are men who, irrespective of the names by which they are called in
+the Babel confusion of sects, are endeared to the common heart of
+Christendom. Our doors open of their own accord to receive them. For in
+them we feel that in some faint degree, and with many limitations, the
+Divine is again manifested: something of the Infinite Love shines out of
+them; their very garments have healing and fragrance borrowed from the
+bloom of Paradise. So of books. There are volumes which perhaps contain
+many things, in the matter of doctrine and illustration, to which our
+reason does not assent, but which nevertheless seem permeated with a
+certain sweetness and savor of life. They have the Divine seal and
+imprimatur; they are fragrant with heart's-ease and asphodel; tonic with
+the leaves which are for the healing of the nations. The meditations of
+the devout monk of Kempen are the common heritage of Catholic and
+Protestant; our hearts burn within us as we walk with Augustine under
+Numidian fig-trees in the gardens of Verecundus; Feuelon from his
+bishop's palace and John Woolman from his tailor's shop speak to us in
+the same language. The unknown author of that book which Luther loved
+next to his Bible, the Theologia Germanica, is just as truly at home in
+this present age, and in the ultra Protestantism of New England, as in
+the heart of Catholic Europe, and in the fourteenth century. For such
+books know no limitations of time or place; they have the perpetual
+freshness and fitness of truth; they speak out of profound experience
+heart answers to heart as we read them; the spirit that is in man, and
+the inspiration that giveth understanding, bear witness to them. The
+bent and stress of their testimony are the same, whether written in this
+or a past century, by Catholic or Quaker: self-renunciation,--
+reconcilement to the Divine will through simple faith in the Divine
+goodness, and the love of it which must needs follow its recognition, the
+life of Christ made our own by self-denial and sacrifice, and the
+fellowship of His suffering for the good of others, the indwelling
+Spirit, leading into all truth, the Divine Word nigh us, even in our
+hearts. They have little to do with creeds, or schemes of doctrine, or
+the partial and inadequate plans of salvation invented by human
+speculation and ascribed to Him who, it is sufficient to know, is able to
+save unto the uttermost all who trust in Him. They insist upon simple
+faith and holiness of life, rather than rituals or modes of worship; they
+leave the merely formal, ceremonial, and temporal part of religion to
+take care of itself, and earnestly seek for the substantial, the
+necessary, and the permanent.
+
+With these legacies of devout souls, it seems to me, the little volume
+herewith presented is not wholly unworthy of a place. It assumes the
+life and power of the gospel as a matter of actual experience; it bears
+unmistakable evidence of a realization, on the part of its author, of the
+truth, that Christianity is not simply historical and traditional, but
+present and permanent, with its roots in the infinite past and its
+branches in the infinite future, the eternal spring and growth of Divine
+love; not the dying echo of words uttered centuries ago, never to be
+repeated, but God's good tidings spoken afresh in every soul,--the
+perennial fountain and unstinted outflow of wisdom and goodness, forever
+old and forever new. It is a lofty plea for patience, trust, hope, and
+holy confidence, under the shadow, as well as in the light, of Christian
+experience, whether the cloud seems to rest on the tabernacle, or moves
+guidingly forward. It is perhaps too exclusively addressed to those who
+minister in the inner sanctuary, to be entirely intelligible to the
+vaster number who wait in the outer courts; it overlooks, perhaps, too
+much the solidarity and oneness of humanity;' but all who read it will
+feel its earnestness, and confess to the singular beauty of its style,
+the strong, steady march of its argument, and the wide and varied
+learning which illustrates it.
+
+ ("The good are not so good as I once thought, nor the bad so evil,
+ and in all there is more for grace to make advantage of, and more to
+ testify for God and holiness, than I once believed."--Baxter.)
+
+To use the language of one of its reviewers in the Scottish press:--
+
+"Beauty there is in the book; exquisite glimpses into the loveliness of
+nature here and there shine out from its lines,--a charm wanting which
+meditative writing always seems to have a defect; beautiful gleams, too,
+there are of the choicest things of art, and frequent allusions by the
+way to legend or picture of the religious past; so that, while you read,
+you wander by a clear brook of thought, coining far from the beautiful
+hills, and winding away from beneath the sunshine of gladness and beauty
+into the dense, mysterious forest of human existence, that loves to sing,
+amid the shadow of human darkness and anguish, its music of heavenborn
+consolation; bringing, too, its pure waters of cleansing and healing, yet
+evermore making its praise of holy affection and gladness; while it is
+still haunted by the spirits of prophet, saint, and poet, repeating
+snatches of their strains, and is led on, as by a spirit from above, to
+join the great river of God's truth. . . .
+
+"This is a book for Christian men, for the quiet hour of holy solitude,
+when the heart longs and waits for access to the presence of the Master.
+The weary heart that thirsts amidst its conflicts and its toils for
+refreshing water will drink eagerly of these sweet and refreshing words.
+To thoughtful men and women, especially such as have learnt any of the
+patience of hope in the experiences of sorrow and trial, we commend this
+little volume most heartily and earnestly."
+
+
+_The Patience of Hope_ fell into my hands soon after its publication in
+Edinburgh, some two years ago. I was at once impressed by its
+extraordinary richness of language and imagery,--its deep and solemn tone
+of meditation in rare combination with an eminently practical tendency,--
+philosophy warm and glowing with love. It will, perhaps, be less the
+fault of the writer than of her readers, if they are not always able to
+eliminate from her highly poetical and imaginative language the subtle
+metaphysical verity or phase of religious experience which she seeks to
+express, or that they are compelled to pass over, without appropriation,
+many things which are nevertheless profoundly suggestive as vague
+possibilities of the highest life. All may not be able to find in some
+of her Scriptural citations the exact weight and significance so apparent
+to her own mind. She startles us, at times, by her novel applications of
+familiar texts, by meanings reflected upon them from her own spiritual
+intuitions, making the barren Baca of the letter a well. If the
+rendering be questionable, the beauty and quaint felicity of illustration
+and comparison are unmistakable; and we call to mind Augustine's saying,
+that two or more widely varying interpretations of Scripture may be alike
+true in themselves considered. "When one saith, Moses meant as I do,'
+and another saith, 'Nay, but as I do,' I ask, more reverently, 'Why not
+rather as both, if both be true?"
+
+Some minds, for instance, will hesitate to assent to the use of certain
+Scriptural passages as evidence that He who is the Light of men, the Way
+and the Truth, in the mystery of His economy, designedly "delays,
+withdraws, and even hides Himself from those who love and follow Him."
+They will prefer to impute spiritual dearth and darkness to human
+weakness, to the selfishness which seeks a sign for itself, to evil
+imaginations indulged, to the taint and burden of some secret sin, or to
+some disease and exaggeration of the conscience, growing out of bodily
+infirmity, rather than to any purpose on the part of our Heavenly Father
+to perplex and mislead His children. The sun does not shine the less
+because one side of our planet is in darkness. To borrow the words of
+Augustine "Thou, Lord, forsakest nothing thou hast made. Thou alone art
+near to those even who remove far from thee. Let them turn and seek
+thee, for not as they have forsaken their Creator hast thou forsaken thy
+creation." It is only by holding fast the thought of Infinite Goodness,
+and interpreting doubtful Scripture and inward spiritual experience by
+the light of that central idea, that we can altogether escape the
+dreadful conclusion of Pascal, that revelation has been given us in
+dubious cipher, contradictory and mystical, in order that some, through
+miraculous aid, may understand it to their salvation, and others be
+mystified by it to their eternal loss.
+
+I might mention other points of probable divergence between reader and
+writer, and indicate more particularly my own doubtful parse and
+hesitancy over some of these pages. But it is impossible for me to make
+one to whom I am so deeply indebted an offender for a word or a
+Scriptural rendering. On the grave and awful themes which she discusses,
+I have little to say in the way of controversy. I would listen, rather
+than criticise. The utterances of pious souls, in all ages, are to me
+often like fountains in a thirsty land, strengthening and refreshing, yet
+not without an after-taste of human frailty and inadequateness, a slight
+bitterness of disappointment and unsatisfied quest. Who has not felt at
+times that the letter killeth, that prophecies fail, and tongues cease to
+edify, and been ready to say, with the author of the Imitation of Christ:
+"Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. Let not Moses nor the prophets
+speak to me, but speak thou rather, who art the Inspirer and Enlightener
+of all. I am weary with reading and hearing many things; let all
+teachers hold their peace; let all creatures keep silence: speak thou
+alone to me."
+
+The writer of The Patience of Hope had, previous to its publication,
+announced herself to a fit, if small, audience of earnest and thoughtful
+Christians, in a little volume entitled, A Present Heaven. She has
+recently published a collection of poems, of which so competent a judge
+as Dr. Brown, the author of _Horae Subsecivae_ and _Rab and his Friends_,
+thus speaks, in the _North British Review_:--
+
+"Such of our readers--a fast increasing number--as have read and enjoyed
+_The Patience of Hope_, listening to the gifted nature which, through
+such deep and subtile thought, and through affection and godliness still
+deeper and more quick, has charmed and soothed them, will not be
+surprised to learn that she is not only poetical, but, what is more, a
+poet, and one as true as George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, or our own
+Cowper; for, with all our admiration of the searching, fearless
+speculation, the wonderful power of speaking clearly upon dark and all
+but unspeakable subjects, the rich outcome of 'thoughts that wander
+through eternity,' which increases every time we take up that wonderful
+little book, we confess we were surprised at the kind and the amount of
+true poetic _vis_ in these poems, from the same fine and strong hand.
+There is a personality and immediateness, a sort of sacredness and
+privacy, as if they were overheard rather than read, which gives to these
+remarkable productions a charm and a flavor all their own. With no
+effort, no consciousness of any end but that of uttering the inmost
+thoughts and desires of the heart, they flow out as clear, as living, as
+gladdening as the wayside well, coming from out the darkness of the
+central depths, filtered into purity by time and travel. The waters are
+copious, sometimes to overflowing; but they are always limpid and
+unforced, singing their own quiet tune, not saddening, though sometimes
+sad, and their darkness not that of obscurity, but of depth, like that of
+the deep sea.
+
+"This is not a book to criticise or speak about, and we give no extracts
+from the longer, and in this case, we think, the better poems. In
+reading this Cardiphonia set to music, we have been often reminded, not
+only of Herbert and Vaughan, but of Keble,--a likeness of the spirit, not
+of the letter; for if there is any one poet who has given a bent to her
+mind, it is Wordsworth,--the greatest of all our century's poets, both in
+himself and in his power of making poets."
+
+In the belief that whoever peruses the following pages will be
+sufficiently interested in their author to be induced to turn back and
+read over again, with renewed pleasure, extracts from her metrical
+writings, I copy from the volume so warmly commended a few brief pieces
+and extracts from the longer poems.
+
+Here are three sonnets, each a sermon in itself:--
+
+
+ ASCENDING.
+
+ They who from mountain-peaks have gazed upon
+ The wide, illimitable heavens have said,
+ That, still receding as they climbed, outspread,
+ The blue vault deepens over them, and, one
+ By one drawn further back, each starry sun
+ Shoots down a feebler splendor overhead
+ So, Saviour, as our mounting spirits, led
+ Along Faith's living way to Thee, have won
+ A nearer access, up the difficult track
+ Still pressing, on that rarer atmosphere,
+ When low beneath us flits the cloudy rack,
+ We see Thee drawn within a widening sphere
+ Of glory, from us further, further back,--
+ Yet is it then because we are more near.
+
+
+ LIFE TAPESTRY.
+
+ Top long have I, methought, with tearful eye
+ Pored o'er this tangled work of mine, and mused
+ Above each stitch awry and thread confused;
+ Now will I think on what in years gone by
+ I heard of them that weave rare tapestry
+ At royal looms, and hew they constant use
+ To work on the rough side, and still peruse
+ The pictured pattern set above them high;
+ So will I set my copy high above,
+ And gaze and gaze till on my spirit grows
+ Its gracious impress; till some line of love,
+ Transferred upon my canvas, faintly glows;
+ Nor look too much on warp or woof, provide
+ He whom I work for sees their fairer side!
+
+
+ HOPE.
+
+ When I do think on thee, sweet Hope, and how
+ Thou followest on our steps, a coaxing child
+ Oft chidden hence, yet quickly reconciled,
+ Still turning on us a glad, beaming brow,
+ And red, ripe lips for kisses: even now
+ Thou mindest me of him, the Ruler mild,
+ Who led God's chosen people through the wild,
+ And bore with wayward murmurers, meek as thou
+ That bringest waters from the Rock, with bread
+ Of angels strewing Earth for us! like him
+ Thy force abates not, nor thine eye grows dim;
+ But still with milk and honey-droppings fed,
+ Thou leadest to the Promised Country fair,
+ Though thou, like Moses, may'st not enter there
+
+
+There is something very weird and striking in the following lines:--
+
+
+ GONE.
+
+ Alone, at midnight as he knelt, his spirit was aware
+ Of Somewhat falling in between the silence and the prayer;
+
+ A bell's dull clangor that hath sped so far, it faints and dies
+ So soon as it hath reached the ear whereto its errand lies;
+
+ And as he rose up from his knees, his spirit was aware
+ Of Somewhat, forceful and unseen, that sought to hold him there;
+
+ As of a Form that stood behind, and on his shoulders prest
+ Both hands to stay his rising up, and Somewhat in his breast,
+
+ In accents clearer far than words, spake, "Pray yet longer, pray,
+ For one that ever prayed for thee this night hath passed away;
+
+ "A soul, that climbing hour by hour the silver-shining stair
+ That leads to God's great treasure-house, grew covetous; and there
+
+ "Was stored no blessing and no boon, for thee she did not claim,
+ (So lowly, yet importunate!) and ever with thy name
+
+ "She link'd--that none in earth or heaven might hinder it or stay--
+ One Other Name, so strong, that thine hath never missed its way.
+
+ "This very night within my arms this gracious soul I bore Within the
+ Gate, where many a prayer of hers had gone before;
+
+ "And where she resteth, evermore one constant song they raise Of 'Holy,
+ holy,' so that now I know not if she prays;
+
+ "But for the voice of praise in Heaven, a voice of Prayer hath gone
+ From Earth; thy name upriseth now no more; pray on, pray on!"
+
+
+The following may serve as a specimen of the writer's lighter, half-
+playful strain of moralizing:--
+
+
+ SEEKING.
+
+ "And where, and among what pleasant places,
+ Have ye been, that ye come again
+ With your laps so full of flowers, and your faces
+ Like buds blown fresh after rain?"
+
+ "We have been," said the children, speaking
+ In their gladness, as the birds chime,
+ All together,--"we have been seeking
+ For the Fairies of olden time;
+ For we thought, they are only hidden,--
+ They would never surely go
+ From this green earth all unbidden,
+ And the children that love them so.
+ Though they come not around us leaping,
+ As they did when they and the world
+ Were young, we shall find them sleeping
+ Within some broad leaf curled;
+ For the lily its white doors closes
+ But only over the bee,
+ And we looked through the summer roses,
+ Leaf by leaf, so carefully.
+
+ But we thought, rolled up we shall find them
+ Among mosses old and dry;
+ From gossamer threads that bind them,
+ They will start like the butterfly,
+ All winged: so we went forth seeking,
+ Yet still they have kept unseen;
+ Though we think our feet have been keeping
+ The track where they have been,
+ For we saw where their dance went flying
+ O'er the pastures,--snowy white."
+
+ Their seats and their tables lying,
+ O'erthrown in their sudden flight.
+ And they, too, have had their losses,
+ For we found the goblets white
+ And red in the old spiked mosses,
+ That they drank from over-night;
+ And in the pale horn of the woodbine
+ Was some wine left, clear and bright;
+ "But we found," said the children, speaking
+ More quickly, "so many things,
+ That we soon forgot we were seeking,--
+ Forgot all the Fairy rings,
+ Forgot all the stories olden
+ That we hear round the fire at night,
+ Of their gifts and their favors golden,--
+ The sunshine was so bright;
+ And the flowers,--we found so many
+ That it almost made us grieve
+ To think there were some, sweet as any,
+ That we were forced to leave;
+ As we left, by the brook-side lying,
+ The balls of drifted foam,
+ And brought (after all our trying)
+ These Guelder-roses home."
+
+ "Then, oh!" I heard one speaking
+ Beside me soft and low,
+ "I have been, like the blessed children, seeking,
+ Still seeking, to and fro;
+ Yet not, like them, for the Fairies,--
+ They might pass unmourned away
+ For me, that had looked on angels,--
+ On angels that would not stay;
+ No! not though in haste before them
+ I spread all my heart's best cheer,
+ And made love my banner o'er them,
+ If it might but keep them here;
+ They stayed but a while to rest them;
+ Long, long before its close,
+ From my feast, though I mourned and prest them
+ The radiant guests arose;
+ And their flitting wings struck sadness
+ And silence; never more
+ Hath my soul won back the gladness,
+ That was its own before.
+ No; I mourned not for the Fairies
+ When I had seen hopes decay,
+ That were sweet unto my spirit
+ So long; I said, 'If they,
+ That through shade and sunny weather
+ Have twined about my heart,
+ Should fade, we must go together,
+ For we can never part!'
+ But my care was not availing;
+ I found their sweetness gone;
+ I saw their bright tints paling;--
+ They died; yet I lived on.
+
+ "Yet seeking, ever seeking,
+ Like the children, I have won
+ A guerdon all undreamt of
+
+ When first my quest begun,
+ And my thoughts come back like wanderers,
+ Out-wearied, to my breast;
+ What they sought for long they found not,
+ Yet was the Unsought best.
+ For I sought not out for crosses,
+ I did not seek for pain;
+ Yet I find the heart's sore losses
+ Were the spirit's surest gain."
+
+
+In _A Meditation_, the writer ventures, not without awe and reverence,
+upon that dim, unsounded ocean of mystery, the life beyond:--
+
+
+ "But is there prayer
+ Within your quiet homes, and is there care
+ For those ye leave behind? I would address
+ My spirit to this theme in humbleness
+ No tongue nor pen hath uttered or made known
+ This mystery, and thus I do but guess
+ At clearer types through lowlier patterns shown;
+ Yet when did Love on earth forsake its own?
+ Ye may not quit your sweetness; in the Vine
+ More firmly rooted than of old, your wine
+ Hath freer flow! ye have not changed, but grown
+ To fuller stature; though the shock was keen
+ That severed you from us, how oft below
+ Hath sorest parting smitten but to show
+ True hearts their hidden wealth that quickly grow
+ The closer for that anguish,--friend to friend
+ Revealed more clear,--and what is Death to rend
+ The ties of life and love, when He must fade
+ In light of very Life, when He must bend
+ To love, that, loving, loveth to the end?
+
+ "I do not deem ye look
+ Upon us now, for be it that your eyes
+ Are sealed or clear, a burden on them lies
+ Too deep and blissful for their gaze to brook
+ Our troubled strife; enough that once ye dwelt
+ Where now we dwell, enough that once ye felt
+ As now we feel, to bid you recognize
+ Our claim of kindred cherished though unseen;
+ And Love that is to you for eye and ear
+ Hath ways unknown to us to bring you near,--
+ To keep you near for all that comes between;
+ As pious souls that move in sleep to prayer,
+ As distant friends, that see not, and yet share
+ (I speak of what I know) each other's care,
+ So may your spirits blend with ours!
