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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
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~~ POEMS"
BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
NEW YORK
HURST & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
‘
A i Der ie
VAN Ba Pekan Se a ender sith ce Marek, hd
CONTENTS.
PROEM. 3) Oe. ee Ds Bh PA Me! <1 Be POL Sete ty ele ee, wy NOES 9
MocGc MEGONE:
Part if e . . J e J J e °° e
Part II. . . ee e J ee e ° J e e e e e se e c © . e 29
Part bits.
ei Se Bea OF) EP ENNACOOK «0 (4 6 ails se) ate hss ea
ais PED GUPICTTIMACK Gs. cg nse, wih @ietned el ced 6 Avan OS
7 TRO CR AR DADA tas «leas. is) eves.c) oicer. che kOnnOd.
ra DE eCRTIAUOSTILET 515) oj 61 ass.) ee) 6. 0) we pecieneeee
te IV. The Wedding. Santas ote ie Les Miyano maneee
Ca aay tale Cae MRE oe 1
Sf VI. At Pennacook. Dili atelle. 0.0.8 tsupedte 77
is WII. The Departure . LSE CME ME we he ey
yi VIII. Song of Indian Women. . off 0; e::, wika yas ieee ea eanee
\ *EGENDARY :
Sh ‘EG MGreiniaen Mme. y's eh et so teats . 8%
\. The Norsemen. ,. Pogues) ote) viel Clee
N Cassandra Southwick. RIE A OW lh ty ig Sinan aE
~ Funeral Tree of the Sokokis Bata byt eee. e nee aaa . Ioo
> SOT 4:2 |. Veer PNY aC nee Nieto 3.) . 104
, Pentucket . . wae Sie e) 6.) 6 whie et aiveh ait OO
ra The Familist’s Hymn Piles Gila yi ede. glen Maen ae cate, Sik
oy ive Fountain... 2 fender: Siete pg! on tear anette 2 115
preetUxlesirs is! | cas Seals) aM ett wr are taka
S The New Wife and the Old... . iy tii, Cee ee
s Voices oF FREEDOM:
~ ‘LOtsnamab LYOuverture sii, (ots Por ale Meliatne niet 123
REO SERRA LDS ose eee aon a ae Mreroiette, et car ke
Stanzas, Our Countrymen int Chainea ee 748 208k 149
(3)
LOR SOS O
t CONTENTS.
VoIcEs OF FRFEDOM — continued, PAGE
One ¥ aanleee ta tel oye. s0) oS a eerie is oir 151
LOW eee Use eM swan ie Va) ob DO ee ns aes a
Bone Ofsthe ree ny yli4 le! \s) ala ketene Met! 6 elit Manne
The Elanrersiot Mer tits 3 yeux ee . . 156
Clerical Oppressons fivii.') <1 sive dete activa dhs til) Colma
Phe Christian Slaveieivens. :k) etal) shaven et eene . 160
Stanzas for the Times . . 167
Lines written on reading Gov. Ritner’s Message,
1836. a . 166
Lines written on reading the Famous « Pastoral
. ‘Letter’ ; 168
Lines written for the Meeting of the Anti- Slavery So-
ciety at Chatham Street Chapel, New York, 1834 . 173
Lines written for the Celebration of the Third Anni-
versary of British Emancipation, 1837 . 174
Lines written for the Anniversary Celebration of the
First of August at Milton, 1846 . 175,
The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother to her
Daughter sold into Southern Bondage. . . . Ny 4
Address written for the one ors Pennsylvania
Ral Lew wea ets sit'ls jb, Hetica dhe ie that Mad ne arene
The Moral Warfare. ..... PN Ge Ae SKI Oy Bo
The Response... Be a er
The World’s Convention of the Friends of Emancipa-
tion, held in London in 1840... . Shs he eet OO
New Hampshire . Die 196
The New Year: addressed to the Patrons of the Penn-
Sylvania Breémen iyo 25), 4a fen . 197
Massachusetts to: Virginia .<..,. sits uisaueieanpeea ene 5
BRS RRL ee ahs: 4) ahhh eae epee an ne 209
Stanzas for the Times — 1844 ow Alpe PReGe res) win, eaael amen
The Branded Hand. . , MP ae cA cL PN ate a AL
Texas. . Bo 0) Ss ae
To Faneuil Falls ay. a 3 2 ae ag 9477 |
To Massachusetts, yi fos a... dino aheahin rite eae
be Pine ‘Tree oa, . 226
Lines suggested by a Visit to the City ‘of Washington
in the 12th Month of 1845. . seg aey
Lines from a Letter to a Young Clerical Friend. . . 232
Vorktowat! oc se ee aye tele ea Daa ding » 234
Ego, written in the Book ‘of alee Giika)\ seadene 30
To Gav. Mi Duflis as Ui tunes aie eae te Mie eran cas
CONTENTS. 5
VOICES OF FREEDOM—continued. vac
Lines written on reading ‘‘ Wrights and Wrongs of
Boston,’ Containing an Account of the Meeting ofthe
Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and the Mob
which followed onthe 21st ofthe roth month, 1835 . 245
Lines written on the adoption of Pinckney’s Resolu-
lutions : ! ‘ : : . : Bee Fy |
MISCELLANEOUS:
Palestine ; : , : : : ; fh 250
Ezekiel . : : . AP ace:
The Wife of Marah to rie eaten 5 ° Be Sy
The Cities of the Plain . : : ‘ . . 260
The Crucifixion . ; 7 ‘ ; ° 208
The Star of Bethlehem . ; ; . ° Leos
Christin the Tempest . ; ° . 266
‘¢Knowest Thou the Ordinances of Heaven’ si} 208
Hymns from the French of Lamartine . : 3 5200
The Female Martyr é : ‘ ; ; Sale 9 fe:
The Frost Spirit . ? ° é : ° Pires fs |
The Vaudois Teacher . - ; , ° Cate
The Call of the Christian ; ° . . iL 2OO
My Soul and I ; ; ¢ , or 292
To a Friend on her Return fin Rusone ‘ +: ZO
The Angel of Patience . : ; : ° - 2091
Follen, on reading his Essay on the ‘‘.Future State’’ 292
To the Reformers of England : ; a200
The Quaker of the Olden Time. ) ; . 2098
The Reformer ; . ‘ ° : , sn 2QQ
The Prisoner for Debt . ‘ 303
Lines written on reading Several Pace ohies published
by Clergymen against the Abolition of the Gallows 305
The Worship of Nature. : 309
Lines written in the Commonplace Book of a Young
Lady 5 . ‘ : : é 5 Hee
The Watcher ‘ ‘ ‘ : ° Ue BK!
The City of Refuge 7 : e i : RSET
Pee i
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Lave
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PROEM.
I LOVE the old melodious lays
Which softly melt the ages through,
The songs of Spenser’s golden days,
Arcadian Sidney’s silvery phrase,
Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning
dew.
Yet, vainly in my quiet hours
To breathe their marvellous notes I try 3
I feel them, as the leaves and flowers
In silence feel the dewy showers,
And drink with glad still lips the blessing of the sky,
The rigor of a frozen clime,
The harshness of an untaught ear,
The jarring words of one whose rhyme
Beat often Labor’s hurried time,
Or Duty’s rugged march through storm and strife, are
here.
Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace,
No rounded art the lack supplies ;
Unskilled the subtle lines to trace
Or softer shades of Nature’s face,
I view her common forms with unanointed eyes,
Nor mine the seer-like power to show
The secrets of the heart and mind ;
To drop the plummet-line below
Our common world of joy and woe,
A more intense despair or brighter hope to find,
(9)
10 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
Yet here at least an earnest sense
Of human right and weal is shown;
A hate of tyranny intense,
And hearty in its vehemence,
As if my brother’s pain and sorrow were my own.
Oh Freedom! if to me belong
Nor mighty Milton’s gift divine,
Nor Marvel’s wit and graceful song,
Still with .a love as deep and strong
As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy
shrine!
AMESBURY, 112k month, 1847.
DGG MEGONE.
rex ‘I;
{The story of Mocc MEGOoNE has been considered by the
author only as a framework for sketches of the scenery of New
England, and of its early inhabitants. In portraying the Indian
character, he has followed, as closely as his story would admit,
the rough but natural delineations of Church, Mayhew, Charie-
voix, and Roger Williams; and in so doing he has necessarily
discarded much of the romance which poets and novelists have
thrown around the ill-fated red man.—ED. ]
Wuo stands on that cliff, like a figure of stone,
Unmoving and tall in the light of the sky,
Where the spray of the cataract sparkles on high,
Lonely and sternly, save Mogg Megone? *
Close to the verge of the rock is he,
While beneath him the Saco its work is doing,
Hurrying down to its grave, the sea,
And slow through the rock its pathway hewing !
Far down, through the mist of the falling river,
Which rises up like an incense ever,
* Mocc MEGONE, or Hegone, was a leader among the Saco
indians, in the bloody war of 1677. He attacked and captured
the garrison at Black Point, October 12th of that year ; and cut
off, at the same time, a party of Englishmen near Saco River,
From a deed signed by this Indian in 1664, and from other cir-
cumstances, it seems that, previous to the war, he had mingled
much with the colonists. On this account, he was probably
selected by the principal sachems as their agent, in the treaty
signed in November, 1676.
(11)
i2 WHI1TIER’S POEMS,
The splintered points of the crags are seen,
With water howling and vexed between,
While the scooping whirl of the pool beneath
Seems an open throat, with its granite teeth !
But Mogg Megone never trembled yet
Wherever his eye or his foot was set.
He is watchful: each form, in the moonlight dim,
Of rock or of tree, is seen of him:
He listens ; each sound from afar is caught,
The faintest shiver of leaf and limb:
But he sees not the waters, which foam and fret.
Whose moonlit spray has his moccasin wet —
And the roar of their rushing, he hears it not.
The moonlight, through the open bough
Of the gnarl’d beech, whose naked root
Coils like a serpent at his foot,
Falls, checkered, on the Indian’s brow.
His head is bare, save only where
Waves in the wind one lock of hair,
Reserved for him, whoe’er he be,
More mighty than Megone in strife,
When breast to breast and knee to knee,
Above the fallen warrior’s life
Gleams, quick and keen, the scalping-knife,
Megone hath his knife and hatchet and gun,
And his gaudy and tasselled blanket on:
His knife hath a handle with gold inlaid,
And magic words on its polished blade —
"Twas the gift of Castine * to Mogg Megone,
* Baron de St. Castine came to Canada in 1644. Leaving his
civilized companions, he plunged into the great wilderness, and
settled among the Penobscot Indians, near the mouth of their
noble river. He here took for his wives the daughters of tne
MOGG MEGONE., i3
For a scalp or twain from the Yengees torns
His gun was the gift of the Tarrantine,
And Modocawando’s wives had strung
The brass and the beads, which tinkle and shine
On the polished breech, and broad bright line
Of beaded wampum around it hung.
What seeks Megone? His foes are near—
Gray Jocelyn’s * eye is never sleeping,
And the garrison lights are burning clear,
Where Phillips’ + men their watch are keeping.
Let him hie him away through the dank river fog,
Never rustling the boughs nor displacing the
rocks,
For the eyes and the ears which are watching for
Mogg,
Are keener than those of the wolf or the fox.
He starts—there’s a rustle among the leaves:
Another—the click of his gun is heard !—
A footstep—is it the step of Cleaves,
With Indian blood on his English sword ?
great Modocawando —the most powerful sachem of the east.
His castle was plundered by Governor Andros, during his
reckless administration; and the enraged Baron is supposed to
have excited the Indians into open hostility to the English.
* The owner and commander of the garrison at Black Point,
which Mogg attacked and plundered. He was an old man at
the period to which the tale relates.
+ Major Phillips, one of the principal men of the Colony.
His garrison sustained a long and terrible siege by the savages,
As a magistrate anda gentleman, he exacted of his plebeian
neighbors a remarkable degree of deference. The Court
Records of the settlement inform us that an individual was fined
for the heinous offence of saying that «« Major Phillips’ mare
was as lean as an Indian dog.”
44 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
Steals Harmon * down from the sands of York,
With hand of iron and foot of cork?
Has Scamman, versed in Indian wile,
For vengeance left his vine-hung isle? f
Hark! at that whistle, soft and low,
How lights the eye of Mogg Megone!
A smile gleams o’er his dusky brow —
‘¢ Boon welcome, Johnny Bonython !"”
Out steps, with cautious foot and slow,
\nd quick, keen glances to and fro,
The hunted outlaw, Bonython ! ¢
A low, lean swarthy man is he,
With blanket-garb and buskined knee,
And naught of English fashion on ;
* Captain Harmon, of Georgeana, now York, was, for many
years, the terror of the Eastern Indians, In one of his expedie
tions up the Kennebec River, at the head of a party of rangers,
he discovered twenty of the savages asleep by a large fire.
Cautiously creeping toward them, until he was certain of his
aim, he ordered his men to single out their objects. The first
discharge killed or mortally wounded the whole number of the
unconscious sleepers.
t Wood island, near the mouth of the Saco. It was visited
by the Sieur De Monts and Champlain, in 1603. The follow:
ing extract, from the journal of the latter, relates to it, ‘ Hav-
ing left the Kennebec, we ran along the coast to the westward,
and cast anchor under a small island, near the mainland,
where we saw twenty or more natives. I here visited an is-
land, beautifully clothed with a fine growth of forest trees, par-
ticularly of the oak and walnut; and overspread with vines,
that, in their season, produce excellent grapes. We named it
the island of Bacchus.” — Les voyages de Sieur Champlain,
£20.) 2yi Cu 8
t John Bonython was the son of Richard Bonython, Gent.,
one of the most efficient and able magistrates of the Colony.
John proved to be «a degenerate plant.” In 1635, we find,
by the Court Records, that, for some offence, he was fined 40s,
In 1640, he was fined for abuse toward R. Gibson, the minister,
MOGG MEGONE. 15
For he hates the race from whence he sprung,
And he couches his words in the Indian tongue,
‘¢ Hush — let the Sachem’s voice be weak ;
The water-rat shall hear him speak —
The owl shall whoop in the white man’s ear,
That Mogg Megone, with his scalps, is here ! **
He pauses — dark, over cheek and brow,
A flush, as of shame, is stealing now:
“Sachem |” he says, ‘‘ let me have the land,
Which stretches away upon either hand,
As far about as my feet can stray
In the half of a gentle summer’s day,
From the leaping brook* to the Saco River —=
And the fair-haired girl, thou has sought of me,
Shall sit in the Sachem’s wigwam, and be
The wife of Mogg Megone forever.”’
and Mary, his wife. Soon after, he was fined for disorderly
conduct in the house of his father. In 1645, the “ Great anc
General Court” adjudged “ John Bonython outlawed, and in
capable of any of his majesty’s laws, and proclaimed him ¢
rebel.” [Court Records of the Province, 1645.] In 1651, he
bade defiance to the laws of Massachusetts, and was again out-
lawed. He acted independently of all law and authority ; and
hence, doubtless, his burlesque title of «The Sagamore of
Saco,” which has come down to the present generation in the
following epitaph:
* Here lies Bonython; the Sagamore of Saco,
He lived a rogue, and died a knave, and went to Hobomoko.”
By some means or other, he obtained a large estate. In this
poem, I have taken some liberties with him, not strictly war-
ranted by historical facts, although the conduct imputed to him
is in keeping with his general character. Over the last years
of his life lingers a deep obscurity. Even the manner of his
death is uncertain. He was supposed to have been killed by
the Indians; but this is doubted by the able and indefatigable
author of the history of Saco and Biddeford, —Part I., p. 115.
* Foxwell’s Brook flows from a marsh or bog, called the
16 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
There’s a sudden light in the Indian’s glance,
A moment’s trace of powerful feeling —
Of love or triumph, or both perchance,
Over his proud, calm features stealing.
‘<The words of my father are very good ;
He shall have the land, and water; and wood ;
And he who harms the Sagamore John,
Shall feel the knife of Mogg Megone ;
But the fawn of the Yengees shall sleep on my
breast,
And the bird of the clearing shall sing in my nest.’
‘< But father !’’ — and the Indian’s hand
Falls gently on the white man’s arm,
And with a swile as shrewdly bland
As the deep voice is slow and calm —
¢¢ Where is my father’s singing-bird —
The sunny eye, and sunset hair?
I know I have my father’s word,
And that his word is good and fair;
But, will my father tell me where
Megone shall go and look for his bride ?—
, For he sees her not by her father’s side.’’
The dark, stern eye of Bonython
Flashes over the features of Mogg Megone,
In one of those glances which search within 3
But the stolid calm of the Indian alone
Remains where the traces of emotion has been.
‘Does the Sachem doubt? Let him go with me,
And the eyes of the Sachem his bride shall see.’
Cautious and slow, with pauses oft,
And watchful eyes and whispers soft,
* Heath,” in Saco, containing thirteen hundred acres. On this
brook, and surrounded by wild and romantic scenery, is a beag
tiful waterfall, of more than sixty feet.
MOGG MEGONE.
The twain are stealing through the wood,
Leaving the downward-rushing flood,
Whose deep and solemn roar behind,
Grows fainter on the evening wind,
Hark! — is that the angry howl
Of the wolf, the hills among ?—
Or the hooting of the owl,
On his leafy cradle swung ?—
Quickly glancing, to and fro,
Listening to each sound they gos
FP ound the columns of the pine,
Indistinct, in shadow, seeming
Like some old and pillared shrine 3
With the soft and white moonshine,
Round the foliage-tracery shed
Of each column’s branching head,
For its lamps of worship gleaming 3
And the sounds awakened there,
In the pine leaves fine and small,
Soft and sweetly musical,
By the fingers of the air,
For the anthem’s dying fall
Lingering round some temple’s wall ! «as»
Niche and cornice round and round
Wailing like the ghost of sound!
Is not Nature’s worship thus
Ceaseless ever, going on?
Hath it not a voice for us
In the thunder, or the tone
Of the leaf-harp faint and small,
Speaking to the unsealed ear
Words of blended love and fear,
Of the mighty Soul of all?
78 WHITTIER’S POEMS. -
Naught had the twain of thoughts like these
As they wound along through the crowded trees,
Where never had rung the axeman’s stroke
On the gnarled trunk of the rough-barked oak ;—<=
Climbing the dead tree’s mossy log,
Breaking the mesh of the bramble fine,
Turning aside the wild grape vine,
And lightly crossing the quaking bog
Whose surface shakes at the leap of the frog,
And out of whose pools the ghostly fog
Creeps into the chill moonshine !
Yet even that Indian’s ear had heard
The preaching of the Holy Word;
Sanchekantacket’s isle of sand
Was once his father’s hunting land,
Where zealous Hiacoomes * stood —
The wild apostle of the wood,
* Hiacoomes, the first Christian preacher on Martha’s Vine
yard; for a biography of whom the reader is referred to In-
crease Mayhew’s account of the Praying Indians, 1726. The
following is related of him: “One Lord’s day, after meeting,
where Hiacoomes had been preaching, there came in a Pow-
waw very angry, and said, ‘I know all the meeting Indians
are liars. You say you don’t care for the Powwaws;’— then,
calling two or three of them by name, he railed at them, and
told them they were deceived, for the Powwaws could kill all
the meeting Indians, if they set about it. But Hiacoomes told
him that he would be in the midst of all the Powwaws in the
island, and they should do the utmost they could against him ;
and when they should do their worst by their witchcraft to kill
him, he would without fear set himself against them, by re-
membering Jehovah. He told them also he did put all the
Powwaws under his heel. Such was the faith of this good
man. Nor were these Powwaws ever able to do these Chris-
tian Indians any hurt, though others were frequently hurt and
killed by them.” — Mayhew’s Book, pp. 6, 7, c. I.
MOGG MEGONE.
Shook from his soul the fear of harm,
And trampled on the Powwaw’s charm 3
Until the wizard’s curses hung
Suspended on his palsying tongue,
And the fierce warrior, grim and tall,
Trembled before the forest Paul!
A cottage hidden in the wood —
Red through its seams a light is glowing,
On rock and bough and tree-trunk rude,
A narrow lustre throwing.
*¢Who’s there?’”’ a clear, firm voice demands:
‘‘ Hold, Ruth —’tis I, the Sagamore!’’
Quick, at the summons, hasty hands
Unclose the bolted door ;
And on the outlaw’s daughter shine
The flashes of the kindled pine.
Tall and erect the maiden stands,
Like some young priestess of the wood,
The free born child of Solitude,
And bearing still the wild and rude,
Yet noble trace of Nature’s hands.
Her dark brown cheek has caught its stain
More from the sunshine than the rain ;
Yet, where her long fair hair is parting,
A pure white brow into light is starting ;
And, where the folds of her blanket sever,
Are a neck and bosom as white as ever
The foam-wreaths rise on the leaping river.
But, in the convulsive quiver and grip
Of the muscles around her bloodless lip,
There is something painful and sad to see ;
And her eye has a glance more sternly wild
Than even that of a for: |
In its fearless and un: - tom should be
19
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Yet, seldom in hall or court are seen
So queenly a form and so noble a mien,
As freely and smiling she welcomes them tered
Her outlawed sire and Mogg Megone:
‘« Pray, father, how does thy hunting fare?
And, Sachem, say — does Scamman' wear,
In spite of thy promise, a scalp of his own?*
Hurried and light is the maiden’s tone;
But a fearful meaning lurks within
Her glance, as it questions the eye of Megone =
An awful meaning of guilt and sin! —
The Indian hath opened his blanket, and there
Hangs a human scalp by its long damp hair !
With hand upraised, with quick-drawn breath,
She meets that ghastly sign of death.
In one long, glassy, spectral stare
The enlarging eye is fastened there,
As if that mesh of pale brown hair
Had power to change at sight alone,
Even as the fearful locks which wound
Medusa’s fatal forehead round,
The gazer into stone.
With such a look Herodias read
The features of the bleeding head,
So looked the mad Moor on his dead,
Or the young Cenci as she stood,
O’er-dabbled with a father’s blood !
Look ! — feeling melts that frozen glance,
It moves that marble countenance,
As if at once within her strove
Pity with shame, and hate with love.
The Past recalls its joy and pain,
Old ‘memories rise before her brain ==
MOGG MEGONE.
The lips which love’s embraces met,
The hand her tears of parting wet,
The voice whose pleading tones beguiled
The pleased ear of the forest-child, —
And tears she may no more repress
Reveal her lingering tenderness.
Oh ! woman wronged can cherish hate
More deep and dark than manhood may 3
But, when the mockery of Fate
Hath left Revenge its chosen way,
And the fell curse, which years have nursed,
Full on the spoiler’s head hath burst —
When all her wrong, and shame, and pain,
Burns fiercely on his heart and brain —
Still lingers something of the spell
Which bound her to the traitor’s bosom —
Still, midst the vengeful fires of hell,
Some flowers of old affection blossom.
John Bonython’s eyebrows together are drawn
With a fierce expression of wrath and scorn —=.
He hoarsely whispers, ‘‘ Ruth, beware !
Is this the time to be playing the fool —
Crying over a paltry lock of hair,
Like a love-sick girl at school ? —
Curse on it ! —an Indian can see and hears
Away —and prepare our evening cheer !”’
How keenly the Indian is watching now
Her tearful eye and her varying brow —
With a serpent eye, which kindles and burns,
Like a fiery star in the upper air :
On sire and daughter his fierce glance turns:
‘« Has my old white father a scalp to spare P
For his young one loves the pale brown hair
B2 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
Of the scalp of an English dog, far more
Than Mogg Megone, or his wigwam floor :
Go — Mogg is wise: he will keep his land —
And Sagamore John, when he feels with his hand.
Shall miss his scalp where it grew before.’’
The moment’s gust of grief is gone —
The lip is clenched — the tears are still ous
God pity thee, Ruth Bonython!
With what a strength of will
Are nature’s feelings in thy breast,
As with an iron hand repressed !
And how, upon that nameless woe,
Quick as the pulse can come and go,
While shakes the unsteadfast knee, and yet
The bosom heaves — the eye is wet —
Has thy dark spirit power to stay
The heart’s wild current on its way ?
And whence that baleful strength of guile,
Which, over that still working brow
And tearful eye and cheek, can throw
The mockery of a smile?
Warned by her father’s blackening frown,
With one strong effort crushing down
Grief, hate, remorse, she meets again
The savage murderer’s sullen gaze,
And scarcely look or tone betrays
flow the heart strives beneath its chain,
«<Is the Sachem angry — angry with Ruth,
Because she cries with an ache in her tooth, *
* «<< The tooth-ache,” says Roger Williams, in his observations
upon the language and customs of the New England tribes, « is
the only paine which will force their stoute hearts to cry.”
He afterwards remarks that even the Indian women never er¥
as he has heard “some of their men in this paine.”
MOGG MEGONE.
Which would make a Sagamore jump and cry,
And look about with a woman’s eye P
No — Ruth will sit in the Sachem’s door,
And braid the mats for his wigwam floor,
And broil his fish and tender fawn,
And weave his wampum, and grind his corn, —=
For she loves the brave and the wise, and none
Are braver and wiser than Mogg Megone!’?
The Indian’s brow is clear once more:
With grave, calm face, and half-shut eye,
He sits upon the wigwam floor,
And watches Ruth go by,
Yntent upon her household care 3
And ever and anon, the while,
Or on the maiden, or her fare,
Which smokes in grateful promise there,
Bestows his quiet smile.
Ah, Mogg Megone ! — what dreams are thine,
But those which love’s own fancies dress ==
The sum of Indian happiness ! —
A wigwam, where the warm sunshine
Looks in‘among the groves of pine —
A stream, where, round thy light canoe,
‘The trout and salmon dart in view,
And the fair girl, before thee now,
Spreading thy mat with hand of snow,
Or plying, in the dews of morn,
Her hoe amidst thy patch of corn,
Or offering up, at eve, to thee,
Thy birchen dish of hominy !
From the rude board of Bonython,
Venison and succotash have gone ==
24 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
For long these dwellers of the wooé
Have felt the gnawing want of food.
But untasted of Ruth is the frugal cheer —
With head averted, yet ready ear,
She stands by the side of her austere sire,
Feeding, at times, the unequal fire,
With the yellow knots of the pitch-pine tree,
Whose flaring light, as they kindle, falls
On the cottage-roof, and its black log walls,
And over its inmates three.
From Sagamore Bonython’s hunting flask
The fire-water burns at the lip of Megone:
4¢ Will the Sachem hear what his father shall ask ?
Will he make his mark, that it may be known,
On the speaking-leaf, that he gives the land,
From the Sachem’s own, to his father’s hand ?’”®
The fire-water shines in the Indian’s eyes,
As he rises, the white man’s bidding to do:
‘‘ Wuttamuttata — weekan ! *, Mogg is wise —
For the water he drinks is strong and new, —
Mogg’s heart is great ! — will he shut his hand,
When his father asks for a little land ?’’ —
With unsteady fingers, the Indian has drawn
On the parchment the shape of a hunter’s bow :
** Boon water — boon water — Sagamore John!
Wuttamuttata — weekan ! our hearts will grow ! ’’
He drinks yet deeper — he mutters low —
He reels on his bear-skin to and fro—
His head falls down on his naked breast —
He struggles, and sinks to a drunken rest.
* Wuttamuttata, “Let us drink.” Weekan, “It is sweet.”
Vide Roger Williams’s Key zo the Indian Language, ‘‘in that
parte of America called New England.” London, 1643, p. 35+
UMOGG MEGONE. 25
¢¢ Humph — drunk as a beast !’’ — and Bonython’s
brow
Is darker than ever with evil thought —
*¢ The fool has signed his warrant ; but how
And when shall the deed be wrought ?
