The poetical works of John Greenleaf Whittier in four volumes |
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OCCASIONAL POEMS |
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The poetical works of John Greenleaf Whittier | ||
OCCASIONAL POEMS
EVA.
Suggested by Mrs. Stowe's tale of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and written when the characters in the tale were realities by the fireside of countless American homes.
With the blessed angels leave her;
Of the form so soft and fair
Give to earth the tender care.
Let the sunny south-land give her
Flowery pillow of repose,
Orange-bloom and budding rose.
Let the shining ones receive her,
With the welcome-voicëd psalm,
Harp of gold and waving palm!
There the darkness cometh never;
Tears are wiped, and fetters fall,
And the Lord is all in all.
Wrong and sin no more shall grieve her;
Care and pain and weariness
Lost in love so measureless.
Child confessor, true believer,
Listener at the Master's knee,
“Suffer such to come to me.”
Lighting all the solemn river,
And the blessings of the poor
Wafting to the heavenly shore!
A LAY OF OLD TIME.
Written for the Essex County Agricultural Fair, and sung at the banquet at Newburyport, October 2, 1856.
Poor Adam and his bride
Sat in the shade of Eden's wall—
But on the outer side.
For the chaste garb of old;
He, sighing o'er his bitter fruit
For Eden's drupes of gold.
Their forfeit garden lay,
Before them, wild with rock and thorn,
The desert stretched away.
A light step on the sward,
And lo! they saw before them stand
The angel of the Lord!
When hope is all before,
And patient hand and willing mind,
Your loss may yet restore?
Can make the desert glad,
And call around you fruit and flower
As fair as Eden had.
The curse from off your soil;
Your very doom shall seem a gift,
Your loss a gain through Toil.
To labor as to play.”
White glimmering over Eden's trees
The angel passed away.
Obedient to the word,
And found where'er they tilled the earth
A garden of the Lord!
And blushed with plum and pear,
And seeded grass and trodden root
Grew sweet beneath their care.
And, in our turn and day,
Look back on Eden's sworded gate
As sad and lost as they.
The pitying Angel leaves,
And leads through Toil to Paradise
New Adams and new Eves!
A SONG OF HARVEST.
For the Agricultural and Horticultural Exhibition at Amesbury and Salisbury, September 28, 1858.
The wild grape by the river's side,
And tasteless groundnut trailing low,
The table of the woods supplied.
The blushing tint of peach and pear;
The mirror of the Powow told
No tale of orchards ripe and rare.
These vales the idle Indian trod;
Nor knew the glad, creative skill,
The joy of him who toils with God.
We thank Thee for thy wise design
In Nature's garden work with Thine.
The joy of simple faith is born;
That he who smites the summer weed,
May trust Thee for the autumn corn.
Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall;
Who sows a field, or trains a flower,
Or plants a tree, is more than all.
And God and man shall own his worth
Who toils to leave as his bequest
An added beauty to the earth.
The time of harvest shall be given;
The flower shall bloom, the fruit shall grow,
If not on earth, at last in heaven.
KENOZA LAKE.
This beautiful lake in East Haverhill was the “Great Pond” of the writer's boyhood. In 1859 a movement was made for improving its shores as a public park. At the opening of the park, August 31, 1859, the poem which gave it the name of Kenoza (in the Indian language signifying Pickerel) was read.
To-day the primal right we claim:
Fair mirror of the woods and skies,
We give to thee a name.
The echoes answer back, “Great Pond,”
But sweet Kenoza, from thy shore
And watching hills beyond,
Who ply unseen their shadowy lines,
Call back the ancient name to thee,
As with the voice of pines.
The nutted woods we wandered through,
To friendship, love, and social joys
We consecrate anew.
And memory's dirges soft and low,
And wit shall sparkle on the tongue,
And mirth shall overflow,
From a low, hidden cloud by night,
A light to set the hills ablaze,
But not a bolt to smite.
Are exiled hearts remembering still,
As bees their hive, as birds their nest,
The homes of Haverhill.
And, listening, we may hear, erelong,
From inland lake and ocean bay,
The echoes of our song.
Shall morning break or noon-cloud sail,—
No fairer face than thine shall take
The sunset's golden veil.
Shall break with harsh-resounding din
The quiet of thy banks of shade,
And hills that fold thee in.
The shy loon sound his trumpet-note,
Wing-weary from his fields of air,
The wild-goose on thee float.
Thy beauty our deforming strife;
Thy woods and waters minister
The healing of their life.
Behold, unawed, thy mirrored sky,
Smiling as smiled on Cana's feast
The Master's loving eye.
And light mists walk thy mimic sea,
Revive in us the thought of Him
Who walked on Galilee!
FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL.
Of fruitful Ceres, charm no more;
The woven wreaths of oak and pine
Are dust along the Isthmian shore.
And nature holds us still in debt;
And woman's grace and household skill,
And manhood's toil, are honored yet.
And fruits, have come to own again
The blessings of the summer hours,
The early and the latter rain;
Reverse for us the plenteous horn
Of autumn, filled and running o'er
With fruit, and flower, and golden corn!
O'er richer stores than gems or gold;
Once more with harvest-song and shout
Is Nature's bloodless triumph told.
Like Ruth, among her garnered sheaves;
Her lap is full of goodly things,
Her brow is bright with autumn leaves.
Oh, gifts with rain and sunshine sent!
The bounty overruns our due,
The fulness shames our discontent.
We murmur, but the corn-ears fill,
We choose the shadow, but the sun
That casts it shines behind us still.
The power to make it Eden-fair,
And richer fruits to crown our toil
Than summer-wedded islands bear.
Who scorns his native fruit and bloom?