+ Above Ye know not haply of our state, yet
+ Love Acquaints you with our need, and through a way
+ More sure than that of knowledge--so ye pray!
+
+ "And even thus we meet,
+ And even thus we commune! spirits freed
+ And spirits fettered mingle, nor have need
+ To seek a common atmosphere, the air
+ Is meet for either in this olden, sweet,
+ Primeval breathing of Man's spirit,--Prayer!"
+
+
+I give, in conclusion, a portion of one of her most characteristic poems,
+_The Reconciler_:--
+
+
+ "Our dreams are reconciled,
+ Since Thou didst come to turn them all to Truth;
+ The World, the Heart, are dreamers in their youth
+ Of visions beautiful, and strange and wild;
+ And Thou, our Life's Interpreter, dost still
+ At once make clear these visions and fulfil;
+
+ Each dim sweet Orphic rhyme,
+ Each mythic tale sublime
+ Of strength to save, of sweetness to subdue,
+ Each morning dream the few,
+ Wisdom's first lovers told, if read in Thee comes true.
+
+ . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+ "Thou, O Friend
+ From heaven, that madest this our heart Thine own,
+ Dost pierce the broken language of its moan--
+ Thou dost not scorn our needs, but satisfy!
+ Each yearning deep and wide,
+ Each claim, is justified;
+ Our young illusions fail not, though they die
+ Within the brightness of Thy Rising, kissed
+ To happy death, like early clouds that lie
+ About the gates of Dawn,--a golden mist
+ Paling to blissful white, through rose and amethyst.
+
+ "The World that puts Thee by,
+ That opens not to greet Thee with Thy train,
+ That sendeth after Thee the sullen cry,
+ 'We will not have Thee over us to reign,'
+ Itself Both testify through searchings vain
+ Of Thee and of its need, and for the good
+ It will not, of some base similitude
+ Takes up a taunting witness, till its mood,
+ Grown fierce o'er failing hopes, doth rend and tear
+ Its own illusions grown too thin and bare
+ To wrap it longer; for within the gate
+ Where all must pass, a veiled and hooded Fate,
+ A dark Chimera, coiled and tangled lies,
+ And he who answers not its questions dies,--
+ Still changing form and speech, but with the same
+ Vexed riddles, Gordian-twisted, bringing shame
+ Upon the nations that with eager cry
+ Hail each new solver of the mystery;
+ Yet he, of these the best,
+ Bold guesser, hath but prest
+ Most nigh to Thee, our noisy plaudits wrong;
+ True Champion, that hast wrought
+ Our help of old, and brought
+ Meat from this eater, sweetness from this strong.
+
+ "O Bearer of the key
+ That shuts and opens with a sound so sweet
+ Its turning in the wards is melody,
+ All things we move among are incomplete
+ And vain until we fashion them in Thee!
+ We labor in the fire,
+ Thick smoke is round about us; through the din
+ Of words that darken counsel clamors dire
+ Ring from thought's beaten anvil, where within
+ Two Giants toil, that even from their birth
+ With travail-pangs have torn their mother Earth,
+ And wearied out her children with their keen
+ Upbraidings of the other, till between
+ Thou tamest, saying, 'Wherefore do ye wrong
+ Each other?--ye are Brethren.' Then these twain
+ Will own their kindred, and in Thee retain
+ Their claims in peace, because Thy land is wide
+ As it is goodly! here they pasture free,
+ This lion and this leopard, side by side,
+ A little child doth lead them with a song;
+ Now, Ephraim's envy ceaseth, and no more
+ Doth Judah anger Ephraim chiding sore,
+ For one did ask a Brother, one a King,
+ So dost Thou gather them in one, and bring--
+ Thou, King forevermore, forever Priest,
+ Thou, Brother of our own from bonds released
+ A Law of Liberty,
+ A Service making free,
+ A Commonweal where each has all in Thee.
+
+ "And not alone these wide,
+ Deep-planted yearnings, seeking with a cry
+ Their meat from God, in Thee are satisfied;
+ But all our instincts waking suddenly
+ Within the soul, like infants from their sleep
+ That stretch their arms into the dark and weep,
+ Thy voice can still. The stricken heart bereft
+ Of all its brood of singing hopes, and left
+ 'Mid leafless boughs, a cold, forsaken nest
+ With snow-flakes in it, folded in Thy breast
+ Doth lose its deadly chill; and grief that creeps
+ Unto Thy side for shelter, finding there
+ The wound's deep cleft, forgets its moan, and weeps
+ Calm, quiet tears, and on Thy forehead Care
+ Hath looked until its thorns, no longer bare,
+ Put forth pale roses. Pain on Thee doth press
+ Its quivering cheek, and all the weariness,
+ The want that keep their silence, till from Thee
+ They hear the gracious summons, none beside
+ Hath spoken to the world-worn, 'Come to me,'
+ Tell forth their heavy secrets.
+
+ "Thou dost hide
+ These in Thy bosom, and not these alone,
+ But all our heart's fond treasure that had grown
+ A burden else: O Saviour, tears were weighed
+ To Thee in plenteous measure! none hath shown
+ That Thou didst smile! yet hast Thou surely made
+ All joy of ours Thine own.
+
+ "Thou madest us for Thine;
+ We seek amiss, we wander to and fro;
+ Yet are we ever on the track Divine;
+ The soul confesseth Thee, but sense is slow
+ To lean on aught but that which it may see;
+ So hath it crowded up these Courts below
+ With dark and broken images of Thee;
+ Lead Thou us forth upon Thy Mount, and show
+ Thy goodly patterns, whence these things of old
+ By Thee were fashioned; One though manifold.
+ Glass Thou Thy perfect likeness in the soul,
+ Show us Thy countenance, and we are whole!"
+
+
+No one, I am quite certain, will regret that I have made these liberal
+quotations. Apart from their literary merit, they have a special
+interest for the readers of The Patience of Hope, as more fully
+illustrating the writer's personal experience and aspirations.
+
+It has been suggested by a friend that it is barely possible that an
+objection may be urged against the following treatise, as against all
+books of a like character, that its tendency is to isolate the individual
+from his race, and to nourish an exclusive and purely selfish personal
+solicitude; that its piety is self-absorbent, and that it does not take
+sufficiently into account active duties and charities, and the love of
+the neighbor so strikingly illustrated by the Divine Master in His life
+and teachings. This objection, if valid, would be a fatal one. For, of
+a truth, there can be no meaner type of human selfishness than that
+afforded by him who, unmindful of the world of sin and suffering about
+him, occupies himself in the pitiful business of saving his own soul, in
+the very spirit of the miser, watching over his private hoard while his
+neighbors starve for lack of bread. But surely the benevolent unrest,
+the far-reaching sympathies and keen sensitiveness to the suffering of
+others, which so nobly distinguish our present age, can have nothing to
+fear from a plea for personal holiness, patience, hope, and resignation
+to the Divine will. "The more piety, the more compassion," says Isaac
+Taylor; and this is true, if we understand by piety, not self-concentred
+asceticism, but the pure religion and undefiled which visits the widow
+and the fatherless, and yet keeps itself unspotted from the world,--which
+deals justly, loves mercy, and yet walks humbly before God. Self-
+scrutiny in the light of truth can do no harm to any one, least of all to
+the reformer and philanthropist. The spiritual warrior, like the young
+candidate for knighthood, may be none the worse for his preparatory
+ordeal of watching all night by his armor.
+
+Tauler in mediaeval times and Woolman in the last century are among the
+most earnest teachers of the inward life and spiritual nature of
+Christianity, yet both were distinguished for practical benevolence.
+They did not separate the two great commandments. Tauler strove with
+equal intensity of zeal to promote the temporal and the spiritual welfare
+of men. In the dark and evil time in which he lived, amidst the untold
+horrors of the "Black Plague," he illustrated by deeds of charity and
+mercy his doctrine of disinterested benevolence. Woolman's whole life
+was a nobler Imitation of Christ than that fervid rhapsody of monastic
+piety which bears the name.
+
+How faithful, yet, withal, how full of kindness, were his rebukes of
+those who refused labor its just reward, and ground the faces of the
+poor? How deep and entire was his sympathy with overtasked and ill-paid
+laborers; with wet and illprovided sailors; with poor wretches
+blaspheming in the mines, because oppression had made them mad; with the
+dyers plying their unhealthful trade to minister to luxury and pride;
+with the tenant wearing out his life in the service of a hard landlord;
+and with the slave sighing over his unrequited toil! What a significance
+there was in his vision of the "dull, gloomy mass" which appeared before
+him, darkening half the heavens, and which he was told was "human beings
+in as great misery as they could be and live; and he was mixed with them,
+and henceforth he might not consider himself a distinct and separate
+being"! His saintliness was wholly unconscious; he seems never to have
+thought himself any nearer to the tender heart of God than the most
+miserable sinner to whom his compassion extended. As he did not
+live, so neither did he die to himself. His prayer upon his death-bed
+was for others rather than himself; its beautiful humility and simple
+trust were marred by no sensual imagery of crowns and harps and golden
+streets, and personal beatific exaltations; but tender and touching
+concern for suffering humanity, relieved only by the thought of the
+paternity of God, and of His love and omnipotence, alone found utterance
+in ever-memorable words.
+
+In view of the troubled state of the country and the intense
+preoccupation of the public mind, I have had some hesitation in offering
+this volume to its publishers. But, on further reflection, it has seemed
+to me that it might supply a want felt by many among us; that, in the
+chaos of civil strife and the shadow of mourning which rests over the
+land, the contemplation of "things unseen which are eternal" might not be
+unwelcome; that, when the foundations of human confidence are shaken, and
+the trust in man proves vain, there might be glad listeners to a voice
+calling from the outward and the temporal to the inward and the
+spiritual; from the troubles and perplexities of time, to the eternal
+quietness which God giveth. I cannot but believe that, in the heat and
+glare through which we are passing, this book will not invite in vain to
+the calm, sweet shadows of holy meditation, grateful as the green wings
+of the bird to Thalaba in the desert; and thus afford something of
+consolation to the bereaved, and of strength to the weary. For surely
+never was the Patience of Hope more needed; never was the inner sanctuary
+of prayer more desirable; never was a steadfast faith in the Divine
+goodness more indispensable, nor lessons of self-sacrifice and
+renunciation, and that cheerful acceptance of known duty which shifts not
+its proper responsibility upon others, nor asks for "peace in its day" at
+the expense of purity and justice, more timely than now, when the solemn
+words of ancient prophecy are as applicable to our own country as to that
+of the degenerate Jew,--"Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy
+backsliding reprove thee; know, therefore, it is an evil thing, and
+bitter, that thou bast forsaken the Lord, and that my fear is not in
+thee,"--when "His way is in the deep, in clouds, and in thick darkness,"
+and the hand heavy upon us which shall "turn and overturn until he whose
+right it is shall reign,"--until, not without rending agony, the evil
+plant which our Heavenly Father hath not planted, whose roots have wound
+themselves about altar and hearth-stone, and whose branches, like the
+tree Al-Accoub in Moslem fable, bear the accursed fruit of oppression,
+rebellion, and all imaginable crime, shall be torn up and destroyed
+forever.
+
+AMESBURY, 1st 6th mo., 1862.
+
+
+
+
+THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.
+
+The following letters were addressed to the Editor of the Friends' Review
+in Philadelphia, in reference to certain changes of principle and
+practice in the Society then beginning to be observable, but which have
+since more than justified the writer's fears and solicitude.
+
+
+I.
+
+ AMESBURY, 2d mo., 1870.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE REVIEW.
+
+ESTEEMED FRIEND,--If I have been hitherto a silent, I have not been an
+indifferent, spectator of the movements now going on in our religious
+Society. Perhaps from lack of faith, I have been quite too solicitous
+concerning them, and too much afraid that in grasping after new things we
+may let go of old things too precious to be lost. Hence I have been
+pleased to see from time to time in thy paper very timely and fitting
+articles upon a _Hired Ministry_ and _Silent Worship_.
+
+The present age is one of sensation and excitement, of extreme measures
+and opinions, of impatience of all slow results. The world about us
+moves with accelerated impulse, and we move with it: the rest we have
+enjoyed, whether true or false, is broken; the title-deeds of our
+opinions, the reason of our practices, are demanded. Our very right to
+exist as a distinct society is questioned. Our old literature--the
+precious journals and biographies of early and later Friends--is
+comparatively neglected for sensational and dogmatic publications. We
+bear complaints of a want of educated ministers; the utility of silent
+meetings is denied, and praying and preaching regarded as matters of will
+and option. There is a growing desire for experimenting upon the dogmas
+and expedients and practices of other sects. I speak only of admitted
+facts, and not for the purpose of censure or complaint. No one has less
+right than myself to indulge in heresy-hunting or impatience of minor
+differences of opinion. If my dear friends can bear with me, I shall not
+find it a hard task to bear with them.
+
+But for myself I prefer the old ways. With the broadest possible
+tolerance for all honest seekers after truth! I love the Society of
+Friends. My life has been nearly spent in laboring with those of other
+sects in behalf of the suffering and enslaved; and I have never felt like
+quarrelling with Orthodox or Unitarians, who were willing to pull with
+me, side by side, at the rope of Reform. A very large proportion of my
+dearest personal friends are outside of our communion; and I have learned
+with John Woolman to find "no narrowness respecting sects and opinions."
+But after a kindly and candid survey of them all, I turn to my own
+Society, thankful to the Divine Providence which placed me where I am;
+and with an unshaken faith in the one distinctive doctrine of Quakerism--
+the Light within--the immanence of the Divine Spirit in Christianity. I
+cheerfully recognize and bear testimony to the good works and lives of
+those who widely differ in faith and practice; but I have seen no truer
+types of Christianity, no better men and women, than I have known and
+still know among those who not blindly, but intelligently, hold the
+doctrines and maintain the testimonies of our early Friends. I am not
+blind to the shortcomings of Friends. I know how much we have lost by
+narrowness and coldness and inactivity, the overestimate of external
+observances, the neglect of our own proper work while acting as
+conscience-keepers for others. We have not, as a society, been active
+enough in those simple duties which we owe to our suffering fellow-
+creatures, in that abundant labor of love and self-denial which is never
+out of place. Perhaps our divisions and dissensions might have been
+spared us if we had been less "at ease in Zion." It is in the decline of
+practical righteousness that men are most likely to contend with each
+other for dogma and ritual, for shadow and letter, instead of substance
+and spirit. Hence I rejoice in every sign of increased activity in doing
+good among us, in the precious opportunities afforded of working with the
+Divine Providence for the Freedmen and Indians; since the more we do, in
+the true spirit of the gospel, for others, the more we shall really do
+for ourselves. There is no danger of lack of work for those who, with an
+eye single to the guidance of Truth, look for a place in God's vineyard;
+the great work which the founders of our Society began is not yet done;
+the mission of Friends is not accomplished, and will not be until this
+world of ours, now full of sin and suffering, shall take up, in jubilant
+thanksgiving, the song of the Advent: "Glory to God in the highest!
+Peace on earth and good-will to men!"
+
+It is charged that our Society lacks freedom and adaptation to the age in
+which we live, that there is a repression of individuality and manliness
+among us. I am not prepared to deny it in certain respects. But, if we
+look at the matter closely, we shall see that the cause is not in the
+central truth of Quakerism, but in a failure to rightly comprehend it; in
+an attempt to fetter with forms and hedge about with dogmas that great
+law of Christian liberty, which I believe affords ample scope for the
+highest spiritual aspirations and the broadest philanthropy. If we did
+but realize it, we are "set in a large place."
+
+"We may do all we will save wickedness."
+
+"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."
+
+Quakerism, in the light of its great original truth, is "exceeding
+broad." As interpreted by Penn and Barclay it is the most liberal and
+catholic of faiths. If we are not free, generous, tolerant, if we are
+not up to or above the level of the age in good works, in culture and
+love of beauty, order and fitness, if we are not the ready recipients of
+the truths of science and philosophy,--in a word, if we are not full-
+grown men and Christians, the fault is not in Quakerism, but in
+ourselves. We shall gain nothing by aping the customs and trying to
+adjust ourselves to the creeds of other sects. By so doing we make at
+the best a very awkward combination, and just as far as it is successful,
+it is at the expense of much that is vital in our old faith. If, for
+instance, I could bring myself to believe a hired ministry and a written
+creed essential to my moral and spiritual well-being, I think I should
+prefer to sit down at once under such teachers as Bushnell and Beecher,
+the like of whom in Biblical knowledge, ecclesiastical learning, and
+intellectual power, we are not likely to manufacture by half a century of
+theological manipulation in a Quaker "school of the prophets." If I must
+go into the market and buy my preaching, I should naturally seek the best
+article on sale, without regard to the label attached to it.
+
+I am not insensible of the need of spiritual renovation in our Society.
+I feel and confess my own deficiencies as an individual member. And I
+bear a willing testimony to the zeal and devotion of some dear friends,
+who, lamenting the low condition and worldliness too apparent among us,
+seek to awaken a stronger religious life by the partial adoption of the
+practices, forms, and creeds of more demonstrative sects. The great
+apparent activity of these sects seems to them to contrast very strongly
+with our quietness and reticence; and they do not always pause to inquire
+whether the result of this activity is a truer type of practical
+Christianity than is found in our select gatherings. I think I
+understand these brethren; to some extent I have sympathized with them.
+But it seems clear to me, that a remedy for the alleged evil lies not in
+going back to the "beggarly elements" from which our worthy ancestors
+called the people of their generation; not in will-worship; not in
+setting the letter above the spirit; not in substituting type and symbol,
+and oriental figure and hyperbole for the simple truths they were
+intended to represent; not in schools of theology; not in much speaking
+and noise and vehemence, nor in vain attempts to make the "plain
+language" of Quakerism utter the Shibboleth of man-made creeds: but in
+heeding more closely the Inward Guide and Teacher; in faith in Christ not
+merely in His historical manifestation of the Divine Love to humanity,
+but in His living presence in the hearts open to receive Him; in love for
+Him manifested in denial of self, in charity and love to our neighbor;
+and in a deeper realization of the truth of the apostle's declaration:
+"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit
+the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself
+unspotted from the world."
+
+In conclusion, let me say that I have given this expression of my
+opinions with some degree of hesitation, being very sensible that I have
+neither the right nor the qualification to speak for a society whose
+doctrines and testimonies commend themselves to my heart and head, whose
+history is rich with the precious legacy of holy lives, and of whose
+usefulness as a moral and spiritual Force in the world I am fully
+assured.
+
+
+II.