Speak, Ruth! why, what the devil is there,
' To fix thy gaze in that empty air ?—
Speak, Ruth ! — by my soul, if I thought that tear,
Which shames thyself and our purpose here,
Were shed for that cursed and pale-faced dog,
Whose green scalp hangs from the belt of Mogg,
And whose beastly soul is in Satan's keeping ==
This —this ! ’? —he dashes his hand upon
The rattling stock of his loaded gun—
‘«Should send thee with him to do thy weeps
ing !’?
«* Father !’’ — the eye of Bonython
Sinks, at that low, sepulchral tone,
Hollow and deep, as it were spoken
By the unmoving tongue of death —
Or from some statue’s lips had broken —
A sound without a breath !
‘«¢ Father ! — my life I value less
Than yonder fool his gaudy dress;
And how it ends it matters not,
By heart-break or by rifle-shot :
But spare awhile the scoff and threat —.
Our business is not finished yet.”
‘‘ True, true, my girl —I only meant
To draw up again the bow unbent.
Harm thee, my Ruth! I only sought
To frighten off thy gloomy thought ; —
Come — Iet’s be friends!’’ He seeks to clasp
His daughter’s cold, damp hand in his,
26 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Ruth startles from her father’s grasp,
As if each nerve and muscle felt,
Instinctively, the touch of guilt,
Through all their subtle sympathies.
He points her to the sleeping Mogg,
‘« What shall be done with yonder dog?
Scamman is dead, and revenge is thine —
The deed is signed and the land is mine;
And this drunken fool is of use no more,
Save as thy hopeful bridegroom, and sooth,
*Twere Christian mercy, to finish him, Ruth,
Now, while he lies like a beast on our floor,—m
If not for thine, at least for his sake,
Rather than let the poor dog awake,
To drain my flask, and claim as his bride
Such a forest devil to run by his side —
Such a Wetuomanit* as thou wouldst make!”
He raughs at his jest. Hush — what is there ? —
The sleeping Indian is striving to rise,
With his knife in his hand, and glaring eyes ! —
s¢ Wagh ! —Mogg will have the pale-face’s hair,
For his knife is sharp and his fingers can help
The hair to pull and the skin to peel —
Let him cry like a woman and twist like an eel,
The great Capta-c Scamman must lose his scalp:
* Wetuomanit—a house god, or demon. ‘ They — the
andians— have given me the names of thirty-seven gods,
which I have, all which in their solemne Worships they in-
vocate !”?- R. Williams’s Briefe Observations of the Cus-
toms, Manners, Worships, &c., of the Natives, in Peace and
Warre, in Life and Death: on all which is added Spiritual Ob-
servations, General and Particular, of Chiefe and Special use —
upon all occasions — to all the English inhabiting these parts;
yet Pleasant and Profitable to the view of all Mene, p. 110,
& 21,
MOGG MEGONE. Pa
And Ruth, when she sees it, shall dance with Mogg.”
His eyes are fixed — but his lips draw in —
With a low, hoarse chuckle, and fiendish grin, —
And he sinks again, like a senseless log.
Ruth does not speak —she d ‘es not stir ;
But she gazes down on the murderer,
Whose broken and dreamful slumbers tell,
Too much for her ear, of that deed of hell.
She sees the knife, with its slaughter red,
And the dark fingers clenching the bear-skin bed J
What thoughts of horror and madness whirl
Through the burning brain of that fallen girl!
John Bonython lifts his gun to his eye,
Its muzzle is close to the Indian’s ear —
But he drops it again. ‘‘Some one may be nigh,
And I would not that even the wolves should hear.”
He draws his knife from its deer-skin belt —
its edge with his fingers is slowly felt ; —
Kneeling down on one knee, by the Indian’s side,
From his throat he opens the blanket wide ;
And twice or thrice he feebly essays
A trembling hand with the knife to raise.
“‘T cannot ’? —he mutters — ‘‘ did he not save
My life from a cold and wintry grave,
When the storm came down from Agioochook,
And the north-wind howled, and the tree-tops
shook —
And I strove, in the drifts of the rushing snow,
Till my knees grew weak and I could not go,
And I felt the cold to my vitals creep,
And my heart’s blood stiffen, and pulses sleep f
I cannot strike him — Ruth Bonython !
In the devil’s name, tell me — what’s to be done?™
“WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Oh! when the soul, once pure and high,
Is stricken down from Virtue’s sky,
As, with the downcast star of morn,
Some gems of light are with it drawn —
And, through its night of darkness, play
Some tokens of its primal day —
Some lofty feelings linger still —
The strength to dare, the nerve to meet
Whatever threatens with defeat
Its all-indomitable will !—
But lacks the mean of mind and heart,
Though eager for the gains of crime,
Oft, at this chosen place and time,
The strength to bear this evil part;
Ard, shielded by this very Vice,
Escapes from Crime by Cowardice.
Ruth starts erect — with bloodshot eye,
And lips drawn tight across her teeth,
Showing their locked embrace beneath,
In the red fire-light : — ‘‘ Mogg must die}
Give me the knife ! ’’ — The outlaw turns,
Shuddering in heart and limb, away —
But, fitfully there, the hearth-fire burns,
And he sees on the wall strange shadows play.
A lifted arm, a tremulous blade,
Are dimly pictured, in light and shade,
Plunging down in the darkness. Hark, that cry!
Again — and again — he sees it fall —
That shadowy arm down the lighted wall!
He hears quick footsteps —a shape flits by ! —
The door on its rusted hinges creaks : —
“ Ruth —daughter Ruth !’’ the outlaw shrieks,
But no sound comes back — he is standing alone
By the mangled corse of Mogg Megone!
MOGG MEGONE.
Part JI.
Tis morning over Norridgewock —
Dn tree and wigwam, wave and rock.
Bathed in the autumnal sunshine, stirred
At intervals by breeze and bird,
And wearing all the hues which glow
In heaven’s own pure and perfect bow,
That glorious picture of the air,
Which summer’s light-robed angel forms
On the dark ground of fading storms,
With pencil dipped in sunbeams there =»
And, stretching out, on either hand,
©’er all that wide and unshorn land,
Till, weary of its gorgeousness,
The aching and the dazzled eye
Rests gladdened, on the calm blue sky —
Slumbers the mighty wilderness !
The oak, upon the windy hill, 7
Its dark green burthen upward heaves ==
The hemlock broods above its rill,
Its cone-like foliage darker still,
While the white birch’s graceful stem
And the rough walnut bough receives
The sun upon their crowded leaves,
Each colored like a topaz gem ;
And the tall maple wears with them
The coronal which autumn gives,
The brief, bright sign of ruin near,
The hectic of a dying year!
The hermit priest, who lingers now
On the Bald Mountain’s shrubless brow,
30 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
The gray and thunder-smitten pile
Which marks afar the Desert Isle,*
While gazing on the scene below,
May half forget the dreams of home,
That nightly with his slumbers come,—
The tranquil skies of sunny France,
The peasant’s harvest song and dance,
The vines around the hillsides wreathing,
The soft airs midst their clusters breathing,
The wings which dipped, the stars which shone
Within thy bosom, blue Garonne!
And round the Abbey’s shadowed wall,
At morning spring and even-fall,
Sweet voices in the still air singing—
The chant of many a holy hymn—
The solemn bell of vespers ringing——_
And hallowed torch-light falling dim
On pictured saint and seraphim !
For here beneath him lies unrolled,
Bathed deep in morning’s flood of gold,
A vision gorgeous as the dream
Of the beatified may seem,
When, as his Church’s legends say,
Borne upward in ecstatic bliss,
The rapt enthusiast soars away
Unto a brighter world than this:
A mortal’s glimpse beyond the pale ——-
A moment’s lifting of the veil!
Far eastward o’er the lovely bay,
Penobscot’s clustered wigwams lay;
And gently from that Indian town
The verdant hillside slopes adown,
* Mt. Desert Island, the Bald Mountain which overlooks
Frenchman’s and Penobscot Bay. It was upon this island that
the Jesuits made their earliest settlement.
MOGG MEGONE.
To where the sparkling waters play
Upon the yellow sands below;
And shooting round the winding shores
Of narrow capes, and isles which lie
Slumbering to ocean’s lullaby —
With birchen boat and glancing oars,
The red men to their fishing go;
While from their planting ground is borne
The treasure of the golden corn,
‘By laughing girls, whose dark eyes glow
Wild through the locks which o’er them flow,
The wrinkled squaw, whose toil is done,
Sits on her bear-skin: in the sun,
Watching the huskers, with a smile
For each full ear which swells the piles
And the old chief, who never more
May bend the bow or pull the oar,
Smokes gravely in his wigwam door,
Or slowly shapes, with axe of stone
The arrow-head from flint and bone,
Beneath the westward-turning eye
A thousand wooded islands lie —
Gems of the waters ! — with each hue
Of brightness set in ocean’s blue.
Wach bears aloft its tuft of trees
Touched by the pencil of the frost,
And, with the motion of each breeze,
A moment seen —a moment lost —
Changing and blent, confused and tossed,
The brighter with the darker crossed,
Their thousand tints of beauty glow
Down in the restless waves below,
And tremble in the sunny skies,
As if, from waving bough to bough,
& WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Flitted the birds of paradise.’
There sleep Placentia’s group — and there
Pére Breteaux marks the hour of prayer;
And there, beneath the sea-worn cliff,
On which the Father’s hut is seen,
The Indian stays his rocking skiff,
And peers the hemlock boughs between,
Half trembling, as he seeks to look
Upon the Jesuit’s Cross and Book.*
There, gloomily against the sky,
The Dark Isles rear their summits high ¢
And Desert Rock, abrupt and bare,
Lifts its gray turrets in the air —
Seen from afar, like some strong hold
Built by the ocean kings of old;
And, faint as smoke-wreath white and thin,
Swells in the north vast Katadin:
And, wandering from its marshy feet,
The broad Penobscot comes to meet
And mingle with his own bright bay.
Slow sweep his dark and gathering floods,
Arched over by the ancient woods,
Which Time, in those dim solitudes,
Wielding the dull axe of Decay,
Alone hath ever shorn away.
Not thus, within the woods which hide
The beauty of thy azure tide,
And with their falling timbers block
Thy broken currents, Kennebec !
*Father Hennepin, a missionary among the Iroquois, men-
tions that the Indians believed him to bea conjurer, and that
they were particularly afraid of a bright silver chalice which he
had in his possession. ‘The Indians,” says Pére Jerome Lallar
mant, “fear us as the greatest sorcerers on earth.”
MOGG MEGONE. da
@avew the white man on the wreck
Of ths down-trodden Norridgewock =
In one Iae village hemmed at length,
In battle whorn of half their strength,
Turned, lie the panther in his lair,
With hie fast-flowing life-blood wet,
For one lase struggle of despair, _
Woundew and faint, but tameless yet!
Unreaped, upon the planting lands,
The scant, -ieglected harvest stands:
No shoux is there — no dance — no songs
The aspect wf the very child
Scowls witn a meaning sad and wild
Of bitterness and wrong.
The almost infant Norridgewock
Essays to lirt the tomahawk ;
And plucks his father’s knife away,
To mimic, «m his frightful play,
The scaiping of an English foe:
Wreathes on his lip a horrid smile,
Burns, like a snake’s, his small eye, while
Some vougii or sapling meets his blow.
The fisner, as he drops his line,
Starts, when he sees the hazels quiver
Along the margin of the river,
Looks up and down the rippling tide,
And grasps the firelock at his side.
For Bomazeen * from Tacconock
Has sent his runners to Norridgewock,
With tidings that Moulton and Harmon of York
Far up the river have come:
* Bomazeen is spoken of by Penhallow as “ the famous war
rior and chieftain of Norridgewock.” He was killed in the
attack of the English upon Norridgewock, in 1724.
84 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
They have left their boats —they have entered the
wood,
And filied the depths of the solitude
With the sound of the ranger’s drum.
On the brow of a hill, which slopes to meet
The flowing river, and bathe its feet —
The bare-washed rock, and the drooping grass,
And the creeping vine, as the waters pass —
A rude and unshapely chapel stands,
Built up in that wild by unskilled hands ;
Yet the traveler knows it a place of prayer,
For the holy sign of the cross is there:
And should he chance at that place to be,
Of a Sabbath morn, or some hallowed day,
When prayers are made and masses are said,
Some for the living and some for the dead,
Well might that traveler start to see
The tall dark forms, that take their way
From the birch canoe, on the river-shore,
And the forest paths, to that chapel door ;
And marvel to mark the naked knees
And the dusky foreheads bending there,
While, in coarse white vesture, over these
In blessing or in prayer,
Stretching abroad his thin pale hands,
Like a shrouded ghost, the Jesuit * stands..
* Pére Ralle, or Rasles, was one of the most zealous and in-
defatigable of that band of Jesuit missionaries who, at the be-
ginning of the seventeenth century, penetrated the forests of
America, with the avowed object of converting the heathen,
The first religions mission of the Jesuits, to the savages in
North America, was in 1611. The zeal of the fathers for the
conversion of the Indians to the Catholic faith knew no bounds,
For this, they plunged into the depths o7 the wilderness; habit-
wated themselves to all the hardships and privations of the
aatives; suffered cold, hunger, and some of them death itself
wuGG MEGONE at
Two forms are now in that chapel dim,
The Jesuit, silent and sad and pale,
Anxiously heeding some fearful tale,
Which a a stranger is telling him.
That stranger’s garb is soiled and torn,
And wet with dew and loosely worn ;
Her fair neglected hair falls down
O’er cheeks with wind and sunshine brown;
by the extremest tortures. Pére Brebeuf, after laboring in the
cause of his mission for twenty years, together with his come
panion, Pére Lallamant, was burned alive. To these might be
added the names of those Jesuits who were put to death by the
Iroquois — Daniel, Garnier, Buteaux, La Riborerde, Goupil,
Constantin, and Liegeouis. «For bed,” says Father Lallamant,
in his Relation de ce gui s’est dans le pays des Hurons, 1640, c.
3, “we have nothing but a miserable piece of bark of a tree;
for nourishment, a handful or two of corn, either roasted or
soaked in water, which seldom satisfies our hunger; and after
all, not venturing to perform even the ceremonies of our reli-
gion, without being considered as sorcerers.” Their success
among the natives, however, by no means equalled their exer-
tions. Pére Lallamant says —* With respect to adult persons,
in good health, there is little apparent success; on the contrary,
there have been nothing but storms and whirlwinds from that
quarter.”
Sebastien Ralle established himself, some time about the year
1670, at Norridgewock, where he continued more than forty
years. He was accused, and perhaps not without justice, of ex-
citing his praying Indians against the English, whom he looked
upon as the enemies not only of his king, but also of the Cath-
olic religion. He was killed by the English, in 1724, at the
foot of the cross, which his own hands had planted. This In-
dian church was broken up, and its members either killed out-
right or dispersed.
In a letter written by Ralle to his nephew, he gives the fol
fowing account of his church, and his own labors. «All my
converts repair to the church regularly twice every day ; first,
very early in the morning, to attend mass, and again in the
evening, to assist in the prayers at sunset. As it is necessary
fo fix the imagination of savages, whose attention is easily dis
36 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
Yet still, in that disordered face,
The Jesuit’s cautious eye can trace
Those elements of former grace,
Which, half effaced, seem scarcely less,
Even now, than perfect loveliness.
With drooping head, and voice so low
That scarce it meets the Jesuit’s ears —
While through her clasp’d fingers flow,
From the heart’s fountain, hot and slow,
Her penitential tears —
She tells the story of the woe
And evil of her years.
¢¢ Oh Father, bear with me; my heart
Is sick and death-like, and my brain
Seems girdled with a fiery chain,
Whose scorching links will never part,
And never cool again.
Bear with me while I speak — but turn
Away that gentle eye, the while —
The fires of guilt more fiercely burn
Beneath its holy smile ;
For half I fancy I can see
My mother’s sainted look in thee.
‘« My dear lost mother! sad and pale,
Mournfully sinking day by day,
tracted, I have eamposed prayers, calculated to inspire them
with just sentiments of the august sacrifice of our altars: they
chant, or at least recite them aloud, during mass. Besides
preaching to them on Sundays and Saints’ days, I seldom let a
working day pass, without making a concise exhortation, for
the purpose of inspiring them with horror at those vices to
which they are most addicted, or to confirm them in the prac-
tice of some particular virtue.” Vide Lettres Edifiantes e
Cur., vol. vi., p. 127.
MOGG MEGONE.
And with a hold on life as frail
As frosted leaves, that, thin and gray,
Hang feebly on their parent spray,
And tremble in the gale;
Yet watching o’er my childishness
With patient fondness — not the less
For all the agony which kept
Her blue eye wakeful, while I slept;
And checking every tear and groan
That haply might have waked my owng
And bearing still, without offence,
My idle words, and petulance ;
Reproving with a tear — and, while
The tooth of pain was keenly preying
Upon her very heart, repaying
My brief repentance with a smile.
¢¢ Oh, in her meek, forgiving eye
There was a brightness not of mirth==
A light, whose clear intensity
Was borrowed not of earth.
Along her cheek a deepening red
Told where the feverish hectic fed;
And yet, each fatal token gave
To the mild beauty of her face
A newer and a dearer grace,
Unwarning of the grave.
"Twas like the hue which autumn gives
To yonder changed and dying leaves,
Breathed over by his frosty breath ;
Scarce can the gazer feel that this
Is but the spoiler’s treacherous kiss,
The mocking-smile of Death!
“* Sweet were the tales she used to tell
When summer’s eve was dear to us,
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
And, fading from the darkening det
The glory of the sunset fell
On wooded Agamenticus, —
When, sitting by our cottage wall,
The murmur of the Saco’s fall,
And the south wind’s expiring sighs
Came, softly blending, on my ear,
With the low tones I loved to hear:
Tales of the pure—the good — the ¥ ise—=
The holy men and maids of old,
In the all-sacred pages told ; —
Of Rachel, stooped at Haran’s fountains,
Amid her father’s thirsty flock,
Beautiful to her kinsman seeming
As the bright angels of his dreaming,
On Padan-aran’s holy rock ;
Of gentle Ruth — and her who kept
Her awful vigil on the mountains,
By Israel’s virgin daughters wept ;
Of Miriam, with her maidens, singing
The song for grateful Israel meet,
While every crimson wave was bringing
The spoils of Egypt at her feet ;
Of her — Samaria’s humble daughter,
Who paused to hear, beside her well,
Lessons of love and truth, which fell
Softly .as Shiloh’s flowing water ;
And saw, beneath his pilgrim guise,
The Promised One, so long foretold
By holy seer and bard of old,
Revealed before her wondering eyes?
«« Slowly she faded. Day by day
Her step grew weaker in our hall,
And fainter, at each even-fall,
Her sad voice died away.
MOGG MEGONE.
Yet on her thin, pale lip, the while,
Sat Resignation’s holy smile : ;
And even my father checked his tread,
And hushed his voice, beside her bed :
Beneath the calm and sad rebuke
Of her meek eye’s imploring look,
The scowl of hate his brow forsook,
And, in his stern and gloomy eye,
At times, a few unwonted tears
Wet the dark lashes, which for years
Hatred and pride had kept so dry.
‘¢ Calm as a child to slumber soothed,
As if an angel’s hand had smoothed
The still, white features into rest,
Silent and cold, without a breath
To stir the drapery on her breast,
Pain, with its keen and poisoned fang,
The horror of the mortat pang,
The suffering look her brow had worn,
The fear, the strife, the anguish gone
She slept at last in death!
¢¢ Oh, tell me, father, caz the dead
Walk on the earth, and look on us,
And lay upon the living’s head
Their blessing or their curse ?
For, oh, last night she stood by me,
As I lay beneath the woodland tree!”
The Jesuit crosses himself in awe —
* Jesu! what was it my daughter saw? *”
‘« She came to me last night.
The dried leaves did not feel her tread
She stood by me in the wan moonlight,
In the white robes of the dead !
WHITTIER’S POEMS,
Pale, and very mournfully
She bent her light form over me.
I heard no sound, I felt no breath
Breathe o’er me from that face of death:
Its blue eyes rested on my own,
Rayless and cold as eyes of stone ;
Yet, in their fixed, unchanging gaze,
Something, which spoke of early days —
A sadness in their quiet glare,
As if love’s smile were frozen there —
Came o’er me with an icy thrill;
Oh God! I feel its presence still !”’
The Jesuit makes the holy sign —
‘‘ How passed the vision, daughter mine?”
¢¢ All dimly in the wan moonshine,
As a wreath of mist will twist and twine,
And scatter, and melt into the light —
So scattering — melting on my sight,
The pale, cold vision passed ;
But those sad eyes were fixed on mine
Mournfully to the last.”’
**God help thee, daughter, tell me why
That spirit passed before thine eye !”?
*¢ Father, I know not, save it be
That deeds of mine have summoned her
From the unbreathing sepulchre,
To leave her last rebuke with me.
Ah, woe for me! my mother died
Just at the moment when I stood
Close on the verge of womanhood,
A child in everything beside ;
And when my wild heart rieeded most
Her gentle counsels, they were lost.
MOGG MEGONE,
¢¢ My father lived a stormy life,
Of frequent change and daily strife;
And — God forgive him! left his child
To feel, like him, a freedom wild;
To love the red man’s dwelling place,
The birch boat on his shaded floods,
The wild excitement of the chase
Sweeping the’ ancient woods,
The camp-fire, blazing on the shore
Of the still lakes, the clear stream, where
The idle fisher sets his wear,
Or angles in the shade, far more
Than that restraining awe I felt
Beneath my gentle mother’s care,
When nightly at her knee I knelt,
With childhood’s simple prayer.
‘‘There came a change. The wild, glad mood
Of unchecked freedom passed.
Amid the ancient solitude
Of unshorn grass and waving wood,
And waters glancing bright and fast,
A softened voice was in my ear,
Sweet as those lulling sounds and fine
The hunter lifts his head to hear,
Now far and faint, now full and near —
The murmur of the wind-swept pine.
A manly form was ever nigh,
A bold, free hunter, with an eye
Whose dark, keen glance had power to wake
Both fear and love —to awe and charm;
’'Twa. as the wizard rattlesnake,
Whose evil glances lure to harm —
Whose cold and small and glittering eye,
And brilliant coil, and changing dye,
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Draw, step by step, the gazer near,
With drooping wing and cry of fear,
Yet powerless all to turn away,
A conscious, but a willing prey!
‘« Fear, doubt, thought, life itself, ere long
Merged in one feeling deep and strong.
Faded the world which I had known,
A poor vain shadow, cold and waste,
In the warm present bliss alone
Seemed I of actual life to taste.
Fond longings dimly understood,
The glow of passion’s quickening blood,
And cherished fantasies which press
The young lip with a dream’s caress, —
The heart’s forecast and prophecy
Took form and life before my eye,
Seen in the glance which met my own,
Heard in the soft and pleading tone,
Felt in the arms around me cast,
And warm heart-pulses beating fast.
Ah! scarcely yet to God above
With deeper trust, with stronger love
Has prayerful saint his meek heart lent,
Or cloistered nun at twilight bent,
Than I, before a human shrine,
As mortal and as frail as mine,
With heart, and soul, and mind, ‘and form,
Knelt madly to a fellow worm.
¢¢ Full soon, upon that dream of sin,
An awful light came bursting in.
The shrine was cold, at which I knelt;
The idol of that shrine was gone;
A humbled thing of shame and guilt,
Qutcast, and spurned and lone,
HOGG MEGONE,
Wrapt in the shadows of my crime,
With withering heart and burning brain,
And tears that fell like fiery rain,
I passed a fearful time.
‘< There came a voice — it checked the teat ou
In heart and soul it wrought a change ; —
My father’s voice was in my ear;
It whispered of revenge!
A new and fiercer feeling swept
All lingering tenderness away ;
And tiger passions, which had slept
In childhoed’s better day,
Unknown, unfelt, arose at length
In all their own demoniac strength.
‘¢A youthful warrior of the wild,
By words deceived, by smiles beguiled,
Of crime the cheated instrument,
Upon our fatal errands went.
Through camp and town and wilderness
He tracked his victim; and, at last,
Just when the tide of hate had passed,
And milder thoughts came warm and fast,
Exulting, at my feet he cast
The bloody token of success.
*¢Oh God! with what an awful power
I saw the buried past uprise,
And gather, in aesingle hour,
Its ghost-like memories !
And then I felt —alas! too late—
That underneath the mask of hate,
That shame and guilt and wrong had thrown
O’er feelings which they might not own,
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
The .ieart’s wild love had known no change g
And still, that deep and hidden love,
With its first fondness, wept above
The victim of its own revenge !
There lay the fearful scalp, and there
The blood was on its pale brown hair!
I thought not of the victim’s scorn,
I thought not of his baleful guile,
My deadly wrong, my outcast name,
The characters of sin and shame
On heart and forehead drawn ;
I only saw that victim’s smile —
The still, green places where we met—
The moonlit branches, dewy wet;
I only felt, I only heard
The greeting and the parting word —
The smile—the embrace—the tone,
made
An Eden of the forest shade.
«* And oh, with what a loathing eye,
With what a deadly hate, and deep,
1 saw that Indian murderer he
Before me, in his drunken sleep!
What though for me the deed was done,
And words of mine had sped him on!
Yet when he murmured, as he slept,
The horrors of that deed of blood,
The tide of utter madness swept
O’er brain and bosom, like a.flood.
And, father, with this hand of mine’’—
which
‘‘Ha! what didst thou?’’ the Jesuit cries,
Shuddering, as smitten with sudden pain,
And shading, with one thin hand, his eyes,
With the other he makes the holy sign —
MOGG MEGONE. 45
*¢T smote him as I would a worm ; —
With heart as steeled — with nerves as firm:
He never woke again !”’
‘¢ Woman of sin and blood and shame,
Speak —I would know that victim’s name.”
‘¢ Father,’’ she gasped, ‘‘a chieftain, known
As Saco’s Sachem — Mocc MEGoNE!”’
Pale priest! What proud and lofty dreams,
What keen desires, what cherished schemes,
What hopes, that time may not recall,
Are darkened by that chieftain’s fall!
Was he not pledged, by cross and vow,
To lift the hatchet of his sire,
And, round his own, the Church’s foe,
To light the avenging fire?
Who now the Tarrantine shall wake,
For thine and for the Church’s sake?
Who summon to the scene
Of conquest and unsparing strife,
And vengeance dearer than his life,
The fiery-souled Castine ? *
Three backward steps the Jesuit takes —
His long, thin frame as ague shakes:
* The character of Ralle has probably never been correctly
delineated. By his brethren of the Romish Church, he has been
nearly apotheosized. On the other hand, our Puritan historians
have represented him as a demon in human form. Hewas un-
doubtedly sincere in his devotion to the interests of his church,
and not overscrupulous as to the means of advancing those
interests. ‘The French,” says the author of the History of
Saco and Biddeford, “after the peace of 1713, secretly promised
to supply the Indians with arms and aramunition, if they would
renew hostilities. Their principal agent was the celebrated
Ralle, the French Jesuit.”— p. 215.
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
And loathing hate is in his eye,
As from his lips these words of fear
Fall hoarsely on the maiden’s ear —
«¢The soul that sinneth shall surely die!”
She stands, as stands the stricken deer,
Checked midway in the fearful chase,
When bursts, upon his eye and ear,
The gaunt, gray robber, baying near,
Between him and his hiding place;
While still behind, with yell and blow,
Sweeps, like a storm, the coming foe.
«<Save me, O holy man! ’’— her cry
Fills all the void, as if a tongue,
Unseen, from rib and rafter hung,
Thrilling with mortal agony ;
Her hands are clasping the Jesuit’s knee,
And her eye looks fearfully into his own; =,
‘¢ Off, woman of sin ¢— nay, touch not me
With those fingers of dlood ; — begone!”’
With a gesture of horror, Le spurns the form
‘That writhes at his feet like a trodden worm,
Ever thus the spirit must,
Guilty in the sight of Heaven,
With a keener woe be riven,
For its weak and sinful truse
In the strength of human dust;
And its anguish thrill afresh,
Yor each vain reliance given
To the failing arm of flesh.