Or sighs for dainties far away,
Beside the bounteous board of home?
Can change a rocky soil to gold,—
That brave and generous lives can warm
A clime with northern ices cold.
And piled with fruits, awake again
Thanksgivings for the golden hours,
The early and the latter rain!
THE QUAKER ALUMNI.
Grave men, sober matrons, you gather again;
And, with hearts warmer grown as your heads grow more cool,
Play over the old game of going to school.
(You were not saints yourselves, if the children of saints!)
All your petty self-seekings and rivalries done,
Round the dear Alma Mater your hearts beat as one!
Though your “thee” has grown “you,” and your drab blue and gold,
To the old friendly speech and the garb's sober form,
Like the heart of Argyle to the tartan, you warm.
Your hearts call the roll, but they answer not all:
Through the turf green above them the dead cannot hear;
Name by name, in the silence, falls sad as a tear!
From the morning of life, while we toil through its noon;
They were frail like ourselves, they had needs like our own,
And they rest as we rest in God's mercy alone.
Past, now, and henceforward the Lord is the same;
Though we sink in the darkness, His arms break our fall,
And in death as in life, He is Father of all!
Of the far-away school-time, move slower to-day;—
Here a beard touched with frost, there a bald, shining crown,
And beneath the cap's border gray mingles with brown.
And our follies and sins, not our years, make us sad.
Should the heart closer shut as the bonnet grows prim,
And the face grow in length as the hat grows in brim?
Of yesterday's sunshine the grateful heart sings;
The tribute of thanks, and rejoice on our way;
For the beauty of patience, the whiteness of truth;
For the wounds of rebuke, when love tempered its edge;
For the household's restraint, and the discipline's hedge;
Of the creatures of God, whether human or beast,
Bringing hope to the poor, lending strength to the frail,
In the lanes of the city, the slave-hut, and jail;
Her knowledge of good, than was Eve ere her fall,—
Whose task-work of duty moves lightly as play,
Serene as the moonlight and warm as the day;
Of the creeds of the ages the life and the soul,
Wherein letter and spirit the same channel run,
And man has not severed what God has made one!
As sunshine impartial, and free as the air;
And a hope for all darkness the Light shineth through.
And the songs of the bards in the twilight of years,
All the foregleams of wisdom in santon and sage,
In prophet and priest, are our true heritage.
The truth, as whose symbol the Mithra-fire burned;
The soul of the world which the Stoic but guessed,
In the Light Universal the Quaker confessed!
Their plain stem of life never flowered into song;
But the fountains they opened still gush by the way,
And the world for their healing is better to-day.
To the tomb-crowded transept of England's renown,
The glorious essayist, by genius enthroned,
Whose pen as a sceptre the Muses all owned,—
Setting new statues up, thrusting old ones aside,
And in fiction the pencils of history dipped,
To gild o'er or blacken each saint in his crypt,—
The white bust of Penn, in the niche of his fame!
Self-will is self-wounding, perversity blind:
On himself fell the stain for the Quaker designed!
For the sake of the dear Quaker mother that bore him;
For the sake of his gifts, and the works that outlive him,
And his brave words for freedom, we freely forgive him!
New Gibbons who write our decline and our fall;
But the Lord of the seed-field takes care of His own,
And the world shall yet reap what our sowers have sown.
Leaving only his coat for some Barnum to show;
But the truth will outlive him, and broaden with years,
Till the false dies away, and the wrong disappears.
In the deep sea of time, but the circles sweep on,
Till the low-rippled murmurs along the shores run,
And the dark and dead waters leap glad in the sun.
To the martyrs of Truth and of Freedom our debt?—
Hide their words out of sight, like the garb that they wore,
And for Barclay's Apology offer one more?
And festooned the stocks with our grandfathers' ears?
Talk of Woolman's unsoundness? count Penn heterodox?
And take Cotton Mather in place of George Fox?
The hunted slave back, for Onesimus' sake?
Go to burning church-candles, and chanting in choir,
And on the old meeting-house stick up a spire?
Credit good where we find it, abroad or our own;
And while “Lo here” and “Lo there” the multitude call,
Be true to ourselves, and do justice to all.
Nor talk of our Zion as if we were Jews;
But why shirk the badge which our fathers have worn,
Or beg the world's pardon for having been born?
Nor claim that our wisdom is Benjamin's share;
Truth to us and to others is equal and one:
Shall we bottle the free air, or hoard up the sun?
How the meanest of weeds in the richest soil grow;
But we need not disparage the good which we hold;
Though the vessels be earthen, the treasure is gold!
What matters our label, so truth be our aim?
The creed may be wrong, but the life may be true,
And hearts beat the same under drab coats or blue.
In Jerusalem's courts, or on Gerizim's hill.
When she makes up her jewels, what cares yon good town
For the Baptist of Wayland, the Quaker of Brown?
When she counts up the worthies her annals have known,
Never waits for the pitiful gaugers of sect
To measure her love, and mete out her respect.
Each with head halo-crowned, and with palms in his hand,—
On prelate and puritan, Channing is seen.
Credentials of party, and pass-words of creed:
The new song they sing hath a threefold accord,
And they own one baptism, one faith, and one Lord!
Glide swift into shadow, like sails on the seas:
While we sport with the mosses and pebbles ashore,
They lessen and fade, and we see them no more.
Like a school-boy's who idles and plays with his theme.
Forgive the light measure whose changes display
The sunshine and rain of our brief April day.
Try the question of whether to smile or to cry;
And scenes and reunions that prompt like our own
The tender in feeling, the playful in tone.
