Words for the hour :: :: University of Virginia Library

Now that the Spring ushers smiling the full, glad Summer,
As the bride-maiden the bride, to grow modest beside her,
“Here is my sister,” she saith, “but more fashioned and perfect,
Come to a fuller growth in the heart of the Highest,
She the decision, I the intent of His kindness—
Her receive, O ye mortals, for good and fruition.
And as my blushes are lost in the glow of her beauty,
So let your pleasures give place to the earnest of Wisdom.

Wisdom, the true joy extatic, made good through upholding
The burthen of noontide, with multiform splendors o'ercharging
Man's weak brain, which resists them and therefore is manly.
Ye who walk happy to-day, who unclasp the light vesture,
That to the heart the warm sunshine may do its glad mission,
That through the breast may strike rapturous joy and expansion,
Ye will have sighs to give forth ere the mantle fold closer;
Ye must be sadder and wiser ere Summer shall leave you.”
What should the Summer prove, what the brunt and the bearing,
When the fair Spring-tide doth leave us a sting in her blossoms?
What shall the action be, what the striving and tearing,
When the great heart of a Nation, in wildest commotion
Shakes with its terrible heaving the green earth beneath us?

Heart like a woman's, (the heart is the woman in all things,)
That, through false guidance betrayed from its own nobler instincts,
Wakes yet to consciousness, learning too late the foul treason,
Cries thence for succor, if there be justice in heaven.
What are these passions, the fiendish, that rush into transport?
What are these voices, the earnest, that rise to rebuke them?
What is this anguish? the poor heart grows passive and breathless,
Tightened with terror lest they, the malignant, should conquer,
Lifting its hope to the Godhead that, brooding above us,
Says of the Chaos, this too is my righteous appointing.
Yes, but the Chaos knew the command of its master,
Sleeked its black roughness, and sank at his feet like a watch-dog.
'T was but the threshold I kept of thine uncounted treasures;

Take them unwasted, Master, bring out their fair beauties;
Fling to the wondering deep the new sun and the planets,
Build in the infinite largeness the heavens that shall praise Thee.
Oh! had it risen instead with a purpose persistent;
Said: I am somewhat, and that which I am I continue.
Why should I yield my tumultuous joy of rebellion,
That thy law should remodel my ancient dominion;
That thy will, which I care not to know, be accomplished?
With what a smile had the lips which I dare not imagine
Struck the rude outlaw to mute and immediate homage!
How had the outstretched finger vouchsafed its calm guidance,
Till the dark pulses should leap to the thrill of His music!
So, from the wilder tumult these symbols would picture,
Let the torn heart of my country turn, silent and steadfast,
Seized with the courage of good, till the uproar receding
Be as the thoughts of a child, who, admonished at bedtime,

“Thou hast been froward,” creeps nearer the breast of his mother,
Strangely recalling the passionate cries of the morning.

II.

Who are these that sweep on to the House of the People,
Cherished like song-birds, warm with their own downy wrappings?
Splendors of feathers we see, as of laces and diamonds;
Splendors of beauty, that shame the adornment of either.
Met by the Marshal, and led to the smile of the Magnate
Bland in his greeting—blandly they please him with curtseys.
Fairest of women tender white hands for his touching;
Men of the haughtiest wait for the nod of their patron.
Has he betrayed the trust that was left to his swearing?
Hush! 't is the Chair Presidential to which we do homage;
Every man cringes where any man may aspire.
One I discovered, haply not seen by my fellows;
Young and a Virgin, wearing her fillet of oak-leaves,

Wearing the green nodding plumes of the Court of the Prairie,
Gyves on her free-born limbs, on her fair arms shackles,
Blood on her garments, terror and grief in her features.
Oh! she was weary, upholding the crown of her promise,
Keeping the watch and the ward that brave men should have kept her.
Oh! she was weary with crying aloud from the Westland,
Faintly and fiercely: “Brothers! will none of you help me?”