MOGG MEGONE,
Part III.
Au, weary Priest ! — with pale hands pressed
On thy throbbing brow of pain,
Baffled in thy lifelong quest,
Overworn with toiling vain,
How ill thy troubled musings fit
The holy quiet of a breast
With the Dove of Peace at rest,
Sweetly brooding over it !
Thoughts are thine which have no part
With the meek and pure of heart,
Undisturbed by outward things,
Resting in the heavenly shade,
By the overspreading wings
Of the Blessed Spirit made.
Thoughts of strife and hate and wrong
Sweep thy heated brain along —
Fading hopes, for whose success
It were sin to breathe a prayer ; —
Schemes which heaven may never bless ==
Fears which darken to despair.
Hoary priest! thy dream is done
Of a hundred red tribes won
To the pale of Holy Church;
And the heretic o’erthrown,
And his name no longer known,
And thy weary brethren turning,
Joyful from their years of mourning,
’Twixt the altar and the porch.
Wark ! what sudden sound is heard
In the wood and in the sky,
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Shriller than the scream of bird —
Than the trumpet’s clang more high $
Every wolf-cave of the hills —
Forest arch and mountain gorge,
Rock and dell and river verge —
With an answering echo thrills.
Well does the Jesuit know that cry,
Which summons the Norridgewock to die,
And tells that the foe of his flock is nigh.
He listens, and hears the rangers come,
With loud hurrah, and jar of drum,
And hurrying feet (for the chase is hot),
And the short, sharp sound of rifle shot,
And taunt and menace — answered well
By the Indians’ mocking cry and yell —
The bark of dogs —the squaw’s mad scream ===
The dash of paddles along the stream —
The whistle of shot as it cuts the leaves
Of the maples around the church’s eaves —=
And the gride of hatchets, fiercely thrown,
On wigwam-log and tree and stone.
Black with the grime of paint and dust,
Spotted and streaked with human gore,
A grim and naked head is thrust
Within the chapel door.
‘¢ Ha — Bomazeen ! — In God’s name say,
What mean these sounds of bloody fray ? *
Silent, the Indian points his hand
To where across the echoing glen
Sweep Harmon’s dreaded ranger-band,
And Moulton with his men.
¢¢ Where are thy warriors, Bomazeen ?
MOGG MEGONE, 49
Where are De Rouville * and Castine,
And where the braves of Sawga’s queen? ””
‘Let my father find the winter snow
Which the sun drank up long moons ago!
Under the falls of Tacconock,
The wolves are eating the Norridgewock 3
Castine with his wives lies closely hid
Like a fox in the woods of Pemaquid !
On Sawga’s banks the man of war
Sits in his wigwam like a squaw —
Squando has fled, and Mogg Megone,
Struck by the knife of Sagamore John,
Lies stiff and stark and cold as a stone.”
Fearfully over the Jesuit’s face,
Of a thousand thoughts, trace after trace,
Like swift cloud-shadows, each other chase,
One instant, his fingers grasp his knife,
For a last vain struggle for cherished life —
The next, he hurls the blade away,
And kneels at his altar’s foot to pray ;
Over his beads his fingers stray,
And he kisses the cross, and calls aloud
On the Virgin and her Son ;
For terrible thoughts his memory crowd
Of evil seen and done —
Of scalps brought home by his savage floc
From Casco and Sawga and Sagadahock,
In the Church’s service won.
* Hertel de Rouville was an active and unsparing enemy of
the English. He was the leader of the combined French and
Indian forces which destroyed Deerfield, and massacred its in-
habitants, in 1703. He was afterwards killed in the attack
upon Haverhill. Tradition says that on examining his deaé¢
body, his head and face were found to be perfectly smooth
without the slightest appearance of hair or beard,
50 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
No shrift the gloomy savage brooks,
As scowling on the priest he looks:
‘«« Cowesass — cowesass — tawhich wessaseen ?*
Let my father look upon Bomazeen —
My father’s heart is the heart of a squaw,
But mine is so hard that it does not thaw:
Let my father ask his God to make
A dance and a feast for a great sagamore,
When he paddles across the western lake
With his dogs and his squaws to the sririt’s
shore.
Cowesass — cowesass — tawhich wessaseen ?
‘Let my father die like Bomazeen !’’
Through the chapel’s narrow doors,
And through each window in the walls,
Round the priest and warrior pours
The deadly shower of English balls.
Low on his cross the Jesuit falls ;
While at his side the Norridgewock,
With failing breath, essays to mock
And menace yet the hated foe —
Shakes his scalp-trophies to and fro
Exultingly before their eyes —
Till, cleft and torn by shot and blow,
Defiant still, he dies.
‘*So fare ail eaters of the frog!
Death to the Babylonish dog !
Down with the beast of Rome! ”’
With shouts like these, around the dead,
Unconscious on his bloody bed,
The rangers crowding come.
* Cowesass ?—tawhich wessaseen? Are you afraid?—
why fear you?
MOGG MEGONE.
Brave men! the dead priest cannot hear
The unfeeling taunt —the brutal jeer ; —
Spurn — for he sees ye not —in wrath,
The symbol of your Saviour’s death ; —
Tear from his death-grasp, in your zeal,
And trample, as a thing accursed,
The cross he cherished in the dust ;
The dead man cannot feel !
Brutal alike in deed and word,
With callous heart and hand of strife,
How like a fiend may man be made,
Plying the foul and monstrous trade
Whose harvest-field is human life,
Whose sickle is the reeking sword !
Quenching, with reckless hand, in blood,
Sparks kindled by the breath of God ;
Urging the deathless soul, unshriven
Of open guilt or secret sin,
Before the bar of that pure Heaven
The holy only enter in!
Oh! by the widow’s sore distress,
The orphan’s wailing wretchedness,
By Virtue struggling in the accursed
Embraces of polluting Lust,
By the fell discord of the Pit,
And the pained souls that people it,
And by the blessed peace which fills
The Paradise of God forever,
Resting on all its holy hills,
And flowing with its crystal river =
Let Christian hands no longer bear
In triumph on his crimson car
The foul and idol god of war;
5i
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
No more the purple wreaths prepare
To bind amid his snaky hair ;
Nor Christian bards his glories tell,
Nor Christian tongues his praises swell.
Through the gun-smoke wreathing white,
Glimpses on the soldiers’ sight
A thing of human shape I ween,
For a moment only seen,
With its loose hair backward streaming,
And its eyeballs madly gleaming,
Shrieking, like a soul in pain,
From the world of light and breath,
Hurrying to its place again,
Spectre-like it vanisheth !
Wretched girl! one eye alone
Notes the way which thou has gone,
That great Eye, which slumbers never,
Watching o’er a lost world ever,
Tracks thee over vale and mountain,
By the gushing forest-fountain,
Plucking from the vine its fruit,
Searching for the ground-nut’s root,
Peering in the she wolf’s den,
Wading through the marshy fen,
Where the sluggish water-snake
Basks beside the sunny brake,
Coiling in his slimy bed,
Smooth and cold against thy tread —
Purposeless, thy mazy way
Threading through the lingering day,
And at night securely sleeping
Where the dogwood’s dews are weeping !
Still, though earth and man discard thee,
Doth thy heavenly Father guard thee —=
MOGG MEGONE.
He who spared the guilty Cain,
Even when a brother’s blood,
Crying in the ear of God,
Gave the earth its primal stain —
He whose mercy ever liveth,
Who repenting guilt forgiveth,
And the broken heart receiveth ; —
Wanderer of the wilderness,
Haunted, guilty, crazed and wild,
He regardeth thy distress,
And careth for his sinful child !
*Tis springtime on the eastern hills !
Like torrents gush the summer rills ;
Through winter’s moss and dry dead leaves
The bladed grass revives and lives,
Pushes the mouldering waste away,
And glimpses to the April day.
In kindly shower and sunshine bud
The branches of the dull gray wood;
Out from its sunned and sheltered nooks
The blue eye of the violet looks;
The southwest wind is warmly blowing,
And odors from the springing grass,
The pine-tree and the sassafras,
Are with it on its errands going.
A band is marching through the wood
Where rolls the Kennebec his flood —
The warriors of the wilderness,
Painted, and in their battle dress ;
And with them one whose bearded cheek,
And white and wrinkled brow, bespeak
A wanderer from the shores of France.
WHITTIER’ S POEMS.
A few long locks of scattering snow
Beneath a battered morion flow,
And from the rivets of the vest
Which girds in steel his ample breast,
The slanted sunbeams glance.
In the harsh outlines of his face
Passion and sin have left their trace ;
Yet, save worn brow and thin gray hair,
No signs of weary age are there.
His step is firm, his eye is keen,
Nor years in broil and battle spent,
Nor toil, nor wounds, nor pain have bent
The lordly frame of old Castine.
No purpose now of strife and blood
Urges the hoary veteran on:
The fire of conquest, and the mood
Of chivalry have gone.
A mournful task is his —to lay
Within the earth the bones of those
Who perished in that fearful day,
When Norridgewock became the prey
Of all unsparing foes.
Sadly and still, dark thoughts between,
Of coming vengeance mused Castine,
Of the fallen chieftain Bomazeen,
Who bade for him the Norridgewocks
Dig up their buried tomahawks
For firm defiance or swift attack ;
And him whose friendship formed the tie
Which held the stern self-exile back .
From lasping into savagery ;
Whose garb and tone and kindly glance
Recalled a younger, happier day,
4nd prompted memory’s fond essay,
MOGG MEGONE.
To bridge the mighty waste which lay
Between his wild home and that gray,
Tall chateau of his native France,
Whose chapel bell, with far-heard din
Ushered his birth hour gayly in,
And counted with its solemn toll,
fhe masses for his father’s soul.
clark! from the foremost of the band
Suddenly bursts the Indian yell ;
“or now on the very spot they stand
Where the Norridgewocks fighting fell.
Nc vigwam smoke is curling there;
The very earth is scorched and bare:
And they pause and listen to catch a sound
Of breathing life — but there comes not one,
Save the fox’s bark and the rabbit’s bound ;
But here and there, on the blackened ground,
White bones are glistening in the sun.
And where the house of prayer arose,
And the holy hymn, at daylight’s close,
And the aged priest stood up to bless,
The children of the wilderness,
There is naught save ashes sodden and dank
And the birchen boats of the Norridgewosk
Tethered to tree and stump and rock,
Rotting along the river bank !
Blessed Mary ! — who is she
Leaning against that maple tree ?
The sun upon her face burns hot,
But the fixed eyelid moveth not;
The squirrel’s chirp is shrill and clear
From the dry bough above her ear ;
Dashing from rock and root its spray,
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Close at her feet the river rushes ;
The black-bird’s wing against her brusnes,
And sweetly through the hazel bushes
The robin’s mellow music gushes ; —
God save her! will she sleep alway?
Castine hath bent him over the sleeper:
‘Wake, daughter — wake! ’’ — but she stirs ne
limb:
The eye that looks on him is fixed and dim ;
And the sleep she is sleeping shall be no deeper,
Until the angel’s oath is said,
And the final blast of the trump goes forth
To the graves of the sea and the graves of earth
RUTH BONYTHON IS DEAD!
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.*
WE had been wandering for many days
Through the rough northern country. We had seen
The sunset, with its bars of purple cloud,
ike a new heaven, shine upward from the lake
Of Winnepiseogee ; and had felt
The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy aisles
Which stoop their summer beauty to the lips
Of the bright waters. We had checked our steeds,
Silent with wonder, where the mountain wall
Is piled to heaven; and, through the narrow rift
*Winnepurkit, otherwise called George, Sachem of Saugus,
married a daughter of Passaconaway, the great Pennacook
chieftain, in 1662. The wedding took place at Pennacook
(now Concord, N. H.), and the ceremonies closed with a great
feast. According to the usages of the chiefs, Passaconaway
ordered a select number of his men to accompany the newly-
married couple to the dwelling of the husband, where in turn
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 57
Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet
Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar,
Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind
Comes burdened with the everlasting moan
Of forests and of far-off waterfalls,
We had looked upward where the summer sky,
Tasselled with clouds light-woven by the sun,
Sprung its blue arch above the abutting crags
O’er-roofing the vast portal of the land
Beyond the wall of mountains. We had passed
The high source of the Saco; and, bewildered
In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills,
Had heard above us, like a voice in the cloud,
The horn of Fabyan sounding; and atop
Of old Agioochook had seen the mountains
Piled to the northward, shagged with wood, and
thick
As meadow mole hills— the far sea of Casco,
A white gleam on the horizon of the east ;
Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods and hills;
Moosehillock’s mountain range, and Kearsarge
Lifting his Titan forehead to the sun !
And we had rested underneath the oaks
Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires are shaken
there was another great feast. Some time after, the wife of
Winnepurkit expressing a desire to visit her father’s house,
was permitted to go accompanied by a brave escort of her hus-
band’s chief men. But when she wished to return, her father
sent a messenger to Saugus, informing her husband, and ask-
ing him to come and take her away. He returned for answer
that he has escorted his wife to her father’s house in a style
that became a chief, and that now if she wished to return, her
father must send her back in the same way. This Passacona-
way refused to do, and it is said that here terminated the con-
aection of his daughter with the Saugus chief.— Vide Mor
ton’s New Canaan,
58 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
By the perpetual beating of the falls
Of the wild Ammonoosuc. We had tracked
The winding Pemigewasset, overhung
By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks,
Or lazily gliding through its intervals,
From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam
Of sunlit waters. We had seen the moon
Rising behind Umbagog’s eastern pines
Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its beams
At midnight spanning with a bridge of silver
The Merrimack by Uncanoonuc’s falls.
There were five souls of us whom travel’s chance
Had thrown together in these wild north hills; —
A city lawyer, for a month escaping
From his dull office, where the weary eye
Saw only hot brick walls and close thronged streets =, .
Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see
Life’s sunniest side, and with a heart to take
Its chances all as God-sends ; and his brother,
Pale from long pulpit studies, yet retaining
The warmth and freshness of a genial heart,
Whose mirror of the beautiful and true,
In Man and Nature, was as yet undimmed
By dust of theologic strife, or breath
Of sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore;
Like a clear crystal calm of water, taking
The hue and image of o’erleaning flowers,
Sweet human faces, white clouds of the noon,
Slant starlight glimpses through the dewy leaves,
And tenderest moonrise. ’Twas, in truth, a study,
To mark his spirit, alternating between
A decent and professional gravity
And an irreverent mirthfulness, which often
Laughed in the face of his divinity,
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOR., 59
Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined
The oracle, and for the pattern priest
Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant,
To whom the soiled sheet found in Crawford’s inn,
Giving the latest news of city stocks
And sales of cotton had a deeper meaning
Than the great presence of the awful mountains
Glorified by the sunset ; — and his daughter,
A delicate flower on whom had blown too long
Those evil winds, which, sweeping from the ice
And winnoving the fogs of Labrador,
Shed their oat blight round Massachusetts’ bay,
With the same breath which stirs Spring’s opening
leaves
And lifts her half-formed fiower-bell on its stem,
Poisoning our seaside atmosphere.
It chanced
That as we turned upon our homeward way,
A drear northeastern storm came howling up
The valley of the Saco; and that girl
Who had stood with us upon Mount Washington,
Her brown locks ruffled by the wind which whirled
In gusts around its sharp cold pinnacle,
Who had joined our gay trout-fishing in the streams
Which lave that giant’s feet ; whose laugh was heard
Like a bird’s carol on the sunrise breeze
Which swelled our sail amidst the lake’s green
islands,
Shrank from its harsh, chill breath, and visibly
drooped
Like a flower in the frost. So, in that quiet inn
Which looks from Conway on the mountains piled
Heavily against the horizon of the north,
Like summer thunderclouds, we made our home -
60 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
And while the mist hung over dripping hills,
And the cold wind-driven raindrops, all day long
Beat their sad music upon roof and pane,
We strove to cheer our gentle invalid.
The lawyer in the pauses of the storm
Went angling down the Saco, and, returning,
Recounted his adventures and mishaps ;
Gave us the history of his scaly clients,
Mingling with ludicrous yet apt citations
Of barbarous law Latin, passages
From Izaak Walton’s Angler, sweet and fresh
As the flower-skirted streams of Staffordshire
Where, under aged trees, the southwest wind
Of soft June mornings fanned the thin, white hair
Of the sage fisher. And, if truth be told,
Our youthful candidate forsook his sermons,
His commentaries, articles and creeds
For the fair page of human loveliness —
The missal of young hearts, whose sacred text
Is music, its illumining sweet smiles.
He sang the songs she loved; and in his low,
Deep earnest voice, recited many a page
Of poetry —the holiest, tenderest lines
Of the sad bard of Olney — the sweet songs,
Simple and beautiful as Truth and Nature,
Of him whose whitened locks on Rydal Mount
Are lifted yet by morning breezes blowing
From the green hills, immortal in his lays.
And for myself, obedient to her wish,
I searched our landlord’s proffered library:
A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice wood pictures
Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike them —
Watts’ unmelodious psalms — Astrology’s
Last home, a musty file of Almanacs,
And an old chronicle of border wars
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK, 61
And Indian history. And, as I read
A story of the marriage of the Chief
Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo,
Daughter of Passaconaway, who dwelt
In the old time upon Merrimack,
Our fair one, in the playful exercise
Of her prerogative — the right divine
Of youth and beauty,— bade us versify
The legend, and with ready pencil sketched
Its plan and outlines, laughingly assigning
To each his part, and barring our excuses
With absolute will. So, like the cavaliers
Whose voices still are heard in the Romance
Of silver-tongued Boccaccio, on the banks
Of Arno, with soft tales of love beguiling
The ear of languid beauty, plague-exiled
From stately Florence, we rehearsed our rhymes
To their fair auditor, and shared by turns
Her kind approval and her playful censure.
It may be that these fragments owe alone
To the fair setting of their circumstances—
The associations of time, scene and audience —
Their place amid the pictures which fill up
The chambers of my memory. Yet I trust
That some, who sigh, while wandering in thought,
Pilgrims of Romance o’er the olden world, |
That our broad land — our sea-like lakes, and moune
tains
Piled to the clouds,— our rivers overhung
By forests which have known no other change
For ages, than the budding and the fall
Of leaves — our valleys lovelier than those
Which the old poets sang of —should but figure
On the apocryphal chart of speculation
69 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
As pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with the privileges,
Rights and appurtenances, which make up
A Yankee Paradise — unsung, unknown,
To beautiful tradition ; even their names,
Whose melody yet lingers like the last
Vibration of the red man’s requiem,
Exchanged for syllables significant
Of cotton-mill and rail-car,—- will look kindly
Upon this effort to call up the ghost
Of our dim Past, and listen with pleased ear
To the responses of the questioned Shade:
I. — THE MERRIMACK.
Ox, child of that white-crested mountain whose
springs
Gush forth in the shade of the cliff-eagle’s wings,
Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy wild waters
shine,
Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing through the
dwarf pine.
From that cloud-curtained cradle so cold and so lone,
From the arms of that wintry-locked mother of stone,
By hills hung with forests, through vales wide ana
free,
Thy mountain-born brightness glanced down to the
sea !
No bridge arched thy waters save that where the trees
Stretched their long arms above thee and kissed in
the breeze:
No sound save the lapse of the waves on thy shores,
The plunging of otters, the light dip of oars,
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 63 .
Green-tufted, oak-shaded, by Amoskeag’s fall
Thy twin Uncanoonucs rose stately and tall,
Thy Nashua meadows lay green and unshorn,
And the hills of Pentucket were tasselled with corn,
But thy Pennacook valley was fairer than these,
And greener its grasses and taller its trees,
Ere the sound of an axe in the forest had:rung,
' Or the mower his scythe in the meadows had swung.
In their sheltered repose looking out from the wood
The bark-buiided wigwams of Pennacook stood,
There glided the corn-dance — the Council fire shone,
And against the red war-post the hatchet was thrown.
There the old smoked in silence their pipes, and the
young
To the pike and the white perch their baited lines
flung ;
There the boy shaped his arrows, and there the shy
maid
Wove her many-hued baskets and bright wampum
braid.
Oh, Stream of the Mountains! if answer of thine
Could rise from thy waters to question of mine,
Methinks through the din of thy thronged banks <«
moan
Of sorrow would swell for the days which have gone
Not for thee the dull jar of the loom and the wheel,
The gliding of shuttles, the ringing of steel ;
But that old voice of waters, of bird and of breeze,
The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling of trees !
64 | WHITTIER’S POEMS.
JTI.— THE BASHABA.*
Lirt we the twilight curtains of the Past,
And turning from familiar sight and sound
Sadly and full of reverence let us cast
A glance upon Tradition’s shadowy ground,
Led by the few pale lights, which, glimmering rount
That dim, strange land of Eld, seem dying fast:
And that which history gives not to the eye,
The faded coloring of Time’s tapestry,
Let Fancy, with her dream-dipped brush supply.
Roof of bark and walls of pine,
Through whose chinks the sunbeams shine,
Tracing many a golden line
On the ample floor within ;
Where upon that earth-floor stark,
Lay the gaudy mats of bark,
With the bear’s hide, rough and dark,
And the red-deer’s skin.
Window-tracery, small and slight,
Woven of the willow white,
Lent a dimly-checkered light,
* This was the name which the Indians of New England
gave to two or three of their principal chiefs, to whom all their
inferior sagamores acknowledged allegiance. Passaconaway
seems to have been one of these chiefs. His residence was at
Pennacook.—Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii., pp. 21, 22. ‘He was
regarded,” says Hubbard, “as a great sorcerer, and his fame
was widely spread. It was said of him that he could cause a
green leaf to grow in winter, trees to dance, water to burn, etc.
He was, undoubtedly, one of those shrewd and powerful men
whose achievements are always regarded by a barbarous peo-
ple as the result of supernatural aid. The Indians gave to such
the names of Powahs or Panisees.”
“The Panisees are men of great courage and wisdom, and
to these the Devill appeareth more familiarly than to others,”=—
Winslow’s Relation,
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.
And the night-stars glimmered down,
Where the lodge-fire’s heavy smoke,
Slowly through an opening broke,
In the low roof, ribbed with oak,
Sheathed with hemlock brown.
Gloomed behind the changeless shade,
By the solemn pine-wood made;
Through the rugged palisade,
In the open foreground planted,
Glimpses came of rowers rowing,
Stir of leaves and wild flowers blowing,
Steel-like gleams of water flowing,
In the sunlight slanted.
Here the mighty Bashaba,
Held his long-unquestioned sway,
From the White Hills, far away,
To the great sea’s sounding shores
Chief of c’'iefs, his regal word
All the river Sachems heard,
At his call the war-dance stirred,
Or was still once more.
There his spoils of chase and war,
Jaw of wolf and black bear’s paw,
Panther’s skin and eagle’s claw,
Lay beside his axe and bow;
And, adown the roof-pole hung,
Loosely on a snake-skin strung,
In the smoke his scalp-locks swung
Grimly to and fro.
Nightly down the river going,
Swifter was the hunter’s rowing,
When he saw that lodge-fire glowing
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
O’er the waters still and red ;
And the squaw’s dark eye burned brighter,
And she drew her blanket tighter,
As, with quicker step and lighter,
From that door she fled.
For that chief had magic skill,
And a Panisee’s dark will,
Over vowers of good and ill,
Powers which bless and powers which bas «=
Wizard lord of Pernacook,
Chiefs upon their war-path shook,
When they met the steady look
Of that wise dark man.
Tales of him the gray squaw told,
When the winter night-wind cold
Pierced her blanket’s thickest fold,
And the fire burned low and small,
Till the very child a-bed,
Drew its bear-skin over head,
Shrinking from the pale lights shed
On the trembling wall.
All the subtle spirits hiding
Under earth or wave, abiding
In the caverned rock, or riding
Misty clouds or morning breeze 3
Every dark intelligence,
Secret soul, and influence
Of all things which outward sense
Feels, or hears or sees, —
These the wizard’s skill confessed,
&t his bidding banned or blessed,
Stormru! woke or lulled to rest
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK,
Wind and cloud, and fire and fiood;
Burned for him the drifted snow,
Bade through ice fresh lilies blow,
And the leaves of summer grow
Over winter’s wood !
Not untrue that tale of old!
Now, as then, the wise and bold
All the powers of Nature hold
Subject to their kingly will;
From the wondering crowds ashore,
Treading life’s wild waters o’er,
As upon a marble floor,
Moves the strong man still.
Still, to such, life’s elements
With their sterner laws dispense,
And the chain of consequence
Broken in their pathway nes;
Time and change their vassals making,
Flowers from icy pillows waking,
Tresses of the sunrise shaking
Over midnight skies.
Still, to earnest souls, the sun
Rests on towered Gibeon,
And the moon of Ajalon
Lights the battle-grounds of life;
To his aid the strong reverses,
Hidden powers and giant forces,
And the high stars in their courses
Mingle in his strife !
$8 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
III. — THE DAUGHTER.
THE soot-black brows of men — the yell
Of women thronging round the bed —
The tinkling charm of ring and shell —
The Powah whispering o’er the dead !—
All these the Sachem’s home had known,
When, on her journey long and wild
To the dim World of Souls, alone,
In her young beauty passed the mother of his child.
Three bow-shots from the Sachem’s dwelling
They laid her in the walnut shade,
Where a green hillock gently swelling
Her fitting mound of burial made.
There trailed the vine in Summer hours —
The tree-perched squirrel dropped his shell —
On velvet moss and pale-hued flowers,
Woven with leaf and spray, the softened sunshine
fell !
The Indian’s heart is hard and cold ~
It closes darkly o’er its care,
And, formed in Nature’s sternest mould,
Is slow to feel, and strong to bear.
The war-paint on the Sachem’s face,
_ Unwet with tears, shone fierce and red,
And, still in battle or in chase,
Dry leaf and snow-rime crisped beneath his foremost
tread.
Yet, when her name was heard no more,
And when the robe her mother gave,
And small, light moccasin she wore,
Had slowly wasted on her grave,
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 68
Unmarked of him the dark maids sped
Their sunset dance and moonlit play;
No other shared his lonely bed,
No other fair young head upon his bosom lay.
A lone, stern man. . Yet, as sometimes
The tempest-smitten tree receives
From one small root the sap which climbs
Its topmost spray and crowning leaves,
So from his child the Sachem drew
A life of Love and Hope, and felt
His cold and rugged nature through
The softness and the warmth of her young being melt.
A laugh which in the woodland rang
Bemocking April’s gladdest bird —
A light and graceful form which sprang
To meet him when his step was heard —
Eyes by his lodge-fire flashing dark,
Small fingers stringing bead and shell
Or weaving mats of bright-hued bark, —
With these the household-god * had graced his wig:
wam well.
Child of the forest !—strong and free,
Slight-robed, with loosely flowing hair,
She swam the lake or climbed the tree,
Or struck the flying bird in air.
O’er the heaped drifts of Winter’s moon
Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter’s way ;
And dazzling in the Summer noon
The blade of her light oar threw off its shower ot
spray !
*« The Indians,” says Roger Williams, “have a god whor
they call Wetuomanit, who presides over the household.”
40 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Unknown to her the rigid rule,
The dull restraint, the chiding frown,
The weary torture of the school,
The taming of wild nature down.
Her only lore, the legends told
Around the hunter’s fire at night ;
Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled,
Flowers bloomed and snowflakes fell, unquestioned
in her sight.
Unknown to her the subtle skill
With which the artist-eye can trace
In rock and tree and lake and hill
The outlines of divinest grace ;
Unknown the fine soul’s keen unrest
Which sees, admires, yet yearns alway
Too closely on her mother’s breast
To note her smiles of love the child of Nature lay?