At the feet of your Slocums, and Cartlands, and Earles,—
By courtesy only permitted to lay
On your festival's altar my poor gift, to-day,—
In the warmth of your welcome of hand and of heart,—
On your play-ground of boyhood unbend the brow's care,
And shift the old burdens our shoulders must bear.
Recruits to true manhood and womanhood dear:
Brave boys, modest maidens, in beauty sent forth,
The living epistles and proof of its worth!
As in broad Narragansett the tides come and go;
And its sons and its daughters in prairie and town
Remember its honor, and guard its renown.
Not prayerless the stones of its corner were laid:
The blessing of Him whom in secret they sought
Has owned the good work which the fathers have wrought.
To the Lord of the Harvest our wheat with the tare.
What we lack in our work may He find in our will,
And winnow in mercy our good from the ill!
OUR RIVER.
FOR A SUMMER FESTIVAL AT “THE LAURELS” ON THE MERRIMAC.
Jean Pierre Brissot, the famous leader of the Girondist party in the French Revolution, when a young man travelled extensively in the United States. He visited the valley of the Merrimac, and speaks in terms of admiration of the view from Moulton's hill opposite Amesbury. The “Laurel Party” so called, was composed of ladies and gentlemen in the lower valley of the Merrimac, and invited friends and guests in other sections of the country. Its thoroughly enjoyable annual festivals were held in the early summer on the pine-shaded, laurel-blossomed slopes of the Newbury side of the river opposite Pleasant Valley in Amesbury. The several poems called out by these gatherings are here printed in sequence.
The summer flowers have budded;
Once more with summer's golden light
The vales of home are flooded;
And once more, by the grace of Him
Of every good the Giver,
We sing upon its wooded rim
The praises of our river:
The west-wind down it blowing,
As fair as when the young Brissot
Beheld it seaward flowing,—
And bore its memory o'er the deep,
To soothe a martyr's sadness,
And fresco, in his troubled sleep,
His prison-walls with gladness.
Renowned in song and story,
Whose music murmurs through our dreams
Of human love and glory:
We know that Arno's banks are fair,
And Rhine has castled shadows,
And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr
Go singing down their meadows.
By painter or by poet,
Our river waits the tuneful tongue
And cunning hand to show it,—
We only know the fond skies lean
Above it, warm with blessing,
And the sweet soul of our Undine
Awakes to our caressing.
That graze its shores in keeping;
No icy kiss of Dian mocks
The youth beside it sleeping:
Our Christian river loveth most
The beautiful and human;
The heathen streams of Naiads boast,
But ours of man and woman.
The ripple we are hearing;
It whispers soft to homesick ears
Around the settler's clearing:
In Sacramento's vales of corn,
Or Santee's bloom of cotton,
Was never yet forgotten.
The summer air with clangor;
The war-storm shakes the solid hills
Beneath its tread of anger;
Young eyes that last year smiled in ours
Now point the rifle's barrel,
And hands then stained with fruits and flowers
Bear redder stains of quarrel.
And rivers still keep flowing,
The dear God still his rain and sun
On good and ill bestowing.
His pine-trees whisper, “Trust and wait!”
His flowers are prophesying
That all we dread of change or fate
His love is underlying.
We ask the wise Allotter
Than for the firmness of thy shore,
The calmness of thy water,
The cheerful lights that overlay
Thy rugged slopes with beauty,
To match our spirits to our day
And make a joy of duty.
REVISITED.
Vex the air of our vales no more;
The spear is beaten to hooks of pruning,
The share is the sword the soldier wore!
Under thy banks of laurel bloom;
Softly and sweet, as the hour beseemeth,
Sing us the songs of peace and home.
Temper the triumph and chasten mirth,
Full of the infinite love and pity
For fallen martyr and darkened hearth.
And the oil of joy for mourning long,
Let thy hills give thanks, and all thy waters
Break into jubilant waves of song!
The sweet aroma of birch and pine,
Give us a waft of the north-wind laden
With sweetbrier odors and breath of kine!
Shadows of clouds that rake the hills,
The green repose of thy Plymouth meadows,
The gleam and ripple of Campton rills.
Slaves of fancy, through all thy miles,
The winding ways of Pemigewasset,
And Winnipesaukee's hundred isles.
Laugh in thy plunges from fall to fall;
Play with thy fringes of elms, and darken
Under the shade of the mountain wall.
Here in thy glory and strength repeat;
Give us a taste of thy upland music,
Show us the dance of thy silver feet.
Pour the music and weave the flowers;
With the song of birds and bloom of meadows
Lighten and gladden thy heart and ours.
The joy of the hills to the waiting sea;
The wealth of the vales, the pomp of mountains,
The breath of the woodlands, bear with thee.
Mirth and labor shall hold their truce;
Dance of water and mill of grinding,
Both are beauty and both are use.
Pride and hope of our home and race,—
Freedom lending to rugged labor
Tints of beauty and lines of grace.
Hear our greetings and take our thanks;
Hither we come, as Eastern pilgrims
Throng to the Jordan's sacred banks.
Though never His word has stilled thy waves,
Well for us may thy shores be holy,
With Christian altars and saintly graves.
Of fairer valleys and streams than these,
Where the rivers of God are full of water,
And full of sap are His healing trees!
“THE LAURELS.”
At the twentieth and last anniversary.
O'er leagues of dancing waves, and see
The far, low coast-line stretch away
To where our river meets the sea.
Is burdened with old voices; through
Shut eyes I see how lip and hand
The greeting of old days renew.
Whose bright example warms and cheers,
Ye teach us how to smile at Time,
And set to music all his years!
For pleasant memories lingering long,
For joyful meetings, fond delays,
And ties of friendship woven strong.
You tread the paths familiar grown,
I reach across the severing tide,
And blend my farewells with your own.