+
+Having received several letters from dear friends in various sections
+suggested by a recent communication in thy paper, and not having time or
+health to answer them in detail, will thou permit me in this way to
+acknowledge them, and to say to the writers that I am deeply sensible of
+the Christian love and personal good-will to myself, which, whether in
+commendation or dissent, they manifest? I think I may say in truth that
+my letter was written in no sectarian or party spirit, but simply to
+express a solicitude, which, whether groundless or not, was nevertheless
+real. I am, from principle, disinclined to doctrinal disputations and
+so-called religious controversies, which only tend to separate and
+disunite. We have had too many divisions already. I intended no censure
+of dear brethren whose zeal and devotion command my sympathy,
+notwithstanding I may not be able to see with them in all respects. The
+domain of individual conscience is to me very sacred; and it seems the
+part of Christian charity to make a large allowance for varying
+experiences; mental characteristics, and temperaments, as well as for
+that youthful enthusiasm which, if sometimes misdirected, has often been
+instrumental in infusing a fresher life into the body of religious
+profession. It is too much to expect that we can maintain an entire
+uniformity in the expression of truths in which we substantially agree;
+and we should be careful that a rightful concern for "the form of sound
+words" does not become what William Penn calls "verbal orthodoxy." We
+must consider that the same accepted truth looks somewhat differently
+from different points of vision. Knowing our own weaknesses and
+limitations, we must bear in mind that human creeds, speculations,
+expositions, and interpretations of the Divine plan are but the faint and
+feeble glimpses of finite creatures into the infinite mysteries of God.
+
+ "They are but broken lights of Thee,
+ And Thou, O Lord, art more than they."
+
+Differing, as we do, more or less as to means and methods, if we indeed
+have the "mind of Christ," we shall rejoice in whatever of good is really
+accomplished, although by somewhat different instrumentalities than those
+which we feel ourselves free to make use of, remembering that our Lord
+rebuked the narrowness and partisanship of His disciples by assuring them
+that they that were not against Him were for Him.
+
+It would, nevertheless, give me great satisfaction to know, as thy kindly
+expressed editorial comments seem to intimate, that I have somewhat
+overestimated the tendencies of things in our Society. I have no pride
+of opinion which would prevent me from confessing with thankfulness my
+error of judgment. In any event, it can, I think, do no harm to repeat
+my deep conviction that we may all labor, in the ability given us, for
+our own moral and spiritual well-being, and that of our fellow-creatures,
+without laying aside the principles and practice of our religious
+Society. I believe so much of liberty is our right as well as our
+privilege, and that we need not really overstep our bounds for the
+performance of any duty which may be required of us. When truly called
+to contemplate broader fields of labor, we shall find the walls about us,
+like the horizon seen from higher levels, expanding indeed, but nowhere
+broken.
+
+I believe that the world needs the Society of Friends as a testimony and
+a standard. I know that this is the opinion of some of the best and most
+thoughtful members of other Christian sects. I know that any serious
+departure from the original foundation of our Society would give pain to
+many who, outside of our communion, deeply realize the importance of our
+testimonies. They fail to read clearly the signs of the times who do not
+see that the hour is coming when, under the searching eye of philosophy
+and the terrible analysis of science, the letter and the outward evidence
+will not altogether avail us; when the surest dependence must be upon the
+Light of Christ within, disclosing the law and the prophets in our own
+souls, and confirming the truth of outward Scripture by inward
+experience; when smooth stones from the brook of present revelation
+shall' prove mightier than the weapons of Saul; when the doctrine of the
+Holy Spirit, as proclaimed by George Fox and lived by John Woolman, shall
+be recognized as the only efficient solvent of doubts raised by an age of
+restless inquiry. In this belief my letter was written. I am sorry it
+did not fall to the lot of a more fitting hand; and can only hope that no
+consideration of lack of qualification on the part of its writer may
+lessen the value of whatever testimony to truth shall be found in it.
+
+AMESBURY, 3d mo., 1870.
+
+
+P. S. I may mention that I have been somewhat encouraged by a perusal of
+the Proceedings of the late First-day School Conference in Philadelphia,
+where, with some things which I am compelled to pause over, and regret, I
+find much with which I cordially unite, and which seems to indicate a
+providential opening for good. I confess to a lively and tender sympathy
+with my younger brethren and sisters who, in the name of Him who "went
+about doing good," go forth into the highways and byways to gather up the
+lost, feed the hungry, instruct the ignorant, and point the sinsick and
+suffering to the hopes and consolations of Christian faith, even if, at
+times, their zeal goes beyond "reasonable service," and although the
+importance of a particular instrumentality may be exaggerated, and love
+lose sight of its needful companion humility, and he that putteth on his
+armor boast like him who layeth it off. Any movement, however irregular,
+which indicates life, is better than the quiet of death. In the
+overruling providence of God, the troubling may prepare the way for
+healing. Some of us may have erred on one hand and some on the other,
+and this shaking of the balance may adjust it.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL.
+
+Originally published as an introduction to a reissue of the work.
+
+To those who judge by the outward appearance, nothing is more difficult
+of explanation than the strength of moral influence often exerted by
+obscure and uneventful lives. Some great reform which lifts the world to
+a higher level, some mighty change for which the ages have waited in
+anxious expectancy, takes place before our eyes, and, in seeking to trace
+it back to its origin, we are often surprised to find the initial link in
+the chain of causes to be some comparatively obscure individual, the
+divine commission and significance of whose life were scarcely understood
+by his contemporaries, and perhaps not even by himself. The little one
+has become a thousand; the handful of corn shakes like Lebanon. "The
+kingdom of God cometh not by observation;" and the only solution of the
+mystery is in the reflection that through the humble instrumentality
+Divine power was manifested, and that the Everlasting Arm was beneath the
+human one.
+
+The abolition of human slavery now in process of consummation throughout
+the world furnishes one of the most striking illustrations of this truth.
+A far-reaching moral, social, and political revolution, undoing the evil
+work of centuries, unquestionably owes much of its original impulse to
+the life and labors of a poor, unlearned workingman of New Jersey, whose
+very existence was scarcely known beyond the narrow circle of his
+religious society.
+
+It is only within a comparatively recent period that the journal and
+ethical essays of this remarkable man have attracted the attention to
+which they are manifestly entitled. In one of my last interviews with
+William Ellery Channing, he expressed his very great surprise that they
+were so little known. He had himself just read the book for the first
+time, and I shall never forget how his countenance lighted up as he
+pronounced it beyond comparison the sweetest and purest autobiography in
+the language. He wished to see it placed within the reach of all classes
+of readers; it was not a light to be hidden under the bushel of a sect.
+Charles Lamb, probably from his friends, the Clarksons, or from Bernard
+Barton, became acquainted with it, and on more than one occasion, in his
+letters and Essays of Elia, refers to it with warm commendation. Edward
+Irving pronounced it a godsend. Some idea of the lively interest which
+the fine literary circle gathered around the hearth of Lamb felt in the
+beautiful simplicity of Woolman's pages may be had from the Diary of
+Henry Crabb Robinson, one of their number, himself a man of wide and
+varied culture, the intimate friend of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Coleridge.
+In his notes for First Month, 1824, he says, after a reference to a
+sermon of his friend Irving, which he feared would deter rather than
+promote belief:
+
+"How different this from John Woolman's Journal I have been reading at
+the same time! A perfect gem! His is a _schone Seele_, a beautiful
+soul. An illiterate tailor, he writes in a style of the most exquisite
+purity and grace. His moral qualities are transferred to his writings.
+Had he not been so very humble, he would have written a still better
+book; for, fearing to indulge in vanity, he conceals the events in which
+he was a great actor. His religion was love. His whole existence and
+all his passions were love. If one could venture to impute to his creed,
+and not to his personal character, the delightful frame of mind he
+exhibited, one could not hesitate to be a convert. His Christianity is
+most inviting, it is fascinating! One of the leading British reviews a
+few years ago, referring to this Journal, pronounced its author the man
+who, in all the centuries since the advent of Christ, lived nearest to
+the Divine pattern. The author of The Patience of Hope, whose authority
+in devotional literature is unquestioned, says of him: 'John Woolman's
+gift was love, a charity of which it does not enter into the natural
+heart of man to conceive, and of which the more ordinary experiences,
+even of renewed nature, give but a faint shadow. Every now and then, in
+the world's history, we meet with such men, the kings and priests of
+Humanity, on whose heads this precious ointment has been so poured forth
+that it has run down to the skirts of their clothing, and extended over
+the whole of the visible creation; men who have entered, like Francis of
+Assisi, into the secret of that deep amity with God and with His
+creatures which makes man to be in league with the stones of the field,
+and the beasts of the field to be at peace with him. In this pure,
+universal charity there is nothing fitful or intermittent, nothing that
+comes and goes in showers and gleams and sunbursts. Its springs are deep
+and constant, its rising is like that of a mighty river, its very
+overflow calm and steady, leaving life and fertility behind it.'"
+
+After all, anything like personal eulogy seems out of place in speaking
+of one who in the humblest self-abasement sought no place in the world's
+estimation, content to be only a passive instrument in the hands of his
+Master; and who, as has been remarked, through modesty concealed the
+events in which he was an actor. A desire to supply in some sort this
+deficiency in his Journal is my especial excuse for this introductory
+paper.
+
+It is instructive to study the history of the moral progress of
+individuals or communities; to mark the gradual development of truth; to
+watch the slow germination of its seed sown in simple obedience to the
+command of the Great Husbandman, while yet its green promise, as well as
+its golden fruition, was hidden from the eyes of the sower; to go back to
+the well-springs and fountain-heads, tracing the small streamlet from its
+hidden source, and noting the tributaries which swell its waters, as it
+moves onward, until it becomes a broad river, fertilizing and gladdening
+our present humanity. To this end it is my purpose, as briefly as
+possible, to narrate the circumstances attending the relinquishment of
+slave-holding by the Society of Friends, and to hint at the effect of
+that act of justice and humanity upon the abolition of slavery throughout
+the world.
+
+At an early period after the organization of the Society, members of it
+emigrated to the Maryland, Carolina, Virginia, and New England colonies.
+The act of banishment enforced against dissenters under Charles II.
+consigned others of the sect to the West Indies, where their frugality,
+temperance, and thrift transmuted their intended punishment into a
+blessing. Andrew Marvell, the inflexible republican statesman, in some
+of the sweetest and tenderest lines in the English tongue, has happily
+described their condition:--
+
+ What shall we do but sing His praise
+ Who led us through the watery maze,
+ Unto an isle so long unknown,
+ And yet far kinder than our own?
+ He lands us on a grassy stage,
+ Safe from the storms and prelates' rage;
+ He gives us this eternal spring,
+ Which here enamels everything,
+ And sends the fowls to us in care,
+ On daily visits through the air.
+ He hangs in shades the orange bright,
+ Like golden lamps, in a green night,
+ And doth in the pomegranate close
+ Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.
+
+ . . . . . . . . .
+
+ And in these rocks for us did frame
+ A temple where to sound His name.
+ Oh! let our voice His praise exalt,
+ Till it arrive at heaven's vault,
+ Which then, perhaps rebounding, may
+ Echo beyond the Mexic bay.'
+
+ "So sang they in the English boat,
+ A holy and a cheerful note;
+ And all the way, to guide their chime,
+ With falling oars they kept the time."
+
+Unhappily, they very early became owners of slaves, in imitation of the
+colonists around them. No positive condemnation of the evil system had
+then been heard in the British islands. Neither English prelates nor
+expounders at dissenting conventicles had aught to say against it. Few
+colonists doubted its entire compatibility with Christian profession and
+conduct. Saint and sinner, ascetic and worldling, united in its
+practice. Even the extreme Dutch saints of Bohemia Manor community, the
+pietists of John de Labadie, sitting at meat with hats on, and pausing
+ever and anon with suspended mouthfuls to bear a brother's or sister's
+exhortation, and sandwiching prayers between the courses, were waited
+upon by negro slaves. Everywhere men were contending with each other
+upon matters of faith, while, so far as their slaves were concerned,
+denying the ethics of Christianity itself.
+
+Such was the state of things when, in 1671, George Fox visited Barbadoes.
+He was one of those men to whom it is given to discern through the mists
+of custom and prejudice something of the lineaments of absolute truth,
+and who, like the Hebrew lawgiver, bear with them, from a higher and
+purer atmosphere, the shining evidence of communion with the Divine
+Wisdom. He saw slavery in its mildest form among his friends, but his
+intuitive sense of right condemned it. He solemnly admonished those who
+held slaves to bear in mind that they were brethren, and to train them up
+in the fear of God. "I desired, also," he says, "that they would cause
+their overseers to deal gently and mildly with their negroes, and not use
+cruelty towards them as the manner of some hath been and is; and that,
+after certain years of servitude, they should make them free."
+
+In 1675, the companion of George Fox, William Edmundson, revisited
+Barbadoes, and once more bore testimony against the unjust treatment of
+slaves. He was accused of endeavoring to excite an insurrection among
+the blacks, and was brought before the Governor on the charge. It was
+probably during this journey that he addressed a remonstrance to friends
+in Maryland and Virginia on the subject of holding slaves. It is one of
+the first emphatic and decided testimonies on record against negro
+slavery as incompatible with Christianity, if we except the Papal bulls
+of Urban and Leo the Tenth.
+
+Thirteen years after, in 1688, a meeting of German Quakers, who had
+emigrated from Kriesbeim, and settled at Germantown, Pennsylvania,
+addressed a memorial against "the buying and keeping of negroes" to the
+Yearly Meeting for the Pennsylvania and New Jersey colonies. That
+meeting took the subject into consideration, but declined giving judgment
+in the case. In 1696, the Yearly Meeting advised against "bringing in
+any more negroes." In 1714, in its Epistle to London Friends, it
+expresses a wish that Friends would be "less concerned in buying or
+selling slaves." The Chester Quarterly Meeting, which had taken a higher
+and clearer view of the matter, continued to press the Yearly Meeting to
+adopt some decided measure against any traffic in human beings.
+
+The Society gave these memorials a cold reception. The love of gain and
+power was too strong, on the part of the wealthy and influential planters
+and merchants who had become slaveholders, to allow the scruples of the
+Chester meeting to take the shape of discipline. The utmost that could
+be obtained of the Yearly Meeting was an expression of opinion adverse to
+the importation of negroes, and a desire that "Friends generally do, as
+much as may be, avoid buying such negroes as shall hereafter be brought
+in, rather than offend any Friends who are against it; yet this is only
+caution, and not censure."
+
+In the mean time the New England Yearly Meeting was agitated by the same
+question. Slaves were imported into Boston and Newport, and Friends
+became purchasers, and in some instances were deeply implicated in the
+foreign traffic. In 1716, the monthly meetings of Dartmouth and
+Nantucket suggested that it was "not agreeable to truth to purchase
+slaves and keep them during their term of life." Nothing was done in the
+Yearly Meeting, however, until 1727, when the practice of importing
+negroes was censured. That the practice was continued notwithstanding,
+for many years afterwards, is certain. In 1758, a rule was adopted
+prohibiting Friends within the limits of New England Yearly Meeting from
+engaging in or countenancing the foreign slave-trade.
+
+In the year 1742 an event, simple and inconsiderable in itself, was made
+the instrumentality of exerting a mighty influence upon slavery in the
+Society of Friends. A small storekeeper at Mount Holly, in New Jersey, a
+member of the Society, sold a negro woman, and requested the young man in
+his employ to make a bill of sale of her.
+
+ (Mount Holly is a village lying in the western part of the long,
+ narrow township of Northampton, on Rancocas Creek, a tributary of
+ the Delaware. In John Woolman's day it was almost entirely a
+ settlement of Friends. A very few of the old houses with their
+ quaint stoops or porches are left. That occupied by John Woolman
+ was a small, plain, two-story structure, with two windows in each
+ story in front, a four-barred fence inclosing the grounds, with the
+ trees he planted and loved to cultivate. The house was not painted,
+ but whitewashed. The name of the place is derived from the highest
+ hill in the county, rising two hundred feet above the sea, and
+ commanding a view of a rich and level country, of cleared farms and
+ woodlands. Here, no doubt, John Woolman often walked under the
+ shadow of its holly-trees, communing with nature and musing on the
+ great themes of life and duty.
+
+ When the excellent Joseph Sturge was in this country, some thirty
+ years ago, on his errand of humanity, he visited Mount Holly, and
+ the house of Woolman, then standing. He describes it as a very
+ "humble abode." But one person was then living in the town who had
+ ever seen its venerated owner. This aged man stated that he was at
+ Woolman's little farm in the season of harvest when it was customary
+ among farmers to kill a calf or sheep for the laborers. John
+ Woolman, unwilling that the animal should be slowly bled to death,
+ as the custom had been, and to spare it unnecessary suffering, had a
+ smooth block of wood prepared to receive the neck of the creature,
+ when a single blow terminated its existence. Nothing was more
+ remarkable in the character of Woolman than his concern for the
+ well-being and comfort of the brute creation. "What is religion?"
+ asks the old Hindoo writer of the Vishnu Sarman. "Tenderness toward
+ all creatures." Or, as Woolman expresses it, "Where the love of God
+ is verily perfected, a tenderness towards all creatures made subject
+ to our will is experienced, and a care felt that we do not lessen
+ that sweetness of life in the animal creation which the Creator
+ intends for them under our government.")
+
+On taking up his pen, the young clerk felt a sudden and strong scruple in
+his mind. The thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of his
+fellow-creatures oppressed him. God's voice against the desecration of
+His image spoke in the soul. He yielded to the will of his employer,
+but, while writing the instrument, he was constrained to declare, both to
+the buyer and the seller, that he believed slave-keeping inconsistent
+with the Christian religion. This young man was John Woolman. The
+circumstance above named was the starting-point of a life-long testimony
+against slavery. In the year 1746 he visited Maryland, Virginia, and
+North Carolina. He was afflicted by the prevalence of slavery. It
+appeared to him, in his own words, "as a dark gloominess overhanging the
+land." On his return, he wrote an essay on the subject, which was
+published in 1754. Three years after, he made a second visit to the
+Southern meetings of Friends. Travelling as a minister of the gospel, he
+was compelled to sit down at the tables of slaveholding planters, who
+were accustomed to entertain their friends free of cost, and who could
+not comprehend the scruples of their guest against receiving as a gift
+food and lodging which he regarded as the gain of oppression. He was a
+poor man, but he loved truth more than money. He therefore either placed
+the pay for his entertainment in the hands of some member of the family,
+for the benefit of the slaves, or gave it directly to them, as he had
+opportunity. Wherever he went, he found his fellow-professors entangled
+in the mischief of slavery. Elders and ministers, as well as the younger
+and less high in profession, had their house servants and field hands.
+He found grave drab-coated apologists for the slave-trade, who quoted the
+same Scriptures, in support of oppression and avarice, which have since
+been cited by Presbyterian doctors of divinity, Methodist bishops; and
+Baptist preachers for the same purpose. He found the meetings generally
+in a low and evil state. The gold of original Quakerism had become dim,
+and the fine gold changed. The spirit of the world prevailed among them,
+and had wrought an inward desolation. Instead of meekness, gentleness,
+and heavenly wisdom, he found "a spirit of fierceness and love of
+dominion."