It is enough for such to be
Of common, natural things a pait,
To feel with bird and stream and tree
The pulses of the same great heart ;
But we, from Nature long exiled
In our cold homes of Art and Thought,
Grieve like the stranger-tended child,
Which seeks its mother’s arms, and sees but feels
them not.
The garden rose may richly bloom
In cultured soil and genial air,
To cloud the light of Fashion’s room
Or droop in Beauty’s midnight hair,
In lonelier grace, to sun and dew
The sweet-briar on the hillside shows
Its single leaf and fainter hue,
Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose?
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK,
Thus o’er the heart of Weetamoo
Their mingling shades of joy and ill
The instincts of her nature threw,—
The savage was a woman still.
Midst outlines dim of maiden schemes,
Heart-colored prophecies of life,
Rose on the ground of her young dreams
The light of a new home —the lover and the wife!
IV. — THE WEDDING.
Coot and dark fell the Autumn night,
But the Bashaba’s wigwam glowed with light,
For down from its roof by green withes hung
Flaring and smoking the pine-knots swung.
And along the river great wood fires
Shot into the night their long red spires,
Showing behind the tall, dark wood
Flashing before on the sweeping flood.
In the changeful wind, with shimmer and shade,
Now high, now low, that fire-light played,
On tree-leaves wet with evening dews,
On gliding water and still canoes.
The trapper that night on Turee’s brook
And the weary fisher on Contoocook
Saw over the marshes and through the pine,
And down on the river the dance-lights shine,
For the Saugus Sachem had come to woo
The Bashaba’s daughter Weetamoo,
And laid at her father’s feet that night
His softest furs and wampum white,
¥ 4 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
From the Crystal Hills to the far South East
The river Sagamores came to the feast ;
And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds shook,
Sat down on the mats of Pennacook.
They came from Sunapee’s shore of rock,
From the snowy sources of Snooganock,
And from rough Cods whose thick woods shake
Their pine-cones in Umbagog lake.
From Ammonoosuck’s mountain pass
Wild as his home came Chepewass ;
And the Keenomps of the hills which throw
Their shade on the Smile of Manito.
With pipes of peace and bows unstrung,
Glowing with paint came old and young,
{n wampum and furs and feathers arrayed
To the dance and feast the Bashaba made.
Bird of the air and beast of the field,
All which the woods and waters yield
On dishes of birch and hemlock piled
Garnished and graced that banquet wild.
Steaks of the brown bear fat and large
From the rocky slopes of the Kearsarge ;
Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook,
And salmon spear’d in the Contoocook ;
Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick
In the gravelly bed of the Otternic,
And small wild hens in reed-snares caught
From the banks of Sondagardee brought ;
Pike and perch from the Suncook taken,
Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken,
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 3
Cranberries picked in the Squamscot bog,
And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog :
And, drawn from that great stone vase which stands
In the river scooped by a spirit’s hands, *
Garnished with spoons of shell and horn,
Stood the birchen dishes of smoking corn.
Thus bird of the air and beast of the field,
All which the woods and the waters yield,
Furnished in that olden day
The bridal feast of the Bashaba.
And merrily when that feast was done
On the fire-lit green the dance begun,
With squaws’ shrill stave, and deeper hum
Of old men beating the Indian drum.
Painted and plumed, with scalp locks flowing,
And red arms tossing and black eyes glowing,
Now in the light and now in the shade
Around the fires the dancers played.
The step was quicker, the song more shrill,
And the beat of the small drums louder still
Whenever within the circle drew
The Saugus Sachem and Weetamoo.
The moons of forty winters had shed
Their snow upon that chieftain’s head,
And toil and care, and battle’s chance
Had seamed his hard dark countenance.
A fawn beside the bison grim —
Why turns the bride’s fond eye on him,
* There are rocks in the River at the Falls of Amoskeag, in
the cavities of which, tradition says, the Indians formerly
stored and concealed their corn,
e
74 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
In whose cold look is naught beside
The triumph of a sullen pride?
Ask why the graceful grape entwines
The rough oak with her arm of vines;
And why the gray rock’s rugged cheek
The soft lips of the mosses seek :
Why, with wise instinct, Nature seems
‘To harmonize her wide extremes,
Linking the stronger with the weak,
The haughty with the soft and meek!
V. — THE New Home.
A wip and broken landscape, spiked with firs,
Roughening the bleak horizon’s northern edge,
Steep, cavernous hillside, where black hemlock spurs
And sharp, gray splinters of the wind-swept ledge
. Pierced the thin-glaz’d ice, or bristling rose,
Where the cold rim of the sky sunk down upon the
snows.
And eastward cold, wide marshes stretched away,
Dull, dreary flats without a bush or tree,
O’er-crossed by icy creeks, where twice a day
Gurgled the waters of the moon-struck sea ;
And faint with distance came the stifled roar,
The melancholy lapse of waves on that low shore,
No cheerful village with its mingling smokes,
No laugh of children wrestling in the snow,
No camp-fire blazing through the hillside oaks,
No fishers kneeling on the ice below ;
Vet midst all desolate things of sound and view,
Through the long winter moons smiled dark-eyed
Weetamoo.
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK, %%
Her heart had found a home; and freshly all
Its beautiful affections overgrew
Their rugged prop. As o’er some granite wall
Soft vine leaves open to the moistening dew
And warm bright sun, the love of that young wife
Found on a hard cold breast the dew and warmth of
life.
The steep bleak hills, the melancholy shore,
The long dead level of the marsh between,
A coloring of unreal beauty wore
Through the soft golden mist of young love seen,
For o’er those hills and from that dreary plain,
Nightly she welcomed home her hunter chief again,
No warmth of heart, no passionate burst of feeling
Repaid her welcoming smile, and parting kiss,
No fond and playful dalliance half concealing,
Under the guise of mirth, its tenderness ;
But, in their stead, the warrior’s settled pride,
And vanity’s pleased smile with homage satisfied.
Enough for Weetamoo, that she alone
Sat on his mat and slumbered at his side;
That he whose fame to her young ear had flown,
Now looked pon her proudly as his bride ;
That he whose name the Mohawk trembling heard
Vouchsafed to her at times a kindly look or word,
For she has learned the maxims of her race,
Which teach the woman to become a slave
And feel herself the pardonless disgrace
- Of love’s fond weakness in the wise and brave—
The scandal and the shame which they incur,
Who give to woman all which man requires of her.
7e WHITTIER’S POEMS.
So passed the winter moons. The sun at last
Broke link by link the frost chain of the rills,
And the warm breathings of the southwest passed
Over the hoar rime of the Saugus hills,
The gray and desolate marsh grew green once more,
And the birch-tree’s tremulous shade fell round the
Sachem’s door.
Then from far Pennacook swift runners came,
With gift and greeting for the Saugus chief;
Beseeching him in the great Sachem’s name,
That, with the coming of the flower and leat,
‘The song of birds, the warm breeze and the rain,
Young Weetamoo might greet her lonely sire again
And Winnepurkit called his chiefs together,
And a grave council in his wigwam met,
Solemn and brief in words, considering whether
The rigid rules of forest etiquette
Permitted Weetamoo once more to look
Upon her father’s face and green-banked Pennacook,.
With interludes of pipe-smoke and strong water,
‘The forest sages pondered, and at length,
Concluded in a body to escort her
Up to her father’s home of pride and strength,
Impressing thus on Pennacook a sense
Of Winnepurkit’s power and regal consequence.
So through old woods which Aukeetamit’s * hand
A soft and many-shaded greenness lent,
Over high breezy hills, and meadow land
' Yellow with flowers, the wild procession went,
Till rolling down its wooded banks between,
A broad, clear, mountain stream, the Merrimack wag
seen. |
»~ The Spring God. —See Roger Williams’s Xey, etc
THE RRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 12
The hunter leaning on his bow undrawn —
The fisher lounging on the pebbled shores,
Squaws in the clearing dropping the seed-corn,
Young children peering through the wigwam doors,
Saw with delight, surrounded by her train
Of painted Saugus braves, their Weetamoo again.
VI. — AT PENNACOOK.
TueE hills are dearest which our childish feet
Have climbed the earliest; and the streams most
sweet,
Are ever those at which our young lips drank,
Stooped to their waters o’er the grassy bank :
Midst the cold dreary sea-watch, Home’s hearth-light
Shines round the helmsman plunging through the
night ;
And still, with inward eye, the traveller sees
In close, dark, stranger streets his native trees.
The homesick dreamer’s brow is nightly fanned
By breezes whispering of his native land,
And, on the stranger’s dim and dying eye,
The soft, sweet pictures of his childhood lie}
Joy then for Weetamoo, to sit once more
A child upon her father’s wigwam floor !
Once more with her old fondness to beguile
From his cold eye the strange light of a smile.
The long bright days of Summer swiftly passed,
The dry leaves whirled in Autumn’s rising blast,
And evening cloud and whitening sunrise rime
Told of the coming of the winter time,
78 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
But vainly looked, the while, young Weetamoo.
Down the dark river for her chief’s canoe ;
No dusky messenger from Saugus brought
The grateful tidings which the young wife sought,
At length a runner, from her father sent
To Winnepurkit’s sea-cooled wigwam went :
‘¢ Eagle of Saugus, —in the woods the dove,
Mourns for the shelter of thy wings of love.’
But the dark chier of Saugus turned aside
In the grim anger of hard-hearted pride ;
«<T bore her as became a chieftain’s daughter,
Up to her home beside the gliding water.
¢¢ If now no more a mat for her is found
Of all which line her father’s wigwam round,
Let Pennacook call out his warrior train
And send her back with wampum gifts again.”
The baffled runner turned upon his track,
Bearing the words of Winnepurkit back.
‘* Dog of the Marsh,’’ cried Pennacook, ‘‘ no more
Shall child of mine sit on his wigwam floor.
‘< Go— let him seek some meaner squaw to spread
The stolen bear-skin of his beggar’s bed :
Son of a fish-hawk ! —let him dig his clams
For some vile daughter of the Agawams,
‘¢Or coward Nipmucks ! — may his scalp dry black
In M hawk smoke, before I send her back.”’
He shook his clenched hand toward the ocean wave,
While hoarse assent his listening council gave.
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 739
Alas poor bride ! —can thy grim sire impart
His iron hardness to thy woman’s heart P
Or cold self-torturing pride like his atone
For love denied and life’s warm beauty flown ?
On Autumn’s gray and mournful grave the snow
Hung its white wreaths; with stifled voice and low
The river crept, by one vast bridge o’ercrossed,
Built by the hoar-locked artisan of Frost.
And many a Moon in beauty newly born
Pierced the red sunset with her silver horn,
Or, from the east across her azure field,
Rolled the wide brightness of her full-orbed shield.
Yet Winnepurkit came not —on the mat
Of the scorned wife her dusky rival sat,
And he, the while, in Western woods afar —
Urged the long chase, or trod the path of war,
Dry up thy tears, young daughter of a chief!
Waste not on him the sacredness of grief;
Be the fierce spirit of thy sire thine own,
His lips of scorning, and his heart of stone.
What heeds the warrior of a hundred fights,
The storm-worn watcher through long hunting night?
Cold, crafty, proud, of woman’s weak distress,
Her home-bound grief and pining loneliness?
VII. — THE DEPARTURE.
THE wild March rains had fallen fast and long
The snowy mountains of the North among,
Making each vale a water-course — each hill
Bright with the cascade of some new made rill.
80 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Gnawed by the sunbeams, softened by the rain,
Heaved underneath by the swollen current’s strain,
The ice-bridge yielded, and the Merrimack
Bore the huge ruin crashing down its track.
On that strong turbid water, a small boat
Guided by one weak hand was seen to float,
Evil the fate which loosed it from the shore,
Too early voyager with too frail an oar !
Down the vexed centre of that rushing tide,
The thick huge ice-blocks threatening either side,
The foam-white rocks of Amoskeag in view,
With arrowy swiftness sped that light canoe.
The trapper, moistening his moose’s meat
On the wet bank by Uncanoonuc’s feet,
Saw the swift boat flash down the troubled stream —
Slept he, or waked he ? — was it truth or dream?
The straining eye bent fearfully before,
The small hand clenching on the useless oar,
The bead-wrought blanket trailing o’er the water—
He knew them all — wo for the Sachem’s daughter4
Sick and aweary of her lonely life,
Heedless of peril the still faithful wife
Had left her mother’s grave, her father’s door,
To seek the wigwam of her chief once more.
Down the white rapids like a sear leaf whirled,
On the sharp rocks and piled up ices hurled,
Empty and broken, circled the canoe
In the vexed pool below — but, where was Weetamoe#
i THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOR. 81
VIII. —Sonc or INDIAN WoMEN,
THE Dark eye has left us,
The Spring-bird has flown,
On the pathway of spirits
She wanders alone.
The song of the wood-dove has died on our shore
Mat wonck kunna-monee /* — we hear it no more!
Oh, dark water Spirit !
We cast on thy wave
These furs which may never
Hang over her grave;
Bear d>wn to the lost one the robes that she wore;
Mat wonck kunna-monee /—- We see her no more!
Of the strange land she walks in
_ No Powah has told:
It may burn with the sunshine,
Or freeze with the cold.
Let us give to our lost one the robes that she wore,
Mat wonck kunna-monee / — We see her no more!
The path she is treading
Shall soon be our own;
Each gliding in shadow
Unseen and alone! —
In vain shall we call on the souls gone before —
Mat wonck kunna-monee /— They hear us no more}
Oh mighty Sowanna ! F
Thy gateways unfold,
From thy wigwam of sunset
Lift curtains of gold!
* «Mat wonck kunna-monee.” We shall see thee or her no
more. — Vide Roger Williams’s Key to the Indian Language.
+“ The Great South West God.’?— See Roger Williams’s
Observations, etc.
82 | WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Take home the poor Spirit whose journey is o’er —
Wat wonck kunna-monee / — We see her no more!
So sang the Children of the Leaves beside
The broad, dark river’s coldly-flowing tide,
Now low, now harsh, with sob-like pause and swell
On the high wind their voices rose and fell.
Nature’s wild music — sounds of wind-swept trees,
The scream of birds, the wailing of the breeze,
The roar of waters, steady, deep and strong,
Mingled and murmured in that farewell song -
LEGENDARY.
THE MERRIMACK.
{* The Indians speak of a beautiful river, far to the South,
which they call Merrimack.” — SIEUR DE Monts, 1604.]
STREAM of my fathers! sweetly still
The sunset rays thy valley fill;
Poured slantwise down the long defile,
Wave, wood, and spire beneath them smile.
I see the winding Powow fold
The green hill in its belt of gold,
And following down its wavy line,
Its sparkling waters blend with thine,
There’s not a tree upon thy side,
Nor rock, which thy returning tide
As yet hath left abrupt and stark
Above thy evening water-mark ;
No calm cove with its rocky hem,
No isle whose emerald swells begem
Thy broad, smooth current ; not a sail
Bowed to the freshening ocean gale;
No small boat with its busy oars,
Nor gray wall sloping to thy shores;
Nor farmhouse with its maple shade,
Or rigid poplar colonnade,
But lies distinct and full in sight,
Beneath this gush of sunset light,
(83)
8 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Centuries ago, that harbor-bar,
Stretching its length of foam afar,
And Salisbury’s beach of shining sand,
And yonder island’s wave-smoothed strand,
Saw the adventurer’s tiny sail
Flit, stooping from the eastern gale ; *
And o’er these woods and waters broke
The cheer from Britain’s hearts of oak,
As brightly on the voyager’s eye,
Weary of forest, sea, and sky,
Breaking the dull continuous wood,
The Merrimack rolled down his flood 3
Mingling that clear pellucid brook,
Which channels vast Agioochook
When springtime’s sun and shower unlock
The frozen fountains of the rock,
And more abundant waters given
From that pure lake, ‘‘ The Smile of Heaven,”
Tributes from vale and mountain side—
With.ocean’s dark, eternal tide!
On yonder rocky cape, which braves
The stormy challenge of the waves,
Midst tangled vine and dwarfish wood,
The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood,
Planting upon the topmost crag
The staff of England’s battle-flag ;
And, while from out its heavy fold
Saint George’s crimson cross unrolled,
* The celebrated Captain Smith, after resigning the govern-
ment of the colony in Virginia, in his capacity of “ Admiral of
New England,” made a careful survey of the coast from Penob-
scot to Cape Cod, in the summer of 1614,
¢ Lake Winnipiseogee — The Smile of the Great Spirit=
the source of one of the branches of the Merrimack,
THE MERRIMACK. 85
Midst roll of drum and trumpet blare,
And weapons brandishing in air,
He gave to that lone promontory
The sweetest name in all his story ; *
Of her, the flower of Islam’s daughters,
Whose harems look on Stamboul’s waters —«
Who, when the chance of war had bound
The Moslem chain his limbs around,
Wreathed o’er with silk that iron chain,
Soothed with her smiles his hours of pain,
And fondly to her youthful slave
A dearer gift than freedom gave,
But look ! —the yellow light no more
Streams down on wave and verdant shore;
And clearly on the calm air swells
The twilight voice of distant bells.
From Ocean’s bosom, white and thin
The mists come slowly rolling in;
Hills, woods, the river’s rocky rim,
Amidst the sea-like vapor swim,
While yonder lonely coast-light set
Within its wave-washed minaret,
Half quenched, a beamless star and pale,
Shines dimly through its cloudy veil!
Home of my fathers ! —I have stood
Where Hudson rolled his lordly floods
Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade
Along his frowning Palisade ;
* Captain Smith gave to the promontory, now called Cape
Ann, the name of Tragabizanda, in memory of his young and
beautiful mistress of that name, who, while he was a captive
at Constantinople, like Desdemona, “loved him for the dangers
fe had passed.”
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Looked down the Appalachian peak
On Juniata’s silver streak ;
Have seen along his valley gleam
The Mohawk’s softly winding stream $
The level light of sunset shine
Through broad Potomac’s hem of pine
And autumn’s rainbow-tinted banner
Hang lightly o’er the Susquehanna ;
Yet, wheresoe’er his step might be,
Thy wandering child looked back to thee!
Heard in his dreams thy river’s sound
Of murmuring on its pebbly bound,
The unforgotten swell and roar
Of waves on thy familiar shore ;
And saw, amidst the curtained gloom
And quiet of his lonely room,
Thy sunset scenes before him pass 3
As, in Agrippa’s magic glass,
The loved and lost arose to view,
Remembered groves in greenness grew,
Bathed still in childhood’s morning dew,
Along whose bowers of beauty swept
Whatever Memory’s mourners wept,
Sweet faces, which the charnel kept,
Young, gentle eyes, which long had slept 3
And while the gazer leaned to trace,
More near, some dear familiar face,
He wept to find the vison flown —
A phantom and a dream alone !
THE NORSEMEN. &?
THE NORSEMEN.
{Some three or four years since, a fragment of a statue,
rudely chiselled from dark gray stone, was found in the town
of Bradford, on the Merrimack. Its origin must be left entirely
to conjecture. The fact that the ancient Northmen visited
New England, some centuries before the discoveries of Colum
mic. is now very generally admitted. ]
Girt from the cold and silent Past !
A relic to thé present cast ;
Left on the ever-changing strand
Of shifting and unstable sand,
Which wastes beneath the steady chime
And beating of the waves of Time!
Who from its bed of primal rock
#irst wrenched thy dark, unshapely block?
Whose hand, of curious skill untaught,
Thy rude and savage outline wrought ?
The waters of my native stream
Are glancing in the sun’s warm beam ¢
From sail-urged keel and flashing oar
The circles widen to its shore ;
And cultured field and peopled town
Slope to its willowed margin down.
Yet, while this morning breeze is bringing
The mellow sound of church-bells ringing,
And rolling wheel, and rapid jar
Of the fire-winged and steedless car,
And voices from the wayside near
Some quick and blended on my ear,
4 spell is in this old gray stone —
My thoughts are with the Past alone?
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
A change ! — The steepled town no more
Stretches along the sail-thronged shore ;
Like palace-domes in sunset’s cloud,
Fade sun-gilt spire and mansion proud !
Spectrally rising where they stood,
I see the old, primeval wood :
Dark, shadow-like, on either hand
I see its solemn waste expand:
It climbs the green and cultured hill,
It arches o’er the valley’s rill;
And leans from cliff and crag, to throw
Its wild arms o’er the stream below.
Unchanged, alone, the same bright river
Flows on, as it will flow forever !
I listen, and I hear the low
Soft ripple where its waters go;
I hear behind the panther’s cry,
The wild bird’s scream goes thrilling by,
And shyly on the river’s brink
The deer is stooping down to drink.
But hark ! — from wood and rock flung back,
What sound comes up the Merrimack?
What sea-worn barks are those which throw
The light spray from each rushing prow?
Have they not in the North Sea’s blast
Bowed to the waves the straining mast?
Their frozen sails the low, pale sun
Of Thulé’s night has shone upon ;
Flapped by the sea-wind’s gusty sweep
Round icy drift, and headland steep.
Wild Jutland’s wives and Lochlin’s daughters
Have watched them fading o’er the waters,
Lessening through driving mist and spray,
Like white-winged sea-birds on their way 3
THE NORSEMEN,
Onward they glide — and now I view
Their iron-armed and stalwart crew ;
Joy glistens in each wild blue eye,
Turned to green earth and summer sky:
Each broad, seamed breast has cast aside
Its cumbering vest of shaggy hide ;
Bared to the sun and soft warm air,
Streams back the Norsemen’s yellow hair.
I see the gleam of axe and spear,
The sound of smitten shields I hear,
Keeping a harsh and fitting time
To Saga’s chant, and Runic rhyme;
Such lays as Zetland’s Skald has sung,
His gray and naked isles among ;
Or muttered low at midnight hour
Round Odin’s mossy stone of power.
The wolf beneath the Arctic moon
Has answered to that startling rune;
The Gaal has heard its stormy swell,
The light Frank knows its summons well;
Iona’s sable-stoled Culdee
Has heard it sounding o’er the sea,
And swept with hoary beard and hair
His altar’s foot in trembling prayer!
"Tis past — the ’wildering vision dies
In darkness on my dreaming eyes!
The forest vanishes in air —
Hill-slope and vale lie starkly bare;
I hear the common tread of men,
And hum of work-day life again:
The mystic relic seems alone
A broken mass of common stone;
And if it be the chiselled limb
Of Berserkar or idol grim—
WHITTIER’S POEMS,
A fragment of Valhalla’s Thor,
The stormy Viking’s god of War,
Of Praga of the Runic lay,
Or love awakening Siona,
I know not — for no graven line,
Nor Druid mark, nor Runic sign,
Is left me here, by which to trace
Its name, or origin, or place.
Vet, for this vision of the Past,
This glance upon its darkness cast,
My spirit bows in gratitude
Before the Giver of all good,
Who fashioned so the human mind,
That, from the waste of Time behing
A simple stone, or mound of earth,
Can summon the departed forth ;
Quicken the Past to life again —
The Present lose in what hath been,
And in their primal freshness show
The buried forms of long ago.
As if a portion of that Thought
By which the Eternal will is wrought,
Whose impulse fills anew with breath
The frozen solitude of Death,
To mortal mind were sometimes lent,
To mortal musings sometimes sent,
To whisper — even when it seems
But Memory’s phantasy of dreams —
Through the mind’s waste of woe and sin,
Of an immortal origin !
CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK. OR
CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK,
To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing rise
to-day,
From the scoffer and the cruel He hath plucked the
spoil away,—
Yea, He who cooled the furnace around the faithful
three,
And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set His hands
maid free !
Last night I saw the sunset melt through my prison
bars,
Last night across my damp earth-floor fell the pale
gleam of stars ;
In the coldness and the darkness all through the tong
night time,
My grated casement whitened with Autumn’s early
rime.
Alone, in that dark sorrow, hour after hour crept by;
Star after star looked palely in and sank adown the
sky ;
No sound amid night’s stillness, save that which
seemed to be
The dull and heavy beating of the pulses of the sea;
All night I sat unsleeping, for I knew that on the
morrow
The ruler and the cruel priest would mock me in my
sorrow,
Dragged to their place of market, and bargained for
and sold,
Like a lamb before the shambles, like a heifer from
the fold !
92 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Oh, the weakness of the flesh was there — the shrink:
ing and the shame;
And the low voice of the aa like whispers to me
came ;
*« Why sit’st thou thus forlornly }’? the wicked mur-
mur said,
‘¢ Damp walls thy bower of beauty, cold earth thy
maiden bed?
#¢Where be the smiling faces, and voices soft and
sweet,
Seen in thy father’s dwelling, heard in the pleasant
street ?
Where be the youths, whose glances the summer Sab-
bath through
Turned tenderly and timidly unto thy father’s pew ?
‘Why sit’st thou here, Cassandra? — Bethink thee
with what mirth
Thy happy schoolmates gather around the warm
bright hearth ;
How the crimson shadows tremble on foreheads ‘white
and fair,
On eyes of merry girlhood, half hid in golden hair.
*“ Not for thee the hearth-fire brightens, not for thee
kind words are spoken,
Not for thee the nuts of Wenham woods by laughing
boys are broken,
No first-fruits of the orchard within thy lap are laid,
For thee no flowers ot Autumn the youthful hunters
braid.
*©Oh! weak, deluded maiden! —by crazy fancies
led,
With wild and raving railers an evil path to tread ;
CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK. $3
To leave a wholesome worship, and teaching pure and
sound ;
And mate with maniac women, loose-haired and
sack-cloth-bound.
*‘ Mad scoffers of the priesthood, who mock at things
divine,
Who rail against the pulpit, and holy bread and
wine ;
Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and from the
pillory lame,
Rejoicing in their wretchedness, and glorying in their
shame.
‘©And what a fate awaits thee? —a sadly toiling
slave,
Dragging the slowly lengthening chain of bondage ta
the grave!
Think of thy woman’s nature, subdued in hopeless
thrall,
The easy prey of any, the scoff and scorn of all!”
Oh !—ever as the Tempter spoke, and feeble Na
ture’s fears
Wrung drop by drop the scalding flow of unavailing
tears,
I wrestled down the evil thoughts, and strove in silent
prayer,
To feel, oh, Helper of the weak ! — that Thou indeed
wert there !
I thought of Paul and Silas, within Philippi’s cell,
And how from Peter’s sleeping limbs the prisone
shackles fell,
34 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an angel’s robe
of white,
And to feel a blessed presence invisible to sight.
Bless the Lord for all His mercies !— for the peace
and love I felt,
Like dew of Hermon’s holy hill, upon my spirit
melt ;
When, ‘‘ Get hehind me, Satan! ”’ was the language
of my heart,
And I felt the Evil Tempter with all his doubts de-
part.
Slow broke the gray cold morning; again the sune
shine fell,
Flecked with the shade of bar and grate within my
lonely cell ;
The hoar frost melted on the wall, and upward from
the street
Came careless laugh and idle word, and tread of pass-
ing feet.
At length the heavy bolts fell back, my door was’
. open cast,
And slowly at the sheriff’s side, up the long street I
passed ;
I heard the murmur round me, and felt, but dared
not see,
How, from every door and window, the people gazed
on me.
And doubt and fear fell on me, shame burned upon
my cheek,
Swam earth and sky around me, my trembling limbs
grew weak: :
CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK. 98
‘¢ Oh, Lord! support thy handmaid; and from her
soul cast out
The fear of man, which brings a snare — the weak-
ness and the doubt.’’
Then the dreary shadows scattered like a cloud in
morning’s breeze,
And a low deep voice within me seemed whispering
words like these:
‘‘ Though thy earth be as the iron, and thy heaven a
brazen wall,
Trust still His loving kindness whose power is over
all.’’
We paused at length, where at my feet the sunlit
waters broke
On glaring reach of shining beach, and shingly wall
of rock ;
The merchant-ships lay idly there, in hard clear lines
on high,
Tracing with rope and slender spar their network on
the sky.
