From 248d296234dc7ce76294c677bf2ca5e76c2f50d1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Fudgerboy <91767657+Fudgerboy@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2024 05:02:38 +0000 Subject: Sat, Apr 13, 2024, 10:02 PM -07:00 --- wk5/pset/speller/texts/whittier.txt | 82043 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 82043 insertions(+) create mode 100644 wk5/pset/speller/texts/whittier.txt (limited to 'wk5/pset/speller/texts/whittier.txt') diff --git a/wk5/pset/speller/texts/whittier.txt b/wk5/pset/speller/texts/whittier.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..32c9abd --- /dev/null +++ b/wk5/pset/speller/texts/whittier.txt @@ -0,0 +1,82043 @@ +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 + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WHITTIER *** + +***** This file should be named 9600.txt or 9600.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/9/6/0/9600/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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