For other feet in place of ours,
And in the summers yet to come,
Make glad another Feast of Flowers!
The pleasant pictures thou hast seen;
Forget thy lovers not, but keep
Our memory like thy laurels green.
JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC.
What come ye out to see?
This common earth, this common sky,
This water flowing free?
Your door-yard blossoms spring;
As sweetly as these wild-wood birds
Your cagëd minstrels sing.
The rippling river's rune,
The beauty which is everywhere
Beneath the skies of June;
Of old pine-forest kings,
Beneath whose century-woven shade
Deer Island's mistress sings.
And Curson's bowery mill;
And Pleasant Valley smiles between
The river and the hill.
The upland's wavy line,
And how the sunshine tips with fire
The needles of the pine.
Or sweet, familiar face,
Not less because of commonness
You love the day and place.
Shall hard-strung nerves relax,
Not all in vain the o'erworn brain
Forego its daily tax.
Have all the year their own;
The haunting demons well may let
Our one bright day alone.
Aside the ledger lay:
The world will keep its treadmill step
Though we fall out to-day.
Without excuse from thrift
We change for once the gains of toil
For God's unpurchased gift.
From crowded car and town,
Dear Mother Earth, upon thy lap,
We lay our tired heads down.
Blue river, through the green
Of clustering pines, refresh the eyes
Which all too much have seen.
Are thronged with memories old,
Have felt the grasp of friendly hands
And heard love's story told.
The earth whereon we meet;
These winding forest-paths are trod
By more than mortal feet.
Which they alone could hear,
From mystery to mystery,
From life to life, draw near.
Each other's hands we press;
Our voices take from them a tone
Of deeper tenderness.
Alike below, above,
Or here or there, about us fold
The arms of one great love!
No party names we own;
Unlabelled, individual,
We bring ourselves alone.
For pass-words of the town?
The sound of fashion's shibboleth
The laughing waters drown.
And care his face forlorn;
The liberal air and sunshine laugh
The bigot's zeal to scorn.
His load of selfish cares;
And woman takes her rights as flowers
And brooks and birds take theirs.
The brook's release are ours;
The freedom of the unshamed wind
Among the glad-eyed flowers.
Nor foot profane comes in;
Our grove, like that of Samothrace,
Is set apart from sin.
A sky more holy smiles;
The chant of the beatitudes
Swells down these leafy aisles.
That brings us here once more;
For memories of the good behind
And hopes of good before!
Of June like this must come,
Unseen of us these laurels clothe
The river-banks with bloom;
By other feet than ours,
Full long may annual pilgrims come
To keep the Feast of Flowers;
The bearded man a boy,
And we, in heaven's eternal June,
Be glad for earthly joy!
HYMN
FOR THE OPENING OF THOMAS STARR KING'S HOUSE OF WORSHIP, 1864.
The poetic and patriotic preacher, who had won fame in the East, went to California in 1860 and became a power on the Pacific coast. It was not long after the opening of the house of worship built for him that he died.
The solemn minarets of the pine,
And awful Shasta's icy shrine,—
And organ-thunders never fail,
Behind the cataract's silver veil,—
Our poor reed-music sounds Thy praise:
Forgive, O Lord, our childish ways!
We urge Thee not with selfish prayers,
Nor murmur at our daily cares.
Our country's bleeding heart we lay,
And dare not ask Thy hand to stay;
For union, but a union free,
With peace that comes of purity!
And, smiting through this Red Sea wave,
Make broad a pathway for the slave!
We trust nor rite nor word nor deed,
Nor yet the broken staff of creed.
To each, as to the multitude,
Eternal Love and Fatherhood,—
Stretch dumbly forth our hands, and feel
Our weakness is our strong appeal.
We wait to see with Thy forgiven
The opening Golden Gate of Heaven!
Shall holier altars rise to Thee,—
Thy Church our broad humanity!
Soft bells of peace shall ring its chime,
Its days shall all be holy time.
The music of the world's accord
Confessing Christ, the Inward Word!
One hope, one faith, one love, restore
The seamless robe that Jesus wore.
HYMN
FOR THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP AT GEORGETOWN, ERECTED IN MEMORY OF A MOTHER.
In temples which thy children raise;
Our work to thine is mean and small,
And brief to thy eternal days.
If marred thereby our gift may be,
For love, at least, has sanctified
The altar that we rear to thee.
From sunken base to tower above
The image of a tender thought,
The memory of a deathless love!
Or organ echo from its wall,
Its stones would pious lessons teach,
Its shade in benedictions fall.
And blessings and not curses given;
The mingled loves of earth and heaven.
The dear one watching by Thy cross,
Forgetful of the pains of death
In sorrow for her mighty loss,
O Mother-born, the offering take,
And make it worthy of Thy name,
And bless it for a mother's sake!
A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION.
Its summer bloom discloses;
The wilding sweetbrier of his prayers
Is crowned with cultured roses.
The lesson that he taught her,
And binds his pearl of charity
Upon her brown-locked daughter.
His Providence plantations?
That still the careful Founder takes
A part on these occasions?
Which all of us so well know:
He rises up to speak; he jogs
The presidential elbow.
I sowed in self-denial,
For toleration had its griefs
And charity its trial.
To him must needs be given
Who heareth heresy and leaves
The heretic to Heaven!
I see in dreary vision
Dyspeptic dreamers, spiritual bores,
And prophets with a mission.
His Scripture-garbled label;
All creeds were shouted in my ears
As with the tongues of Babel.
The hope of every other;
Each martyr shook his branded fist
At the conscience of his brother!
The shriller pipe of woman,
As Gorton led his saints elect,
Who held all things in common!