And there were ancient citizens, cloak-wrapped and
grave and cold,
And grim and stout sea-captains with faces bronzed
and old,
And on his horse, with Rawson, his cruel clerk at
hand,
Sat dark and haughty Endicott, the ruler of the land.
And poisoning with his evil words the ruler’s ready
ear,
The priest leaned o’er his saddle, with laugh and
scoff and jeer ;
66 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
It stirred my soul, and from my lips the seal of
silence broke,
As if through woman’s weakness a warning spirit
spoke.
I cried, ‘‘ The Lord rebuke thee, thou smiter of the
meek,
Thou robber of the righteous, thou trampler of the
weak !
Go light the dark, cold hearth-stones— go turn the
prison lock
Of the poor hearts thou hast hunted, thou wolf amid
the flock! ’’
Dark lowered the brows of Endicott, and with a
deeper red
O’er Rawson’s wine-empurpled cheek the flush of
anger spread ;
«< Good people,’’ quoth the white-lipped priest, ‘‘ heed
not her words so wild,
Her Master speaks within her—the Devil owns his
child ! ’’
But gray heads shook, and young brows knit, the
while the sheriff read
That law the wicked rulers against the poor have
made,
Who to their house of Rimmon and idol priesthood
brin
No peRacatenee of worship, nor gainful offering.
Then to the stout sea-captains the sheriff turning
said :
* Which of ye, worthy seamen, will take this Quaker
maid ?
CASSANDEA SOUTHWICK. wv
In the Isle of fair Barbadoes, or on Virginia’s shore,
You may hold her at a higher price than Indian gir}
or Moor.”’
Grim and silent stood the captains; and when again
he cried,
‘‘Speak out, my worthy seamen!’’—no voice, no
sign replied ;
But I felt a hard hand press my own, and kind words
met my ear:
‘<God bless thee, and preserve thee, my gentle gir}
and dear !’’
A weight seemed lifted from my heart, a pitying
friend was nigh,
I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw it in his
eye; |
And when again the sheriff spoke, that voice, so kind
to me,
Growled back its stormy answer like the roaring of
the sea;
‘<Pile my ship with bars of silver — pack with coins
of Spanish gold,
From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the roomage of
her hold,
By the living God who made me! —I would sooner
in your bay
Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear this child
away!”
‘Well answered, worthy captain, shame on their
cruel laws ! ”’
Ran through the crowd in murmurs loud the people’s
just applause.
88 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
«¢ Like the herdsmen of Tekoa, in Israel of old,
Shall we see the poor and righteous again for silver
sold ?”’
I looked on haughty Endicott ; with weapon half way ©
drawn,
Swept round the throng his lion glare of bitter hate
and scorn ; |
Fiercely he drew his bridle rein, and turned in
silence back,
And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode murmuring
in his track.
Hard after them the sheriff looked, in bitterness of
soul ;
Thrice smote his staff upon the ground, and crushed
his parchment roll.
‘Good friends,’’ he said, ‘‘ since both have fled, the
ruler and the priest,
fudge ye, if from their further work I be not well
released.’’
Loud was the cheer which, full and clear, swept round
the silent bay,
As, with kind words and kinder looks, he bade me go
my way ;
for He who turns the courses of the streamlet of the
glen,
And the river of great waters, had turned the hearts
of men.
Oh, at that hour the very earth seemed changed
beneath my eye,
A holier wonder round me rose the blue walls of the
sky,
CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK, 99
A lovelier light on rock -and hill, and stream and
woodland lay,
And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the waters of the bay.
Thanksgiving to the Lord of life!—to Him all
praises be,
Who from the hands of evil men hath set His hand-
maid free ;
All praise to Him before whose power the mighty are
afraid,
Who takes the crafty in the snare, which for the poor
is laid!
Sing, oh, my soul, rejoicingly, on evening’s twilight
calm
Uplift the loud thanksgiving — pour forth the grate-
ful psalm ;
Let all dear hearts with me rejoice, as did the saints
of old,
When of the Lord’s good angel the rescued Peter told.
And weep and howl, ye evil priests and mighty men
of wrong,
The Lord shall smite the proud and lay His hand
upon the strong.
Woe to the wicked rulers in His avenging hour !
Woe to the wolves who seek the flocks to raven and
devour :
But let the humble ones arise, —the poor in heart
be glad,
And let the mourning ones again with robes of praise
be clad,
For He who cooled the furnace, and smoothed the
stormy wave,
and tamed the Chaldean lions, is mighty still to save !
(00 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS.®
AROUND Sebago’s lonely lake
There lingers not a breeze to break
The mirror which its waters make.
The solemn pines along its shore,
The firs which hang its gray rocks o’er,
Are painted on its glassy floor.
The sun looks o’er, with hazy eye,
The snowy mountain-tops which lie
Piled coldly up against the sky.
Dazzling and white! save where the bleak,
Wild winds have bared some splintering peak,
Or snow-slide left its dusky streak.
Yet green are Saco’s banks below,
And belts of spruce and cedar show,
Dark fringing round those cones of snow.
The earth hath felt the breath of spring,
Though yet on her deliverer’s wing
The lingering frosts of winter cling.
*Polan, a chief of the Sokokis Indians, the original inhabit-
ants of the country lying between Agamenticus and Casco
Bay, was killed in a skirmish at Windham, on the Sebago
lake, in the spring of 1756. He claimed all the lands on both
sides of the Presumpscot River to its mouth at Casco, as his
own. He was shrewd, subtle, and brave. After the white
men had retired, the surviving Indians “swayed” or bent
down a young tree until its roots were turned up, placed the
body of their chief beneath them, and then released the tree to
‘pring back to its former position.
FUNEKAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS.,
Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks,
And mildly from its sunny nooks
The blue eye of the violet looks.
And odors from the springing grass,
The sweet birch and the sassafras,
Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass.
Her tokens of renewing care
Hath Nature scattered everywhere,
In bud and flower, and warmer air.
But in their hour of bitterness,
What reck the broken Sokokis,
Beside their slaughtered chief, of this?
The turf’s red stain is yet undried —
Scarce have the death-shot echoes died
Along Sebago’s wooded side :
And silent now the hunters stand,
Grouped darkly, where a swell of land
Slopes upward from the lake’s white sand.
Fire and the axe have swept it bare,
Save one lone beech, unclosing there
Its light leaves in the vernal air.
With grave, cold looks, all sternly mute,
They break the damp turf at its foot,
And bare its coiled and twisted root.
They heave the stubborn trunk aside,
The firm roots from the earth divide ~
The rent beneath yawns dark and wide,
And there the fallen chief is laid, —
Jn tasselled garb of skins arrayed,
And girded with his wampum-braid.
10%
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
The silver cross he loved is pressed’
Beneath the heavy arms, which rest
Upon his scarred and naked breast.*
*Tis done: the roots are backward sent,
The beechen tree stands up unbent —
The Indian’s fitting monument !
When of that sleeper’s broken race
Their green and pleasant dwelling-place
Which knew them once, retains no traces
O! long may sunset’s light be shed
As now upon that beech’s head —
A green memorial of the dead !
There shall his fitting requiem be,
In northern winds, that, cold and free,
Howl nightly in that funeral tree.
To their wild wail the waves which break
Forever round that lonely lake
A solemn undertone shall make!
And who shall deem the spot unblest,
Where Nature’s younger children rest,
Lulled on their sorrowing mother’s breast ?
Deem ye that mother loveth less
These bronzed forms of the wilderness
She foldeth in her long caress?
As sweet o’er them her wild flowers blow.
As if with fairer hair and brow
The blue-eyed Saxon slept below.
*The Sokokis were early converts to the Catholic faith. -
Most of them, prior to the year 1756, had removed to the
French settlements on the St. Francois.
FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS, 103
What though the places of their rest
No priestly knee hath ever pressed —
No funeral rite nor prayer hath blessed P
What though the bigot’s ban be there,
And thoughts of wailing and despair,
And cursing in the place of prayer ! *
Yet Heaven hath angels watching round
The Indian’s lowliest forest-mound —
And ¢hey have made it holy ground.
There ceases man’s frail judgment; all
His powerless bolts of cursing fall
Unheeded on that grassy pall.
O, peeled, and hunted, and reviled,
Sleep on, dark tenant of the wild!
Great Nature owns her simple child!
And Nature’s God, to whom alone
The secret of the heart is known —
The hidden language traced thereon ;
Who from its many cumberings
Of form and creed, and outward things,
To light the naked spirit brings; -
Not with our partial eye shall scan —
Not with our pride and scorn shall ban
The spirit of our brother man!
* The brutai and unchristian spirit of the early settlers «
New England toward the red man is strikingly illustrated ir.
the conduct of the man who shot down the Sokokis chief. He
used to say he always noticed the anniversary of that exploit, a-
“the day on which he sent the devil a present.” — Williamson «
fistory of Maine.
104
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
ST, JOHN.
¢¢To the winds give our banne™ ‘
Bear homeward again !’’
Cried the Lord of Acadia,
Cried Charles of Estienne;
From the prow of his shallop
He gazed, as the sun,
From its bed in the ocean,
Streamed up the St. John.
O’er the blue western waters
That shallop had passed,
Where the mists of Penobscot
Clung damp on her mast.
6t. Saviour * had look’d
On the heretic sail,
As the songs of the Huguenot
Rose on the gale.
The pale, ghostly fathers
Remembered her welli,
And had cursed her while passing,
With taper and bell,
But the men of Monhegan, f
Of Papists abhorr’d,
Had welcomed and feasted
The heretic Lord.
* The settlement of the Jesuits on the island of Mount Desert
was called St. Saviour.
¢ The isle of Monhegan was one of the first settled on the
coast of Maine.
ST. JOHN. Nii ee
They had loaded his shallop
With dun-fish and ball,
With stores for his larder,
And steel for his wall.
Pemequid, from her bastions
And turrets of stone,
Had welcomed his coming
With banner and gun.
And the prayers of the elders
Had followed his way,
As homeward he glided,
Down Pentecost Bay.
O! well sped La Tour!
For, in peril and pain,
His lady kept watch
For his coming again.
O’er the Isle of the Pheasant
The morning sun shone,
On the plane trees which shaded
The shores of St. John.
‘¢ Now, why from yon battlements
Speaks not my love!
Why waves there no banner
My fortress above? ’’
Dark and wild, from his deck
St. Estienne gazed about,
On fire-wasted dwellings,
And silent redoubt ;
From the low, shattered walls
Which the flame had o’errun,
There floated no banner,
There thunder’d no gun!
106
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
But, beneath the low arch
Of its doorway there stood
A pale priest of Rome,
In his cloak and his hood.
With the bound of a lion,
La ‘Tour sprang to land,
On the throat of the Papist
He fastened his hand.
«¢ Speak, son of the Woman,
Of scarlet and sin !
What wolf has been prowling
My castle within ? ”’
From the grasp of the soldier
The Jesuit broke,
Half in scorn, half in sorrow,
He smiled as he spoke:
‘No wolf, Lord of Estienne,
Has ravaged thy hall,
But thy red-handed rival,
With fire, steel, and ball!
On an errand of mercy
I hitherward came,
While the walls of thy castle
Yet spouted with flame. |
¢é Pentagoet’s dark vessels
Were moored in the bay,
Grim sea-lions, roaring
Aloud for their prey.’’
¢¢ But what of my lady ?’’
Cried Charles of Estienne $
4¢ On the shot-crumbled turret
Thy lady was seen :
ST, JOHN.
‘¢ Half-veiled in the smoke-cloud,
Her hand grasped thy pennon,
While her dark tresses swayed
In the hot breath of cannon !
But woe to the heretic,
Evermore woe !
When the son of the church
And the cross is his foe!
«Tn the track of the shell,
In the path of the ball,
Pentagoet swept over
The breach of the wall]
Steel to steel, gun to gun,
One moment — and then
Alone stood the victor,
Alone with his men!
‘¢ Of its sturdy defenders,
Thy lady alone
Saw the cross-blazon’d banner
Float over St. John.”
‘¢ Let the dastard look to it!"
Cried fiery Estienne,
** Were D’Aulney King Louis,
I'd free her again! ’”’
‘‘ Alas, for thy lady !
No service from thee
Is needed by her
Whom the Lord hath set frees
Nine days, in stern silence,
Her thraldom she bore,
But the tenth morning came,
And Death opened her door !®
208
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
As if suddenly smitten
La Tour stagger’d back;
His hand grasped his sword-hilt,
His forehead grew black.
He sprang on the deck
Of his shallop again :
*¢ We cruise now for vengeance ?
Give way !’’ cried Estienne.
¢¢ Massachusetts shall hear
Of the Huguenot’s wrong,
And from island and creek-side
Her fishers shall throng !
Pentagoet shall rue
What his Papists have done,
When his palisades echo
The Puritan’s gun !”’
O! the loveliest of heavens
Hung tenderly o’er him,
There were waves in the sunshine,
And green isles before him:
But a pale hand was beckoning
The Huguenot on ;
And in blackness and ashes
Behind was St. John !
PENTUCKET. 103
PENTUCKET.
[The village of Haverhill, on the Merrfmack, called by the
Indians Pentucket, was for nearly seventeen years a frontier
town, and during thirty years endured all the horrors of savage
warfare. In the year 1708,a combined body of French and
Indians, under the command of De Challions, and Hertel de
Rouville, the infamous and. bloody sacker of Deerfield, made
an attack upon the village, which at that time contained only
thirty houses. Sixteen of the villagers were massacred, anda
still larger number made prisoners. About thirty of the enemy
also fell, and among them Hertel de Rouville. The minister
of the place, Benjamin Rolfe, was killed by a shot through his
own door. |
How sweetly on the wood-girt town
The mellow light of sunset shone!
Each small, bright lake, whose waters still
Mirror the forest and the hill,
Reflected from its waveless breast
The beauty of a cloudless West,
Glorious as if a glimpse were given
Within the western gates of Heaven,
Left, by the spirit of the star
Of sunset’s holy hour, ajar !
Beside the river’s tranquil flood
The dark and low-wall’d dwellings stood,
Where many a rood of open fand
Stretch’d up and down on either hand,
With corn-leaves waving freshly green
The thick and blacken’d stumps between,
Behind, unbroken, deep and dread,
The wild, untravell’d forest spread,
Back to those mountains, white and cold,
Of which the Indian trapper told,
Upon whose summits never yet
Was mortal foot in safety set.
210 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
Quiet and calm, without a fear
Of danger darkly lurking near,
The weary laborer left his plough —
The milkmaid caroll’d by her cow —
From cottage door and household hearth
Rose songs of praise, or tones of mirth.
At length the murmur died away,
And silence on that village lay —
So slept Pompeii, tower and hall,
Ere the quick earthquake swallow’d all,
Undreaming of the fiery fate
Which made its dwellings desolate !
Hours pass’d away. By moonlight sped
ihe Merrimack along his bed.
Bathed in the pallid lustre, stood
Dark cottage-wall and rock and wood,
Silent, beneath that tranquil beam,
As the hush’d grouping of a dream.
Yet on the still air crept a sound —
No bark of fox — nor rabbit’s bound —
Nor stir of wings — nor waters flowing —
Nor leaves in midnight breezes blowing.
Was that the tread of many feet,
Which downward from the hillside beat?
What forms were those which darkly stood
Just on the margin of the wood P —
Charr’d tree-stumps in the moonlight dim,
Or paling rude, or leafless limb?
No — through the trees fierce eyeballs glow’¢
Dark human forms in sunshine show’d,
Wild from their native wilderness,
With painted limbs and battle-dress !
PENTUCKET.
A yell, the dead might wake to hear,
Swell’d on the night air, far and clear =
Then smote the ludian tomahawk
On crashing door and shattering lock —
Then rang the rifle-shot —and then
The shrill death-scream of stricken meri»
Sank the red axe in woman’s brain,
And childhood’s cry arose in vain —
Bursting through roof and window came,
Red, fast and fierce, the kindled flame;
And blended fire and moonlight glared
On still dead men and weapons bared.
The morning sun looked brightly through
The river willows, wet with dew.
No sound of combat fill’d the air,-
No shout was heard,— nor gun-shot theres
Yet still the thick and sullen smoke
From smouldering ruins slowly broke;
And on the greensward many a stain,
And, here and there, the mangled slain
Told how that midnight bolt had sped,
Pentucket, on thy fated head !
Even now the villager can tell
Where Rolfe beside his hearth-stone fell,
Still show the door of wasting oak
Through which the fatal death-shot broke,
And point the curious stranger where
De Rouville’s corse lay grim and bare —
Whose hideous head, in death still fear’d,
Bore not a trace of hair or beard —
And still, within the churchyard ground,
Heaves darkly up the ancient mound,
Whose grass-grown surface overlies
The victims of that sacrifice.
ili?
12 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
THE FAMILIST’S HYMN.
{The « Pilgrims” of New England, even in their wilderness
home, were not exempted from the sectarian contentions which
agitated the mother country after the downfall of Charles the
First, and of the established Episcopacy. The Quakers, Bap-
tists, and Catholics were banished, on pain of death, from the
Massachusetts Colony. One Samuel Gorton, a bold and elo-
quent declaimer, after preaching for a time in Boston, against
the doctrines of the Puritans, and declaring that their churches
were mere human devices, and their sacrament and baptism an
abomination, was driven out of the State’s jurisdiction, and
compelled to seek a residence among the savages. He gath-
. ered round him a considerable number of converts, who, like
the primitive Christians, shared all things in common. His
opinions, however, were so troublesome to the leading clergy
of the Colony, that they instigated an attack upon his “« Family *
by an armed force, which seized upon the principal men in it,
and brought them into Massachusetts, where they were sen-
tenced to be kept at hard labor in several towns (one only in
each town), during the pleasure of the General Court, they
being forbidden, under severe penalties, to utter any of their
religious sentiments, except to such ministers as might labor
for their conversion. They were unquestionably sincere in
their opinions, and, whatever may have been their errors, de-
served to be ranked among those who have in all ages suffered
fpr the freedom of conscience. ]
FATHER ! to thy suffering poor
Strength and grace and faith impart,
And with Thy own love restore
Comfort to the broken heart !
Oh, the failing ones confirm
With a holier strength of zeai! —
Give Thou not the feeble worm
Helpless to the spoiler’s heel !
THE FAMILIST’S HYMN.
Father! for Thy holy sake
We are spoiled and hunted thus;
Joyful, for Thy truth we take
Bonds and burthens unto us:
Poor, and weak, and robbed of all,
Weary with our daily task,
That Thy truth may never fall
Through our weakness, Lord, we ask
Round our fired and wasted homes
Flits the forest-bird unscared,
And at noon the wild beast comes
Where our frugal meal was shared ;
For the song of praises there
Shrieks the crow the livelong day,
For the sound of evening prayer
Howls the evil beast of prey !
Sweet the songs we loved to sing
Underneath Thy holy sky —
Words and tones that used to bring
Tears of joy in every eye,—
Dear the wrestling hours of prayer,
When we gathered knee to knee,
Blameless youth and hoary hair,
Bow’d, O God, alone to Thee.
As Thine early children, Lord,
Shared their wealth and daily bread,
Even so, with one accord,
We, in love, each other fed. . -
Not with us the miser’s hoard,
Not with us his grasping hand;. .
Equal round a common board, ~
Drew our meek and brother band’!
113
WHITTIER’S POEMS
Safe our quiet Eden lay
When the war-whoop stirred the land,
And the Indian turn’d away
From our home his bloody hand,
Well that forest-ranger saw,
That the burthen and the curse
Of the white man’s cruel law
Rested also upon us.
Torn apart, and driven forth
To our toiling hard and long,
Father! from the dust of earth
Lift we still our grateful song !
Grateful — that in bonds we share
In Thy love which maketh free;
Joyful — that the wrongs we bear,
Draw us nearer, Lord, to Thee!
Grateful ! — that where’er we toil —
By Wachuset’s wooded side,
On Nantucket’s sea-worn isle,
Or by wild Neponset’s tide —
Still, in spirit, we are near,
And our evening hymns which rise:
Separate and discordant here,
Meet and mingle in the skies !
Let the scoffer scorn and mock,
Let the proud and evil priest
Rob the needy of his flock,
For his wine-cup and his feast, —
Redden not Thy bolts in store
Through the blackness of Thy skies”
For the sighing of the poor
Wilt Thou not, at length, arise?
THE FOUNTAIN. 118
Worn and wasted, oh, how long,
Shall Thy trodden poor complain?
In Thy name they bear the wrong,
In Thy cause the bonds of pain!
Melt oppression’s heart of steel,
Let the haughty priesthood see,
And their blinded followers feel,
That in us they mock at Thee!
In Thy time, O Lord of hosts,
Stretch abroad that hand to save
Which of old, on Egypt’s coasts,
Smote apart the Red Sea’s wave}
Lead us from this evil land,
From the spoiler set us free,
And once more our gather’d band,
Heart to heart, shall worship Thee ?
THE FOUNTAIN.
[On the declivity of a hill, in Salisbury, Essex County, is a
beautifik fountain of clear water, gushing out from the very
roots oY a majestic and venerable oak. It is about two miles
from the junction of the Powow River with the Merrimack.)
TRAVELER ! on thy journey toiling
By the swift Powow,
With the summer sunshine falling
On thy heated brow,
Listen, while all else is still
To the brooklet from the hill.
Wild and sweet the flowers are blowing
By that streamlet’s side,
And a greener vendure showing
Where its waters glide —
116
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Down the hill-slope murmuring on,
Over root and mossy stone.
Where yon oak his broad arms flingeth
O’er the sloping hill,
Beautiful and freshly springeth
That soft-flowing rill,
Through its dark roots wreath’d and bare,
Gushing up to sun and air.
Brighter waters sparkled never
In that magic well,
Of whose gift of life for ever
Ancient legends tell,—
In the lonely desert wasted,
And by mortal lip untasted,
Waters which the proud Castilian *
Sought with longing eyes,
Underneath the bright pavilion
Of the Indian skies ;
Where his forest pathway lay
Through the blooms of Florida,
Years ago a lonely stranger,
With the dusky brow
Of the outcast forest-ranger,
Crossed the swift Powow ;
And betook him to the rill,
And the oak upon the hill.
O’er his face of moody sadness
For an instant shone
Something like a gleam of gladness,
* De Soto, in the sixteenth century, penetrated into the wilds
of the new world in search of gold and the fountain of perpet-
wal youth.
THE FOUNTAIN.
As he stooped him down
To the fountain’s grassy side
And his eager thirst supplied.
With the oak its shadow throwing
O’er his mossy seat,
And the cool, sweet waters flowing
Softly at his feet,
Closely by the fountain’s rim
That lone Indian seated him.
Autumn’s earliest frost had given
To the woods below
Hues of beauty, such as Heaven
Lendeth to its bow
And the soft breeze fan the west
Scarcely broke their dreamy rest.
Far behind was Ocean striving
With his chains of sand ;
Southward, sunny glimpses giving,
*Twixt the swells of land,
Of its calm and silvery track,
Rolled the tranquil Merrimack.
Over village, wood and meadow,
Gazed that stranger man
Sadly, till the twilight shadow
Over all things ran,
Save where spire and westward pane
Flashed the sunset back again.
Gazing thus upon the dwelling
Of his warrior sires,
Where no lingering trace was telling
Of their wigwam fires,
in?
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Who the gloomy thoughts might know
Of that wandering child of woe?
Naked lay, in sunshine glowing,
Hills that once had stood,
Down their sides the shadows throwing
Of a mighty wood,
Where the deer his covert kept,
And the eagle’s pinion swept !
Where the birch canoe had glided
Down the swift Powow,
Dark and gloomy bridges strided
Those clear waters now ;
And where once the beaver swam,
Jarred the wheel and frowned the dam,
For the wood-bird’s merry singing,
And the hunter’s cheer,
Tron clang and hammer’s ringing
Smote upon his ear;
And the thick and sullen smoke
From the blackened forges broke.
Could it be, his fathers ever,
Loved to linger here ?
These bare hills — this conquer’d river «=
Could they hold them dear,
With their native loveliness
Tamed and tortured into this?
Sadly, as the shades of even
Gathered o’er the hill,
While the western half of Heaven
Blushed with sunset still,
From the fountain’s mossy seat
Turned the Indian’s weary feet.
THE EXILES, 119
Year on year hath flown for ever,
But he came no more
To the hillside or vhe river
Where he came before.
But the villager can tell
Of that strange man’s visit well.
And the merry children, laden
With their fruits or flowers —
Roving boy and laughing maiden,
In their school-day hours,
Love the simple tale to tell
Of the Indian and his well.
THE EXILES.
{The incidents upon which the following ballad has its
foundation, occurred about the year 1660. Thomas Macey was
one of the first, if not ¢4e first white settler of Nantucket. A
quaint description of his singular and perilous voyage, in his
own handwriting, is still preserved. ]
THE goodman sat beside his door
One sultry afternoon,
With his young wife singing at his side
An old and goodly tune.
A glimmer of heat was in the air,—
The dark green woods were still ;
And the skirts of a heavy thundercloud
Hung over the western hill.
Black, thick, and vast, arose that cloud
Above the wilderness,
As some dark world from upper air
Were stooping over this.
£20
WHITTIER’S POEMS,
At times, the solemn thunder pealed,
And all was still again,
Save a low murmur in the air
Of coming wind and rain.
Just as the first big raindrop fell,
A weary stranger came,
And stood before the farmer’s door, |
With travel soiled and lame.
Sad seemed he, yet sustaining hope
Was in his quiet glance,
And peace, like autumn’s moonlight, clothed
His tranquil countenance.
A look, like that his Master wore
In Pilate’s council-hall:
It told of wrongs — but of a love
Meekly forgiving all.
s¢ Friend ! wilt thou give me shelter here? *
The stranger meekly said ;
And, leaning on his oaken staff,
The goodman’s features read,
6 My life is hunted — evil men
Are following in my track;
The traces of the torturer’s whip
Are on my aged back.
*¢ And much, I fear, ’twill peril thee
Within thy doors to take
A hunted seeker of the Truth,
Oppressed for conscience’ sake.”®
THE EXILES. 128
Oh, kindly spoke the goodman’s wife —=
‘<Come in, old man !’’ quoth she,—
‘¢ We will not leave thee to the storm,
Whoever thou may’st be.’’
Then came the aged wanderer in,
And silent sat him down ;
While all within grew dark as night
Beneath the storm-cloud’s frown.
But while the sudden lightning’s blaze
Filled every cottage nook,
And with the jarring thunder-roll
The loosened casement shook,
A heavy tramp of horses’ feet
Came sounding up the lane,
And half a score of horse, or more,
Came plunging through the rain.
*¢ Now, Goodman Macey, ope thy door,—_
We would not be house-breakers ;
A rueful deed thou’st done this day,
In harboring banished Quakers.’’
Out looked the cautious goodman then,
With much of fear and awe,
For there, with broad wig drenched with rain,
The parish priest he saw.
*¢ Open thy door, thou wicked man,
And let thy pastor in,
And give God thanks, if forty stripes
Repay thy deadly sin.’’
122
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
‘¢ What seek ye ?’’ quoth the goodman,—
‘<The stranger is my guest ;
He is worn with toil and grievous wrong,—
Pray let the old man rest.’
¢¢ Now, out upon thee, canting knave!”
And strong hands shook the door,
*¢ Believe me, Macey,’’ quoth the priest,——_=
‘© Thou’lt rue thy conduct sore.”’
Then kindled Macey’s eye of fire:
‘< No priest who walks the earth,
Shall pluck away the stranger-guest
Made welcome to my hearth.”
Down from his cottage wall he caught
The matchlock, hotly tried
At Preston-pans and Marston-moor,
By fiery Ireton’s side ;
Where Puritan, and Cavalier,
With shout and psalm contended ;
And Rupert’s oath, and Cromwell’s prayer,
With battle-thunder blended.