+
+ (The tradition is that he travelled mostly on foot during his
+ journeys among slaveholders. Brissot, in his New Travels in
+ America, published in 1788, says: "John Woolman, one of the most
+ distinguished of men in the cause of humanity, travelled much as a
+ minister of his sect, but always on foot, and without money, in
+ imitation of the Apostles, and in order to be in a situation to be
+ more useful to poor people and the blacks. He hated slavery so much
+ that he could not taste food provided by the labor of slaves." That
+ this writer was on one point misinformed is manifest from the
+ following passage from the Journal: "When I expected soon to leave a
+ friend's house where I had entertainment, if I believed that I
+ should not keep clear from the gain of oppression without leaving
+ money, I spoke to one of the heads of the family privately, and
+ desired them to accept of pieces of silver, and give them to such of
+ their negroes as they believed would make the best use of them; and
+ at other times I gave them to the negroes myself, as the way looked
+ clearest to me. Before I came out, I had provided a large number of
+ small pieces for this purpose, and thus offering them to some who
+ appeared to be wealthy people was a trial both to me and them. But
+ the fear of the Lord so covered me at times that my way was made
+ easier than I expected; and few, if any, manifested any resentment
+ at the offer, and most of them, after some conversation, accepted of
+ them.")
+
+In love, but at the same time with great faithfulness, he endeavored to
+convince the masters of their error, and to awaken a degree of sympathy
+for the enslaved.
+
+At this period, or perhaps somewhat earlier, a remarkable personage took
+up his residence in Pennsylvania. He was by birthright a member of the
+Society of Friends, but having been disowned in England for some
+extravagances of conduct and language, he spent several years in the West
+Indies, where he became deeply interested in the condition of the slaves.
+His violent denunciations of the practice of slaveholding excited the
+anger of the planters, and he was compelled to leave the island. He came
+to Philadelphia, but, contrary to his expectations, he found the same
+evil existing there. He shook off the dust of the city, and took up his
+abode in the country, a few miles distant. His dwelling was a natural
+cave, with some slight addition of his own making. His drink was the
+spring-water flowing by his door; his food, vegetables alone. He
+persistently refused to wear any garment or eat any food purchased at the
+expense of animal life, or which was in any degree the product of slave
+labor. Issuing from his cave, on his mission of preaching "deliverance
+to the captive," he was in the habit of visiting the various meetings for
+worship and bearing his testimony against slaveholders, greatly to their
+disgust and indignation. On one occasion he entered the Market Street
+Meeting, and a leading Friend requested some one to take him out. A
+burly blacksmith volunteered to do it, leading him to the gate and
+thrusting him out with such force that he fell into the gutter of the
+street. There he lay until the meeting closed, telling the bystanders
+that he did not feel free to rise himself. "Let those who cast me here
+raise me up. It is their business, not mine."
+
+His personal appearance was in remarkable keeping with his eccentric
+life. A figure only four and a half feet high, hunchbacked, with
+projecting chest, legs small and uneven, arms longer than his legs; a
+huge head, showing only beneath the enormous white hat large, solemn eyes
+and a prominent nose; the rest of his face covered with a snowy
+semicircle of beard falling low on his breast,--a figure to recall the
+old legends of troll, brownie, and kobold. Such was the irrepressible
+prophet who troubled the Israel of slave-holding Quakerism, clinging like
+a rough chestnut-bur to the skirts of its respectability, and settling
+like a pertinacious gad-fly on the sore places of its conscience.
+
+On one occasion, while the annual meeting was in session at Burlington,
+N. J., in the midst of the solemn silence of the great assembly, the
+unwelcome figure of Benjamin Lay, wrapped in his long white overcoat,
+was seen passing up the aisle. Stopping midway, he exclaimed, "You
+slaveholders! Why don't you throw off your Quaker coats as I do mine,
+and show yourselves as you are?" Casting off as he spoke his outer
+garment, he disclosed to the astonished assembly a military coat
+underneath and a sword dangling at his heels. Holding in one hand a
+large book, he drew his sword with the other. "In the sight of God," he
+cried, "you are as guilty as if you stabbed your slaves to the heart, as
+I do this book!" suiting the action to the word, and piercing a small
+bladder filled with the juice of poke-weed (playtolacca decandra), which
+he had concealed between the covers, and sprinkling as with fresh blood
+those who sat near him. John Woolman makes no mention of this
+circumstance in his Journal, although he was probably present, and it
+must have made a deep impression on his sensitive spirit. The violence
+and harshness of Lay's testimony, however, had nothing in common with
+the tender and sorrowful remonstrances and appeals of the former, except
+the sympathy which they both felt for the slave himself.
+
+ (Lay was well acquainted with Dr. Franklin, who sometimes visited him.
+ Among other schemes of reform he entertained the idea of converting
+ all mankind to Christianity. This was to be done by three
+ witnesses,--himself, Michael Lovell, and Abel Noble, assisted by Dr.
+ Franklin. But on their first meeting at the Doctor's house, the
+ three "chosen vessels" got into a violent controversy on points of
+ doctrine, and separated in ill-humor. The philosopher, who had been
+ an amused listener, advised the three sages to give up the project
+ of converting the world until they had learned to tolerate each
+ other.)
+
+Still later, a descendant of the persecuted French Protestants, Anthony
+Benezet, a man of uncommon tenderness of feeling, began to write and
+speak against slavery. How far, if at all, he was moved thereto by the
+example of Woolman is not known, but it is certain that the latter found
+in him a steady friend and coadjutor in his efforts to awaken the
+slumbering moral sense of his religious brethren. The Marquis de
+Chastellux, author of _De la Felicite Publique_, describes him as a
+small, eager-faced man, full of zeal and activity, constantly engaged in
+works of benevolence, which were by no means confined to the blacks.
+Like Woolman and Lay, he advocated abstinence from intoxicating spirits.
+The poor French neutrals who were brought to Philadelphia from Nova
+Scotia, and landed penniless and despairing among strangers in tongue and
+religion, found in him a warm and untiring friend, through whose aid and
+sympathy their condition was rendered more comfortable than that of their
+fellow-exiles in other colonies.
+
+The annual assemblage of the Yearly Meeting in 1758 at Philadelphia must
+ever be regarded as one of the most important religious convocations in
+the history of the Christian church. The labors of Woolman and his few
+but earnest associates had not been in vain. A deep and tender interest
+had been awakened; and this meeting was looked forward to with varied
+feelings of solicitude by all parties. All felt that the time had come
+for some definite action; conservative and reformer stood face to face in
+the Valley of Decision. John Woolman, of course, was present,--a man
+humble and poor in outward appearance, his simple dress of undyed
+homespun cloth contrasting strongly with the plain but rich apparel of
+the representatives of the commerce of the city and of the large slave-
+stocked plantations of the country. Bowed down by the weight of his
+concern for the poor slaves and for the well-being and purity of the
+Society, he sat silent during the whole meeting, while other matters were
+under discussion. "My mind," he says, "was frequently clothed with
+inward prayer; and I could say with David that 'tears were my meat and
+drink, day and night.' The case of slave-keeping lay heavy upon me; nor
+did I find any engagement, to speak directly to any other matter before
+the meeting." When the important subject came up for consideration, many
+faithful Friends spoke with weight and earnestness. No one openly
+justified slavery as a system, although some expressed a concern lest the
+meeting should go into measures calculated to cause uneasiness to many
+members of the Society. It was also urged that Friends should wait
+patiently until the Lord in His own time should open a way for the
+deliverance of the slave. This was replied to by John Woolman. "My
+mind," he said, "is led to consider the purity of the Divine Being, and
+the justice of His judgments; and herein my soul is covered with
+awfulness. I cannot forbear to hint of some cases where people have not
+been treated with the purity of justice, and the event has been most
+lamentable. Many slaves on this continent are oppressed, and their cries
+have entered into the ears of the Most High. Such are the purity and
+certainty of His judgments that He cannot be partial in our favor. In
+infinite love and goodness He hath opened our understandings from one
+time to another, concerning our duty towards this people; and it is not a
+time for delay. Should we now be sensible of what He requires of us, and
+through a respect to the private interest of some persons, or through a
+regard to some friendships which do not stand upon an immutable
+foundation, neglect to do our duty in firmness and constancy, still
+waiting for some extraordinary means to bring about their deliverance,
+God may by terrible things in righteousness answer us in this matter."
+
+This solemn and weighty appeal was responded to by many in the assembly,
+in a spirit of sympathy and unity. Some of the slave-holding members
+expressed their willingness that a strict rule of discipline should be
+adopted against dealing in slaves for the future. To this it was
+answered that the root of the evil would never be reached effectually
+until a searching inquiry was made into the circumstances and motives of
+such as held slaves. At length the truth in a great measure triumphed
+over all opposition; and, without any public dissent, the meeting agreed
+that the injunction of our Lord and Saviour to do to others as we would
+that others should do to us should induce Friends who held slaves "to set
+them at liberty, making a Christian provision for them," and four
+Friends--John Woolman, John Scarborough, Daniel Stanton, and John Sykes--
+were approved of as suitable persons to visit and treat with such as kept
+slaves, within the limits of the meeting.
+
+This painful and difficult duty was faithfully performed. In that
+meekness and humility of spirit which has nothing in common with the
+"fear of man, which bringeth a snare," the self-denying followers of
+their Divine Lord and Master "went about doing good." In the city of
+Philadelphia, and among the wealthy planters of the country, they found
+occasion often to exercise a great degree of patience, and to keep a
+watchful guard over their feelings. In his Journal for this important
+period of his life John Woolman says but little of his own services. How
+arduous and delicate they were may be readily understood. The number of
+slaves held by members of the Society was very large. Isaac Jackson, in
+his report of his labors among slave-holders in a single Quarterly
+Meeting, states that he visited the owners of more than eleven hundred
+slaves. From the same report may be gleaned some hints of the
+difficulties which presented themselves. One elderly man says he has
+well brought up his eleven slaves, and "now they must work to maintain
+him." Another owns it is all wrong, but "cannot release his slaves; his
+tender wife under great concern of mind" on account of his refusal. A
+third has fifty slaves; knows it to be wrong, but can't see his way clear
+out of it. "Perhaps," the report says, "interest dims his vision." A
+fourth is full of "excuses and reasonings." "Old Jos. Richison has
+forty, and is determined to keep them." Another man has fifty, and
+"means to keep them." Robert Ward "wants to release his slaves, but his
+wife and daughters hold back." Another "owns it is wrong, but says he
+will not part with his negroes,--no, not while he lives." The far
+greater number, however, confess the wrong of slavery, and agree to take
+measures for freeing their slaves.
+
+ (An incident occurred during this visit of Isaac Jackson which
+ impressed him deeply. On the last evening, just as he was about to
+ turn homeward, he was told that a member of the Society whom he had
+ not seen owned a very old slave who was happy and well cared for.
+ It was a case which it was thought might well be left to take care
+ of itself. Isaac Jackson, sitting in silence, did not feel his mind
+ quite satisfied; and as the evening wore away, feeling more and more
+ exercised, he expressed his uneasiness, when a young son of his host
+ eagerly offered to go with him and show him the road to the place.
+ The proposal was gladly accepted. On introducing the object of
+ their visit, the Friend expressed much surprise that any uneasiness
+ should be felt in the case, but at length consented to sign the form
+ of emancipation, saying, at the same time, it would make no
+ difference in their relations, as the old man was perfectly happy.
+ At Isaac Jackson's request the slave was called in and seated before
+ them. His form was nearly double, his thin hands were propped on
+ his knees, his white head was thrust forward, and his keen,
+ restless, inquiring eyes gleamed alternately on the stranger and on
+ his master. At length he was informed of what had been done; that
+ he was no longer a slave, and that his master acknowledged his past
+ services entitled him to a maintenance so long as he lived. The old
+ man listened in almost breathless wonder, his head slowly sinking on
+ his breast. After a short pause, he clasped his hands; then
+ spreading them high over his hoary head, slowly and reverently
+ exclaimed, "Oh, goody Gody, oh!"--bringing his hands again down on
+ his knees. Then raising them as before, he twice repeated the
+ solemn exclamation, and with streaming eyes and a voice almost too
+ much choked for utterance, he continued, "I thought I should die a
+ slave, and now I shall die a free man!"
+
+ It is a striking evidence of the divine compensations which are
+ sometimes graciously vouchsafed to those who have been faithful to
+ duty, that on his death-bed this affecting scene was vividly revived
+ in the mind of Isaac Jackson. At that supreme moment, when all
+ other pictures of time were fading out, that old face, full of
+ solemn joy and devout thanksgiving, rose before him, and comforted
+ him as with the blessing of God.)
+
+An extract or two from the Journal at this period will serve to show both
+the nature of the service in which he was engaged and the frame of mind
+in which he accomplished it:--
+
+"In the beginning of the 12th month I joined in company with my friends,
+John Sykes and Daniel Stanton, in visiting such as had slaves. Some,
+whose hearts were rightly exercised about them, appeared to be glad of
+our visit, but in some places our way was more difficult. I often saw
+the necessity of keeping down to that root from whence our concern
+proceeded, and have cause in reverent thankfulness humbly to bow down
+before the Lord who was near to me, and preserved my mind in calmness
+under some sharp conflicts, and begat a spirit of sympathy and tenderness
+in me towards some who were grievously entangled by the spirit of this
+world."
+
+"1st month, 1759.--Having found my mind drawn to visit some of the more
+active members of society at Philadelphia who had slaves, I met my friend
+John Churchman there by agreement, and we continued about a week in the
+city. We visited some that were sick, and some widows and their
+families; and the other part of the time was mostly employed in visiting
+such as had slaves. It was a time of deep exercise; but looking often to
+the Lord for assistance, He in unspeakable kindness favored us with the
+influence of that spirit which crucifies to the greatness and splendor of
+this world, and enabled us to go through some heavy labors, in which we
+found peace."
+
+These labors were attended with the blessing of the God of the poor and
+oppressed. Dealing in slaves was almost entirely abandoned, and many who
+held slaves set them at liberty. But many members still continuing the
+practice, a more emphatic testimony against it was issued by the Yearly
+Meeting in 1774; and two years after the subordinate meetings were
+directed to deny the right of membership to such as persisted in holding
+their fellow-men as property.
+
+A concern was now felt for the temporal and religious welfare of the
+emancipated slaves, and in 1779 the Yearly Meeting came to the conclusion
+that some reparation was due from the masters to their former slaves for
+services rendered while in the condition of slavery. The following is an
+extract from an epistle on this subject:
+
+"We are united in judgment that the state of the oppressed people who
+have been held by any of us, or our predecessors, in captivity and
+slavery, calls for a deep inquiry and close examination how far we are
+clear of withholding from them what under such an exercise may open to
+view as their just right; and therefore we earnestly and affectionately
+entreat our brethren in religious profession to bring this matter home,
+and that all who have let the oppressed go free may attend to the further
+openings of duty.
+
+"A tender Christian sympathy appears to be awakened in the minds of many
+who are not in religious profession with us, who have seriously
+considered the oppressions and disadvantages under which those people
+have long labored; and whether a pious care extended to their offspring
+is not justly due from us to them is a consideration worthy our serious
+and deep attention."
+
+Committees to aid and advise the colored people were accordingly
+appointed in the various Monthly Meetings. Many former owners of slaves
+faithfully paid the latter for their services, submitting to the award
+and judgment of arbitrators as to what justice required at their hands.
+So deeply had the sense of the wrong of slavery sunk into the hearts of
+Friends!
+
+John Woolman, in his Journal for 1769, states, that having some years
+before, as one of the executors of a will, disposed of the services of a
+negro boy belonging to the estate until he should reach the age of thirty
+years, he became uneasy in respect to the transaction, and, although he
+had himself derived no pecuniary benefit from it, and had simply acted as
+the agent of the heirs of the estate to which the boy belonged, he
+executed a bond, binding himself to pay the master of the young man for
+four years and a half of his unexpired term of service.
+
+The appalling magnitude of the evil against which he felt himself
+especially called to contend was painfully manifest to John Woolman. At
+the outset, all about him, in every department of life and human
+activity, in the state and the church, he saw evidences of its strength,
+and of the depth and extent to which its roots had wound their way among
+the foundations of society. Yet he seems never to have doubted for a
+moment the power of simple truth to eradicate it, nor to have hesitated
+as to his own duty in regard to it. There was no groping like Samson in
+the gloom; no feeling in blind wrath and impatience for the pillars of
+the temple of Dagon. "The candle of the Lord shone about him," and his
+path lay clear and unmistakable before him. He believed in the goodness
+of God that leadeth to repentance; and that love could reach the witness
+for itself in the hearts of all men, through all entanglements of custom
+and every barrier of pride and selfishness. No one could have a more
+humble estimate of himself; but as he went forth on his errand of mercy
+he felt the Infinite Power behind him, and the consciousness that he had
+known a preparation from that Power "to stand as a trumpet through which
+the Lord speaks." The event justified his confidence; wherever he went
+hard hearts were softened, avarice and love of power and pride of opinion
+gave way before his testimony of love.
+
+The New England Yearly Meeting then, as now, was held in Newport, on
+Rhode Island. In the year 1760 John Woolman, in the course of a
+religious visit to New England, attended that meeting. He saw the
+horrible traffic in human beings,--the slave-ships lying at the wharves
+of the town, the sellers and buyers of men and women and children
+thronging the market-place. The same abhorrent scenes which a few years
+after stirred the spirit of the excellent Hopkins to denounce the slave-
+trade and slavery as hateful in the sight of God to his congregation at
+Newport were enacted in the full view and hearing of the annual
+convocation of Friends, many of whom were themselves partakers in the
+shame and wickedness. "Understanding," he says, "that a large number of
+slaves had been imported from Africa into the town, and were then on sale
+by a member of our Society, my appetite failed; I grew outwardly weak,
+and had a feeling of the condition of Habakkuk: 'When I heard, my belly
+trembled, my lips quivered; I trembled in myself, that I might rest in
+the day of trouble.' I had many cogitations, and was sorely distressed."
+He prepared a memorial to the Legislature, then in session, for the
+signatures of Friends, urging that body to take measures to put an end to
+the importation of slaves. His labors in the Yearly Meeting appear to
+have been owned and blessed by the Divine Head of the church. The London
+Epistle for 1758, condemning the unrighteous traffic in men, was read,
+and the substance of it embodied in the discipline of the meeting; and
+the following query was adopted, to be answered by the subordinate
+meetings:--
+
+"Are Friends clear of importing negroes, or buying them when imported;
+and do they use those well, where they are possessed by inheritance or
+otherwise, endeavoring to train them up in principles of religion?"
+
+At the close of the Yearly Meeting, John Woolman requested those members
+of the Society who held slaves to meet with him in the chamber of the
+house for worship, where he expressed his concern for the well-being of
+the slaves, and his sense of the iniquity of the practice of dealing in
+or holding them as property. His tender exhortations were not lost upon
+his auditors; his remarks were kindly received, and the gentle and loving
+spirit in which they were offered reached many hearts.
+
+In 1769, at the suggestion of the Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting, the
+Yearly Meeting expressed its sense of the wrongfulness of holding slaves,
+and appointed a large committee to visit those members who were
+implicated in the practice. The next year this committee reported that
+they had completed their service, "and that their visits mostly seemed to
+be kindly accepted. Some Friends manifested a disposition to set such at
+liberty as were suitable; some others, not having so clear a sight of
+such an unreasonable servitude as could be desired, were unwilling to
+comply with the advice given them at present, yet seemed willing to take
+it into consideration; a few others manifested a disposition to keep them
+in continued bondage."