And torn by thorn and thicket,
The dancing-girls of Merry Mount
Came dragging to my wicket.
Gray witch-wives, hobbling slowly,
And Antinomians, free of law,
Whose very sins were holy.
Of stripes and bondage braggarts,
Pale Churchmen, with singed rubrics snatched
From Puritanic fagots.
With tongues still sore from burning,
The Bay State's dust from off their feet
Before my threshold spurning;
Faith's odds and ends together;
Well might I shrink from guests with lungs
Tough as their breeches leather:
Came, rope in hand to catch them,
I took the hunted outcasts in,
I never sent to fetch them.
I gave to all who walked in,
Not clams and succotash alone,
But stronger meat of doctrine.
The bubble of perfection,
And clapped upon their inner light
The snuffers of election.
This credit I am taking;
I kept each sectary's dish apart,
No spiritual chowder making.
Would puzzle their assorter,
The dry-shod Quaker kept the land,
The Baptist held the water.
The hat 's no more a fixture;
And which was wet and which was dry,
Who knows in such a mixture?
To bless them all is able;
And bird and beast and creeping thing
Make clean upon His table!
The ways of faith divided,
Was I to force unwilling feet
To tread the path that I did?
Yet saw not all its splendor;
I knew enough of doubt to feel
For every conscience tender.
His Eden-trees were planted;
Because they chose amiss, should I
Deny the gift He granted?
Our common weakness feeling,
I left them with myself to God
And His all-gracious dealing!
To tare and wheat are given;
And if the ways to hell were free,
I left them free to heaven!”
Soul-freedom's brave confessor,
So love of God and man wax strong,
Let sect and creed be lesser.
In ours one hymn are swelling;
The wandering feet, the severed paths,
All seek our Father's dwelling.
That makes us all thy debtor,—
That holy life is more than rite,
And spirit more than letter;
Perchance the common Master,
And other sheep He hath than they
Who graze one narrow pasture!
To act as God's avenger,
And deems, beyond his sentry-beat,
The crystal walls in danger!
Of verbal quirk and quibble,
And weeds the garden of the Lord
With Satan's borrowed dibble.
One Master's touch are feeling;
The branches of a common Vine
Have only leaves of healing.
We share this restful nooning;
The Quaker with the Baptist here
Believes in close communing.
Too light for thy deserving;
Thanks for thy generous faith in man,
Thy trust in God unswerving.
The words that thou hast spoken;
No forge of hell can weld again
The fetters thou hast broken.
From Roman or Genevan;
Thought-free, no ghostly tollman keeps
Henceforth the road to Heaven!
CHICAGO.
In one wild night the city fell;
Fell shrines of prayer and marts of gain
Before the fiery hurricane.
Where ghastly sunrise looked on none.
Men clasped each other's hands, and said:
“The City of the West is dead!”
The fiends of fire from street to street,
Turned, powerless, to the blinding glare,
The dumb defiance of despair.
That signalled round that sea of fire;
Swift words of cheer, warm heart-throbs came;
In tears of pity died the flame!
The messages of hope shot forth,
And, underneath the severing wave,
The world, full-handed, reached to save.
The new, the dreary void shall fill
With dearer homes than those o'erthrown,
For love shall lay each corner-stone.
The ashen sackcloth of thy woe;
And build, as to Amphion's strain,
To songs of cheer thy walls again!
The primal sin of selfishness!
How instant rose, to take thy part,
The angel in the human heart!
Above thy dreadful holocaust;
The Christ again has preached through thee
The Gospel of Humanity!
And fret with spires the western sky,
To tell that God is yet with us,
And love is still miraculous!
KINSMAN.
As sweetly shall the loved one rest,
As if beneath the whispering pines
And maple shadows of the West.
But, haply, mourn ye not alone;
For him shall far-off eyes be dim,
And pity speak in tongues unknown.
The story of his blameless youth;
All hearts shall throb intuitive,
And nature guess the simple truth.
Shall many a tender tribute win;
The stranger own his sacred claim,
And all the world shall be his kin.
The dews of holy peace shall fall,
The same sweet heavens above him smile,
And God's dear love be over all!
THE GOLDEN WEDDING OF LONGWOOD.
Longwood, not far from Bayard Taylor's birthplace in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, was the home of my esteemed friends John and Hannah Cox, whose golden wedding was celebrated in 1874.
The Golden Age, old friends of mine, is not a fable now.
Still, as at Cana's marriage-feast, the best wine is the last!
Its meadows, woods, and ample barns, and quaint, stone-builded homes.
Of which their poet sings so well from towered Cedarcroft.
From city, hamlet, farm-house old, the wedding guests come in.
In Freedom's age of martyrs came, as victors now return.
And hearts are light and eyes are glad, though heads are badger-gray.
Midst roaring flames and shouting mob, of Pennsylvania Hall;
Singing of freedom through the grates of Moyamensing jail!
Pass, silently as shadows pass, within your open door,—
The Christian grace of Pennock, the steadfast heart of Neal.
Grave men, fair women, youth and maid, pass by in hushed review.
God give them now, whate'er their names, the peace of duty done!
Sit down beside your hearth once more and look in the dear old faces!
For honest lives that louder speak than half our noisy preaching;
When the Golden Rule was treason, and to feed the hungry, crime;
And saint and sinner, church and state, joined hands to send him back.
So homeless, faint, and naked, unto our Lord was done!
The mellow sunset of your lives, friends of my early days.
And, late at last, in tenderest love, the beckoning angel come.
Our friends are now in either world, and love is sure of love.
HYMN
FOR THE OPENING OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA.