Where with hum and confusion scarce tempered by music,
The brilliant assemblage thronged their chief man for his virtue,
Sudden she stood, like a guilty ghost at a banquet.
“I am Kansas,” she shrieked, and her hand gave its menace,
“Kansas,” and seized the crisp locks for a terrible shaking.
“Me dost thou murder—me dost thou sell in thy shambles.
Coined from my blood is the gold that should keep thee in power.

Thou hast heard my loud shrieking—hast counted my struggles;
Scarcely I hold from my heart the death wound of thy Bravos.
Tremble,” she cried, “tho' the battle seem thine for a season,
Not a drop of my blood shall be wanting to judge thee—
Tremble, thou fallen from mercy, ere fallen from office;
The heart of the Nations shall loathe ere it gladly forget thee,
Known for thy vileness alone, and the sorrow it wrought us.”

While she yet spake, from the heaven God's thunder had fall'n;
And I heard: “The crime, not the paltry offender so stirs us.”

III.

Take heart, thou lone one—a champion leaps to defend thee,
Armed with the loftier issue, the art and the moral;
Eloquent lips, and the integral heart of Conviction,
Powerful still, when the arm of the spoiler has crumbled.

Doctrine of Right, and the Old World tradition of Freedom—
Doctrine of Justice, thank God, no New England invention;
Known to the Ancients, known to the Gods and their poets,
Known to great Tully, whose pillars of perfect marble
Stand in the temple of Truth, his remembrance for Ages.
There shall thy record be, Knight of the wronged and the helpless;
There shall thy weapon be kept, with the motto: “I hurled it.”
How hast thou hardened the loving heart and quick feelings,
To stand up and speak the great spirit-dividing sentence,
To stand, a mark for the thief and assassin to aim at.
More than our envy, more than thy hope was thy guerdon—
Setting the seal of thy blood to the word of thy courage.
If but the pure of heart in a pure cause should suffer,
Sumner, the task thou hast chosen was thine for its fitness.
Never was Paschal victim more stainlessly offered,
Never on milder brow gleamed the crown of the martyr.

Stand thence, a mark for the better and nobler ambition;
For they are holy, the wounds that the Southerner dealt thee.
Count them blessed, and blessed the mother that bore thee.
Would that the thing I best love, aye, the son of my bosom,
Suffering beside thee, had shared the high deed and its glory.
Shall we bend over those wounds with our tears and our balsams?
Tears warm with rapture, balsams of costliest clearness.
Take thy deserving then—wear it for life on thy forehead;
Crowned with those scars shalt thou enter the just man's heaven;
Crowned with those scars shalt thou stand in the record of heroes.

If earthly counsel were vain, should the heavens befriend thee.
Sinking Orion, cast out in the wrath of the tyrant,
Calls not in vain on the dumb heart of Nature to help him;

Lo! the deep comes to his aid, and its monsters upbear him;
Hesper stoops over the Ocean her long shining tresses
Till he is drawn by them up to the zone of her beauty;
And, like fair sisters, the stars close around him forever.

IV.

Scarcely the hush of horror gives way thro' the country,
Ere from the Westland breaks the wild war-cry that grieves us.
Here the oppressor has come, he has reaped his rude harvest,
And the black ridges are left in the desolate cornfield.
Low lies the village; the people stand, dull and disheartened,
Wondering what miscreant shall march with the banner of Freedom.
Oh! thou blue banner of God, with the stars of thy promise,
Wave in thy fury, avenge this usurping and insult!
Crack! thou crystal! let flame from the high empyrean,
Sweep from the outraged earth the vile chief and his legions.

Lawrence is fallen! Our friends and our brothers are murdered!