+
+It was stated in the Epistle to London Yearly Meeting of the year 1772,
+that a few Friends had freed their slaves from bondage, but that others
+"have been so reluctant thereto that they have been disowned for not
+complying with the advice of this meeting."
+
+In 1773 the following minute was made: "It is our sense and judgment that
+truth not only requires the young of capacity and ability, but likewise
+the aged and impotent, and also all in a state of infancy and nonage,
+among Friends, to be discharged and set free from a state of slavery,
+that we do no more claim property in the human race, as we do in the
+brutes that perish."
+
+In 1782 no slaves were known to be held in the New England Yearly
+Meeting. The next year it was recommended to the subordinate meetings to
+appoint committees to effect a proper and just settlement between the
+manumitted slaves and their former masters, for their past services. In
+1784 it was concluded by the Yearly Meeting that any former slave-holder
+who refused to comply with the award of these committees should, after
+due care and labor with him, be disowned from the Society. This was
+effectual; settlements without disownment were made to the satisfaction
+of all parties, and every case was disposed of previous to the year 1787.
+
+In the New York Yearly Meeting, slave-trading was prohibited about the
+middle of the last century. In 1771, in consequence of an Epistle from
+the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a committee was appointed to visit those
+who held slaves, and to advise with them in relation to emancipation. In
+1776 it was made a disciplinary offence to buy, sell, or hold slaves upon
+any condition. In 1784 but one slave was to be found in the limits of
+the meeting. In the same year, by answers from the several subordinate
+meetings, it was ascertained that an equitable settlement for past
+services had been effected between the emancipated negroes and their
+masters in all save three cases.
+
+In the Virginia Yearly Meeting slavery had its strongest hold. Its
+members, living in the midst of slave-holding communities, were
+necessarily exposed to influences adverse to emancipation. I have
+already alluded to the epistle addressed to them by William Edmondson,
+and to the labors of John Woolman while travelling among them. In 1757
+the Virginia Yearly Meeting condemned the foreign slave-trade. In 1764
+it enjoined upon its members the duty of kindness towards their servants,
+of educating them, and carefully providing for their food and clothing.
+Four years after, its members were strictly prohibited from purchasing
+any more slaves. In 1773 it earnestly recommended the immediate
+manumission of all slaves held in bondage, after the females had reached
+eighteen and the males twenty-one years of age. At the same time it was
+advised that committees should be appointed for the purpose of
+instructing the emancipated persons in the principles of morality and
+religion, and for advising and aiding them in their temporal concerns.
+
+I quote a single paragraph from the advice sent down to the subordinate
+meetings, as a beautiful manifestation of the fruits of true repentance:--
+
+"It is the solid sense of this meeting, that we of the present generation
+are under strong obligations to express our love and concern for the
+offspring of those people who by their labors have greatly contributed
+towards the cultivation of these colonies under the afflictive
+disadvantage of enduring a hard bondage, and the benefit of whose toil
+many among us are enjoying."
+
+In 1784, the different Quarterly Meetings having reported that many still
+held slaves, notwithstanding the advice and entreaties of their friends,
+the Yearly Meeting directed that where endeavors to convince those
+offenders of their error proved ineffectual, the Monthly Meetings should
+proceed to disown them. We have no means of ascertaining the precise
+number of those actually disowned for slave-holding in the Virginia
+Yearly Meeting, but it is well known to have been very small. In almost
+all cases the care and assiduous labors of those who had the welfare of
+the Society and of humanity at heart were successful in inducing
+offenders to manumit their slaves, and confess their error in resisting
+the wishes of their friends and bringing reproach upon the cause of
+truth.
+
+So ended slavery in the Society of Friends. For three quarters of a
+century the advice put forth in the meetings of the Society at stated
+intervals, that Friends should be "careful to maintain their testimony
+against slavery," has been adhered to so far as owning, or even hiring, a
+slave is concerned. Apart from its first-fruits of emancipation, there
+is a perennial value in the example exhibited of the power of truth,
+urged patiently and in earnest love, to overcome the difficulties in the
+way of the eradication of an evil system, strengthened by long habit,
+entangled with all the complex relations of society, and closely allied
+with the love of power, the pride of family, and the lust of gain.
+
+The influence of the life and labors of John Woolman has by no means been
+confined to the religious society of which he was a member. It may be
+traced wherever a step in the direction of emancipation has been taken in
+this country or in Europe. During the war of the Revolution many of the
+noblemen and officers connected with the French army became, as their
+journals abundantly testify, deeply interested in the Society of Friends,
+and took back to France with them something of its growing anti-slavery
+sentiment. Especially was this the case with Jean Pierre Brissot, the
+thinker and statesman of the Girondists, whose intimacy with Warner
+Mifflin, a friend and disciple of Woolman, so profoundly affected his
+whole after life. He became the leader of the "Friends of the Blacks,"
+and carried with him to the scaffold a profound hatred, of slavery. To
+his efforts may be traced the proclamation of emancipation in Hayti by
+the commissioners of the French convention, and indirectly the subsequent
+uprising of the blacks and their successful establishment of a free
+government. The same influence reached Thomas Clarkson and stimulated
+his early efforts for the abolition of the slave-trade; and in after life
+the volume of the New Jersey Quaker was the cherished companion of
+himself and his amiable helpmate. It was in a degree, at least, the
+influence of Stephen Grellet and William Allen, men deeply imbued with
+the spirit of Woolman, and upon whom it might almost be said his mantle
+had fallen, that drew the attention of Alexander I. of Russia to the
+importance of taking measures for the abolition of serfdom, an object the
+accomplishment of which the wars during his reign prevented, but which,
+left as a legacy of duty, has been peaceably effected by his namesake,
+Alexander II. In the history of emancipation in our own country
+evidences of the same original impulse of humanity are not wanting. In
+1790 memorials against slavery from the Society of Friends were laid
+before the first Congress of the United States. Not content with
+clearing their own skirts of the evil, the Friends of that day took an
+active part in the formation of the abolition societies of New England,
+New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Jacob Lindley, Elisha
+Tyson, Warner Mifflin, James Pemberton, and other leading Friends were
+known throughout the country as unflinching champions of freedom. One of
+the earliest of the class known as modern abolitionists was Benjamin
+Lundy, a pupil in the school of Woolman, through whom William Lloyd
+Garrison became interested in the great work to which his life has been
+so faithfully and nobly devoted. Looking back to the humble workshop at
+Mount Holly from the stand-point of the Proclamation of President
+Lincoln, how has the seed sown in weakness been raised up in power!
+
+The larger portion of Woolman's writings is devoted to the subjects of
+slavery, uncompensated labor, and the excessive toil and suffering of the
+many to support the luxury of the few. The argument running through them
+is searching, and in its conclusions uncompromising, but a tender love
+for the wrong-doer as well as the sufferer underlies all. They aim to
+convince the judgment and reach the heart without awakening prejudice and
+passion. To the slave-holders of his time they must have seemed like the
+voice of conscience speaking to them in the cool of the day. One feels,
+in reading them, the tenderness and humility of a nature redeemed from
+all pride of opinion and self-righteousness, sinking itself out of sight,
+and intent only upon rendering smaller the sum of human sorrow and sin by
+drawing men nearer to God, and to each other. The style is that of a man
+unlettered, but with natural refinement and delicate sense of fitness,
+the purity of whose heart enters into his language. There is no attempt
+at fine writing, not a word or phrase for effect; it is the simple
+unadorned diction of one to whom the temptations of the pen seem to have
+been wholly unknown. He wrote, as he believed, from an inward spiritual
+prompting; and with all his unaffected humility he evidently felt that
+his work was done in the clear radiance of
+
+ "The light which never was on land or sea."
+
+It was not for him to outrun his Guide, or, as Sir Thomas Browne
+expresses it, to "order the finger of the Almighty to His will and
+pleasure, but to sit still under the soft showers of Providence." Very
+wise are these essays, but their wisdom is not altogether that of this
+world. They lead one away from all the jealousies, strifes, and
+competitions of luxury, fashion, and gain, out of the close air of
+parties and sects, into a region of calmness,--
+
+ "The haunt
+ Of every gentle wind whose breath can teach
+ The wild to love tranquillity,"--
+
+a quiet habitation where all things are ordered in what he calls "the
+pure reason;" a rest from all self-seeking, and where no man's interest
+or activity conflicts with that of another. Beauty they certainly have,
+but it is not that which the rules of art recognize; a certain
+indefinable purity pervades them, making one sensible, as he reads, of a
+sweetness as of violets. "The secret of Woolman's purity of style," said
+Dr. Channing, "is that his eye was single, and that conscience dictated
+his words."
+
+Of course we are not to look to the writings of such a man for tricks of
+rhetoric, the free play of imagination, or the unscrupulousness of
+epigram and antithesis. He wrote as he lived, conscious of "the great
+Task-master's eye." With the wise heathen Marcus Aurelius Antoninus he
+had learned to "wipe out imaginations, to check desire, and let the
+spirit that is the gift of God to every man, as his guardian and guide,
+bear rule."
+
+I have thought it inexpedient to swell the bulk of this volume with the
+entire writings appended to the old edition of the Journal, inasmuch as
+they mainly refer to a system which happily on this continent is no
+longer a question at issue. I content myself with throwing together a
+few passages from them which touch subjects of present interest.
+
+"Selfish men may possess the earth: it is the meek alone who inherit it
+from the Heavenly Father free from all defilements and perplexities of
+unrighteousness."
+
+"Whoever rightly advocates the cause of some thereby promotes the good of
+the whole."
+
+"If one suffer by the unfaithfulness of another, the mind, the most noble
+part of him that occasions the discord, is thereby alienated from its
+true happiness."
+
+"There is harmony in the several parts of the Divine work in the hearts
+of men. He who leads them to cease from those gainful employments which
+are carried on in the wisdom which is from beneath delivers also from the
+desire of worldly greatness, and reconciles to a life so plain that a
+little suffices."
+
+"After days and nights of drought, when the sky hath grown dark, and
+clouds like lakes of water have hung over our heads, I have at times
+beheld with awfulness the vehement lightning accompanying the blessings
+of the rain, a messenger from Him to remind us of our duty in a right use
+of His benefits."
+
+"The marks of famine in a land appear as humbling admonitions from God,
+instructing us by gentle chastisements, that we may remember that the
+outward supply of life is a gift from our Heavenly Father, and that we
+should not venture to use or apply that gift in a way contrary to pure
+reason."
+
+"Oppression in the extreme appears terrible; but oppression in more
+refined appearances remains to be oppression. To labor for a perfect
+redemption from the spirit of it is the great business of the whole
+family of Jesus Christ in this world."
+
+"In the obedience of faith we die to self-love, and, our life being 'hid
+with Christ in God,' our hearts are enlarged towards mankind universally;
+but many in striving to get treasures have departed from this true light
+of life and stumbled on the dark mountains. That purity of life which
+proceeds from faithfulness in following the pure spirit of truth, that
+state in which our minds are devoted to serve God and all our wants are
+bounded by His wisdom, has often been opened to me as a place of
+retirement for the children of the light, in which we may be separated
+from that which disordereth and confuseth the affairs of society, and may
+have a testimony for our innocence in the hearts of those who behold us."
+
+"There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in
+different places and ages bath had different names; it is, however, pure,
+and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of
+religion nor excluded from any, when the heart stands in perfect
+sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, they become
+brethren."
+
+"The necessity of an inward stillness hath appeared clear to my mind. In
+true silence strength is renewed, and the mind is weaned from all things,
+save as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will; and a lowliness in
+outward living, opposite to worldly honor, becomes truly acceptable to
+us. In the desire after outward gain the mind is prevented from a
+perfect attention to the voice of Christ; yet being weaned from all
+things, except as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will, the pure light
+shines into the soul. Where the fruits of the spirit which is of this
+world are brought forth by many who profess to be led by the Spirit of
+truth, and cloudiness is felt to be gathering over the visible church,
+the sincere in heart, who abide in true stillness, and are exercised
+therein before the Lord for His name's sake, have knowledge of Christ in
+the fellowship of His sufferings; and inward thankfulness is felt at
+times, that through Divine love our own wisdom is cast out, and that
+forward, active part in us is subjected, which would rise and do
+something without the pure leadings of the spirit of Christ.
+
+"While aught remains in us contrary to a perfect resignation of our
+wills, it is like a seal to the book wherein is written 'that good and
+acceptable and perfect will of God' concerning us. But when our minds
+entirely yield to Christ, that silence is known which followeth the
+opening of the last of the seals. In this silence we learn to abide in
+the Divine will, and there feel that we have no cause to promote except
+that alone in which the light of life directs us."
+
+Occasionally, in Considerations on the Keeping of? Negroes, the intense
+interest of his subject gives his language something of passionate
+elevation, as in the following extract:--
+
+"When trade is carried on productive of much misery, and they who suffer
+by it are many thousand miles off, the danger is the greater of not
+laying their sufferings to heart. In procuring slaves on the coast of
+Africa, many children are stolen privately; wars are encouraged among the
+negroes, but all is at a great distance. Many groans arise from dying
+men which we hear not. Many cries are uttered by widows and fatherless
+children which reach not our ears. Many cheeks are wet with tears, and
+faces sad with unutterable grief, which we see not. Cruel tyranny is
+encouraged. The hands of robbers are strengthened.
+
+"Were we, for the term of one year only, to be eye-witnesses of what
+passeth in getting these slaves; were the blood that is there shed to be
+sprinkled on our garments; were the poor captives, bound with thongs, and
+heavily laden with elephants' teeth, to pass before our eyes on their way
+to the sea; were their bitter lamentations, day after day, to ring in our
+ears, and their mournful cries in the night to hinder us from sleeping,--
+were we to behold and hear these things, what pious heart would not be
+deeply affected with sorrow!"
+
+"It is good for those who live in fulness to cultivate tenderness of
+heart, and to improve every opportunity of being acquainted with the
+hardships and fatigues of those who labor for their living, and thus to
+think seriously with themselves: Am I influenced by true charity in
+fixing all my demands? Have I no desire to support myself in expensive
+customs, because my acquaintances live in such customs?
+
+"If a wealthy man, on serious reflection, finds a witness in his own
+conscience that he indulges himself in some expensive habits, which might
+be omitted, consistently with the true design of living, and which, were
+he to change places with those who occupy his estate, he would desire to
+be discontinued by them,--whoever is thus awakened will necessarily find
+the injunction binding, 'Do ye even so to them.' Divine Love imposeth no
+rigorous or unreasonable commands, but graciously points out the spirit
+of brotherhood and the way to happiness, in attaining which it is
+necessary that we relinquish all that is selfish.
+
+"Our gracious Creator cares and provides for all His creatures; His
+tender mercies are over all His works, and so far as true love influences
+our minds, so far we become interested in His workmanship, and feel a
+desire to make use of every opportunity to lessen the distresses of the
+afflicted, and to increase the happiness of the creation. Here we have a
+prospect of one common interest from which our own is inseparable, so
+that to turn all we possess into the channel of universal love becomes
+the business of our lives."
+
+His liberality and freedom from "all narrowness as to sects and opinions"
+are manifest in the following passages:--
+
+"Men who sincerely apply their minds to true virtue, and find an inward
+support from above, by which all vicious inclinations are made subject;
+who love God sincerely, and prefer the real good of mankind universally
+to their own private interest,--though these, through the strength of
+education and tradition, may remain under some great speculative errors,
+it would be uncharitable to say that therefore God rejects them. The
+knowledge and goodness of Him who creates, supports, and gives
+understanding to all men are superior to the various states and
+circumstances of His creatures, which to us appear the most difficult.
+Idolatry indeed is wickedness; but it is the thing, not the name, which
+is so. Real idolatry is to pay that adoration to a creature which is
+known to be due only to the true God.
+
+"He who professeth to believe in one Almighty Creator, and in His Son
+Jesus Christ, and is yet more intent on the honors, profits, and
+friendships of the world than he is, in singleness of heart, to stand
+faithful to the Christian religion, is in the channel of idolatry; while
+the Gentile, who, notwithstanding some mistaken opinions, is established
+in the true principle of virtue, and humbly adores an Almighty Power, may
+be of the number that fear God and work righteousness."
+
+Nowhere has what is called the "Labor Question," which is now agitating
+the world, been discussed more wisely and with a broader humanity than in
+these essays. His sympathies were with the poor man, yet the rich too
+are his brethren, and he warns them in love and pity of the consequences
+of luxury and oppression:--
+
+"Every degree of luxury, every demand for money inconsistent with the
+Divine order, hath connection with unnecessary labors."
+
+"To treasure up wealth for another generation, by means of the immoderate
+labor of those who in some measure depend upon us, is doing evil at
+present, without knowing that wealth thus gathered may not be applied to
+evil purposes when we are gone. To labor hard, or cause others to do so,
+that we may live conformably to customs which our Redeemer
+discountenanced by His example, and which are contrary to Divine order,
+is to manure a soil for propagating an evil seed in the earth."
+
+"When house is joined to house, and field laid to field, until there is
+no place, and the poor are thereby straitened, though this is done by
+bargain and purchase, yet so far as it stands distinguished from
+universal love, so far that woe predicted by the prophet will accompany
+their proceedings. As He who first founded the earth was then the true
+proprietor of it, so He still remains, and though He hath given it to the
+children of men, so that multitudes of people have had their sustenance
+from it while they continued here, yet He bath never alienated it, but
+His right is as good as at first; nor can any apply the increase of their
+possessions contrary to universal love, nor dispose of lands in a way
+which they know tends to exalt some by oppressing others, without being
+justly chargeable with usurpation."
+
+It will not lessen the value of the foregoing extracts in the minds of
+the true-disciples of our Divine Lord, that they are manifestly not
+written to subserve the interests of a narrow sectarianism. They might
+have been penned by Fenelon in his time, or Robertson in ours, dealing as
+they do with Christian practice,--the life of Christ manifesting itself
+in purity and goodness,--rather than with the dogmas of theology. The
+underlying thought of all is simple obedience to the Divine word in the
+soul. "Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the
+kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father in heaven."
+In the preface to an English edition, published some years ago, it is
+intimated that objections had been raised to the Journal on the ground
+that it had so little to say of doctrines and so much of duties. One may
+easily understand that this objection might have been forcibly felt by
+the slave-holding religious professors of Woolman's day, and that it may
+still be entertained by a class of persons who, like the Cabalists,
+attach a certain mystical significance to words, names, and titles, and
+who in consequence question the piety which hesitates to flatter the
+Divine ear by "vain repetitions" and formal enumeration of sacred
+attributes, dignities, and offices. Every instinct of his tenderly
+sensitive nature shrank from the wordy irreverence of noisy profession.
+His very silence is significant: the husks of emptiness rustle in every
+wind; the full corn in the ear holds up its golden fruit noiselessly to
+the Lord of the harvest. John Woolman's faith, like the Apostle's, is
+manifested by his labors, standing not in words but in the demonstration
+of the spirit,--a faith that works by love to the purifying of the heart.
+The entire outcome of this faith was love manifested in reverent waiting
+upon God, and in that untiring benevolence, that quiet but deep
+enthusiasm of humanity, which made his daily service to his fellow-
+creatures a hymn of praise to the common Father.