Lord of all gifts, to offer Thee;
And hence with grateful hearts to-day,
Thy own before Thy feet we lay.
Thy hand unseen amidst us wrought;
Through mortal motive, scheme and plan,
Thy wise eternal purpose ran.
For human needs and longings grew
This house of prayer, this home of rest,
In the fair garden of the West.
On Thee for whom the heavens are small;
Thy glory is Thy children's good,
Thy joy Thy tender Fatherhood.
Fill with Thy love their emptiness,
And let their door a gateway be
To lead us from ourselves to Thee!
LEXINGTON.
No battle-joy was theirs, who set
Against the alien bayonet
Their homespun breasts in that old day.
They loved not strife, they dreaded pain;
They saw not, what to us is plain,
That God would make man's wrath his praise.
Its vast results the future hid:
The meaning of the work they did
Was strange and dark and doubtful then.
The plough mid-furrow standing still,
The half-ground corn grist in the mill,
The spade in earth, the axe in cleft.
They scarcely asked the reason why;
They only knew they could but die,
And death was not the worst of all!
All that was theirs to give, they gave.
The flowers that blossomed from their grave
Have sown themselves beneath all skies.
And shattered slavery's chain as well;
On the sky's dome, as on a bell,
Its echo struck the world's great hour.
The nations listening to its sound
Wait, from a century's vantage-ground,
The holier triumphs yet to come,—
The gladness of the world's release,
When, war-sick, at the feet of Peace
The hawk shall nestle with the dove!—
Unknown to other rivalries
Than of the mild humanities,
And gracious interchange of good,
Till meet, beneath saluting flags,
The eagle of our mountain-crags,
The lion of our Motherland!
THE LIBRARY.
And over chaos dark and cold,
And through the dead and formless frame
Of nature, life and order came.
On giant fern and mastodon,
On half-formed plant and beast of prey,
And man as rude and wild as they.
The earth, uplifting brute and man;
And mind, at length, in symbols dark
Its meanings traced on stone and bark.
On plastic clay and leathern scroll,
Man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed,
And lo! the Press was found at last!
Whose bones were dust revived again;
The cloister's silence found a tongue,
Old prophets spake, old poets sung.
The kings of mind again we crown;
We hear the voices lost so long,
The sage's word, the sibyl's song.
Alive along these crowded shelves;
And Shakespeare treads again his stage,
And Chaucer paints anew his age.
Their stony trance, and lived and spoke,
Life thrills along the alcoved hall,
The lords of thought await our call!
“I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE TOOK ME IN.”
An incident in St. Augustine, Florida.
The air was full of light and balm,
And warm and soft the Gulf wind blew
Through orange bloom and groves of palm.
Who sought the fount of health in vain,
Sank homeless on the alien earth,
And breathed the languid air with pain.
Of pity made her blue eye dim;
Against her woman's breast she laid
The drooping, fainting head of him.
Flower-sweet and cool with salt sea air,
And watched beside his bed, for whom
His far-off sisters might not care.
Its lines of pain with tenderest touch.
With holy hymn and prayer she soothed
The trembling soul that feared so much.
Came to him, as he lapsed away
As one whose troubled dreams of night
Slide slowly into tranquil day.
Upon his lonely grave she laid:
The jasmine dropped its golden showers,
The orange lent its bloom and shade.
More sweet than mortal voices be:
“The service thou for him hast wrought
O daughter! hath been done for me.”
CENTENNIAL HYMN.
Written for the opening of the International Exhibition, Philadelphia, May 10, 1876. The music for the hymn was written by John K. Paine, and may be found in The Atlantic Monthly for June, 1876.
I.
Our fathers' God! from out whose handThe centuries fall like grains of sand,
And loyal to our land and Thee,
To thank Thee for the era done,
And trust Thee for the opening one.
II.
Here, where of old, by Thy design,The fathers spake that word of Thine
Whose echo is the glad refrain
Of rended bolt and falling chain,
To grace our festal time, from all
The zones of earth our guests we call.
III.
Be with us while the New World greetsThe Old World thronging all its streets,
Unveiling all the triumphs won
By art or toil beneath the sun;
And unto common good ordain
This rivalship of hand and brain.
IV.
Thou, who hast here in concord furledThe war flags of a gathered world,
Beneath our Western skies fulfil
The Orient's mission of good-will,
And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece,
Send back its Argonauts of peace.
V.
For art and labor met in truce,For beauty made the bride of use,
We thank Thee; but, withal, we crave
The austere virtues strong to save,
The manhood never bought nor sold!
VI.
Oh make Thou us, through centuries long,In peace secure, in justice strong;
Around our gift of freedom draw
The safeguards of Thy righteous law:
And, cast in some diviner mould,
Let the new cycle shame the old!
AT SCHOOL-CLOSE.
To all things; in these sweet June days
The teacher and the scholar trust
Their parting feet to separate ways.
Shall pleasant memories cling to each,
As shells bear inland from the sea
The murmur of the rhythmic beach.
When, plastic to his lightest touch,
His clay-wrought model slowly grows
To that fine grace desired so much.
The living shapes whereon she wrought,
The child's heart with the woman's thought.
The voice that called from dream and play,
The firm but kindly hand that set
Her feet in learning's pleasant way,—
The wakening sense, the strange delight
That swelled the fabled statue's breast
And filled its clouded eyes with sight!
Ye pass from girlhood's gate of dreams;
In broader ways your footsteps fall,
Ye test the truth of all that seems.
She breaks her wand of power apart,
While, for your love and trust, she gives
The warm thanks of a grateful heart.
Contrasted with your morn of spring,
The waning with the waxing moon,
The folded with the outspread wing.
She sends her God-speed back to you;
She has no thought of doubts or fears.
