Part 1

This eBook was produced by David Widger

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS

SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM

BY

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM

CONTENTS:

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

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 be 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.