Chapter 5

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 bard 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."