Chapter 6

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