Up rose the ancient stranger then:
‘¢ My spirit is not free
To bring the wrath and violence
Of evil men on thee:
¢¢ And for thyself, I pray forbear,—=
Bethink thee of thy Lord,
Who healed again the smitten ear,
And sheathed his follower’s sword.
THE EXILES. 123
‘« 1 go, as to the slaughter led:
Friends of the poor, farewell }
Beneath his hand the oaken door
Back on its hinges fell.
«Come forth, old gray-beard, yea and nay;
The reckless scoffers cried,
As to a horseman’s saddle-bow
The old man’s arms were tied.
And of his bondage hard and long
In Boston’s crowded jail,
Where suffering woman’s prayer was heard,
With sickening childhood’s wail,
It suits not with our tale to tell:
Those scenes have passed away —
Let the dim shadows of the past
Brood o’er that evil day.
*¢ Ho, sheriff !’’? quoth the ardent priest <=
‘¢'Take goodman Macey too;
The sin of this day’s heresy,
His back or purse shall rue.”’
And priest and sheriff, both together
Upon his threshold stood,
When Macey, through another door,
Sprang out into the wood.
4¢ Now, goodwife, haste thee !’’ Macey cried,
She caught his manly arm : —
Behind, the parson urged pursuit,
With outcry and alarm.
U24
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Ho! speed the Maceys, neck or naught, =u
The river course was near : —
The plashing on its pebbled shore
Was music to their ear.
A gray rock, tasselled o’er with birch,
Above the waters hung,
And at its base, with every wave,
A small light wherry swung.
A leap — they gain the boat —- and there
The goodman wields his oar:
#¢ Tl] luck betide them all ’’— he cried,—
‘« The laggards upon the shore.’’
Down through the crashing under-wood,
The burly sheriff came: —
*« Stand, goodman Macey — yield thyself s
Yield in the King’s own name.”’’
¢¢ Now out upon thy hangman’s face !"”
Bold Macey answered then,—
¢¢ Whip women, on the village green,
But meddle not with men.”
The priest came panting to the shore,—»
His grave cocked nat was gone:
Behind him, like some owl’s nest, hung
His wig upon a thorn.
*¢ Come back —come back !’’ the parson cried,
‘‘ The church’s curse beware.”’
*¢ Curse and thou wilt,’’ said Macey, ‘‘ but
Thy blessing prithee spare.’’
THE EXILES.
*¢6 Vile scoifer!’’ cried the baffled priest, —
“‘Thou’lr yet the gallows see.”’
’¢ Who’s born to be hanged, will not be drowned,”
Quoth Macey merrily ;
«* And so, sir sheriff and priest, good-bye !"”
He bent him to his oar,
And the small boat glided quietly
From the twain upon the shore.
Now in the west, the heavy clouds
Scattered and fell asunder,
While feebler came the rush of rain,
And fainter growled the thunder,
And through the broken clouds, the sun
Looked out serene and warm,
Painting its holy symbol-light
Upon the passing storm.
Oh, beautiful! that rainbow span,
O’er dim Crane-neck was bended ; —
One bright foot touched the eastern hills,
And one with ocean blended.
By green Pentucket’s southern slope
The small boat glided fast, —
The watchers of ‘‘ the Block-house’’ saw
The strangers as they passed.
That night a stalwart garrison
Sat shaking in their shoes,
To hear the dip of Indian oars,—e
The glide of birch canoes.
We
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
The fisher-wives of Salisbury,
(The men were ali away),
Looked out to see the stranger oar
Upon their waters play.
Deer-Island’s rocks and fir-trees threw
Their sunset-shadows o’er them,
And Newbury’s spire and weathercock
Peered o’er the pines before them.
Around the Black Rocks, on their left,
The marsh lay broad and green ;
And on their right, with dwarf shrubs crowned,
Plum Island’s hills were seen.
With skilful hand and wary eye
The harbor-bar was crossed ; —
A plaything of the restless wave,
The boat on ocean tossed.
The glory of the sunset heaven
On land and water lay,—
On the steep hills of Agawam,
On cape, and bluff, and bay.
They passed the gray rocks of Cape Ann,
And Gloucester’s harbor-bar ;
The watch-fire of the garrison
Shone like a setting star.
How brightly broke the morning
On Massachusetts’ Bay !
Blue wave, and bright green island,
_ Rejoicing in the day.
7 NH.
THE EXILES.
On passed the bark in safety
Round isle and headland steep»
No tempest broke above them,
No fog-cloud veiled the deep.
Far round the bleak and stormy Cape
The vent’rous Macey passed,
And on Nantucket’s naked isle,
Drew up his boat at last.
And how, in log-built cabin,
They braved the rough sea-weather
And there, in peace and quietness,
Went down life’s vale together:
How others drew around them,
And how their fishing sped,
Until to every wind of heaven
Nantucket’s sails were spread 3
How pale want alternated
With plenty’s golden smile;
Behold, is it not written
In the annals of the isle?
And yet that isle remaineth
A refuge of the free,
As when true-hearted Macey
Beheld it from the sea.
Free as the winds that winnow
Her shrubless hills of sand =
Free as the waves that batter
Along her yielding land.
RE WHITTIER’S POEMS,
Than hérs, at duty’s summons,
No loftier spirit stirs, — -
Nor falls o’er human suffering
A readier tear than hers.
God bless the sea-beat island ! —
And grant for evermore,
That charity and freedom dwell,
As now upon her shore!
THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD.
{The following Ballad is founded upon one of the marvelous
legends connected with the famous General M., of Hampton,
N. H., who was regarded by his neighbors as a Yankee Faust,
in league with the adversary. I give the story, as I heard it
when a child, from a venerable family visitant. ]
Dark the halls, and cold the feast —
Gone the bridemaids, gone the priest !
All is over —all is done,
Twain of yesterday are one!
Blooming girl and manhood gray,
Autumn in the arms of May!
Hushed within and hushed without,
Dancing feet and wrestlers’ shout ;
Dies the bonfire on the hill;
All is dark and all is still,
Save the starlight, save the breeze
Moaning through the grave-yard trees
And the great sea-waves below,
Like the night’s pulse, beating slow..
From the brief dream of a bride
She hath wakened, at his side.
YHE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD.
With half uttered shriek and start —
Feels she not his beating heart ?
And the pressure of his arm,
And his breathing near and warm?
Lightly from the bridal bed
Springs that fair dishevelled head,
And a feeling, new, intense,
Half of shame, half innocence,
Maiden fear and wonder speaks
Through her lips and changing cheeks,
From the oaken mantel glowing
Faintest light the lamp is throwing
On the mirror’s antique mould,
High-backed chair, and wainscot old,
And, through faded curtains stealing,
His dark sleeping face revealing.
Listless lies the strong man there,
Silver-streaked his careless hair ;
Lips of love have left no trace
On that hard and haughty face;
And that forehead’s knitted thought
Love’s soft hand hath not unwrought.
‘* Yet,’’ she sighs, ‘‘ he loves me wel,
More than these calm lips will tell.
Stooping to my lowly state,
He hath made me rich and great,
And I bless him, though he be
Hard and stern to all save me!’
While she speaketh, falls the light
O’er her fingers small and white;
Gold and gem, and costly ring
Back the timid lustre fling —
WHITTIER’S PCEUHS.
Love’s selectest gifts, and rare,
His proud hand had fastened there
Gratefully she marks the glew |
From those tapering lines ot snow;
Fondly o’er the sleeper bending
His black hair with golden blending,
In her soft and light caress,
Cheek and lip together press.
Ha !—that start of horror! — Why
That wild stare and wilder cry,
Full or terror, full of pain ?
Is there madness in her brain ?
Hark ! that gasping, hoarse and lows
«¢ Spare me — spare me — let me go! **
God have mercy ! — Icy cold
Spectral hands her own enfold,
Drawing silently from them
Love’s fair gifts of gold and gem,
‘¢Waken ! save me!’ still as death
At her side he slumbereth.
Ring and bracelet all are gone,
And that ice-cold hand withdrawn ;
But she hears a murmur low,
Full of sweetness, full of woe,
Half a sigh and half a moan:
‘‘ Fear not! give the dead her own! ‘
Ah ! — the dead wife’s voice she knows!
That cold hand whose pressure froze,
Once in warmest life had borne
Gem and band her own hath worn.
«¢ Wake thee! wake thee !’’ Lo, his eyes
Open with a dull surprise.
[HE NEW WiFE AND THE OLD.
In his arms the strong man folds her,
Closer to his breast he holds her ;
Trembling limbs his own are meeting,
And he feels her heart’s quick beating:
‘‘ Nay, my dearest, why this fear ?’”’
‘¢ Hush !’’ she saith, ‘‘ the dead is here} *
‘¢ Nay, a dream —an idle dream.”
But before the lamp’s pale gleam
Tremblingly her hand she raises, —
There no more the diamond blazes,
Clasp of pearl, or ring of gold,—
«© Ah!”’ she sighs, ‘* her hand was cold t
Broken words of cheer he saith,
But his dark lip quivereth,
And as o’er the past he thinketh,
From his young wife’s arms he shrinketh 3
Can those soft arms round him lie,
Underneath his dead wife’s eye?
She her fair young head can rest
Soothed and child-like on his breast,
And in trustful innocence
Draw new strength and courage thence;
He, the proud man, feels within
But the cowardice of sin!
She can murmur in her thought
Simple prayers her mother taught,
And His blessed angels call,
Whose great love is over all ;
He, alone, in prayerless pride,
Meets the dark Past at her side!
One, who living shrank with dwead,
From his look, or word, or tread,
WHITTIER’S POEMS
Unto whom her early grave
Was as freedom to the slave,
foves him at this midnight hour,
With the dead’s unconscious power ?
Ah, the dead, the unforgot !
From their solemn homes of thought,
Where the cypress shadows blend
Darkly over foe and friend,
Or in love or sad rebuke,
Back upon the living look.
And the tenderest ones and weakest,
Who their wrongs have borne the meekest,
Lifting from those dark, still places,
Sweet and sad-remembered faces,
O’er the guilty hearts behind
An unwitting triumph find.
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE.
(ToussAInT L’OUVERTURE, the black chieftain of Hayti,
was a slave on the plantation ‘de Libertas,” belonging to M.
Bayou. When the rising of the negroes took place, in 1791,
TOoussAINT refused to join them until he had aided M. Bayou
- and his family to escape to Baltimore. The white man had
discovered in TOUSSAINT many noble qualities, and had in-
structed him in some of the first branches of education; and
the preservation of his life was owing to the negro’s gratitude
for this kindness.
In 1797, ToussAINT L’OUVERTURE was appointed, by the
French government, General-in-Chief of the armies of St. Do-
mingo, and, as such, signed the Convention with General MAIT-
LAND, for the evacuation of the island by the British. From
this period until 1801, the island, under the government of
TOUSSAINT was happy, tranquil, and prosperous. The miser-
able attempt of NAPOLEON to reéstablish slavery in St. Do-
mingo, although it failed of its intended object, proved fatal to
the negro chieftain. Treacherously seized by LE CLERC, he
was hurried on board a vessel by night, and conveyed to France,
where he was confined in a cold subterranean dungeon, at Be-
sancon, where, in April, 1803, he died. The treatment of
ToussAINT finds a parallel only in the murder of the Duke
D’ENGHIEN. It was the remark of GoDWIN, in his Lectures,
that the West India Islands, since their first discovery by Co-
LUMBUS, could not boast of » single name which deserves com-
parison witb that of ToussaAInT L’OUVERTURE. ]
*Twas night. The tra:quil moonlight smile
With which Heaven dreams of Earth, shed down
Its beauty on the Indian ‘sle —
On broad gree™ field and white-walled town;
_ (133)
134
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
And inland waste of rock and wood,
In searching sunshine, wild and rude,
Rose, mellowed through the silver gleam,
Soft as the landscape of a dream,
All motionless and dewy wet,
Tree, vine, and flower in shadow met:
The myrtle with its snowy bloom,
Crossing the nightshade’s solemn gloom —u-.
The white cecropia’s silver rind
Relieved by deeper green behind, —
The orange with its fruit of gold,—
The lithe paullinia’s verdant fold,—
The passion-flower, with symbol holy,
Twining its tendrils long and lowly,—=
The rhexias dark, and cassia tall,
And proudly rising over all,
The kingly palm’s imperial stem,
Crowned with its leafy diadem,—
Star-like, beneath whose sombre shade,
The fiery-winged cucullo played !
Yes — lovely was thine aspect, then,
Fair island of the Western Sea !
Lavish of beauty, even when
Thy brutes were happier than thy men,
For they, at least, were free!
Regardless of thy glorious clime,
Unmindful of thy soil of flowers,
The toiling negro sighed, that Time
No faster sped his hours.
For, by the dewy moonlight still,
He fed the weary-turning mill,
Or bent him in the chill morass,
To pluck the long and tarigled grass,
TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE, 135
And hear above his scar-worn back
The heavy slave-whip’s frequent crack ;
While in his heart one evil thought
In solitary madness wrought, —
One baleful fire surviving still
The quenching of the immortal mind —
One sterner passion of his kind,
Which even fetters could not kill,—
The savage hope, to deal, ere long,
A vengeance bitterer than his wrong !
Hark to that cry ! —long, loud, and shrill,
From field and forest, rock and hill,
Thrilling and horrible it rang,
Around, beneath, above ; —
The wild beast from his cavern sprang —
The wild bird from her grove!
Nor fear, nor joy, nor agony
Were mingled in that midnight cry;
But, like the lion’s growl of wrath,
When falls that hunter in his path,
Whose barbed arrow, deeply set,
Is rankling in his bosom yet,
It told of hate, full, deep, and strong,—»
Of vengeance kindling out of wrong ;
It was.as if the crimes of years —
The unrequited toil — the tears —
The shame and hate, which liken well
Earth’s garden to the nether hell,
Had found in Nature’s self a tongue,
On which the gathered horror hung 3
As if from cliff, and stream, and glen,
Burst, on the startled ears of men,
That voice which rises unto God,
Solemn and stern —the cry of blood!
136 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
It ceased — and all was still once more,
Save ocean chafing on his shore,
The sighing of the wind between
The broad banana’s leaves of green,
Or bough by restless plumage shook,
Or murmuring voice of mountain brook,
Brief was the silence. Once again
Pealed to the skies that frantic yell —
Glowed on the heavens a fiery stain,
And flashes rose and fell;
And, painted on the blood-red sky,
Dark, naked arms were tossed on high;
And, round the white man’s lordly hall,
Trode, fierce and free, the brute he madez
And those who crept along the wall,
And answered to his hghtest call
With more than spaniel dread —
The creatures of his lawless beck —
Were trampling on his very neck !
And, on the night-air, wild and clear,
Rose woman’s shriek of more than fear ;
For bloodied arms were round her thrown,
And dark cheeks pressed against her own!
Then, injured Afric ! — for the shame
Of thy own daughters, vengeance came
Full on the scornful hearts of those,
Who mocked thee in thy nameless woes,
And to thy hapless children gave
One choice — pollution, or the grave!
Where then was he, whose fiery zeal
Had taught the trampled heart to feel,
Until despair itself grew strong,
And vengeance fed its torch fom wrong ?
TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTUPE 137
Now — when the thunderbolt is speeding :
Now — when oppression’s heart is bleeding:
Now — when the latent curse of Time
Is raining down in fire and blood —
That curse which, through long years of crime,
Has gathered, drop by drop, its flood —
Why strikes he not, the foremost one,
Where murder’s sternest deeds are done?
He stood the aged palms beneath,
That shadowed o’er his humble door,
Listening, with half-suspended breath,
To the wild sounds of fear and death —=
Toussaint L’Ouverture !
What marvel that his heart beat high!
The blow for freedom had been given $
And blood had answered to the cry
Which earth sent up to Heaven !
What marvel, that a fierce delight
Smiled grimly o’er his brow of night,
As groan, and shout, and bursting flame,
Told where the midnight tempest came,
With blood and fire along its van,
And death behind !—he was a MAN]
Yes, dark-souled chieftain ! —if the light
Of mild Religion’s heavenly ray
Unveiled not to thy mental sight
The lowlier and the purer way,
In which the Holy Sufferer trod,
Meekly amidst the sons of crime,—
That calm reliance upon God
For justice, in his own good time,—
That gentleness, to which belongs
Forgiveness for its many wrongs.
$38
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Sven as the primal martyr, kneeling
For mercy on the evil-dealing, —
Let not the favored white man name
Thy stern appeal, with words of blame.
Has he not, with the light of heaven
Broadly around him, made the same?
Yea, on his thousand war-fields striven,
And gloried in his ghastly shame ? —
Kneeling amidst his brother’s blood,
To offer mockery unto God,
As if the High and Holy One
Could smile on deeds of murder done ! —_
As if a human sacrifice
Were purer in his Holy eyes,
Though offered up by Christian hands,
Than the foul rites of Pagan lands !
« aK & &
Sternly, amidst his household band,
His carbine grasped within his hand,
The white man stood, prepared and still,
Waiting the shock of maddened men,
Unchained, and fierce as tigers, when
The horn winds through their caverned hill
And one was weeping in his sight —
The sweetest flower of all the isle,—
The bride who seemed but yesternight
Love’s fair embodied smile.
And, clinging to her trembling knee,
Looked up the form of infancy,
With tearful glance in either face,
The secret of its fear to trace.
TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE. 139
% Ha—stand, or die!’’ The white man’s eye
His steady musket gleamed along,
As a tall Negro hastened nigh,
With fearless step and strong.
‘¢What, ho, Toussaint !’’ A moment more,
His shadow crossed the lighted floor.
‘¢ Away,’’ he shouted ; ‘‘ fly with me,—
The white man’s bark is on the sea; —
Her sails must catch the seaward wind,
For sudden vengeance sweeps behind.
Our brethren from their grave have spoken,
The yoke is spurned — the chain is broken;
On all the hills our fires are glowing —
Through all the vales red blood is flowing !
No more the mocking White shall rest
His foot upon the Negro’s breast ;
No more, at morn or eve, shall drip
The warm blood from the driver’s whip ; —
Yet, though Toussaint has vengeance sworn
For all the wrongs his race have borne, —
Though for each drop of Negro blood
The white man’s veins shall pour a flood ;
Not all alone the sense of ill
Around his heart is lingering still,
Nor deeper can the white man feel
The generous warmth of grateful zeal.
Friends of the Negro! fly with me—
The path is open to the sea:
Away, for life!’’—- He spoke, and pressed
The young child to his manly breast,
As, headlong, through the cracking cane,
Down swept the dark insurgent train —
Drunken and grim, with shout and yell ~
Hawled through the dark, like sounds from hell ?
1
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Far out, in peace, the white man’s sail
Swayed free before the sunrise gale.
Cloud-like that island hung afar,
Along the bright horizon’s verge,
O’er which the curse of servile war
Rolled its red torrent, surge on surge.
And he —the Negro champion — where
In the fierce tumult, struggled he?
Go trace him by the fiery glare
Of dwellings in the midnight air —
The yells of triumph and despair —
The streams that crimson to the sea
Sleep calmly in thy dungeon-tomb,
Beneath Besancon’s alien sky,
Dark Haytien ! — for the time shall come,
Yea, even now is nigh —
When, everywhere, thy name shall be
Redeemed from color’s infamy ;
And men shall learn to speak of thee,
As one of earth’s great spirits, born
In servitude, and nursed in scorn,
Casting aside the weary weight
And fetters of its low estate,
In that strong majesty of soul,
Which knows no color, tongue or clime =
Which still hath spurned the base control
Of tyrants through all time!
Far other hands than mine may wreathe
The laurel round thy brow of death,
And speak thy praise, as one whose word
A thousand fiery spirits stirred, —
Who crushed his foeman as a worm —
Whose step on human hearts fell firm : —*
*The reader may, perhaps, call to mind the beautiful sonmey
TOUSSAINT L’CUVERTURE. 143
Be mine the better task to find
A tribute for thy lofty mind,
Amidst whose gloomy vengeance shone
Some milder virtues all thine own,—
Some gleams of feeling pure and warm,
Like sunshine on a sky of storm,—
Proofs that the Negro’s heart retains
Some nobleness amidst its chains,—
That kindness to the wronged is never
Without its excellent reward,—.
Holy to human-kind, and ever
Acceptable to God.
of William Wordsworth, addressed to Toussaint L’Ouverture,
during his confinement in France.
«“ Toussaint !— thou most unhappy man of men!
Whether the whistling rustic tends his plough
Within thy hearing, or thou liest now
Buried in some deep dungeon’s earless den;
Oh, miserable chieftain !—- where and when
Wilt thou find patience ? — Yet, die not; do thou
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,
Live and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
Powers that will work for thee ; air, earth, and skies, <=
There’s not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee: thou hast great allies,
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man’s unconquerable mind,”
142 WOHILLIE RD CUWULE,
THE SLAVE SHIPS.
« That fatal, that perfidious bark,
Built ? the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark.”
Milton’s Lycidas.
[The French ship LE RoODEuvR, with a crew of twenty-two
men, and with one hundred and sixty negro slaves, sailed from
Bonny, in Africa, April, 1819. On approaching the line, a
terrible malady broke out —an obstinate disease of the eyes —
contagious, and altogether beyond the resources of medicine,
It was aggravated by the scarcity of water among the slaves
(only half a wine-glass per day being allowed to an individual),
and by the extreme impurity of the air in which they breathed.
By the advice of the physician, they were brought upon deck
occasionally ; but some of the poor wretches, locking themselves
in each other’s arms, leaped overboard, in the hope, which so
universally prevails among them, of being swiftly transported
to their own homes in Africa. To check this, the captain
ordered several, who were stopped in the attempt, to be shot,
or hanged, before their companions. The disease extended to
the crew; and one after another were smitten withit, until only
one remained unaffected. Yet even this dreadful condition did
not preclude calculation: ta save the expense of supporting
slaves rendered unsalable, and to obtain grounds for a claim
against the underwriters, ¢hirty-stx of the negroes, having be-
come blind, were thrown into the sea and drowned !
In the midst of their dreadful fears lest the solitary indi-
vidu: 4, whose sight remained unaffected, should also be seized
witk the malady, a sail was discovered. It was the Spanish
slat er, LEON. The same disease had been there; and, horrible
to cell, all the crew had become blind! Unable to assist each
ot ser, the vessels parted. The Spanish ship has never since
been heard of. The RoDEuR reached Gaudaloupe on the 21st
of June; the only man who had escaped the disease, and had
thus been enabled to steer the slaver into port, caught it in
three days after its arrival,—_ Speech of MW. Benjamin Constant,
ta the Lrench Chamber of Deputies, June 17, 1820.]
‘¢ Aut ready? ’”’ cried the captain;
‘‘ Ay, ay !’’ the seamen said;
‘« Heave up the worthless lubbers .—
“he dying and the dead.”
eeceiata
THE SUAVE SHIPS.
Up from the slave-ship’s prison
Fierce, bearded heads were thrust u=
*¢ Now let the sharks look to it —
Toss up the dead ones first !””
Corpse after corpse came up,—
Death had been busy there ;
Where every blow is mercy,
Why should the spoiler spare?
Corpse after corpse they cast
Sullenly from the ship,
Yet bloody with the traces
Of fetter-link and whip.
Gioomily stood the captain,
With his arms upon his breast,
With his cold brow sternly knotted,
And his iron lip compressed.
*¢ Are all the dead dogs over ?”’
Growled through that matted lip =
#¢' The blind ones are no better,
Let’s lighten the good ship.’’
Hark! from the ship’s dark bosom,
The very sounds of hell!
The ringing clank of iron —
The maniac’s short, sharp yell! —
The hoarse, low curse, throat-stifled ou
The starving infant’s moan —
The horror of a breaking heart
Poured through a mother’s groan?
Up from that loathsome prison
The stricken blind ones came:
Below, had all been darkness —
Above, was still the same.
143
144
WHITTIER’S POEMS, ; [
Yet the holy breath of heaven
Was sweetly breathing there,
And the heated brow of fever
Cooled in the soft sea air.
¢¢ Overboard with them, shipmates }
Cutlass and dirk were plied ;
Fettered and blind, one after one,
Plunged down the vessel’s side,
The sabre smote above —
Beneath, the lean shark lay,
Waiting with wide and bloody jaw
His quick and human prey.
God of the earth! what cries
Rang upward unto Thee?
Voices of agony and blood,
From ship-deck and from sea,
The last dull plunge was heard —
The last wave caught its stain —=
And the unsated shark looked up
For human hearts in vain,
* * * * 2
Red glowed the western waters —
The setting sun was there,
Scattering alike on wave and cloud
His fiery mesh of hair.
Amidst a group in blindness,
A solitary eye
Gazed, from the burdened slaver’s deck,
Into that burning sky.
«¢ A storm,’’ spoke out the gazer,
‘tits gathering and at hand —
Curse cn’t —I’d give my other eye
For one firm rood of land.’
THE SLAVE SHIPS,
And then he laughed — but only
His echoed laugh replied —
For the blinded and the suffering
Alone were at his side.
Night settled on the waters,
And on a stormy heaven,
While fiercely on that lone ship’s track
The thunder-gust was driven.
¢¢ A sail ! — thank God, a sail! "”
And, as the helmsman spoke,
Up through the stormy murmur,
A shout of gladness broke.
Down came the stranger vessei
Unheeding on her way,
So near, that on the slaver’s deck
Fell off her driven spray.
‘*Ho! for the love of mercy —
We’re perishing and blind!”
A wail of utter agony
Came back upon the wind:
*¢ Help ws / for we are stricken
With blindness every one;
Ten days we’ve floated fearfully,
Unnoting star or sun.
Our ship’s the slaver Leon —
We’ve but a score on board —
Our slaves are all gone over —
Help — for the love of God!”
On livid brows of agony
The broad red lightning shone --=
But the roar of wind and thunder
Stified the answering groan.
145
146
|
WHITTIER’S PQEHMS. [
Wailed from the broken waters
A last despairing cry,
As, kindling in the stormy light,
The stranger ship went by.
* * *K *
In the sunny Guadaloupe
A dark-hulled vessel lay —
With a crew who noted never
The nightfall or the day.
The blossom of the orange
Was white by every stream,
And tropic leaf, and flower, and biré
Were in the warm sunbeam.
And the sky was bright as ever,
And the moonlight slept as well,
On the palm trees by the hillside,
And the streamlet of the dell;
And the glances of the Creole
Were still as archly deep,
And her smiles as full as ever
Of passion and of sleep.
But vain were bird and blossom,
The green earth and the sky,
And the smile of human faces,
To the slaver’s darkened eye;
At the breaking of the morning,
At the starlit evening time,
O’er a world of light and beauty,
Fell the blackness of his crime.
a
OUR COUNTRYMEN IN CHAINS, 147
STANZAS.
{* The despotism which our fathers could not bear in their
ative country is expiring, and the sword of justice in her re-
formed hands has applied its exterminating edge to slavery.
Shall the United States—the free United States, which could
aot bear the bonds of a king, cradle the bondage which a king
is abolishing? Shall a Republic be less free than a Monarchy ?
Shall we, in the vigor and buoyancy @ our manhood, be less
energetic in righteousness than a kingdom in its age?” — Dn
Follen’s Address.
« Genius of America !—Spirit of our free institutions—where
art thou ?— How art thou fallen, O Lucifer! son of the morn- —
ing —how art thou fallen from Heaven! Hell from beneath
is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming ! — The kings of
the earth cry out to thee, Aha! Aha!—-arT THOU BECOME
“°KE UNTO US?” — Speech of Samuel F. May.]
Our fellow-countrymen in chains!
Slaves —in a land of light and law!
Slaves — crouching on the very plains
Where rolled the storm of Freedom’s war!
A groan from Eutaw’s haunted wood —
A wail where Camden’s martyrs fell —
By every shrine of patriot blood,
From Moultrie’s wall and Jasper’s well!
