Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform Part 25

"Men of the North! beneath your very eyes, By hearth and home, your real danger lies.

Still day by day some hold of freedom falls Through home-bred traitors fed within its walls.

Men whom yourselves with vote and purse sustain, At posts of honor, influence, and gain; The right of Slavery to your sons to teach, And 'South-side' Gospels in your pulpits preach, Transfix the Law to ancient freedom dear On the sharp point of her subverted spear, And imitate upon her cus.h.i.+on plump The mad Missourian lynching from his stump; Or, in your name, upon the Senate's floor Yield up to Slavery all it asks, and more; And, ere your dull eyes open to the cheat, Sell your old homestead underneath your feet While such as these your loftiest outlooks hold, While truth and conscience with your wares are sold, While grave-browed merchants band themselves to aid An annual man-hunt for their Southern trade, What moral power within your grasp remains To stay the mischief on Nebraska's plains?

High as the tides of generous impulse flow, As far rolls back the selfish undertow; And all your brave resolves, though aimed as true As the horse-pistol Balmawhapple drew, To Slavery's bastions lend as slight a shock As the poor trooper's shot to Stirling rock!

"Yet, while the need of Freedom's cause demands The earnest efforts of your hearts and hands, Urged by all motives that can prompt the heart To prayer and toil and manhood's manliest part; Though to the soul's deep tocsin Nature joins The warning whisper of her Orphic pines, The north-wind's anger, and the south-wind's sigh, The midnight sword-dance of the northern sky, And, to the ear that bends above the sod Of the green grave-mounds in the Fields of G.o.d, In low, deep murmurs of rebuke or cheer, The land's dead fathers speak their hope or fear, Yet let not Pa.s.sion wrest from Reason's hand The guiding rein and symbol of command.

Blame not the caution proffering to your zeal A well-meant drag upon its hurrying wheel; Nor chide the man whose honest doubt extends To the means only, not the righteous ends; Nor fail to weigh the scruples and the fears Of milder natures and serener years.

In the long strife with evil which began With the first lapse of new-created man, Wisely and well has Providence a.s.signed To each his part,--some forward, some behind; And they, too, serve who temper and restrain The o'erwarm heart that sets on fire the brain.

True to yourselves, feed Freedom's altar-flame With what you have; let others do the same.

"Spare timid doubters; set like flint your face Against the self-sold knaves of gain and place Pity the weak; but with unsparing hand Cast out the traitors who infest the land; From bar, press, pulpit, cast them everywhere, By dint of fasting, if you fail by prayer.

And in their place bring men of antique mould, Like the grave fathers of your Age of Gold; Statesmen like those who sought the primal fount Of righteous law, the Sermon on the Mount; Lawyers who prize, like Quincy, (to our day Still spared, Heaven bless him!) honor more than pay, And Christian jurists, starry-pure, like Jay; Preachers like Woolman, or like them who bore The faith of Wesley to our Western sh.o.r.e, And held no convert genuine till he broke Alike his servants' and the Devil's yoke; And priests like him who Newport's market trod, And o'er its slave-s.h.i.+ps shook the bolts of G.o.d!

So shall your power, with a wise prudence used, Strong but forbearing, firm but not abused, In kindly keeping with the good of all, The n.o.bler maxims of the past recall, Her natural home-born right to Freedom give, And leave her foe his robber-right,--to live.

Live, as the snake does in his noisome fen!

Live, as the wolf does in his bone-strewn den!

Live, clothed with cursing like a robe of flame, The focal point of million-fingered shame!

Live, till the Southron, who, with all his faults, Has manly instincts, in his pride revolts, Dashes from off him, midst the glad world's cheers, The hideous nightmare of his dream of years, And lifts, self-prompted, with his own right hand, The vile enc.u.mbrance from his glorious land!

"So, wheresoe'er our destiny sends forth Its widening circles to the South or North, Where'er our banner flaunts beneath the stars Its mimic splendors and its cloudlike bars, There shall Free Labor's hardy children stand The equal sovereigns of a slaveless land.

