Part 17
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.