By storied hill and hallowed grot,
By mossy wood and marshy glen,
Whence rang of old the rifle-shot,
And hurrying shout of Marion’s men!
The groan of breaking hearts is there -—
The falling lash —the fetter’s clank !
slaves — SLAVES are breathing in that air,
Which old De Kalb and Sumter drank !
848 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
What, ho! — our countrymen in chains ¢
The whip on woman’s shrinking flesh !
Our soil yet reddening with the stains,
Caught from her scourging, warm and fresh
What ! mothers from their children riven !
_ What ! God’s own image bought and sold$
AMERICANS to market driven,
And bartered as the brute for gold !
Speak! shall their agony of prayer
Come thrilling to our hearts in vain?
To us whose fathers scorned to bear
The paltry menace of a chain ;
To us, whose boast is loud and long
Of holy Liberty and Light —
Say, shall these writhing slaves of Wrong
Plead vainly for their plundered Right ?
What! shall we send, with lavish breath,
Our sympathies across the wave,
Where Manhood, on the field of death,
Strikes for his freedom, or a grave ?
Shall prayers go up, and hymns be sung
For Greece, the Moslem fetter spurning,
And millions hail with pen and tongue
Our light on all her altars burning ?
Shall Belgium feel, and gallant France,
By Vendéme’s pile and Schoenbrun’s wall, |
And Poland, gasping on her lance,
The impulse of our cheering call ?
And shall the SLAVE, beneath our eye,
Clank o’er our fields his hateful chain P
And toss his fettered arms on high,
And groan for Freedom’s gift, in vain?
OUR COUNTRYMEN IN CHAINS, 143
Oh, say, shall Prussia’s banner be
A refuge for the stricken slave?
And shall the Russian serf go free
By Baikal’s lake and Neva’s wave?
And shall the wintry-bosomed Dane
Relax the iron hand of pride,
And bid his bondman cast the chain
From fettered soul and limb, aside?
Shall every flap of England’s flag
Proclaim that all around are free,
From ‘‘ farthest Ind”’ to each blue crag
That beetles o’er the Western Sea?
And shall we scoff at Europe’s kings,
When Freedom’s fire is dim with us,
And round our country’s altar clings
The damning shade of Slavery’s curse?
Go — let us ask of Constantine
To loose his grasp on Poland’s throat 3
And beg the lord of Mahmoud’s line
To spare the struggling Suliote —
Will not the scorching answer come
From turbaned Turk, and scornful Russ;
‘Go, loose your fettered slaves at home,
Then turn, and ask the like of us!”’
Just God ! and shall we calmly rest,
The Christian’s scorn—the heathen’s mirth =.
Content to live the lingering jest
And by-word of a mocking Earth?
Shall our own glorious land retain
That curse which Europe scorns to bear?
Shall our own brethren drag the chain
Which not even Russia’s menia/s wear?
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Up, then, in Freedom’s manly par
From gray-beard eld to fiery youtn,
And on the nation’s naked heart
Scatter the living coals of Truth 1.
Up — while ye slumber, deeper yet
The shadow of our fame is growing :
Up —while ye pause, our sun may set
In blood, around our altars flowing !
Oh! rouse ye, ere the storm comes forth =m
The gathered wrath of God and man —
Like that which wasted Egypt’s earth,
When hail and fire above it ran.
Hear ye no warnings in the air?
Feel ye no earthquake underneath P
Up — up — why will ye slumber where
The sleeper only wakes in death?
Up ow for Freedom ! — not in strife
Like that your sterner fathers saw —
The awful waste of human life —
The glory and the guilt of war:
But break the chain — the yoke remove,
And smite to earth Oppression’s rod,
With those mild arms of Truth and.Love.
Made mighty through the living God!
Down let the shrine of Molock sink,
And leave no traces where it stood ;
Nor longer let its idol drink
His daily cup of human blood:
But rear another altar there,
To Truth and Love and Mercy given,
And Freedom’s gift, and Freedom’s prayer,
Shall cali an answer down from Heaven !
oe TD a
ee
THE YANKEE GIRL. 153
THE YANKEE GIRL,
SHE sings by her wheel, at that low cottage-door,
Which the long evening shadow is stretching before,
With a music as sweet as the music which seems
Breathed softly and faint in the ear of our dreams !
How brilliant and mirthful the light of her eye,
Like a star glancing out from the blue of the sky!
And lightly and freely her dark tresses play
O’er a brow and a bosom as lovely as they !
Who comes in his pride to that low cottage-door—
The haughty and rich to the humble and poor P
"Tis the great Southern planter—the master who
waves
His whip of dominion o’er hundreds of slaves.” _
“«Nay, Ellen—for shame! Let those Yankee fools
spin,
Who would pass for our slaves with a change of their
skins ;
Let them toil as they will at the loom or the wheel,
Too stupid for shame, and too vulgar to feel!
** But thou art too lovely and precious a gem
fo be bound to their burdens and sullied by them —
for shame, Ellen, shame ! —cast thy bondage aside,
And away to the South, as my blessing and pride.
«Ob, come where no winter thy footsteps can wrong,
But where flowers are blossoming all the year long,
Where the shade of the palm-tree is over my home,
And the lemon and orange are white in their bloom {
152 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
‘«Oh, come to my home, where my servants shall all
Depart at thy bidding and come at thy call ;
They shall heed thee as mistress with trembling and
awe,
And each wish of thy heart shall be felt as a law.”
Oh, could ye have seen her—that pride of ow
girls —
Arise and cast back the dark wealth of her curls,
With a scorn in her eye which the gazer could feel,
And a glance like the sunshine that flashes on steel
‘Go back, haughty Southron! thy treasures of gole
Are dim with the blood of the hearts thou hast sold;
Thy home may be lovely, but round it I hear
The crack of the whip and the footsteps of fear!
‘¢And the sky of thy South may be brighter thaa
ours,
And greener thy landscapes, and fairer thy flowers;
But, dearer the blast round our mountains which
raves,
Than the sweet summer zephyr which breathes cver
slaves !
‘* Full low at thy bidding thy negroes may kneel,
With the iron of bondage on spirit and heel ;
Yet know that the Yankee girl sooner would be
In fetters with them, than in freedom with thee! ’*
TO W. L. &.
TO W. L. G
CHAMPION of those who groan beneatn
Oppression’s iron hand:
In view of penury, hate and death,
I see the fearless stand,
Still bearing up thy lofty brow,
In the steadfast strength of truth,
In manhood sealing well the vow
And promise of thy youth.
Go on ! —for thou hast chosen wells
On in the strength of God!
Long as one human heart shall swell
Beneath the tyrant’s rod.
Speak in a slumbering nation’s ear,
As thou hast ever spoken,
Until the dead in sin shall hear —
The fetter’s link be broken !
I love thee with a brother’s love,
I feel my pulses thrill,
To mark thy spirit soar above
The cloud of human ill.
My heart hath leaped to answer thine,
And echo back thy words,
As leaps the warrior’s at the shine
And flash of kindred swords !
They tell me thou art rash and vain —
A searcher after fame —
That thou art striving but to gain
A long-enduring name —
That thou hast nerved the Afric’s hand,
And steeled the Afric’s heart,
To shake aloft his vengeful brand,
And rend his chain apart.
15a
154
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Have I not known thee well, and reac
Thy mighty purpose long !
And watched the trials which have made
Thy human spirit strong P
And shall the slanderer’s demon breath
Avail with one like me,
To dim the sunshine of my faith
And earnest trust in thee ?
Go on — the dagger’s point may glare
Amid thy pathway’s gloom —
The fate which sternly threatens there
Is glorious martyrdom !
Then onward with a martyr’s zeal —
Press on to thy reward —
The hour when man shall only kneel
Before his Father — God.
SONG OF TH FREE.
{ Living, I shall assert the right of FREE Discussion
dying, I shall assert it; and, should I leave no other inherit
ance to my children, by the blessing of God I will leave them
the inheritance of FREE PRINCIPLES, and the example of a
manly and independent defence of them.” —Daniel Webster.]
Pripe of New England!
Soul of our fathers !
Shrink we all craven-like,
When the storm gathers ?
What though the tempest be
Over us lowering,
Where’s the New Englander
Shamefully cowering?
SONG OF THE FREE, 15%
araves green and holy
Around us are lying,—
Free were the sleepers all,
Living and dying!
Back with the Southerner’s
Padlocks and scourges !
Go — let him fetter down
Ocean’s free surges !
Go — let him silence
Winds, clouds, and waters «x
Never New England’s own
Free sons and daughters !
Free as our rivers are
Ocean-ward going —
Free as the breezes are
Over us blowing.
Up to our altars, then,
Haste we, and summon
Courage and loveliness,
Manhood and woman {
Deep let our pledges be:
Freedom forever !
Truce with oppression,
Never, oh! never!
By our own birthright-gift,
Granted of Heaven —
Freedom for heart and lip,
Be the pledge given !
If we have whispered truth,
Whisper no longer ;
Speak as the tempest does,
Sterner and stronger ;
Still be the tones of truth,
156 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Louder and firmer,
Startling and haughty South
With the deep murmur:
God and our charter’s right,
Freedom forever !
Truce with oppression,
Never, oh ! never |}
THE HUNTERS OF MEN.
Written on reading the report of the proceedings of the Amer
ican Colonization Society, at its annual meeting in 1834.
Have ye heard of our hunting, o’er mountain and
glen,
Through cane-brake and forest—the hunting of
men ?
The lords of our land to this hunting have gone,
As the fox-hunter follows the sound of the horn;
Hark ! — the cheer and the hallo !—the crack of the
whip,
And the yell of the hound as he fastens his grip!
All blithe are our hunters, and noble their match —
Though hundreds are caught, there are milliors to
catch.
So speed to their hunting, o’er mountain and glex,
Through cane-brake and forest—the hunting. of
men !
Gay luck to our hunters ! —how nobly they ride
In the glow of their zeal, and the strength of t¥wiz
pride ! —
The priest with his cassock flung back on the w**d,
Just screening the politic statesman behind —
THE HUNTERS OF MEN. 157
The saint and the sinner, with cursing and prayer —
The drunk and the sober, ride merrily there.
And woman—kind woman—wife, widow, and
maid —
For the good of the hunted, is lending her aid:
Her foot’s in the stirrup — her hand on the rein —
How blithely she rides to the hunting of men!
Oh! goodly and grand is our hunting to see,
In this ‘‘land of the brave and this home of the
freon
Priest, warrior, and statesman, from Georgia toa
Maine,
All mounting the saddle —all grasping the rein
Right merrily hunting the black man, whose sin
Is the curl of his hair and the hue of his skin !
Woe, now, to the hunted who turns him at bay!
Will our hunters be turned from their purpose and
prey?
Will their hearts fail within them?—their nerves
tremble, when
All roughly they ride to the hunting of men?
Ho ! — ats for our hunters ! all weary and faint
Wax the curse of the sinner and prayer of the saint,
The horn is wound faintly —the echoes are still,
Over cane-brake and river, and forest and hill.
Haste — alms for our hunters! the hunted once more
Have turned from their flight with their backs to the
shore ;
What right have ziey here in the home of the white,
shadowed o’er by our banner of Freedom and
Right?
to !—alms for the hunters! or never again
Will they r‘de in their pomp to the hunting of men!
i58 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
ALMS-— ALMS for our hunters! why w// ye delay,
When their pride and their glory are melting away ?
The parson has turned ; for, on charge of his own,
Who goeth a warfare, or hunting, alone?
The politic statesman looks back with a sigh —
There is doubt in his heart — there is fear in his eye.
Oh! haste, lest that doubting and fear shall prevail,
And the head of his steed take the place of the tail.
Oh! haste, ere he leave us! for who will ride then,
For pleasure or gain, to the hunting of men?
CLERICAL OPPRESSORS.
[In the Report of the celebrated pro-slavery meeting in
Charleston, S. C., on the 4th of the 9th month, 1835, pub-
lished in the “Courier” of that city, it is stated, ** Zhe
CLERGY of all denominations attended in a body, LENDING
THEIR SANCTION TO THE PROCEEDINGS, and adding by their
presence to the impressive character of the scene! ”’}
Just God ! —and these are they
Who minister at Thine altar, God of Right !
Men who their hands with prayer and blessing lay
On Israel’s Ark of light!
What! preach and kidnap men?
Give thanks —and rob Thy own afflicted poor?
Talk of Thy glorious liberty, and then
Bolt hard the captive’s door?
What! servants of Thy own
Merciful Son, who came to seek and save
The homeless and the outcast, — fettering down
The tasked and plundered slave}
CLERICAL OPPRESSORS. 153
Pilate and Herod, friends !
Chief prfests and rulers, as of old, combine!
Just God and holy! is that church, which lends
Strength to the spoiler, Thine?
Paid hypocrites, who turn
Judgment aside, and rob the Holy Book
Of those high words of truth which search and bura
In warning and rebuke ;
Feed fat, ye locusts, feed !
And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank the Lord
That, from the toiling bondsman’s utter need,
Ye pile your own. full board.
How long, O lord! how long
Shall such a priesthood barter truth away,
And, in Thy name, for robbery and wrong
At Thy own altars pray?
Is not Thy hand stretched forth
Visibly in the heavens, to awe and smite?
Shall not the living God of all the earth,
And heaven above, do right ?
Woe, then, to all who grind
sheir brethren of a common Father down!
To all who plunder from the immortal mind
Its bright and glorious crown!
Woe to the priesthood ! woe
To those whose hire is with the price of blood —=-
Perverting, darkening, changing as they go,
The searching truths of God !
260 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Their glory and their might
Shall perish; and their very names shall be
Vile before all the people, in the light
Of a world’s liberty.
Oh ! speed the moment on
When Wrong shall cease— and Liberty, and Love.
And Truth, and Right, throughout the earth be
known
As in their home above.
THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE.
{In a late publication of L. F. Tasisrro, « Random Shots
and Southern Breezes,” is a description of a slave auction at
New Orleans, at which the auctioneer recommended the woman
on the stand as “ A GooD CHRISTIAN! ””]
A CHRISTIAN! going, gone!
Who bids for God’s own image ? — for His grace
Which that poor victim of the market-place
Hath in her suffering won?
My God! can such things be?
Hast thou not said that whatsoe’er is done
Unto Thy weakest and Thy humblest one,
Is even done to Thee?
In that sad victim, then,
Child of Thy pitying love, I see Thee stand —
Once more the jest-word of a mocking band,
Bound, sold, and scourged again !
A Christian up for sale!
Wet with her blood your whips — o’ertask her frame,
Make her life loathsome with your wrong and shame,
Her patience shall not fail !
———
——7 hl
THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE. 16]
A heathen hand might deal
Back on your heads the gathered wrong of years,
But her low, broken prayer and nightly tears
Ye neither heed nor feel.
Con well thy lesson o’er,
Thou prudent teacher — tell the toiling slave
No dangerous tale of Him who came to save
The outcast and the poor.
But wisely shut the ray
Of God’s free Gospel from her simple heart,
And to her darkened mind alone impart
One stern command — ‘¢ OBEy !’'*
So shalt thou deftly raise
The market price of human flesh; and while
On thee, their pampered guest, the planters smi
Thy church shall praise.
Grave, reverend men shall tell
From Northern pulpits how thy work was blest,
While in that vile South Sodom, first and best,
Thy poor disciples sell.
Oh, shame! the Moslem thrall,
Who, with his master, to the Prophet kneels,
While turning to the sacred Kebla feels
His fetters break and fall.
* There is in Liberty County, Georgia, an Association for thy
religious instruction of Negroes. Their seventh annual report
contains an address by the Rev. Josiah Spry Law, from which
we extract the following: —‘ There is a growing interest, in
this community, in the religious instruction of Negroes. There
is a conviction that religious instruction promotes the gzze¢ and
order of the peonle, and the pecuniary izzeres¢t of the owners,”
‘162 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Cheers for the turbaned Bey
Of robber-peopled ‘Tunis! he hath torn
The dark slave-dungeons open, and hath borne
Their inmates into day:
But our poor slave in vain
Turns to the Christian shrine his aching eyes=—=
Its rites will only swell his market price,
And rivet on his chain.*
God of all right! how long
Shall priestly robbers at Thine altar stand,
Lifting in prayer to Thee, the bloody hand
And haughty brow of wrong?
Oh, from the fields of cane,
From the low rice-swamp, from the trader’s cell —
From the black slave-ship’s foul and loathsome hell,
And coffle’s weary chain, —
Hoarse, horrible, and strong,
Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry,
Filling the arches of the hollow sky,
How tonc, On Gop, HOW LONG?
* We often see advertisements in the Southern papers, in
which individual slaves, or several of a lot, are recommended
as “ ptous,” or as “ members of churches.” Lately we saw a
slave advertised, who, among other qualifications, was described
as “a Baptist preacher.”
vw
STANZAS FOR THE TIMES, 163
STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.
as this the land our fathers loved,
The freedom which they toiled to winP
Is this the soil whereon they moved ?
Are these the graves they slumber in?
Are we the sons by whom are born
The mantles which the dead have worn?
And shall we crouch above these graves,
With craven soul and fettered lip?
Yoke in with marked and branded slaves,
And tremble at the driver’s whip?
Bend to the earth our pliant knees,
And speak — but as our masters please?
Shall outraged Nature cease to feel ?
Shall mercy’s tears no longer flowr
Shall ruffian threats of cord and steel —
_ The dungeon’s gloom — the assassin’s blow,
Turn back the spirit roused to save
The Truth, our Country, and the Slave?
Of human skulls that shrine was made,
Round which the priests of Mexico
Before their loathsome idol prayed —
Is Freedom’s altar fashioned so?
And must we yield to Freedom’s God,
As offering meet, the negro’s blood P
Shall tongues be mute, when deeds are wrought
Which well might shame extremest hell ?
Shall freemen lock the indignant thought ?
Shall Pity’s bosom cease to swell ?
Shall Honor bleed ?—Shall Truth succumb?
Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb?
164 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
No— by each spot of haunted ground,
Where Freedom weeps her children’s fall—
By Plymouth’s rock, and Bunker’s mound —
By Griswold’s stained and shattered wall —.
By Warren’s ghost — by Langdon’s shade —
By all the memories of our dead !
By their enlarging souls, which burst
The bands and fetters round them set —=»
By the free Pilgrim spirit nursed
Within our inmost bosoms, yet, —
By ai? above — around — below —
Be ours the indignant answer — NO!
No — guided by our country’s laws,
For truth, and right, and suffering man,,
Be ours to strive in Freedom’s cause,
As Christians may —as freemen can {
Still pouring on unwilling ears
That truth oppression only fears.
What! shall we guard our neighbor still,
While woman shrieks beneath his rod,
And while he tramples down at will
The image of a common God !
Shall watch and ward be round him set,
Of Northern nerve and bayonet ?
And shall we know and share with him
The danger and the growing shame ?
And see our Freedom’s light grow dim,
Which should have filled the world with dame?
And, writhing, feel, where’er we turn,
A world’s reproach around us burn P
STANZAS FOR THE TIMES 2635
Is ’t not enough that this is borne?
And asks our hearty neighbor more ?
Must fetters which his slaves have worn,
Clank round the Yankee farmer’s door ?
Must he be told, beside his plough,
What he must speak, and when, and how?
Must he be told his freedom stands
On Slavery’s dark foundations strong ——
On breaking hearts and fettered hands,
On robbery, and crime, and wrong?
That all his fathers taught is vain —
That Freedom’s emblem is the chain?
Its life — its soul, from slavery drawn?
False — foul — profane! Go— teach as well
Of holy Truth from Falsehood born !
Of Heaven refreshed by airs from Hell!
Of Virtue in the arms of Vice!
Of Demons planting Paradise !
Rail on, then, ‘‘ brethren of the South ?? —-—.«
Ye shall not hear the truth the less —
No seal is on the Yankee’s mouth,
No fetter on the Yankee press !
From our Green Mountains to the Sea,
One voice shall thunder — WE ARE FREE}
‘166 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
LINES
Written on reading the spirited and manly remarks of Governor
RITNER, of Pennsylvania, in his Message of 1836, on the:
subject of Slavery.
TuHank God for the token ! — one lip is still free <=
One spirit untrammelled — unbending one knee!
Like the oak of the mountain, deep-rooted and firm,
Erect, when the multitude bends to the storm ;
When traitors to Freedom, and Honor, and God,
Are bowed at an Idol polluted with blood ;
When the recreant North has forgotten her trust,
And the lip of her honor is low in the dust, —
Thank God, that one arm from the shackle has
broken !
Thank God, that one man, as a freeman, has spoken !
O’er thy crags, Alleghany, a blast has been blown!
Down thy tide, Susquehanna, the murmur has gone!
To the land of the South—of the charter and
chain —
Of Liberty sweetened witl: Slavery’s pain ;
Where the cant of Democracy dwells on the lips
Of the forgers of fetters, and wielders of whips!
Where ‘‘chivalric’’ honor means really no more
Than scourging of women, and robbing the poor !
Where the Moloch of Slavery sitteth on high,
And the words which he utters are—- WORSHIP, oF
DiE !
Right onward, oh, speed it! Wherever the blood
Of the wronged and the guiltless is crying to God
Wherever a slave in his fetters is pining ;
Wherever the lash of the driver is twiping 3
RITNER, 167
Wherever from kindred, torn rudely apart,
Comes the sorrowful wail of the broken of heart;
Wherever the shackles of tyranny bind,
In silence and darkness, the God-given mind ;
There, God speed it onward!— its truth will be
felt —
The bonds shall be loosened — the iron shall melt !
And oh, will the land where the free soul of PENN
Still lingers and breathes over mountain and glen —
Will the land where a BENEZET’S spirit went forth
To the peeled, and the meted, and outcast of Earth —
Where the words of the:Charter of Liberty first
From the soul of the sage and the patriot burst —
Where first for the wronged and the weak of their
kind,
The Christian and statesman their efforts combined —
Will that land of the free and the good wear achain ?
Will the call to the rescue of Freedom be vain?
No, RiTNER ! —her ‘‘ Friends,”’ at thy warning shal?
stand
Erect for the truth, like their ancestral band ;
Forgetting the feuds and the strife of past time,
Counting coldness injustice, and silence a crime;
Turning back from the cavil of creeds, to unite
Once again for the poor in defence of the Right;
Breasting calmly, but firmly, the full tide of Wrong,
Overwhelmed, but not borne on its surges along ;
Unappalled by the danger, the shame, and the pain,
And counting each trial for Truth as their gain!
And that bold-hearted yeomanry, honest and true,
Who, haters of fraud, give to labor its due;
Whose fathers, of old, sang in concert with thire,
On the banks of Swetara, the songs of the Rhine —
168 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
The German-born pilgrims, who first dared to brave
The scorn of the proud in the cause of the slave: *—
Will the sons of such men yield the lords of the
South
One brow for the brand — for the padlock one mouth ?
They cater to tyrants P —they rivet the chain,
Which their fathers smote off, on the negro again?
No, never ! — one voice, like the sound in the cloud,
When the roar of the storm waxes loud and more
loud,
Wherever the foot of the freeman hath pressed
From the Delaware’s marge to the Lake of the West,
On the South-going breezes shall deepen and grow
Till the land it sweeps over shall tremble below !
The voice of a PEOPLE — uprisen — awake —
Pennsylvania’s watchword, with Freedom at stake,
Thrilling up from each valley, flung down from each
height,
‘«QuR CountTRY AND LiBpeErTy!—-GoD FOR THE
Ricut |"
LINES
Written on reading the famous “ PASTORAL LETTER” of the
Massachusetts General Association, 1837.
So, this is all — the utmost reach
Of priestly power the mind to fetter !
When laymen think — when women preach —
A war of words —a ‘‘ Pastoral Letter !’’
* It is a remarkable fact that the first testimony of a religious
body against negro slavery was that of a Society of German
* Friends ”’ in Pennsylvania.
PASTORAL LETTER. 168 .
Now, shame upon ye, parish Popes !
Was it thus with those, your predecessors,
Who sealed with racks, and fire, and ropes
Their loving kindness to transgressors ?
A ‘* Pastoral Letter,’’ grave and dull ~
Alas! in hoof and horns and features,
How different is your Brookfield bull,
From him who bellows from St. Peter’s !
Your pastoral rights and powers from harm,
Think ye, Can words alone preserve them’
Your wiser fathers taught the arm
And sword of temporal power to serve them.
Oh, glorious days — when church and state
Were wedded by your spiritual fathers !
And on submissive shoulders sat
Your Wilsons and your Cotton Mathers,
No vile ‘‘ itinerant ’’ then could mar
The beauty of your tranquil Zion,
But at his peril of the scar
Of hangman’s whip and branding-iron
Then, wholesome laws relieved the church
Of heretic and mischief-maker,
And priest and bailiff joined in search,
By turns, of Papist, witch, and Quaker?
The stocks were at each church’s door,
The gallows stood on Boston Common,
4 Papist’s ears the pillory bore, —
The gallows-rope, a Quaker woman f
Your fathers dealt not as ye deal
With ‘‘ non-professing ’’ frantic teachers ;
They bored the tongue with red-hot steel,
4nd flayed the backs of female preachers,”
(70 VHITTIER’S POEM
Old Newbury, had her fields a tongue,
And Salem’s streets, could tell their story,
f fainting woman dragged along,
Gashed by the whip, accursed and gory !
And will ye ask me, why this taunt
Of memories sacred from the scorner ?
And why with reckless hand I plant
A nettle on the graves ye honor?
Not to reproach New England’s dead
‘This record from the past I summon,
Of manhood to the scaffold led,
And suffering and heroic woman.
No — for yourselves alone, I turn
The pages of intolerance over,
That, in their spirit, dark and stern,
Ye haply may your own discover !
For, if ye claim the ‘‘ pastoral right ’’
To silence Freedom’s voice of warning,
And from your precincts shut the light
Of Freedom’s day around ye dawning;
df when an earthquake voice of power,
And signs in earth and heaven are showing
That, forth, in its appointed hour,
The Spirit of the Lord is going !
‘And, with that Spirit, Freedom’s light
On kindred, tongue, and people breaking,
Whose slumbering millions, at the sight,
In glory and in strength are waking !
When for the sighing of the poor,
And for the needy, God hath risen,
And chains are breaking, and a door
Is opening for the souls in prison !
‘
PASTORAL LETTER. by t |
If then ye would, with puny hands,
Arrest the very work of Heaven,
And bind anew the evil bands
Which God’s right arm of power hath river - -
What marvel that, in many a mind,
Those darker deeds of bigot madness
Are closely with your own combined,
Yet ‘‘ less in anger than in sadness ’’ ?
What marvel, if the people learn
To claim the right of free opinion?
What marvel, if at times they spurn
The ancient yoke of your dominion?
Oh, how contrast, with such as ye,
A Leavitt’s free and generous bearing !
A PErry’s calm integrity,
A PHELpP’s zeal and Christian daring §
A FoLLeEn’s soul of sacrifice,
And May’s with kindness overflowing !?
How green and lovely in the eyes
Of freemen are their graces growing !
Ay, there’s a glorious remnant yet,
Whose lips are wet at Freedom’s fountains,
The coming of whose welcome feet
Is beautiful upon our mountains !
Men, who the gospel tidings bring
Of Liberty and Love forever,
Whose joy is one abiding spring,
Whose peace is as a gentle river }
But ye, who scorn the thrilling tale
Of Carolina’s high-souled daughters,
Which echoes here the mournful waik
Of sorrow from Edisto’s waters,
$72 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Close while ye may the public ear —
With malice vex, with slander wound them —
The pure and good shall throng to hear,
And tried and manly hearts surround them.
Oh, ever may the power which led
Their way to such a fiery trial,
And strengthened womanhood to tread
The wine-press of such self-denial,
Be round them in an evil land,
With wisdom and with strength from Heaven,
With Miriam’s voice, and Judith’s hand,
And Deborah’s song for triumph given !
