Part 2

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 1565 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.