Be but yourselves, be pure, be true,
Low voice of conscience; through the ill
And discord round about you, keep
Your faith in human nature still.
Be pitiful as woman should,
And, spite of all the lies of creeds,
Hold fast the truth that God is good.
The world that needs the hand and heart
Of Martha's helpful carefulness
No less than Mary's better part.
And leave each year a richer good,
And matron loveliness outvie
The nameless charm of maidenhood.
With gracious lives and manners fine,
The teacher shall assert her claims,
And proudly whisper, “These were mine!”
HYMN OF THE CHILDREN.
Thine the broken bread;
Let the naked feet be shod,
And the starving fed.
Give as they abound,
Till the poor have breathing-space,
And the lost are found.
Is the giver's choice;
Sweeter than the song of birds
Is the thankful voice.
As the flowers of spring;
Let the tender hearts be glad
With the joy they bring.
Make their sports and plays,
And from lips of childhood take
Thy perfected praise!
THE LANDMARKS.
This poem was read at a meeting of citizens of Boston having for its object the preservation of the Old South Church famous in Colonial and Revolutionary history.
I.
Fast the red-winged terror sped;
With its hundred tongues of flame,
Stood like chained Andromeda,
Swift doom or deliverer!
Over walls no longer new,
Four entombed and one alive;
Battleward from Marblehead;
Treville's lilied pennons play,
By the barge of Lafayette,
Of the coming fleet of France!
Quaint in desk and chandelier;
Burials tolled and bridals rung;
Keys that Snetzler's hand had swept;
Sinai's law its thunders rolled!
“Look! St. Michael's is aflame!”
Snake-like wound its coil of ire.
From the jealousies of sect,
“Save it, though our roof-trees fall!”
One, the bravest, outward swung
Smoked beneath the holder's hands,
Burning fragments from the tower.
Broke the painful pause of breath;
With home's ashes at their feet;
“Thank the Lord! St. Michael's saved!”
II.
Stands the church of old renown,
Which set free a continent;
Prophecies of freedom fell;
Rang the nation's birth-day in!
Perilled like St. Michael's tower,
But by mammon's grasping claim.
She is shamed by Marblehead?
Hast thou none to do and dare?
Shall not wealth be staked for thine?
Vainly for the Old South Church;
All thy pride of place is gone;
Stretched before them wide and far,
Wilderness of brick and slate,
By the commonplace of trade!
Duty is but destiny.
Keep with thy traditions faith;
Hold its flowing forelock fast;
Of a grand munificence;
Give, as thou didst yesterday
Need's demand from fired St. John.
Free the generous deed to tell.
In the glad, sonorous voice,
Of the bell of the Old South,—
“What she was is Boston still!”
GARDEN.
A hymn for the American Horticultural Society, 1882.
We own Thy wise design,
Whereby these human hands of ours
May share the work of Thine!
The root and sow the seed;
Thy early and Thy later rain,
Thy sun and dew we need.
Our burden is our boon;
The curse of Earth's gray morning is
The blessing of its noon.
For Eden's unknown ground?
That garden of the primal pair
May nevermore be found.
May right the ancient wrong,
The beauty lost so long.
May Eden's orchard shame;
We taste the tempting sweets of these
Like Eve, without her blame.
The pride of every zone,
The fairest, rarest, and the best
May all be made our own.
In hill-groves and in bowers,
The fittest offerings thither brought
Were Thy own fruits and flowers.
Thy gifts each year renewed;
The good is always beautiful,
The beautiful is good.
A GREETING.
Read at Harriet Beecher Stowe's seventieth anniversary, June 14, 1882, at a garden party at ex-Governor Claflin's in Newtonville, Mass.
And golden-fruited orange bowers
To this sweet, green-turfed June of ours!
To her who, in our evil time,
Dragged into light the nation's crime
And, mightier than their swords, her pen!
To her who world-wide entrance gave
To the log-cabin of the slave;
Made all his wrongs and sorrows known,
And all earth's languages his own,—
North, South, and East and West, made all
The common air electrical,
Until the o'ercharged bolts of heaven
Blazed down, and every chain was riven!
Whose Wooing of the Minister
Revealed the warm heart of the man
Beneath the creed-bound Puritan,
And taught the kinship of the love
Of man below and God above;
To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes
Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks;
Whose fireside stories, grave or gay,
In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way,
With old New England's flavor rife,
Waifs from her rude idyllic life,
Are racy as the legends old
By Chaucer or Boccaccio told;
To her who keeps, through change of place
And time, her native strength and grace,
Alike where warm Sorrento smiles,
Or where, by birchen-shaded isles,
Whose summer winds have shivered o'er
The icy drift of Labrador,
She lifts to light the priceless Pearl
Of Harpswell's angel-beckoned girl!
Be tributes of the tongue and pen;
Be honor, praise, and heart-thanks given,
The loves of earth, the hopes of heaven!
The air to-day, our love is hers!
She needs no guaranty of fame
Whose own is linked with Freedom's name.
Long ages after ours shall keep
Her memory living while we sleep;
The waves that wash our gray coast lines,
The winds that rock the Southern pines,
Shall sing of her; the unending years
Shall tell her tale in unborn ears.
And when, with sins and follies past,
Are numbered color-hate and caste,
White, black, and red shall own as one
The noblest work by woman done.
GODSPEED.
Outbound, your bark awaits you. Were I oneWhose prayer availeth much, my wish should be
Your favoring trade-wind and consenting sea.
By sail or steed was never love outrun,
And, here or there, love follows her in whom
All graces and sweet charities unite,
The old Greek beauty set in holier light;
Who walks among us welcome as the Spring,
Calling up blossoms where her light feet stray.