And when at last the hunted bison tires, And dies o'ertaken by the squatter's fires; And westward, wave on wave, the living flood Breaks on the snow-line of majestic Hood; And lonely Shasta listening hears the tread Of Europe's fair-haired children, Hesper-led; And, gazing downward through his boar-locks, sees The tawny Asian climb his giant knees, The Eastern sea shall hush his waves to hear Pacific's surf-beat answer Freedom's cheer, And one long rolling fire of triumph run Between the sunrise and the sunset gun!"

My task is done. The Showman and his show, Themselves but shadows, into shadows go; And, if no song of idlesse I have sung.

Nor tints of beauty on the canvas flung; If the harsh numbers grate on tender ears, And the rough picture overwrought appears, With deeper coloring, with a sterner blast, Before my soul a voice and vision pa.s.sed, Such as might Milton's jarring trump require, Or glooms of Dante fringed with lurid fire.

Oh, not of choice, for themes of public wrong I leave the green and pleasant paths of song, The mild, sweet words which soften and adorn, For sharp rebuke and bitter laugh of scorn.

More dear to me some song of private worth, Some homely idyl of my native North, Some summer pastoral of her inland vales, Or, grim and weird, her winter fireside tales Haunted by ghosts of unreturning sails, Lost barks at parting hung from stem to helm With prayers of love like dreams on Virgil's elm.

Nor private grief nor malice holds my pen; I owe but kindness to my fellow-men; And, South or North, wherever hearts of prayer Their woes and weakness to our Father bear, Wherever fruits of Christian love are found In holy lives, to me is holy ground.

But the time pa.s.ses. It were vain to crave A late indulgence. What I had I gave.

Forget the poet, but his warning heed, And shame his poor word with your n.o.bler deed.

1856.

ON A PRAYER-BOOK,

WITH ITS FRONTISPIECE, ARY SCHEFFER'S "CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR,"

AMERICANIZED BY THE OMISSION OF THE BLACK MAN.

It is hardly to be credited, yet is true, that in the anxiety of the Northern merchant to conciliate his Southern customer, a publisher was found ready thus to mutilate Scheffer's picture. He intended his edition for use in the Southern States undoubtedly, but copies fell into the hands of those who believed literally in a gospel which was to preach liberty to the captive.

O ARY SCHEFFER! when beneath thine eye, Touched with the light that cometh from above, Grew the sweet picture of the dear Lord's love, No dream hadst thou that Christian hands would tear Therefrom the token of His equal care, And make thy symbol of His truth a lie The poor, dumb slave whose shackles fall away In His compa.s.sionate gaze, grubbed smoothly out, To mar no more the exercise devout Of sleek oppression kneeling down to pray Where the great oriel stains the Sabbath day!

Let whoso can before such praying-books Kneel on his velvet cus.h.i.+on; I, for one, Would sooner bow, a Pa.r.s.ee, to the sun, Or tend a prayer-wheel in Thibetar brooks, Or beat a drum on Yedo's temple-floor.

No falser idol man has bowed before, In Indian groves or islands of the sea, Than that which through the quaint-carved Gothic door Looks forth,--a Church without humanity!

Patron of pride, and prejudice, and wrong,-- The rich man's charm and fetich of the strong, The Eternal Fulness meted, clipped, and shorn, The seamless robe of equal mercy torn, The dear Christ hidden from His kindred flesh, And, in His poor ones, crucified afres.h.!.+

Better the simple Lama scattering wide, Where sweeps the storm Alechan's steppes along, His paper horses for the lost to ride, And wearying Buddha with his prayers to make The figures living for the traveller's sake, Than he who hopes with cheap praise to beguile The ear of G.o.d, dishonoring man the while; Who dreams the pearl gate's hinges, rusty grown, Are moved by flattery's oil of tongue alone; That in the scale Eternal Justice bears The generous deed weighs less than selfish prayers, And words intoned with graceful unction move The Eternal Goodness more than lives of truth and love.