+
+However the intellect may criticise such a life, whatever defects it may
+present to the trained eyes of theological adepts, the heart has no
+questions to ask, but at once owns and reveres it. Shall we regret that
+he who had so entered into fellowship of suffering with the Divine One,
+walking with Him under the cross, and dying daily to self, gave to the
+faith and hope that were in him this testimony of a life, rather than any
+form of words, however sound? A true life is at once interpreter and
+proof of the gospel, and does more to establish its truth in the hearts
+of men than all the "Evidences" and "Bodies of Divinity" which have
+perplexed the world with more doubts than they solved. Shall we venture
+to account it a defect in his Christian character, that, under an abiding
+sense of the goodness and long-suffering of God, he wrought his work in
+gentleness and compassion, with the delicate tenderness which comes of a
+deep sympathy with the trials and weaknesses of our nature, never
+allowing himself to indulge in heat or violence, persuading rather than
+threatening? Did he overestimate that immeasurable Love, the
+manifestation of which in his own heart so reached the hearts of others,
+revealing everywhere unsuspected fountains of feeling and secret longings
+after purity, as the rod of the diviner detects sweet, cool water-springs
+under the parched surfaces of a thirsty land? And, looking at the
+purity, wisdom, and sweetness of his life, who shall say that his faith
+in the teaching of the Holy Spirit--the interior guide and light--was a
+mistaken one? Surely it was no illusion by which his feet were so guided
+that all who saw him felt that, like Enoch, he walked with God. "Without
+the actual inspiration of the Spirit of Grace, the inward teacher and
+soul of our souls," says Fenelon, "we could neither do, will, nor believe
+good. We must silence every creature, we must silence ourselves also, to
+hear in a profound stillness of the soul this inexpressible voice of
+Christ. The outward word of the gospel itself without this living
+efficacious word within would be but an empty sound." "Thou Lord," says
+Augustine in his Meditations, "communicatest thyself to all: thou
+teachest the heart without words; thou speakest to it without articulate
+sounds."
+
+ "However, I am sure that there is a common spirit that plays within
+ us, and that is the Spirit of God. Whoever feels not the warm gale
+ and gentle ventilation of this Spirit, I dare not say he lives; for
+ truly without this to me there is no heat under the tropic, nor any
+ light though I dwelt in the body of the sun."--Sir Thomas Browne's
+ Religio Medici.
+
+Never was this divine principle more fully tested than by John Wool man;
+and the result is seen in a life of such rare excellence that the world
+is still better and richer for its sake, and the fragrance of it comes
+down to us through a century, still sweet and precious.
+
+It will be noted throughout the Journal and essays that in his lifelong
+testimony against wrong he never lost sight of the oneness of humanity,
+its common responsibility, its fellowship of suffering and communion of
+sin. Few have ever had so profound a conviction of the truth of the
+Apostle's declaration that no man liveth and no man dieth to himself.
+Sin was not to him an isolated fact, the responsibility of which began
+and ended with the individual transgressor; he saw it as a part of a vast
+network and entanglement, and traced the lines of influence converging
+upon it in the underworld of causation. Hence the wrong and discord
+which pained him called out pity, rather than indignation. The first
+inquiry which they awakened was addressed to his own conscience. How far
+am I in thought, word, custom, responsible for this? Have none of my
+fellow-creatures an equitable right to any part which is called mine?
+Have the gifts and possessions received by me from others been conveyed
+in a way free from all unrighteousness? "Through abiding in the law of
+Christ," he says, "we feel a tenderness towards our fellow-creatures, and
+a concern so to walk that our conduct may not be the means of
+strengthening them in error." He constantly recurs to the importance of
+a right example in those who profess to be led by the spirit of Christ,
+and who attempt to labor in His name for the benefit of their fellow-men.
+If such neglect or refuse themselves to act rightly, they can but
+"entangle the minds of others and draw a veil over the face of
+righteousness." His eyes were anointed to see the common point of
+departure from the Divine harmony, and that all the varied growths of
+evil had their underlying root in human selfishness. He saw that every
+sin of the individual was shared in greater or less degree by all whose
+lives were opposed to the Divine order, and that pride, luxury, and
+avarice in one class gave motive and temptation to the grosser forms of
+evil in another. How gentle, and yet how searching, are his rebukes of
+self-complacent respectability, holding it responsible, in spite of all
+its decent seemings, for much of the depravity which it condemned with
+Pharisaical harshness! In his Considerations on the True Harmony of
+Mankind be dwells with great earnestness upon the importance of
+possessing "the mind of Christ," which removes from the heart the desire
+of superiority and worldly honors, incites attention to the Divine
+Counsellor, and awakens an ardent engagement to promote the happiness of
+all. "This state," he says, "in which every motion from the selfish
+spirit yieldeth to pure love, I may acknowledge with gratitude to the
+Father of Mercies, is often opened before me as a pearl to seek after."
+
+At times when I have felt true love open my heart towards my fellow-
+creatures, and have been engaged in weighty conversation in the cause of
+righteousness, the instructions I have received under these exercises in
+regard to the true use of the outward gifts of God have made deep and
+lasting impressions on my mind. I have beheld how the desire to provide
+wealth and to uphold a delicate life has greviously entangled many, and
+has been like a snare to their offspring; and though some have been
+affected with a sense of their difficulties, and have appeared desirous
+at times to be helped out of them, yet for want of abiding under the
+humbling power of truth they have continued in these entanglements;
+expensive living in parents and children hath called for a large supply,
+and in answering this call the 'faces of the poor' have been ground away,
+and made thin through hard dealing.
+
+"There is balm; there is a physician! and oh what longings do I feel that
+we may embrace the means appointed for our healing; may know that removed
+which now ministers cause for the cries of many to ascend to Heaven
+against their oppressors; and that thus we may see the true harmony
+restored!--a restoration of that which was lost at Babel, and which will
+be, as the prophet expresses it, 'the returning of a pure language!'"
+
+It is easy to conceive how unwelcome this clear spiritual insight must
+have been to the superficial professors of his time busy in tithing mint,
+anise, and cummin. There must have been something awful in the presence
+of one endowed with the gift of looking through all the forms, shows, and
+pretensions of society, and detecting with certainty the germs of evil
+hidden beneath them; a man gentle and full of compassion, clothed in "the
+irresistible might of meekness," and yet so wise in spiritual
+discernment,
+
+ "Bearing a touchstone in his hand
+ And testing all things in the land
+ By his unerring spell.
+
+ "Quick births of transmutation smote
+ The fair to foul, the foul to fair;
+ Purple nor ermine did he spare,
+ Nor scorn the dusty coat."
+
+In bringing to a close this paper, the preparation of which has been to
+me a labor of love, I am not unmindful of the wide difference between the
+appreciation of a pure and true life and the living of it, and am willing
+to own that in delineating a character of such moral and spiritual
+symmetry I have felt something like rebuke from my own words. I have
+been awed and solemnized by the presence of a serene and beautiful spirit
+redeemed of the Lord from all selfishness, and I have been made thankful
+for the ability to recognize and the disposition to love him. I leave
+the book with its readers. They may possibly make large deductions from
+my estimate of the author; they may not see the importance of all his
+self-denying testimonies; they may question some of his scruples, and
+smile over passages of childlike simplicity; but I believe they will all
+agree in thanking me for introducing them to the Journal of John Woolman.
+
+AMESBURY, 20th 1st mo.,1871.
+
+
+
+
+HAVERFORD COLLEGE.
+
+ Letter to President Thomas Chase, LL. D.
+
+ AMESBURY, MASS., 9th mo., 1884.
+
+THE Semi-Centennial of Haverford College is an event that no member of
+the Society of Friends can regard without deep interest. It would give
+me great pleasure to be with you on the 27th inst., but the years rest
+heavily upon me, and I have scarcely health or strength for such a
+journey.
+
+It was my privilege to visit Haverford in 1838, in "the day of small
+beginnings." The promise of usefulness which it then gave has been more
+than fulfilled. It has grown to be a great and well-established
+institution, and its influence in thorough education and moral training
+has been widely felt. If the high educational standard presented in the
+scholastic treatise of Barclay and the moral philosophy of Dymond has
+been lowered or disowned by many who, still retaining the name of
+Quakerism, have lost faith in the vital principle wherein precious
+testimonials of practical righteousness have their root, and have gone
+back to a dead literalness, and to those materialistic ceremonials for
+leaving which our old confessors suffered bonds and death, Haverford, at
+least, has been in a good degree faithful to the trust committed to it.
+
+Under circumstances of more than ordinary difficulty, it has endeavored
+to maintain the Great Testimony. The spirit of its culture has not been
+a narrow one, nor could it be, if true to the broad and catholic
+principles of the eminent worthies who founded the State of
+Pennsylvania, Penn, Lloyd, Pastorius, Logan, and Story; men who were
+masters of the scientific knowledge and culture of their age, hospitable
+to all truth, and open to all light, and who in some instances
+anticipated the result of modern research and critical inquiry.
+
+It was Thomas Story, a minister of the Society of Friends, and member of
+Penn's Council of State, who, while on a religious visit to England,
+wrote to James Logan that he had read on the stratified rocks of
+Scarborough, as from the finger of God, proofs of the immeasurable age
+of our planet, and that the "days" of the letter of Scripture could
+only mean vast spaces of time.
+
+May Haverford emulate the example of these brave but reverent men, who,
+in investigating nature, never lost sight of the Divine Ideal, and who,
+to use the words of Fenelon, "Silenced themselves to hear in the
+stillness of their souls the inexpressible voice of Christ." Holding
+fast the mighty truth of the Divine Immanence, the Inward Light and
+Word, a Quaker college can have no occasion to renew the disastrous
+quarrel of religion with science. Against the sublime faith which shall
+yet dominate the world, skepticism has no power. No possible
+investigation of natural facts; no searching criticism of letter and
+tradition can disturb it, for it has its witness in all human hearts.
+
+That Haverford may fully realize and improve its great opportunities as
+an approved seat of learning and the exponent of a Christian philosophy
+which can never be superseded, which needs no change to fit it for
+universal acceptance, and which, overpassing the narrow limits of sect,
+is giving new life and hope to Christendom, and finding its witnesses in
+the Hindu revivals of the Brahmo Somaj and the fervent utterances of
+Chunda Sen and Mozoomdar, is the earnest desire of thy friend.
+
+
+
+
+CRITICISM: EVANGELINE
+
+ A review of Mr. Longfellow's poem.
+
+EUREKA! Here, then, we have it at last,--an American poem, with the lack
+of which British reviewers have so long reproached us. Selecting the
+subject of all others best calculated for his purpose,--the expulsion of
+the French settlers of Acadie from their quiet and pleasant homes around
+the Basin of Minas, one of the most sadly romantic passages in the
+history of the Colonies of the North,--the author has succeeded in
+presenting a series of exquisite pictures of the striking and peculiar
+features of life and nature in the New World. The range of these
+delineations extends from Nova Scotia on the northeast to the spurs of
+the Rocky Mountains on the west and the Gulf of Mexico on the south.
+Nothing can be added to his pictures of quiet farm-life in Acadie, the
+Indian summer of our northern latitudes, the scenery of the Ohio and
+Mississippi Rivers, the bayous and cypress forests of the South, the
+mocking-bird, the prairie, the Ozark hills, the Catholic missions, and
+the wild Arabs of the West, roaming with the buffalo along the banks of
+the Nebraska. The hexameter measure he has chosen has the advantage of a
+prosaic freedom of expression, exceedingly well adapted to a descriptive
+and narrative poem; yet we are constrained to think that the story of
+Evangeline would have been quite as acceptable to the public taste had it
+been told in the poetic prose of the author's Hyperion.
+
+In reading it and admiring its strange melody we were not without fears
+that the success of Professor Longfellow in this novel experiment might
+prove the occasion of calling out a host of awkward imitators, leading us
+over weary wastes of hexameters, enlivened neither by dew, rain, nor
+fields of offering.
+
+Apart from its Americanism, the poem has merits of a higher and universal
+character. It is not merely a work of art; the pulse of humanity throbs
+warmly through it. The portraits of Basil the blacksmith, the old
+notary, Benedict Bellefontaine, and good Father Felician, fairly glow
+with life. The beautiful Evangeline, loving and faithful unto death, is
+a heroine worthy of any poet of the present century.
+
+The editor of the Boston Chronotype, in the course of an appreciative
+review of this poem, urges with some force a single objection, which we
+are induced to notice, as it is one not unlikely to present itself to the
+minds of other readers:--
+
+"We think Mr. Longfellow ought to have expressed a much deeper
+indignation at the base, knavish, and heartless conduct of the English
+and Colonial persecutors than he has done. He should have put far bolder
+and deeper tints in the picture of suffering. One great, if not the
+greatest, end of poetry is rhadamanthine justice. The poet should mete
+out their deserts to all his heroes; honor to whom honor, and infamy to
+whom infamy, is due.
+
+"It is true that the wrong in this case is in a great degree fathered
+upon our own Massachusetts; and it maybe said that it is afoul bird that
+pollutes its own nest. We deny the applicability of the rather musty
+proverb. All the worse. Of not a more contemptible vice is what is
+called American literature guilty than this of unmitigated self-
+laudation. If we persevere in it, the stock will become altogether too
+small for the business. It seems that no period of our history has been
+exempt from materials for patriotic humiliation and national self-
+reproach; and surely the present epoch is laying in a large store of that
+sort. Had our poets always told us the truth of ourselves, perhaps it
+would now be otherwise. National self-flattery and concealment of faults
+must of course have their natural results."
+
+We must confess that we read the first part of Evangeline with something
+of the feeling so forcibly expressed by Professor Wright. The natural
+and honest indignation with which, many years ago, we read for the first
+time that dark page of our Colonial history--the expulsion of the French
+neutrals--was reawakened by the simple pathos of the poem; and we longed
+to find an adequate expression of it in the burning language of the poet.
+We marvelled that he who could so touch the heart by his description of
+the sad suffering of the Acadian peasants should have permitted the
+authors of that suffering to escape without censure. The outburst of the
+stout Basil, in the church of Grand Pre, was, we are fain to acknowledge,
+a great relief to us. But, before reaching the close of the volume, we
+were quite reconciled to the author's forbearance. The design of the
+poem is manifestly incompatible with stern "rhadamanthine justice" and
+indignant denunciation of wrong. It is a simple story of quiet pastoral
+happiness, of great sorrow and painful bereavement, and of the endurance
+of a love which, hoping and seeking always, wanders evermore up and down
+the wilderness of the world, baffled at every turn, yet still retaining
+faith in God and in the object of its lifelong quest. It was no part of
+the writer's object to investigate the merits of the question at issue
+between the poor Acadians and their Puritan neighbors. Looking at the
+materials before him with the eye of an artist simply, he has arranged
+them to suit his idea of the beautiful and pathetic, leaving to some
+future historian the duty of sitting in judgment upon the actors in the
+atrocious outrage which furnished them. With this we are content. The
+poem now has unity and sweetness which might have been destroyed by
+attempting to avenge the wrongs it so vividly depicts. It is a psalm of
+love and forgiveness: the gentleness and peace of Christian meekness and
+forbearance breathe through it. Not a word of censure is directly
+applied to the marauding workers of the mighty sorrow which it describes
+just as it would a calamity from the elements,--a visitation of God. The
+reader, however, cannot fail to award justice to the wrong-doers. The
+unresisting acquiescence of the Acadians only deepens his detestation of
+the cupidity and religious bigotry of their spoilers. Even in the
+language of the good Father Felician, beseeching his flock to submit to
+the strong hand which had been laid upon them, we see and feel the
+magnitude of the crime to be forgiven:--
+
+ "Lo, where the crucified Christ from his cross is gazing upon you!
+ See in those sorrowful eyes what meekness and holy compassion!
+ Hark! how those lips still repeat the prayer, O Father, forgive
+ them!
+ Let us repeat that prayer in the hour when the wicked assail us;
+ Let us repeat it now, and say, O Father, forgive them!"
+
+How does this simple prayer of the Acadians contrast with the "deep
+damnation of their taking off!"
+
+The true history of the Puritans of New England is yet to be written.
+Somewhere midway between the caricatures of the Church party and the
+self-laudations of their own writers the point may doubtless be found
+from whence an impartial estimate of their character may be formed. They
+had noble qualities: the firmness and energy which they displayed in the
+colonization of New England must always command admiration. We would not
+rob them, were it in our power to do so, of one jot or tittle of their
+rightful honor. But, with all the lights which we at present possess, we
+cannot allow their claim of saintship without some degree of
+qualification. How they seemed to their Dutch neighbors at New
+Netherlands, and their French ones at Nova Scotia, and to the poor
+Indians, hunted from their fisheries and game-grounds, we can very well
+conjecture. It may be safely taken for granted that their gospel claim
+to the inheritance of the earth was not a little questionable to the
+Catholic fleeing for his life from their jurisdiction, to the banished
+Baptist shaking off the dust of his feet against them, and to the
+martyred Quaker denouncing woe and judgment upon them from the steps of
+the gallows. Most of them were, beyond a doubt, pious and sincere; but
+we are constrained to believe that among them were those who wore the
+livery of heaven from purely selfish motives, in a community where
+church-membership was an indispensable requisite, the only open sesame
+before which the doors of honor and distinction swung wide to needy or
+ambitious aspirants. Mere adventurers, men of desperate fortunes,
+bankrupts in character and purse, contrived to make gain of godliness
+under the church and state government of New England, put on the austere
+exterior of sanctity, quoted Scripture, anathematized heretics, whipped
+Quakers, exterminated Indians, burned and spoiled the villages of their
+Catholic neighbors, and hewed down their graven images and "houses of
+Rimmon." It is curious to observe how a fierce religious zeal against
+heathen and idolaters went hand in hand with the old Anglo-Saxon love of
+land and plunder. Every crusade undertaken against the Papists of the
+French colonies had its Puritan Peter the Hermit to summon the saints to
+the wars of the Lord. At the siege of Louisburg, ten years before the
+onslaught upon the Acadian settlers, one minister marched with the
+Colonial troops, axe in hand, to hew down the images in the French
+churches; while another officiated in the double capacity of drummer and
+chaplain,--a "drum ecclesiastic," as Hudibras has it.