God keep you both, make beautiful your way,
Comfort, console, and bless; and safely bring,
Ere yet I make upon a vaster sea
The unreturning voyage, my friends to me.
WINTER ROSES.
Have perished from the leaf-strewn walks;
Their pale, fair sisters smile no more
Upon the sweet-brier stalks.
Spring's violets, summer's blooming pride,
And Nature's winter and my own
Stand, flowerless, side by side.
To-day, in bleak December's noon,
Come sweetest fragrance, shapes, and hues,
The rosy wealth of June!
And bless the hearts that prompted it;
If undeserved it comes, at least
It seems not all unfit.
Had gifts of forty stripes save one;
To-day as many roses crown
The gray head of their son.
The fresh-faced givers smiling come,
And nine and thirty happy girls
Make glad a lonely room.
The light and warmth of long ago
Are in my heart, and on my cheek
The airs of morning blow.
And fairer than the gift ye chose,
For you may years like leaves unfold
The heart of Sharon's rose!
THE REUNION.
We stretch our welcoming hands across;
The distance but a pebble's toss
Between us and our youth appears.
The remnant of a once full list;
Conning our lessons, undismissed,
With faces to the setting sun.
And some await the call to rest;
Who knoweth whether it is best
For those who went or those who stay?
If faith and love and hope remain,
Our length of days is not in vain,
And life is well worth living still.
The thanks of grateful hearts are due,
For blessings when our lives were new,
For all the good vouchsafed us since.
The wish denied, the purpose crossed,
And pleasure's fond occasions lost,
Were mercies to our small desert.
Gray pilgrims, to our ancient ways,
And tender memories of old days
Walk with us by the Merrimac;
A sense of youth comes back again,
As through this cool September rain
The still green woodlands dream of June.
Have keener sight for bygone years,
And sweet and clear, in deafening ears,
The bird that sang at morning sings.
Send from their homes their kindly word,
And dearer ones, unseen, unheard,
Smile on us from some heavenly star.
Unchanged by seeming change His care
And love are round us here and there;
He breaks no thread His hand has spun.
Of life eternal has no gaps;
And after half a century's lapse
Our school-day ranks are closed and whole.
Where shadows end, we trust in light;
The star that ushers in the night
Is herald also of the day!
NORUMBEGA HALL.
Norumbega Hall at Wellesley College, named in honor of Eben Norton Horsford, who has been one of the most munificent patrons of that noble institution, and who had just published an essay claiming the discovery of the site of the somewhat mythical city of Norumbega, was opened with appropriate ceremonies, in April, 1886. The following sonnet was written for the occasion, and was read by President Alice E. Freeman, to whom it was addressed.
Of the sought City rose, nor yet beside
The winding Charles, nor where the daily tide
Of Naumkeag's haven rises and retires,
The beautiful gates must open to our quest,
Somewhere that marvellous City of the West
Would lift its towers and palace domes in view,
And, lo! at last its mystery is made known—
Its only dwellers maidens fair and young,
Its Princess such as England's Laureate sung;
And safe from capture, save by love alone,
It lends its beauty to the lake's green shore,
And Norumbega is a myth no more.
THE BARTHOLDI STATUE.
In freeing us, itself made free,
Our Old World Sister, to us brings
Her sculptured Dream of Liberty:
Uplifted by the toil-worn slave,
On Freedom's soil with freemen's hands
We rear the symbol free hands gave.
Once more a debt of love we owe:
In peace beneath thy Colors Three,
We hail a later Rochambeau!
Thy light and hope to all who sit
In chains and darkness! Belt the earth
With watch-fires from thy torch uplit!
Which Chaos heard and ceased to be,
Trace on mid-air th' Eternal Will
In signs of fire: “Let man be free!”
To Reason's ways and Virtue's aim,
A lightning-flash the wretch to smite
Who shields his license with thy name!
ONE OF THE SIGNERS.
Written for the unveiling of the statue of Josiah Bartlett at Amesbury, Mass., July 4, 1888. Governor Bartlett, who was a native of the town, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Amesbury or Ambresbury, so called from the “anointed stones” of the great Druidical temple near it, was the seat of one of the earliest religious houses in Britain. The tradition that the guilty wife of King Arthur fled thither for protection forms one of the finest passages in Tennyson's Idyls of the King.
Rejoice through all thy shade and shine,
And from his century's sleep call back
A brave and honored son of thine.
The living and the dead to-day;
The fathers of the Old Thirteen
Shall witness bear as spirits may.
The shades of Lee and Jefferson,
Wise Franklin reverend with his years
And Carroll, lord of Carrollton!
Beyond thy namesake's over-sea,
Where scarce a stone is left to trace
The Holy House of Amesbury.
The birthplace of thy true man here
Than that which haunts the refuge found
By Arthur's mythic Guinevere.
And signed a nation's title-deed
Is dearer now to fame than that
Which bore the scroll of Runnymede.
Shall ring the Independence bells,
Give to thy dwellers yet unborn
The lesson which his image tells.
Which tried the men of bravest stock,
He knew the end alone must be
A free land or a traitor's block.
Than his, who here first drew his breath,
No firmer fingers held the pen
Which wrote for liberty or death.
But for the world their work was done;
On all the winds their thought has flown
Through all the circuit of the sun.
By songs of grateful Labor still;
To-day, in all her holy fanes,
It rings the bells of freed Brazil.
O earth and air that nursed him, give,
In this memorial semblance, room
To him who shall its bronze outlive!
That in the countless years to come,
Whenever Freedom needs a voice,
These sculptured lips shall not be dumb!
The poetical works of John Greenleaf Whittier | ||