The poetical works of John Greenleaf Whittier | ||
AFTER THE WAR.
THE PEACE AUTUMN.
And none can make afraid;
For Peace that sits as Plenty's guest
Beneath the homestead shade!
The negro's broken chains,
And beat them at the blacksmith's forge
To ploughshares for our plains.
And vales where cotton flowers;
All streams that flow, all winds that blow,
Are Freedom's motive-powers.
Be knightly honors paid;
For nobler than the sword's shall be
The sickle's accolade.
O grateful hearts of ours!
And shape it of the greenest sward
That ever drank the showers.
And there the orchard fruits;
From earth her goodly roots.
The stars uprise and fall;
Our roll of martyrs, sad and slow,
Let sighing breezes call.
And rough-shod feet applaud.
Who died to make the slave a man,
And link with toil reward.
To such an anthem sung
As never swelled on poet's rhyme,
Or thrilled on singer's tongue.
Of peace and long annoy;
The passion of our mighty grief
And our exceeding joy!
The harvests sown in tears,
And gave each field a double yield
To feed our battle-years!
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 1865 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.
Likewise the chosen of the Lord,
To do His will and speak His word?
Not man alone hath called ye forth,
But He, the God of all the earth!
He quenches; unto Him belongs
The solemn recompense of wrongs.
And not by cell or gallows-stair
Shall ye the way of God prepare.
Your manhood, bend no suppliant knees,
Nor palter with unworthy pleas.
Of starving men; we shut in vain
Our eyes to Pillow's ghastly stain.
What tears wash out the stain of death?
What oaths confirm your broken faith?
Of union, freedom, peace, we claim;
We urge no conqueror's terms of shame.
We bend above our triumphs won
Like David o'er his rebel son.
By one brave, generous action; trust
Your better instincts, and be just!
Take hands from off the negro's throat,
Give black and white an equal vote.
But give the common law's redress
To labor's utter nakedness.
Be in the right as brave and strong
As ye have proved yourselves in wrong.
Your loss the wealth of full amends,
And hate be love, and foes be friends.
Its common slain be mourned, and let
All memories soften to regret.
Her lost and wandering ones recall,
Forgiving and restoring all,—
Above the Capitolian dome,
Stretch hands, and bid ye welcome home!
THE HIVE AT GETTYSBURG.
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.
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.
They wander wide and far,
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.
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!
HOWARD AT ATLANTA.
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.
Of the poor and long-enslavëd
Singing the songs of David.
Behold!—the dumb lips speaking,
The blind eyes seeing!
Bones of the Prophet's vision
Warmed into being!
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!
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.
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!”
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!
Ill comes of hate and scorning:
Shall the dark faces only
Be turned to morning?—
Make Time your sole avenger,
All-healing, all-redressing;
Meet Fate half-way, and make it
A joy and blessing!
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.
Of old renown give place,
O city, Freedom-loved! to his
Whose hand unchained a race.
Save in a martyr's grave;
The care-lined face, that none forgot,
Bent to the kneeling slave.
He spake was not his own;
An impulse from the Highest stirred
These chiselled lips alone.
Along his pathway ran,
And Nature, through his voice, denied
The ownership of man.
Saw peril, strife, and pain;
His was the nation's sacrifice,
And ours the priceless gain.
As it is done above!
Bear witness to the cost and worth
Of justice and of love.
To coming ages long,
That truth is stronger than a lie,
And righteousness than wrong.
THE JUBILEE SINGERS.
A number of students of Fisk University, under the direction of one of the officers, gave a series of concerts in the Northern States, for the purpose of establishing the college on a firmer financial foundation. Their hymns and songs, mostly in a minor key, touched the hearts of the people, and were received as peculiarly expressive of a race delivered from bondage.
The pathos of their mournful song,
The sorrow of their night of wrong!
A prayer for one to guide and save,
Like Moses by the Red Sea's wave!
To Miriam's note of triumph sent
O'er Egypt's sunken armament!
And shook the walls of slavery down,
The spectral march of old John Brown!
The triumph after long delays,
The bondmen giving God the praise!
Till Freedom's every right is won,
And slavery's every wrong undone!
GARRISON.
The earliest poem in this division was my youthful tribute to the great reformer when himself a young man he was first sounding his trumpet in Essex County. I close with the verses inscribed to him at the end of his earthly career, May 24, 1879. My poetical service in the cause of freedom is thus almost synchronous with his life of devotion to the same cause.
The hounding hatred shamed and still,
Go, soul of freedom! take at last
The place which thou alone canst fill.
Life saved for self is lost, while they
Who lose it in His service hold
The lease of God's eternal day.
Thy words of thunder shook the world;
No selfish griefs or hatred gave
The strength wherewith thy bolts were hurled.
We heard a tender under song;
Thy very wrath from pity grew,
From love of man thy hate of wrong.
The life below is life above;
Thy mortal years have but begun
Thy immortality of love.
We lay thy outworn garment by,
Give death but what belongs to death,
And life the life that cannot die!
Of selfish ease and joys of sense;
But duty, more than crown or palm,
Its own exceeding recompense.
Its morning promise well fulfilled,
Arise to triumphs yet unwon,
To holier tasks that God has willed.
The work below of man for man;
With the white legions of the stars
Do service such as angels can.
Or suffering spirits urge their plea,
Be thine a voice to smite the lie,
A hand to set the captive free!
The poetical works of John Greenleaf Whittier | ||