+
+At the late celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims in New York, the
+orator of the day labored at great length to show that the charge of
+intolerance, as urged against the colonists of New England, is unfounded
+in fact. The banishment of the Catholics was very sagaciously passed
+over in silence, inasmuch as the Catholic Bishop of New York was one of
+the invited guests, and (hear it, shade of Cotton Mather!) one of the
+regular toasts was a compliment to the Pope. The expulsion of Roger
+Williams was excused and partially justified; while the whipping, ear-
+cropping, tongue-boring, and hanging of the Quakers was defended, as the
+only effectual method of dealing with such devil-driven heretics, as
+Mather calls them. The orator, in the new-born zeal of his amateur
+Puritanism, stigmatizes the persecuted class as "fanatics and ranters,
+foaming forth their mad opinions;" compares them to the Mormons and the
+crazy followers of Mathias; and cites an instance of a poor enthusiast,
+named Eccles, who, far gone in the "tailor's melancholy," took it into
+his head that he must enter into a steeple-house pulpit and stitch
+breeches "in singing time,"--a circumstance, by the way, which took place
+in Old England,--as a justification of the atrocious laws of the
+Massachusetts Colony. We have not the slightest disposition to deny the
+fanaticism and folly of some few professed Quakers in that day; and had
+the Puritans treated them as the Pope did one of their number whom he
+found crazily holding forth in the church of St. Peter, and consigned
+them to the care of physicians as religious monomaniacs, no sane man
+could have blamed them. Every sect, in its origin, and especially in its
+time of persecution, has had its fanatics. The early Christians, if we
+may credit the admissions of their own writers or attach the slightest
+credence to the statements of pagan authors, were by no means exempt from
+reproach and scandal in this respect. Were the Puritans themselves the
+men to cast stones at the Quakers and Baptists? Had they not, in the
+view at least of the Established Church, turned all England upside down
+with their fanaticisms and extravagances of doctrine and conduct? How
+look they as depicted in the sermons of Dr. South, in the sarcastic pages
+of Hudibras, and the coarse caricatures of the clerical wits of the times
+of the second Charles? With their own backs scored and their ears
+cropped for the crime of denying the divine authority of church and state
+in England, were they the men to whip Baptists and hang Quakers for doing
+the same thing in Massachusetts?
+
+Of all that is noble and true in the Puritan character we are sincere
+admirers. The generous and self-denying apostleship of Eliot is, of
+itself, a beautiful page in their history. The physical daring and
+hardihood with which, amidst the times of savage warfare, they laid the
+foundations of mighty states, and subdued the rugged soil, and made the
+wilderness blossom; their steadfast adherence to their religious
+principles, even when the Restoration had made apostasy easy and
+profitable; and the vigilance and firmness with which, under all
+circumstances, they held fast their chartered liberties and extorted new
+rights and privileges from the reluctant home government,--justly entitle
+them to the grateful remembrance of a generation now reaping the fruits
+of their toils and sacrifices. But, in expressing our gratitude to the
+founders of New England, we should not forget what is due to truth and
+justice; nor, for the sake of vindicating them from the charge of that
+religious intolerance which, at the time, they shared with nearly all
+Christendom, undertake to defend, in the light of the nineteenth century,
+opinions and practices hostile to the benignant spirit of the gospel and
+subversive of the inherent rights of man.
+
+
+
+
+MIRTH AND MEDICINE
+
+ A review of Poems by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
+
+IF any of our readers (and at times we fear it is the case with all) need
+amusement and the wholesome alterative of a hearty laugh, we commend
+them, not to Dr. Holmes the physician, but to Dr. Holmes the scholar, the
+wit, and the humorist; not to the scientific medical professor's
+barbarous Latin, but to his poetical prescriptions, given in choice old
+Saxon. We have tried them, and are ready to give the Doctor certificates
+of their efficacy.
+
+Looking at the matter from the point of theory only, we should say that a
+physician could not be otherwise than melancholy. A merry doctor! Why,
+one might as well talk of a laughing death's-head,--the cachinnation of a
+monk's _memento mori_. This life of ours is sorrowful enough at its best
+estate; the brightest phase of it is "sicklied o'er with the pale cast"
+of the future or the past. But it is the special vocation of the doctor
+to look only upon the shadow; to turn away from the house of feasting and
+go down to that of mourning; to breathe day after day the atmosphere of
+wretchedness; to grow familiar with suffering; to look upon humanity
+disrobed of its pride and glory, robbed of all its fictitious ornaments,
+--weak, helpless, naked,--and undergoing the last fearful metempsychosis
+from its erect and godlike image, the living temple of an enshrined
+divinity, to the loathsome clod and the inanimate dust. Of what ghastly
+secrets of moral and physical disease is he the depositary! There is woe
+before him and behind him; he is hand and glove with misery by
+prescription,--the ex officio gauger of the ills that flesh is heir to.
+He has no home, unless it be at the bedside of the querulous, the
+splenetic, the sick, and the dying. He sits down to carve his turkey,
+and is summoned off to a post-mortem examination of another sort. All
+the diseases which Milton's imagination embodied in the lazar-house dog
+his footsteps and pluck at his doorbell. Hurrying from one place to
+another at their beck, he knows nothing of the quiet comfort of the
+"sleek-headed men who sleep o' nights." His wife, if he has one, has an
+undoubted right to advertise him as a deserter of "bed and board." His
+ideas of beauty, the imaginations of his brain, and the affections of his
+heart are regulated and modified by the irrepressible associations of his
+luckless profession. Woman as well as man is to him of the earth,
+earthy. He sees incipient disease where the uninitiated see only
+delicacy. A smile reminds him of his dental operations; a blushing cheek
+of his hectic patients; pensive melancholy is dyspepsia; sentimentalism,
+nervousness. Tell him of lovelorn hearts, of the "worm I' the bud," of
+the mental impalement upon Cupid's arrow, like that of a giaour upon the
+spear of a janizary, and he can only think of lack of exercise, of
+tightlacing, and slippers in winter. Sheridan seems to have understood
+all this, if we may judge from the lament of his Doctor, in St.
+Patrick's Day, over his deceased helpmate. "Poor dear Dolly," says he.
+"I shall never see her like again; such an arm for a bandage! veins that
+seemed to invite the lancet! Then her skin,--smooth and white as a
+gallipot; her mouth as round and not larger than that of a penny vial;
+and her teeth,--none of your sturdy fixtures,--ache as they would, it was
+only a small pull, and out they came. I believe I have drawn half a
+score of her dear pearls. (Weeps.) But what avails her beauty? She has
+gone, and left no little babe to hang like a label on papa's neck!"
+
+So much for speculation and theory. In practice it is not so bad after
+all. The grave-digger in Hamlet has his jokes and grim jests. We have
+known many a jovial sexton; and we have heard clergymen laugh heartily at
+small provocation close on the heel of a cool calculation that the great
+majority of their fellow-creatures were certain of going straight to
+perdition. Why, then, should not even the doctor have his fun? Nay, is
+it not his duty to be merry, by main force if necessary? Solomon, who,
+from his great knowledge of herbs, must have been no mean practitioner
+for his day, tells us that "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine;"
+and universal experience has confirmed the truth of his maxim. Hence it
+is, doubtless, that we have so many anecdotes of facetious doctors,
+distributing their pills and jokes together, shaking at the same time the
+contents of their vials and the sides of their patients. It is merely
+professional, a trick of the practice, unquestionably, in most cases; but
+sometimes it is a "natural gift," like that of the "bonesetters," and
+"scrofula strokers," and "cancer curers," who carry on a sort of guerilla
+war with human maladies. Such we know to be the case with Dr. Holmes.
+He was born for the "laughter cure," as certainly as Priessnitz was for
+the "water cure," and has been quite as successful in his way, while his
+prescriptions are infinitely more agreeable.
+
+The volume now before us gives, in addition to the poems and lyrics
+contained in the two previous editions, some hundred or more pages of the
+later productions of the author, in the sprightly vein, and marked by the
+brilliant fancy and felicitous diction for which the former were
+noteworthy. His longest and most elaborate poem, _Urania_, is perhaps
+the best specimen of his powers. Its general tone is playful and
+humorous; but there are passages of great tenderness and pathos. Witness
+the following, from a description of the city churchgoers. The whole
+compass of our literature has few passages to equal its melody and
+beauty.
+
+ "Down the chill street, which winds in gloomiest shade,
+ What marks betray yon solitary maid?
+ The cheek's red rose, that speaks of balmier air,
+ The Celtic blackness of her braided hair;
+ The gilded missal in her kerchief tied;
+ Poor Nora, exile from Killarney's side!
+ Sister in toil, though born of colder skies,
+ That left their azure in her downcast eyes,
+ See pallid Margaret, Labor's patient child,
+ Scarce weaned from home, a nursling of the wild,
+ Where white Katahdin o'er the horizon shines,
+ And broad Penobscot dashes through the pines;
+ Still, as she hastes, her careful fingers hold
+ The unfailing hymn-book in its cambric fold:
+ Six days at Drudgery's heavy wheel she stands,
+ The seventh sweet morning folds her weary hands.
+ Yes, child of suffering, thou mayst well be sure
+ He who ordained the Sabbath loved the poor."
+
+This is but one of many passages, showing that the author is capable of
+moving the heart as well as of tickling the fancy. There is no straining
+for effect; simple, natural thoughts are expressed in simple and
+perfectly transparent language.
+
+_Terpsichore_, read at an annual dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at
+Cambridge, sparkles throughout with keen wit, quaint conceits, and satire
+so good-natured that the subjects of it can enjoy it as heartily as their
+neighbors. Witness this thrust at our German-English writers:--
+
+ "Essays so dark, Champollion might despair
+ To guess what mummy of a thought was there,
+ Where our poor English, striped with foreign phrase, Looks like a
+ zebra in a parson's chaise."
+
+Or this at our transcendental friends:--
+
+ "Deluded infants! will they never know
+ Some doubts must darken o'er the world below
+ Though all the Platos of the nursery trail
+ Their clouds of glory at the go-cart's tail?"
+
+The lines _On Lending a Punch-Bowl_ are highly characteristic. Nobody
+but Holmes could have conjured up so many rare fancies in connection with
+such a matter. Hear him:--
+
+ "This ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times,
+ Of joyous days, and jolly nights, and merry Christmas chimes;
+ They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true,
+ That dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was new.
+
+ "A Spanish galleon brought the bar; so runs the ancient tale;
+ 'T was hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail;
+ And now and then between the strokes, for fear his strength should fail,
+ He wiped his brow, and quaffed a cup of good old Flemish ale.
+
+ "'T was purchased by an English squire to please his loving dame,
+ Who saw the cherubs, and conceived a longing for the same;
+ And oft as on the ancient stock another twig was found,
+ 'T was filled with candle spiced and hot and handed smoking round.
+
+ "But, changing hands, it reached at length a Puritan divine,
+ Who used to follow Timothy, and take a little wine,
+ But hated punch and prelacy; and so it was, perhaps,
+ He went to Leyden, where he found conventicles and schnaps.
+
+ "And then, of course, you know what's next,--it left the Dutchman's shore
+ With those that in the Mayflower came,--a hundred souls and more,--
+ Along with all the furniture, to fill their new abodes,--
+ To judge by what is still on hand, at least a hundred loads.
+
+ "'T was on a dreary winter's eve, the night was closing dim,
+ When brave Miles Standish took the bowl, and filled it to the brim;
+ The little Captain stood and stirred the posset with his sword,
+ And all his sturdy men-at-arms were ranged about the board.
+
+ "He poured the fiery Hollands in,--the man that never feared,--
+ He took a long and solemn draught, and wiped his yellow beard;
+ And one by one the musketeers--the men that fought and prayed--
+ All drank as 't were their mother's milk, and not a man afraid.
+
+ "That night, affrighted from his nest, the screaming eagle flew,
+ He heard the Pequot's ringing whoop, the soldier's wild halloo;
+ And there the sachem learned the rule he taught to kith and kin,
+ 'Run from the white man when you find he smells of Hollands gin!'"
+
+
+In his _Nux Postcoenatica_ he gives us his reflections on being invited
+to a dinner-party, where he was expected to "set the table in a roar" by
+reading funny verses. He submits it to the judgment and common sense of
+the importunate bearer of the invitation, that this dinner-going, ballad-
+making, mirth-provoking habit is not likely to benefit his reputation as
+a medical professor.
+
+ "Besides, my prospects. Don't you know that people won't employ
+ A man that wrongs his manliness by laughing like a boy,
+ And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot,
+ As if Wisdom's oldpotato could not flourish at its root?
+
+ "It's a very fine reflection, when you're etching out a smile
+ On a copperplate of faces that would stretch into a mile.
+ That, what with sneers from enemies and cheapening shrugs from friends,
+ It will cost you all the earnings that a month of labor lends."
+
+
+There are, as might be expected, some commonplace pieces in the volume,--
+a few failures in the line of humor. The _Spectre Pig_, the _Dorchester
+Giant_, the _Height of the Ridiculous_, and one or two others might be
+omitted in the next edition without detriment. They would do well enough
+for an amateur humorist, but are scarcely worthy of one who stands at the
+head of the profession.
+
+It was said of James Smith, of the Rejected Addresses, that "if he had
+not been a witty man, he would have been a great man." Hood's humor and
+drollery kept in the background the pathos and beauty of his sober
+productions; and Dr. Holmes, we suspect, might have ranked higher among a
+large class of readers than he now does had he never written his _Ballad
+of the Oysterman_, his _Comet_, and his _September Gale_. Such lyrics as
+_La Grisette_, the _Puritan's Vision_, and that unique compound of humor
+and pathos, _The Last Leaf_; show that he possesses the power of touching
+the deeper chords of the heart and of calling forth tears as well as
+smiles. Who does not feel the power of this simple picture of the old
+man in the last-mentioned poem?
+
+ "But now he walks the streets,
+ And he looks at all he meets
+ Sad and wan,
+ And he shakes his feeble head,
+ That it seems as if he said,
+ 'They are gone.'
+
+ "The mossy marbles rest
+ On the lips that he has prest
+ In their bloom,
+ And the names he loved to hear
+ Have been carved for many a year
+ On the tomb."
+
+Dr. Holmes has been likened to Thomas Hood; but there is little in common
+between them save the power of combining fancy and sentiment with
+grotesque drollery and humor. Hood, under all his whims and oddities,
+conceals the vehement intensity of a reformer. The iron of the world's
+wrongs had entered into his soul; there is an undertone of sorrow in his
+lyrics; his sarcasm, directed against oppression and bigotry, at times
+betrays the earnestness of one whose own withers have been wrung. Holmes
+writes simply for the amusement of himself and his readers; he deals only
+with the vanity, the foibles, and the minor faults of mankind, good
+naturedly and almost sympathizingly suggesting excuses for the folly
+which he tosses about on the horns of his ridicule. In this respect he
+differs widely from his fellow-townsman, Russell Lowell, whose keen wit
+and scathing sarcasm, in the famous Biglow Papers, and the notes of
+Parson Wilbur, strike at the great evils of society and deal with the
+rank offences of church and state. Hosea Biglow, in his way, is as
+earnest a preacher as Habakkuk Mucklewrath or Obadiah Bind-their-kings-
+in-chains-and-their-nobles-in-fetters-of-iron. His verse smacks of the
+old Puritan flavor. Holmes has a gentler mission. His careless, genial
+humor reminds us of James Smith in his _Rejected Addresses_ and of Horace
+in _London_. Long may he live to make broader the face of our care-
+ridden generation, and to realize for himself the truth of the wise man's
+declaration that a "merry heart is a continual feast."
+
+
+
+
+FAME AND GLORY.
+
+Notice of an Address before the Literary Society of Amherst College, by
+Charles Sumner.
+
+THE learned and eloquent author of the pamphlet lying before us with the
+above title belongs to a class, happily on the increase in our country,
+who venture to do homage to unpopular truths in defiance of the social
+and political tyranny of opinion which has made so many of our statesmen,
+orators, and divines the mere playthings and shuttlecocks of popular
+impulses for evil far oftener than for good. His first production, the
+_True Grandeur of Nations_, written for the anniversary of American
+Independence, was not more remarkable for its evidences of a highly
+cultivated taste and wide historical research than for its inculcation of
+a high morality,--the demand for practical Christianity in nations as
+well as individuals. It burned no incense under the nostrils of an
+already inflated and vain people. It gratified them by no rhetorical
+falsehoods about "the land of the free and the home of the brave." It
+did not apostrophize military heroes, nor strut "red wat shod" over the
+plains of battle, nor call up, like another Ezekiel, from the valley of
+vision the dry bones thereof. It uttered none of the precious scoundrel
+cant, so much in vogue after the annexation of Texas was determined upon,
+about the destiny of the United States to enter in and possess the lands
+of all whose destiny it is to live next us, and to plant everywhere the
+"peculiar institutions" of a peculiarly Christian and chosen people, the
+landstealing propensity of whose progressive republicanism is declared to
+be in accordance with the will and by the grace of God, and who, like the
+Scotch freebooter,--
+
+ "Pattering an Ave Mary
+ When he rode on a border forray,"--
+
+while trampling on the rights of a sister republic, and re-creating
+slavery where that republic had abolished it, talk piously of "the
+designs of Providence" and the Anglo-Saxon instrumentalities thereof in
+"extending the area of freedom." On the contrary, the author portrayed
+the evils of war and proved its incompatibility with Christianity,--
+contrasting with its ghastly triumphs the mild victories of peace and
+love. Our true mission, he taught, was not to act over in the New World
+the barbarous game which has desolated the Old; but to offer to the
+nations of the earth, warring and discordant, oppressed and oppressing,
+the beautiful example of a free and happy people studying the things
+which make for peace,--Democracy and Christianity walking hand in hand,
+blessing and being blessed.
+
+His next public effort, an Address before the Literary Society of his
+Alma Mater, was in the same vein. He improved the occasion of the recent
+death of four distinguished members of that fraternity to delineate his
+beautiful ideal of the jurist, the scholar, the artist, and the
+philanthropist, aided by the models furnished by the lives of such men as
+Pickering, Story, Allston, and Channing. Here, also, he makes greatness
+to consist of goodness: war and slavery and all their offspring of evil
+are surveyed in the light of the morality of the New Testament. He looks
+hopefully forward to the coming of that day when the sword shall devour
+no longer, when labor shall grind no longer in the prison-house, and the
+peace and freedom of a realized and acted-out Christianity shall
+overspread the earth, and the golden age predicted by the seers and poets
+alike of Paganism and Christianity shall become a reality.
+
+The Address now before us, with the same general object in view, is more
+direct and practical. We can scarcely conceive of a discourse better
+adapted to prepare the young American, just issuing from his collegiate
+retirement, for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. It
+treats the desire of fame and honor as one native to the human heart,
+felt to a certain extent by all as a part of our common being,--a motive,
+although by no means the most exalted, of human conduct; and the lesson
+it would inculcate is, that no true and permanent fame can be founded
+except in labors which promote the happiness of mankind. To use the
+language of Dr. South, "God is the fountain of honor; the conduit by
+which He conveys it to the sons of men are virtuous and generous
+practices." The author presents the beautiful examples of St. Pierre,
+Milton, Howard, and Clarkson,--men whose fame rests on the firm
+foundation of goodness,--for the study and imitation of the young
+candidate for that true glory which belongs to those who live, not for
+themselves, but for their race. "Neither present fame, nor war, nor
+power, nor wealth, nor knowledge alone shall secure an entrance to the
+true and noble Valhalla. There shall be gathered only those who have
+toiled each in his vocation for the welfare of others." "Justice and
+benevolence are higher than knowledge and power It is by His goodness
+that God is most truly known; so also is the great man. When Moses said
+to the Lord, Show me Thy glory, the Lord said, I will make all my
+goodness pass before thee."