Alas, the Church! The reverend head of Jay, Enhaloed with its saintly silvered hair, Adorns no more the places of her prayer; And brave young Tyng, too early called away, Troubles the Haman of her courts no more Like the just Hebrew at the a.s.syrian's door; And her sweet ritual, beautiful but dead As the dry husk from which the grain is shed, And holy hymns from which the life devout Of saints and martyrs has wellnigh gone out, Like candles dying in exhausted air, For Sabbath use in measured grists are ground; And, ever while the spiritual mill goes round, Between the upper and the nether stones, Unseen, unheard, the wretched bondman groans, And urges his vain plea, prayer-smothered, anthem-drowned!

O heart of mine, keep patience! Looking forth, As from the Mount of Vision, I behold, Pure, just, and free, the Church of Christ on earth; The martyr's dream, the golden age foretold!

And found, at last, the mystic Graal I see, Brimmed with His blessing, pa.s.s from lip to lip In sacred pledge of human fellows.h.i.+p; And over all the songs of angels hear; Songs of the love that casteth out all fear; Songs of the Gospel of Humanity!

Lo! in the midst, with the same look He wore, Healing and blessing on Genesaret's sh.o.r.e, Folding together, with the all-tender might Of His great love, the dark bands and the white, Stands the Consoler, soothing every pain, Making all burdens light, and breaking every chain.

1859.

THE SUMMONS.

MY ear is full of summer sounds, Of summer sights my languid eye; Beyond the dusty village bounds I loiter in my daily rounds, And in the noon-time shadows lie.

I hear the wild bee wind his horn, The bird swings on the ripened wheat, The long green lances of the corn Are tilting in the winds of morn, The locust shrills his song of heat.

Another sound my spirit hears, A deeper sound that drowns them all; A voice of pleading choked with tears, The call of human hopes and fears, The Macedonian cry to Paul!

The storm-bell rings, the trumpet blows; I know the word and countersign; Wherever Freedom's vanguard goes, Where stand or fall her friends or foes, I know the place that should be mine.

Shamed be the hands that idly fold, And lips that woo the reed's accord, When laggard Time the hour has tolled For true with false and new with old To fight the battles of the Lord!

O brothers! blest by partial Fate With power to match the will and deed, To him your summons comes too late Who sinks beneath his armor's weight, And has no answer but G.o.d-speed!

1860.

TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

On the 12th of January, 1861, Mr. Seward delivered in the Senate chamber a speech on The State of the Union, in which he urged the paramount duty of preserving the Union, and went as far as it was possible to go, without surrender of principles, in concessions to the Southern party, concluding his argument with these words: "Having submitted my own opinions on this great crisis, it remains only to say, that I shall cheerfully lend to the government my best support in whatever prudent yet energetic efforts it shall make to preserve the public peace, and to maintain and preserve the Union; advising, only, that it practise, as far as possible, the utmost moderation, forbearance, and conciliation.

"This Union has not yet accomplished what good for mankind was manifestly designed by Him who appoints the seasons and prescribes the duties of states and empires. No; if it were cast down by faction to-day, it would rise again and re-appear in all its majestic proportions to-morrow. It is the only government that can stand here. Woe! woe! to the man that madly lifts his hand against it. It shall continue and endure; and men, in after times, shall declare that this generation, which saved the Union from such sudden and unlooked-for dangers, surpa.s.sed in magnanimity even that one which laid its foundations in the eternal principles of liberty, justice, and humanity."

STATESMAN, I thank thee! and, if yet dissent Mingles, reluctant, with my large content, I cannot censure what was n.o.bly meant.

But, while constrained to hold even Union less Than Liberty and Truth and Righteousness, I thank thee in the sweet and holy name Of peace, for wise calm words that put to shame Pa.s.sion and party. Courage may be shown Not in defiance of the wrong alone; He may be bravest who, unweaponed, bears The olive branch, and, strong in justice, spares The rash wrong-doer, giving widest scope, To Christian charity and generous hope.

If, without damage to the sacred cause Of Freedom and the safeguard of its laws-- If, without yielding that for which alone We prize the Union, thou canst save it now From a baptism of blood, upon thy brow A wreath whose flowers no earthly soil have known; Woven of the beat.i.tudes, shall rest, And the peacemaker be forever blest!

1861.

IN WAR TIME.

TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL AND HARRIET W. SEWAll, OF MELROSE.