And your smug President soothly subscribes their death warrant.
Man! walk not forth, lest the beasts of the meadow upbraid thee—
True to their office, fulfilling the task God appointed.
Even the mastiff shall greet thee with howls of derision—
He who, left with the treasure, forsakes not its keeping—
Mocking the thief, giving battle till one of them perish.
Yea! let the meanest thing that is faithful deride him;
Let stocks and stones thank God that they cannot do treason.
Set him aside, my country! be great and impeach him!
Write out his dark account, tell his deeds as he did them.
Chosen to serve the people, his servants shall bind them.
Sworn to uphold the law, he will cheat and degrade it.
Blood has he counselled—not once but again and often.
Blood shall he have, poured to God with a holy intention—
True blood of Seventy-Six, that brave men have bequeathed us—
Left to be spent as they spent it, freely for Freedom.

Hark! E'en the pulpit rebukes the slow drowse of the anthem,
Praising of God, amid actions that praise him in nowise.
Here some brave priest lifts his voice; the far rapine and bloodshed,
And murderous manners at home, move his eloquent finger.
“Shame on you Christians,” he cries, “if with such you have friendship,
And, if you be not ashamed, let your Pastor disown you.”

Thanks! good pastor, our tribute of thanks for thy fervor—
'Tis but a spark—let it kindle the wide congregation
With that clear redness of shame which hath grace before Heaven,
With that good tingling that rouses men's slumbering virtue;
Each confessing to each, we were careless and brutish;
Sat unawakened by, while they hewed down our brethren.
Thus, by the sorrowing face shall the heart be made better.
This is as things should be—let the priest lead the people,

Stamp them, as melted wax, with high feeling and purpose.
Who hath anointed the man who shall stand looking Godward,
That he should pipe to the tune of their wanton wishes?
Oh! what a heathen Church shall we have if men's passions,
Traffic and greed, are to measure the text for the preacher.

V.

Finite is human help—many words are a hindrance.
Words for the muses should bear the slow pressure of patience;
Scarcely one leaves them content, after utmost endeavor.
Visit me not with your anger, ye powers poetic,
If, in my hotness and haste, I have jarred your sweet fetters.
But, while your presence I feel, thrilling through and above me,
Listen a moment longer; suspend your high sentence,
(Towards which I leap, when the daring is more than the danger,)
While with the name that has grown to a presence ideal,

As with a sound of sweet music, I pass from your hearing.
Washington! thou art set as a symbol of greatness,
Of courage that boasts not, of honor that knows not temptation.
Thee all men praise—not a town in thy multiplied country
That hath not thy name and thy bust for its empty Valhalla.
How is it with thee, calm looking down from the death-cloud?
Is not thy soul astound with the praise and the practice?
Dost thou not point to the niches, the wreaths, and the statues,
Asking: “What is it ye honor, who know not my maxims?
Mocking my spirit, when patriots catch its far echoes.
Wherefore these splendors?—the skill of the draftsman and sculptor—
Marbles, whose whiteness stands not for your whiteness of virtue,
Filth of the market defiling the innermost temple—
Wherefore these columns?—this dome that shall pierce the high heaven?
Were not the narrow walls wide enough for your mercies?

Was not the low roof too high for your poor aspirations?
Can you not see that the heart of your city is meanness?
Give it another name, lest it stand to defame me.”

VI.

No, not Washington, springtide must end my brief lesson.
Sweetness of Nature alone for these woes can console us.
Blessed is he who takes comfort in seed-time and harvest,
Setting the warfare of life to the hymn of the seasons.
In the garden, the whispering walls are our refuge,
Closes with music its gate on the outer confusion.
The heaped green grasses rise up in their congregation
Lifting their heads to answer the sunshine with gladness.
Birdlings singing aloft in the blossom-hung branches,
Tell of the promise in which they bring up their young households,
Tell of the faith in which God has deserted them never.
So—we will lift our heads—these men too are our brothers—

They should be gathered with us in the fold of the Future.
Heaven enlighten their hearts, ere we close for the death-tug,
Flinging them far from our bounds with their wrath and their rapine,—
As the man tears from his side the beloved who betrays him,
Lest her soft vices insensibly ruin his virtue,
Lest he too fall, undermined by the white tooth of falsehood.
Keep the promise of Spring, O! thou Father of fathers—
Give us, great God, beyond these anarchic convulsions,
The high, synthetic repose of thy progress and order.