+
+We copy the closing paragraph of the Address, the inspiring sentiment of
+which will find a response in all generous and hopeful hearts:--
+
+"Let us reverse the very poles of the worship of past ages. Men have
+thus far bowed down before stocks, stones, insects, crocodiles, golden
+calves,--graven images, often of cunning workmanship, wrought with
+Phidian skill, of ivory, of ebony, of marble, but all false gods. Let
+them worship in future the true God, our Father, as He is in heaven and
+in the beneficent labors of His children on earth. Then farewell to the
+siren song of a worldly ambition! Farewell to the vain desire of mere
+literary success or oratorical display! Farewell to the distempered
+longings for office! Farewell to the dismal, blood-red phantom of
+martial renown! Fame and glory may then continue, as in times past, the
+reflection of public opinion; but of an opinion sure and steadfast,
+without change or fickleness, enlightened by those two sons of Christian
+truth,--love to God and love to man. From the serene illumination of
+these duties all the forms of selfishness shall retreat like evil spirits
+at the dawn of day. Then shall the happiness of the poor and lowly and
+the education of the ignorant have uncounted friends. The cause of those
+who are in prison shall find fresh voices; the majesty of peace other
+vindicators; the sufferings of the slave new and gushing floods of
+sympathy. Then, at last, shall the brotherhood of man stand confessed;
+ever filling the souls of all with a more generous life; ever prompting
+to deeds of beneficence; conquering the heathen prejudices of country,
+color, and race; guiding the judgment of the historian; animating the
+verse of the poet and the eloquence of the orator; ennobling human
+thought and conduct; and inspiring those good works by which alone we may
+attain to the heights of true glory. Good works! Such even now is the
+heavenly ladder on which angels are ascending and descending, while weary
+humanity, on pillows of storfe, slumbers heavily at its feet."
+
+We know how easy it is to sneer at such anticipations of a better future
+as baseless and visionary. The shrewd but narrow-eyed man of the world
+laughs at the suggestion that there car: be any stronger motive than
+selfishness, any higher morality than that of the broker's board. The
+man who relies for salvation from the consequences of an evil and selfish
+life upon the verbal orthodoxy of a creed presents the depravity and
+weakness of human nature as insuperable obstacles in the way of the
+general amelioration of the condition of a world lying in wickedness. He
+counts it heretical and dangerous to act upon the supposition that the
+same human nature which, in his own case and that of his associates, can
+confront all perils, overcome all obstacles, and outstrip the whirlwind
+in the pursuit of gain,--which makes the strong elements its servants,
+taming and subjugating the very lightnings of heaven to work out its own
+purposes of self-aggrandizement,--must necessarily, and by an ordination
+of Providence, become weak as water, when engaged in works of love and
+goodwill, looking for the coming of a better day for humanity, with faith
+in the promises of the Gospel, and relying upon Him, who, in calling man
+to the great task-field of duty, has not mocked him with the mournful
+necessity of laboring in vain. We have been pained more than words can
+express to see young, generous hearts, yearning with strong desires to
+consecrate themselves to the cause of their fellow-men, checked and
+chilled by the ridicule of worldly-wise conservatism, and the solemn
+rebukes of practical infidelity in the guise of a piety which professes
+to love the unseen Father, while disregarding the claims of His visible
+children. Visionary! Were not the good St. Pierre, and Fenelon, and
+Howard, and Clarkson visionaries also?
+
+What was John Woolman, to the wise and prudent of his day, but an amiable
+enthusiast? What, to those of our own, is such an angel of mercy as
+Dorothea Dix? Who will not, in view of the labors of such
+philanthropists, adopt the language of Jonathan Edwards: "If these things
+be enthusiasms and the fruits of a distempered brain, let my brain be
+evermore possessed with this happy distemper"?
+
+It must, however, be confessed that there is a cant of philanthropy too
+general and abstract for any practical purpose,--a morbid
+sentimentalism,--which contents itself with whining over real or
+imaginary present evil, and predicting a better state somewhere in the
+future, but really doing nothing to remove the one or hasten the coming
+of the other. To its view the present condition of things is all wrong;
+no green hillock or twig rises over the waste deluge; the heaven above is
+utterly dark and starless: yet, somehow, out of this darkness which may
+be felt, the light is to burst forth miraculously; wrong, sin, pain, and
+sorrow are to be banished from the renovated world, and earth become a
+vast epicurean garden or Mahometan heaven.
+
+ "The land, unploughed, shall yield her crop;
+ Pure honey from the oak shall drop;
+ The fountain shall run milk;
+ The thistle shall the lily bear;
+ And every bramble roses wear,
+ And every worm make silk."
+
+ (Ben Jenson's Golden Age Restored.)
+
+There are, in short, perfectionist reformers as well as religionists, who
+wait to see the salvation which it is the task of humanity itself to work
+out, and who look down from a region of ineffable self-complacence on
+their dusty and toiling brethren who are resolutely doing whatsoever
+their hands find to do for the removal of the evils around them.
+
+The emblem of practical Christianity is the Samaritan stooping over the
+wounded Jew. No fastidious hand can lift from the dust fallen humanity
+and bind up its unsightly gashes. Sentimental lamentation over evil and
+suffering may be indulged in until it becomes a sort of melancholy
+luxury, like the "weeping for Thammuz" by the apostate daughters of
+Jerusalem. Our faith in a better day for the race is strong; but we feel
+quite sure it will come in spite of such abstract reformers, and not by
+reason of them. The evils which possess humanity are of a kind which go
+not out by their delicate appliances.
+
+The author of the Address under consideration is not of this class. He
+has boldly, and at no small cost, grappled with the great social and
+political wrong of our country,--chattel slavery. Looking, as we have
+seen, hopefully to the future, he is nevertheless one of those who can
+respond to the words of a true poet and true man:--
+
+ "He is a coward who would borrow
+ A charm against the present sorrow
+ From the vague future's promise of delight
+ As life's alarums nearer roll,
+ The ancestral buckler calls,
+ Self-clanging, from the walls
+ In the high temple of the soul!"
+
+ (James Russell Lowell.)
+
+
+
+
+FANATICISM.
+
+THERE are occasionally deeds committed almost too horrible and revolting
+for publication. The tongue falters in giving them utterance; the pen
+trembles that records them. Such is the ghastly horror of a late tragedy
+in Edgecomb, in the State of Maine. A respectable and thriving citizen
+and his wife had been for some years very unprofitably engaged in
+brooding over the mysteries of the Apocalypse, and in speculations upon
+the personal coming of Christ and the temporal reign of the saints on
+earth,--a sort of Mahometan paradise, which has as little warrant in
+Scripture as in reason. Their minds of necessity became unsettled; they
+meditated self-destruction; and, as it appears by a paper left behind in
+the handwriting of both, came to an agreement that the husband should
+first kill his wife and their four children, and then put an end to his
+own existence. This was literally executed,--the miserable man striking
+off the heads of his wife and children with his axe, and then cutting his
+own throat.
+
+Alas for man when he turns from the light of reason and from the simple
+and clearly defined duties of the present life, and undertakes to pry
+into the mysteries of the future, bewildering himself with uncertain and
+vague prophecies, Oriental imagery, and obscure Hebrew texts! Simple,
+cheerful faith in God as our great and good Father, and love of His
+children as our brethren, acted out in all relations and duties, is
+certainly best for this world, and we believe also the best preparation
+for that to come. Once possessed by the falsity that God's design is
+that man should be wretched and gloomy here in order to obtain rest and
+happiness hereafter; that the mental agonies and bodily tortures of His
+creatures are pleasant to Him; that, after bestowing upon us reason for
+our guidance, He makes it of no avail by interposing contradictory
+revelations and arbitrary commands,--there is nothing to prevent one of a
+melancholic and excitable temperament from excesses so horrible as almost
+to justify the old belief in demoniac obsession.
+
+Charles Brockden Brown, a writer whose merits have not yet been
+sufficiently acknowledged, has given a powerful and philosophical
+analysis of this morbid state of mind--this diseased conscientiousness,
+obeying the mad suggestions of a disordered brain as the injunctions of
+Divinity--in his remarkable story of Wieland. The hero of this strange
+and solemn romance, inheriting a melancholy and superstitious mental
+constitution, becomes in middle age the victim of a deep, and tranquil
+because deep, fanaticism. A demon in human form, perceiving his state of
+mind, wantonly experiments upon it, deepening and intensifying it by a
+fearful series of illusions of sight and sound. Tricks of jugglery and
+ventriloquism seem to his feverish fancies miracles and omens--the eye
+and the voice of the Almighty piercing the atmosphere of supernatural
+mystery in which he has long dwelt. He believes that he is called upon
+to sacrifice the beloved wife of his bosom as a testimony of the entire
+subjugation of his carnal reason and earthly affections to the Divine
+will. In the entire range of English literature there is no more
+thrilling passage than that which describes the execution of this baleful
+suggestion. The coloring of the picture is an intermingling of the
+lights of heaven and hell,--soft shades of tenderest pity and warm tints
+of unextinguishable love contrasting with the terrible outlines of an
+insane and cruel purpose, traced with the blood of murder. The masters
+of the old Greek tragedy have scarcely exceeded the sublime horror of
+this scene from the American novelist. The murderer confronted with his
+gentle and loving victim in her chamber; her anxious solicitude for his
+health and quiet; her affectionate caress of welcome; his own relentings
+and natural shrinking from his dreadful purpose; and the terrible
+strength which he supposes is lent him of Heaven, by which he puts down
+the promptings and yearnings of his human heart, and is enabled to
+execute the mandate of an inexorable Being,--are described with an
+intensity which almost stops the heart of the reader. When the deed is
+done a frightful conflict of passions takes place, which can only be told
+in the words of the author:--
+
+"I lifted the corpse in my arms and laid it on the bed. I gazed upon it
+with delight. Such was my elation that I even broke out into laughter.
+I clapped my hands, and exclaimed, 'It is done! My sacred duty is
+fulfilled! To that I have sacrificed, O God, Thy last and best gift, my
+wife!'
+
+"For a while I thus soared above frailty. I imagined I had set myself
+forever beyond the reach of selfishness. But my imaginations were false.
+This rapture quickly subsided. I looked again at my wife. My joyous
+ebullitions vanished. I asked myself who it was whom I saw. Methought
+it could not be my Catharine; it could not be the woman who had lodged
+for years in my heart; who had slept nightly in my bosom; who had borne
+in her womb and fostered at her breast the beings who called me father;
+whom I had watched over with delight and cherished with a fondness ever
+new and perpetually growing. It could not be the same!
+
+"The breath of heaven that sustained me was withdrawn, and I sunk into
+mere man. I leaped from the floor; I dashed my head against the wall; I
+uttered screams of horror; I panted after torment and pain. Eternal fire
+and the bickerings of hell, compared with what I felt, were music and a
+bed of roses.
+
+"I thank my God that this was transient; that He designed once more to
+raise me aloft. I thought upon what I had done as a sacrifice to duty,
+and was calm. My wife was dead; but I reflected that, although this
+source of human consolation was closed, others were still open. If the
+transports of the husband were no more, the feelings of
+the father had still scope for exercise. When remembrance of their
+mother should excite too keen a pang, I would look upon my children and
+be comforted.
+
+"While I revolved these things new warmth flowed in upon my heart. I was
+wrong. These feelings were the growth of selfishness. Of this I was not
+aware; and, to dispel the mist that obscured my perceptions, a new light
+and a new mandate were necessary.
+
+"From these thoughts I was recalled by a ray which was shot into the
+room. A voice spoke like that I had before heard: 'Thou hast done well;
+but all is not done--the sacrifice is incomplete--thy children must be
+offered--they must perish with their mother!'"
+
+The misguided man obeys the voice; his children are destroyed in their
+bloom and innocent beauty. He is arrested, tried for murder, and
+acquitted as insane. The light breaks in upon him at last; he discovers
+the imposture which has controlled him; and, made desperate by the full
+consciousness of his folly and crime, ends the terrible drama by suicide.
+
+Wieland is not a pleasant book. In one respect it resembles the modern
+tale of Wuthering Heights: it has great strength and power, but no
+beauty. Unlike that, however, it has an important and salutary moral. It
+is a warning to all who tamper with the mind and rashly experiment upon
+its religious element. As such, its perusal by the sectarian zealots of
+all classes would perhaps be quite as profitable as much of their present
+studies.
+
+
+
+
+THE POETRY OF THE NORTH.
+
+THE Democratic Review not long since contained a singularly wild and
+spirited poem, entitled the Norseman's Ride, in which the writer appears
+to have very happily blended the boldness and sublimity of the heathen
+saga with the grace and artistic skill of the literature of civilization.
+The poetry of the Northmen, like their lives, was bold, defiant, and full
+of a rude, untamed energy. It was inspired by exhibitions of power
+rather than of beauty. Its heroes were beastly revellers or cruel and
+ferocious plunderers; its heroines unsexed hoidens, playing the ugliest
+tricks with their lovers, and repaying slights with bloody revenge,--very
+dangerous and unsatisfactory companions for any other than the fire-
+eating Vikings and redhanded, unwashed Berserkers. Significant of a
+religion which reverenced the strong rather than the good, and which
+regarded as meritorious the unrestrained indulgence of the passions, it
+delighted to sing the praises of some coarse debauch or pitiless
+slaughter. The voice of its scalds was often but the scream of the
+carrion-bird, or the howl of the wolf, scenting human blood:--
+
+ "Unlike to human sounds it came;
+ Unmixed, unmelodized with breath;
+ But grinding through some scrannel frame,
+ Creaked from the bony lungs of Death."
+
+Its gods were brutal giant forces, patrons of war, robbery, and drunken
+revelry; its heaven a vast cloud-built ale-house, where ghostly warriors
+drank from the skulls of their victims; its hell a frozen horror of
+desolation and darkness,--all that the gloomy Northern imagination could
+superadd to the repulsive and frightful features of arctic scenery:
+volcanoes spouting fire through craters rimmed with perpetual frost,
+boiling caldrons flinging their fierce jets high into the air, and huge
+jokuls, or ice-mountains, loosened and upheaved by volcanic agencies,
+crawling slowly seaward, like misshapen monsters endowed with life,--a
+region of misery unutterable, to be avoided only by diligence in robbery
+and courage in murder.
+
+What a work had Christianity to perform upon such a people as the
+Icelanders, for instance, of the tenth century!--to substitute in rude,
+savage minds the idea of its benign and gentle Founder for that of the
+Thor and Woden of Norse mythology; the forgiveness, charity, and humility
+of the Gospel for the revenge, hatred, and pride inculcated by the Eddas.
+And is it not one of the strongest proofs of the divine life and power of
+that Gospel, that, under its influence, the hard and cruel Norse heart
+has been so softened and humanized that at this moment one of the best
+illustrations of the peaceful and gentle virtues which it inculcates is
+afforded by the descendants of the sea-kings and robbers of the middle
+centuries? No one can read the accounts which such travellers as Sir
+George Mackenzie and Dr. Henderson have given us of the peaceful
+disposition, social equality, hospitality, industry, intellectual
+cultivation, morality, and habitual piety of the Icelanders, without a
+grateful sense of the adaptation of Christianity to the wants of our
+race, and of its ability to purify, elevate, and transform the worst
+elements of human character. In Iceland Christianity has performed its
+work of civilization, unobstructed by that commercial cupidity which has
+caused nations more favored in respect to soil and climate to lapse into
+an idolatry scarcely less debasing and cruel than that which preceded the
+introduction of the Gospel. Trial by combat was abolished in 1001, and
+the penalty of the imaginary crime of witchcraft was blotted from the
+statutes of the island nearly half a century before it ceased to disgrace
+those of Great Britain. So entire has been the change wrought in the
+sanguinary and cruel Norse character that at the present day no Icelander
+can be found who, for any reward, will undertake the office of
+executioner. The scalds, who went forth to battle, cleaving the skulls
+of their enemies with the same skilful hands which struck the harp at the
+feast, have given place to Christian bards and teachers, who, like
+Thorlakson, whom Dr. Henderson found toiling cheerfully with his beloved
+parishioners in the hay-harvest of the brief arctic summer, combine with
+the vigorous diction and robust thought of their predecessors the warm
+and genial humanity of a religion of love and the graces and amenities of
+a high civilization.
+
+But we have wandered somewhat aside from our purpose, which was simply to
+introduce the following poem, which, in the boldness of its tone and
+vigor of language, reminds us of the Sword Chant, the Wooing Song, and
+other rhymed sagas of Motherwell.
+
+
+
+
+THE NORSEMAN'S RIDE. BY BAYARD TAYLOR.
+
+ The frosty fires of northern starlight
+ Gleamed on the glittering snow,
+ And through the forest's frozen branches
+ The shrieking winds did blow;
+ A floor of blue and icy marble
+ Kept Ocean's pulses still,
+ When, in the depths of dreary midnight,
+ Opened the burial hill.
+
+ Then, while the low and creeping shudder
+
+ Thrilled upward through the ground,
+ The Norseman came, as armed for battle,
+ In silence from his mound,--
+ He who was mourned in solemn sorrow
+ By many a swordsman bold,
+ And harps that wailed along the ocean,
+ Struck by the scalds of old.
+
+ Sudden a swift and silver shadow
+ Came up from out the gloom,--
+ A charger that, with hoof impatient,
+ Stamped noiseless by the tomb.
+ "Ha! Surtur,!* let me hear thy tramping,
+ My fiery Northern steed,
+ That, sounding through the stormy forest,
+ Bade the bold Viking heed!"
+
+ He mounted; like a northlight streaking
+ The sky with flaming bars,
+ They, on the winds so wildly shrieking,
+ Shot up before the stars.
+ "Is this thy mane, my fearless Surtur,
+ That streams against my breast?
+
+ (*The name of the Scandinavian god of fire.)
+
+ Is this thy neck, that curve of moonlight
+ Which Helva's hand caressed?
+ "No misty breathing strains thy nostril;
+ Thine eye shines blue and cold;
+ Yet mounting up our airy pathway
+ I see thy hoofs of gold.
+ Not lighter o'er the springing rainbow
+ Walhalla's gods repair
+ Than we in sweeping journey over
+ The bending bridge of air.
+
+ "Far, far around star-gleams are sparkling
+ Amid the twilight space;
+ And Earth, that lay so cold and darkling,
+ Has veiled her dusky face.
+ Are those the Normes that beckon onward
+ As if to Odin's board,
+ Where by the hands of warriors nightly
+ The sparkling mead is poured?
+
+ "'T is Skuld:* I her star-eye speaks the glory
+ That wraps the mighty soul,
+ When on its hinge of music opens
+ The gateway of the pole;
+ When Odin's warder leads the hero
+ To banquets never o'er,
+ And Freya's** glances fill the bosom
+ With sweetness evermore.
+
+ "On! on! the northern lights are streaming
+ In brightness like the morn,
+ And pealing far amid the vastness
+ I hear the gyallarhorn ***
+ The heart of starry space is throbbing
+ With songs of minstrels old;
+ And now on high Walhalla's portal
+ Gleam Surtur's hoofs of gold."
+
+* The Norne of the future.
+
+** Freya, the Northern goddess of love.
+
+*** The horn blown by the watchers on the rainbow, the bridge over which
+the gods pass in Northern mythology.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Complete Works of Whittier, by
+John Greenleaf Whittier
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