And what are ye who strive with God,
Against the ark of his salvation,
Moved by the breath of prayer abroad,
With blessings for a dying nation P
What, but the stubble and the hay
To perish, even as flax consuming,
With all that bars His glorious way,
Before the brightness of His coming ?
And thou sad Angel, who so long
Hast waited for the glorious token,
That Earth from all her bonds of wrong
To liberty and light has broken —
Angel of Freedom! soon to thee
The sounding trumpet shall be given,
And over Earth’s full jubilee :
Shall deeper joy be felt in Heaven }
LINES, li?
LINES
Written for the meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, at Chat
ham Street Chapel, N. Y., held on the 4th of the 7th month,
1834.
O Tuou, whose presence went before
Our fathers in their weary way,
As with thy chosen moved of yore
The fire by night — the cloud by day?!
When from each temple of the free,
A nation’s song ascends to Heaven,
Most Holy Father ! unto Thee
May not our humble prayer be given ?
Thy children all— though hue and form
Are varied in Thine own good will —
With Thy own holy breathings warm,
And fashioned in Thine image still.
We thank Thee, Father ! — hill and plain
Around us wave their fruits once more,
And clustered vine, and blossomed grain,
Are bending round each cottage door,
And peace is here; and hope and love
Are round us asa mantle thrown,
And unto Thee, supreme above, |
The knee of prayer is bowed alone,
8ut oh, for those this day can bring,
As unto us, no joyful thrill —
For those who, under Freedom’s wing,
Are bound in Slavery’s fetters still :
174 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
For those to whom Thy living word
Of light and love is never given —
For those whose ears have never heard
The promise and the hope of Heaven!
For broken heart, and clouded mind,
Whereon no human mercies fall —
Oh, be Thy gracious love inclined,
Who, as a father, pitiest all !
And grant, O Father! that the time
Of Earth’s deliverance may be near,
When every land, and tongue, and clime,
The message of Thy love shall hear —
When, smitten as with fire from heaven,
The captive’s chain shall sink in dust,
And to his fettered soul be given
The glorious freedom of the just !
LINES
Written for the celebration of the Third Anniversary of British.
Emancipation, at the Broadway Tabernacle, N, Y., « First
of August,” 1837.
O HOLY FATHER ! — just and true
Are all Thy works and words and ways,
And unto Thee alone are due
Thanksgiving and eternal praise !
As children of Thy gracious care,
We veil tiie eye — we bend the knee,
With broken words of praise and praye®,
Father and God, we come to Thee.
| : LINES. 176
’ for Thou hast heard, O God of Right,
The sighing of the island slave ;
And stretched for him the arm of might,
Not shortened that it could not save.
The laborer sits beneath his vine,
The shackled soul and hand are free —
Thanksgiving ! — for the work is Thine}
Praise ! — for the blessing is of Thee!
And oh, we feel Thy presence here —
Thy awful arm in judgment bare!
‘Thine eye hath seen the bondman’s tear —
Thine ear hath heard the bondman’s prayer!
Praise ! — for the pride of man is low,
The counsels of the wise are naught,
‘The fountains of repentance How ;
What hath our God in mercy wrought?
Speed on Thy work, Lord God of Hosts!
And when the bondman’s chain is riven,
And swells from all our guilty coasts
The anthem of the free to Heaven,
Oh, not to those whom Thou hast led,
As with Thy cloud and fire before,
But unto Thee, in fear and dread,
Be praise and glory evermore.
LINES
Written for the Anniversary celesration of the First of
August, at Miltor, 1846.
A Few brief years have passed away
Since Britain drove her million slaves
Beneath the tropic’s very ray:
God willed their freedom; and to-day
Life blooms above those island graves!
176
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
He spoke! across the Carib sea,
We heard the clash of breaking chains,
And felt the heart-throb of the free,
The first, strong pulse of liberty
Which thrilled along the bondman’s veins,
Though long delayed, and far, and slow,
The Briton’s triumph shall be ours:
Wears slavery here a prouder brow
Than that which twelve short years ago
Scowled darkly from her island bowers ?
Mighty alike for good or ill
With mother-land, we fully share
The Saxon strength — the nerve of steel —-
The tireless energy of will,—
The power to do, the pride to dare.
What she has done can we not do?
Our hour and men are both at hand 3
The blast which Freedom's angel blew )
O’er her green islands, echoes through js
Each valley of our forest land. ‘Ue
Hear it, old Europe! we have sworn %
The death of slavery. — When jit falls
Look to your vassals in their turn,
Your poor dumb millions, crushed and worm,
Your prisons and your palace walls!
Oh kingly mockers ! — scoffing show
What deeds in Freedom’s name we do$
Yet know that every taunt ye throw
Across the waters, goads our slow
Progression toward the right and true.
FAREWELL OF THE SLAVE MOTHER. 127
Not always shall your outraged poor,
Appalled by democratic crime,
Grind as their fathers ground before, —
The hour which sees our prison door
Swing wide shall be ¢#ezr triumph time,
On then, my brothers! every blow
Ye deal is felt the wide earth through 3
Whatever here uplifts the low
Or humbles Freedom’s hateful foe,
Blesses the Old World through the New.
Take heart! The promised hour draws near —
I hear the downward beat of wings,
And Freedom’s trumpet sounding clear —
Joy to the people ! — woe and fear
To new world tyrants, old world kings}
THE FAREWELL
Fr A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTERS, SOLD
INTO SOUTHERN BONDAGE,
GONE, gone —sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air,—
Gone, gone —sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia’s hills and waters,——
Woe is me, my stolen daughters !
178 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Gone, gone — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
There no mother’s eye is near them,
There no mother’s ear can hear them 3
Never, when the torturing lash
Seams their back with many a gash,
Shall a mother’s kindness bless them,
Or a mother’s arms caress them.
Gone, gone — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia’s hills and waters —
Woe is me, my stolen daughters !
Gone, gone — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
Oh, when weary, sad, and slow,
From the fields at night they go,
Faint with toil, and racked with pain,
To their cheerless homes again —
There no brother’s voice shall greet them ==
There no father’s welcome meet them.
Gone, gone — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia’s hills and waters —
Woe is me, my stolen daughters !
Gone, gone — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From the tree whose shadow lay
On their childhood’s place of play —
From the cool spring where they drank =
Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank —
From the solemn house of prayer,
And the holy counsels there —
FAREWELL OF THE SLAVE MOTHER.
Gone, gone — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia’s hills and waters,~<-
Woe is me, my stolen daughters.‘
Gone, gone —sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone —
‘Loiling through the weary day,
And at night the spoiler’s prey.
Oh, that they had earlier died,
Sleeping calmly, side by side,
Where the tyrant’s power is o’er
And the fetter galls no more !
Gone, gone — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia’s hills and waters,—=.
Woe is me, my stolen daughters !
Gone, gone —soid and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
By the holy love He beareth —
By the bruised reed He spareth —
Oh, may He, to whom alone
All their cruel wrongs are known,
Still their hope and refuge prove,
With a more than a mother’s love,
Gone, gone — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia’s hills and waters,——_
Woe is me, my stolen daughters !:
VE
180 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
ADDRESS
Written for the opening of «« PENNSYLVANIA HALL,” dedicated
to Free Discussion, Virtue, Liberty, and Independence, o
the 15th of the 5th month, 1838.
Not with the splendors of the days of old,
The spoil of nations, and ‘‘ barbaric gold ’’ —
No weapons wrested from the fields of blood,
Where dark and stern the unyielding Roman stood,
And the proud eagles of his cohorts saw
A world, war-wasted, crouching to his law —
Nor blazoned car — nor banners floating gay,
Like those which swept along the Appian way,
When, to the welcome of imperial Rome,
The victor warrior came in triumph home,
And trumpet-peal, and shoutings wild and high,
Stirred the blue quiet of the Italian sky;
But calm and grateful, prayerful and sincere,
As Christian freemen, only, gathering here,
We dedicate our fair and lofty Hall,
Pillar and arch, entab:ature and wall,
As Virtue’s shrine —as Liberty’s abode —
Sacred to Freedom, and to Freedom’s God!
Oh! loftier halls, ’neath brighter skies than these,
Stood darkly mirrored in the A‘gean seas,
Pillar and shrine — and lifelike statues seen,
Graceful and pure, the marble shafts between,
Where glorious Athens from her rocky hill
Saw Art and Beauty subject to her will—
And the chaste temple, and the classic grove—
The kall of sages — and the bowers of love,
Arch, fane, and column, graced the shores, and gave
Their shadows to the blue Saronic wave:
ADDRESS. 181
And statelier rose, on Tiber’s winding side,
The Pantheon’s dome — the Coliseum’s pride—
The Capitol, whose arches backward flung
The deep, clear cadence of the Roman tongue,
' Whence stern decrees, like words of fate, went forth
To the awed nations of a conquered earth,
Where the proud Ceesars in their glory came,
And Brutus lightened from his lips of flame!
Yet in the porches of Athena’s halls,
And in the shadows of her stately walls,
Lurked the sad bondman, and his tears of woe
Wet the cold marble with unheeded flow ;
And fetters clanked beneath the silver dome
Of the proud Pantheon of imperious Rome.
Oh! not for him —the chained and stricken slave om
By Tiber’s shore, or blue A‘gina’s wave,
In the thronged forum, or the sage’s seat,
The bold lip pleaded, and the warm heart beat;
No soul of sorrow melted at his pain,
No tear-of pity rusted on his chain !
But this fair Hall, to Truth and Freedom given,
Pledged to the Right before all Earth and Heaven,
A free arena for the strife of mind,
To caste, or sect, or color unconfined,
Shall thrill with echoes, such as ne’er of old
From Roman hall, or Grecian temple rolled ;
Thoughts shall find utterance, such as never yet
The Propylaea or the Forum met.
Beneath its roof no gladiator’s strife
Shall win applauses with the waste of life;
No lordly lictor urge the barbarous game —=
No wanton Lais glory in her shame.
But here the tear of sympathy shall flow
As the ear listens to the tale of woe:
262 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Here, in stern judgment of the oppressor’s wrong +=
Shall strong rebukings thrill on Freedom’s tongue —
No partial justice hold the unequal scale —
No pride of caste a brother’s rights assail —
No tyrant’s mandates echo from this wall,
Holy to Freedom and the Rights of All!
But a fair field, where mind may close with mint
Free as the sunshine and the chainless wind ;
Vhere the high trust is fixed on Truth alone,
And bonds and fetters from the soul are thrown;
Where wealth, and rank, and worldly pomp, ané
might,
Yield to the presence of the True and Right
And fitting is it that this Hall should stand
Where Pennsylvania’s Founder led his band,
From thy blue waters, Delaware ! — to press
The virgin verdure of the wilderness.
Here, where all Europe with amazement saw
The soul’s high freedom trammelled by no law;
Here, where the fierce and warlike forest-men
Gathered in peace, around the home of PENN,
Awed by the weapons Love alone had given,
Drawn from the holy armory of Heaven ;
Where Nature’s voice against the bondman’s wrong
First found an earnest and indignant tongue;
Where Lay’s bold message to the proud was borne,
And Kertn’s rebuke, and FRANKLIN’s manly scorn —
Fitting it is that here, where Freedom first
From her fair feet shook off the Old World’s dust,
Spread her white pinion’s to our Western blast,
And her free tresses to our sunshine cast, -
One Hall should rise redeemed from Slavery’s
ban — '
‘One Temple sacred to the Rights of Man!
ADDRESS. | 183
Oh} a. che spirits of the parted come,
Visiting angels, to their olden home;
if the dead fathers of the land look forth
From their far dwellings, to the things of earth
Xs it a dream, that with their eyes of love,
They gaze now on us from the bowers above ?
Lay’s ardent soul — and BENEZET the mild,
Steadfast in faith, yet gentle as a child —
Meek-hearted WooLmMANn, — and that brother-band,
- The sorrowing exiles from their ‘‘ FATHERLAND,”’
Leaving their homes in Krieshiem’s bowers of vine,
And the blue beauty of their glorious Rhine,
To seek amidst our solemn depths of wood
Freedum from man and holy peace with God ;
Who first of all their testimonial gave
Against the oppressor, — for the outcast slave, —
Is it a dream that such as these look down,
And with their blessing our rejoicings crown ?
Let us rejoice, that, while the pulpit’s door
Is barred against the pleaders for the poor;
While the church, wrangling upon points of faith,
Forgets her bondmen suffering unto death ;
While crafty traffic and the lust of gain
Unite to forge oppression’s triple chain,
One door is open, and one Temple free —
As a resting place for hunted Liberty!
Where men may speak, unshackled and unawed,
High words of truth, for Freedom and for God.
And when that truth its perfect work hath done,
And rich with blessings o’er our land hath gone‘
When not a slave beneath his yoke shall pine,
From broad Potomac to the far Sabine ;
When unto angel-lips at last is given
The silver trump of Jubilee to Heaven ;
184 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
And from Virginia’s plains — Kentucky’s shades,
And through the dim Floridian everglades,
Rises, to meet that angel-trumpet’s sound,
The voice of millions from their chains unbound —=
Then, though this Hall be crumbling in decay,
Its strong walls blending with the common clay,
Yet, round the ruins of its strength shall stand
The best and noblest of a ransomed land —
Pilgrims, like those who throng around the shrine
Of Mecca, or of holy Palestine ! —
A prouder glory shall that ruin own
Than that which lingers round the Parthenon.
Here shall the child of after years be taught
The work of Freedom which his fathers wrought —
Told of the trials of the present hour,
Our weary strife with prejudice and power,—
How the high errand quickened woman’s soul,
And touched her lip as with a living coal —
How Freedom’s martyrs kept their lofty faith,
True and unwavering, unto bonds and death.—
The pencil’s art shall sketch the ruined Hall,
The Muses’ garland crown its aged wall,
And History’s pen for after times record
Its consecration unto FREEDOM’s GoD!
THE MORAL WARFARE.
WHEN Freedom, on her natal day,
Within her war-rocked cradle lay,
An iron race around her stood,
Baptized her infant brow in blood
And, through the storm which round her swew*
Their constant ward and watching kept.
THE RESPONSE, 185
fhen, where our quiet herds repose,
The roar of baleful battle rose,
And brethren of a common tongue
To mortal strife as tigers sprung,
And every gift on Freedom’s shrine
Was man for beast, and blood for wine !
Our fathers to their graves have gone ;
Their strife is past — their triumph won;
But sterner trials wait the race
Which rises in their honored place —
A moral warfare with the crime
And folly of an evil time.
So let it be. In God’s own might
We gird us for the coming fight,
And, strong in Him whose cause is ours
In conflict with unholy powers,
We grasp the weapons He has given, —
The Light, and Truth, and Love of Heaven!
THE RESPONSE.
{ “To agitate the question (Slavery) anew, is not only im-
politic, but it is a virtual breach of good faith to our brethren
of the South; an unwarrantable interference with their domes-
tic relations and institutions.” ‘I can never, in the official
station which I occupy, consent to countenance a course which
may jeopard the peace and harmony of the Union,”—Gow
ernor Porter's Inangural Message, 1838. |
No ‘‘ countenance ”’ of his, forsooth!
Who asked it at his vassal hands ?
Who looked for homage done to Truth,
By party’s vile and hateful bands?
Who dreamed that one by them possessed,
Would lay for her his spear in rest ?
926 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
His ‘* countenance ’’! well, let it ight
The human robber to his spoil ! —
Let those who track the bondsman’s flight,
Like bloodhounds o’er our once free soil,
Bask in its sunshine while they may,
And howl its praises on their way ;
We ask no boon: our rights we claim —
Free press and thought — free tongue and pen =
The right to speak in Freedom’s name,
As Pennsylvanians and as men ;
To do, by Lynch law unforbid,
What our own Rush and Franklin did.
Ay, there we stand, with planted feet,
Steadfast, where those old worthies stood ¢ —
Upon us let the tempest beat,
Around us swell and surge the flood:
We fail or triumph on that spot ;
God helping us, we falter not.
‘6 A breach of plighted faith ?’’ For shame! —
Who voted for that ‘‘ breach’’! Who gave
In the state councils, vote and name
For freedom for the District slave ?
Consistent patriot! go, forswear,
Blot out, ‘‘ expunge ’’ the record there ! *
Go, eat thy words. Shall H CC
Turn round —a moral harlequin?
And arch V B wipe away
The stains of his Missouri sin ?
* It ought to be borne in mind that DAvip R. PoRTER
voted in the Legislature to instruct the congressional delega-
tion of Pennsylvania to use their influence for the abolition of
slavery in the District of Columbia.
THE RESPONSE. 187
And shall that one unlucky vote
Stick, burr-like, in ¢#y honest throat ?
No —do thy part in ‘‘ putting down" *
The friends of Freedom : — summon out
The parson in his saintly gown,
To curse the outlawed roundabout,
In concert with the Belial brood —
The Balaam of ‘‘ the brotherhood °’!
Quench every free discussion light —
Clap on the legislative snuffers,
And caulk with ‘‘ resolutions ’’ tight
The ghastly rents the Union suffers !
Let church and state brand Abolition
As heresy and rank sedition.
Choke down, at once, each breathing thing,
That whispers of the Rights of Man: —
Gag the free girl who dares to sing
Of freedom o’er her dairy pan: —
Dog the old farmer’s steps about,
And hunt his cherished treason out.
Go, hunt sedition. — Search for that
In every pedler’s cart of rags ;
Pry into every Quaker’s hat,
And Doctor FussELv’s saddle bags!
Lest treason wrap, with all its ills,
Around his powders and his pills.
Where Chester’s oak and walnut shades
With slavery-laden breezes stir,
And on the hills, and in the glades
Of Bucks and honest Lancaster,
* « He [Martin Van Buren] thinks the abolitionists may be
put down.” — Richmond ( Va.) Enquirer,
188 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Are heads which think and hearts which feel -ou=
Flints to the Abolition steel !
Ho! send ye down a corporal’s guard
With flow of flag and beat of drum —
Storm LINDLEY CoATEs’s poultry yard,
Beleaguer THomas WHITSON’s home!
Beat up the Quaker quarters — show
Your valor to an unarmed foe!
Do more. Fill up your loathsome jails
With faithful men and women — set
The scaffold up in these green vales,
And let their verdant turf be wet
With blood of unresisting men —
Ay, do all this, and more, WHAT THEN ?
Think ye, one heart of man and child
Will falter from his lofty faith,
At the mob’s tumult, fierce and wild —
The prison cell — the shameful death ?
No ! — nursed in storm and trial long,
The weakest of our band is strong !
Oh! while before us visions come
Of slave ships on Virginia’s coast —
Of mothers in their childless home,
Like Rachel, sorrowing o’er the lost —=
The slave-gang scourged upon its way —
The bloodhound and his human prey —
We cannot falter! Did we so,
The stones beneath would murmur out,
And all the winds that round us blow
Would whisper of our shame about.
No! let the tempest rock the land,
Our faith shall live — our truth shall stand.
THE WORLDS CONVENTION, 189
True as the Vaudois hemmed around
With Papal fire and Roman steel —
Firm as the Christian heroine bound
Upon Domitian’s torturing wheel,
We ’bate no breath — we curb no thought —
Come what may come, WE FALTER NOT!
THE WORLD’S CONVENTION
OF THE FRIENDS OF EMANCIPATION, HELD IN LONDONIN 184,
Yes, let them gather !— Summon forth
The pledged philanthropy of Earth,
From every land, whose hills have heard
The bugle blast of Freedom waking ;
Or shrieking of her symbol-bird
From out his cloudy eyrie breaking ;
Where-Justice hath one worshipper,
Or truth one altar built to her ;
Where’er a human eye is weeping
O’er wrongs which Earth’s sad childrenknow ==
Where’er a single heart is keeping
Its prayerful watch with human woe:
Thence let them come, and greet each other,
And know in each, a friend and brother !
Yes, let them come! from each green vale
Where England’s old baronial halls
Still bear upon their storied walls
The grim crusader’s rusted mail,
Battered by Paynim spear and brand
Dn Malta’s rock or Syria’s sand !
And mouldering pennon-staves once set
Within the soil of Palestine,
By Jordan and Gennesaret ;
Or. hore with England’s battle line,
290
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
O’er Acre’s shattered turrets stooping,
Or, midst the camp their banners drooping,
With dews from hallowed Hermon wet,
A holier summons now is given
Than that gray hermit’s voice of old,
Which unto all the winds of heaven
The banners of the Cross unrolled !
Not for the long deserted shrine,—
Not for the dull unconscious sod,
Which tells not by one lingering sigh
That there the hope of Israel trod ; —
But for that TRUTH, for which alone
In pilgrim eyes are sanctified
The garden moss, the mountain stone,
Whereon His holy sandals pressed —
The fountain which His lip hath blessed —
Whate’er hath touched His garment’s hem
At Bethany or Bethlehem,
Or Jordan’s riverside.
For FREEDOM, in the name of Him
Who came to raise Earth’s drooping poor;
To break the chain from every limb —
The bolt from every prison door !
For these, o’er all the Earth hath passed
An ever-deepening trumpet blast,
As if an angel’s breath had lent
Its vigor to the instrument.
And Wales, from Snowden’s mountain wall,
Shall startle at that thrilling call,
As if she heard her bards again ;
And Erin’s ‘‘ harp on Tara’s wall’”’
Give out its ancient strain,
Mirthful and sweet, yet sad writhal ——~
THE WORLD'S CONVENTION.
The melody which Erin loves,
When o’er that harp, mid bursts of gladness
And slogan cries and lyke-wake sadness,
The hand of her O’Connell moves:
Scotland, from lake and tarn and rill,
And mountain hold, and heathery hill,
Shall catch and echo back the note,
As if she heard upon her air
Once more her Cameronian’s prayer
And song of Freedom float.
And cheering echoes shall reply
From each remote dependency,
Where Britain’s mighty sway is known,
In tropic sea or frozen zone ;
Where’er her sunset flag is furling,
Or morning gun-fire’s smoke is curling ;
From Indian Bengal’s groves of palm
And rosy fields and gales of balm,
Where Eastern pomp and power are rolled
Through regal Ava’s gates of gold;
And from the lakes and ancient woods
And dim Canadian solitudes,
Whence, sternly from her rocky throne,
Queen of the North, Quebec looks down;
And from those bright and ransomed Isles
Where all unwonted Freedom smiles,
And the dark laborer still retains
The scar of slavery’s broken chains!
From the hoar Alps, which sentinel
The gateways of the land of Tell,
Where morning’s keen and earliest glance
On Jura’s rocky wall is thrown,
And from the olive bowers of France
199
And vine groves garlanding the Rhone, =
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
‘¢ Friends of the Blacks,’”’ as true and tried
As those who stood by Oge’s side —
Brissot and eloquent Grégoire —
When with free lip and heart of fire
The Haytien told his country’s wrong,
Shall gather at that summons strong —
Broglie, Passy, and him, whose song
Breathed over Syria’s holy sod,
And in the paths which Jesus trod,
And murmured midst the hills which hem
Crownless and sad Jerusalem,
Hath echoes whereso’er the tone
Of Israel’s prophet-lyre is known.
Still let them come — from Quito’s walls,
And from the Orinoco’s tide,
From Lima’s Inca-haunted halls,
From Santa Fe and Yucatan, —
Men who by swart Guerrero’s side
Proclaimed the deathless RIGHTS OF MAN,
Broke every bond and fetter off,
And hailed in every sable serf
A free and brother Mexican !
Chiefs who across the Andes’ chain
Have followed Freedom’s flowing pennos
And seen on Junin’s fearful plain,
Glare o’er the broken ranks of Spain,
The fire-burst of Bolivar’s cannon !
And Hayti, from her mountain land,
Shall send the sons of those who hurled
Defiance from her blazing strand —
The war-gage from her Pétion’s hand,
Alone against a hostile world.
Nor all unmindful, thou, the while,
Land of the dark and mystic Nile ! —_
THE WORLD'S CONVENTION. 193
Thy Moslem mercy yet may shame
All tyrants of a Christian name —
When in the shade of Gezeh’s pile,
Or, where from Abyssinian hills
El Gerek’s upper fountain fills,
Or where from mountains of the Moon
El Abiad bears his watery boon,
Where’er thy lotos blossoms swim
Within their ancient hallowed waters —u-
Where’er is heard thy prophet’s hymn,
Or song of Nubia’s sable daughters, —
The curse of SLAVERY and the crime,
Thy bequest from remotest time,
At thy dark Mehemet’s decree
For evermore shall pass from thee ;
And chains forsake each captive’s limb
Of all those tribes, whose hills around
Have echoed back the cymbal sound
And victor horn of Ibrahim.
And thou whose glory and whose crime
To earth’s remotest bound and clime,
In raingled tones of awe and scorn.
The echoes of a world have borne,
My country! glorious at thy birth,
A day-star flashing brightly forth —
The herald-sign of Freedom’s dawn!
Oh! who could dream that saw thee then,
And watched tny rising from afar,
That vapors from oppression’s fen
Would cloud the upward-tending star?
Or, that earth’s tyrant powers, which heard,
Awe-struck, the shout which hailed thy dawm
ing,
Would rise so soon, prince, peer, and king.
494 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
To mock thee with their welcoming, }
Like Hades when her thrones were stirred
To greet the down-cast Star of Morning 3
‘«* Aha! and art thou fallen thus?
Art THOU become as one of ws ?”’
Land of my fathers ! —there will stand,
Amidst that world-assembled band,
Those owning thy maternal claim
Unweakened by thy crime and shame, =
The sad reprovers of thy wrong —
The children thou hast spurned so long.
Still with affection’s fondest yearning »
To their unnatural mother turning.
No traitors they |! — but tried and leal,
Whose own is but thy general weal,
Still blending with the patriot’s zeal
The Christian’s love for human kind,
To caste and climate unconfined.
A holy gathering ! — peaceful all —
No threat of war — no savage call
For vengeance on an erring brother;
But in their stead the God-like plan
To teach the brotherhood of man
To love and reverence one another,
As sharers of a common blood —
The children of a common God ! —
Yet, even at its lightest word,
Shall Slavery’s darkest depths be stirred ¢
Spain watching from her Moro’s keep
Her slave-ships traversing the deep,
And Rio, in her strength and pride,
Lifting, along her mountain side,
Her snowy battlements and towers —=
THE WORLD'S CONVENTION.
Her lemon groves and tropic bowers,
With bitter hate and sullen fear
Its freedom-giving voice shall hear ;
And where my country’s flag is flowing,
On breezes from Mount Vernon blowing
Above the Nation’s council-halls,
Where Freedom’s praise is loud and long,
While, close beneath the outward walls,
The driver plies his reeking thong —--
The hammer of the man-thief falls,
O’er hypocritic cheek and brow
The crimson flush of shame shall glow:
And all who for their native land
Are pledging life and heart and hand —.
Worn watchers o’er her changing weal,
Who for her tarnished honor feel —
Through cottage-door and council-hall
Shall thunder an awakening call.
The pen along its page shall burn
With all intolerable scorn —
And eloquent rebuke shall go
On all the winds that Southward blow;
From priestly lips, now sealed and dumb,
Warning and dread appeal shall come,
Like those which Israel heard from him,
The Prophet of the Cherubim —
Or those which sad Esaias hurled
Against a sin-accursed world !
Its wizard-leaves the Press shall fling
Unceasing from its iron wing,
With characters inscribed thereon,
As fearful in the despot’s hall
As to the pomp of Babylon
The fire-sign on the palace wall!
196 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
And, from her dark iniquities,
Methinks I see my country rise:
Not challenging the nations round
To note her tardy justice done —
Her captives from their chains unbound,
Her prisons opening to the sun ; —
But tearfully her arms extending
Over the poor and unoffending ;
Her regal emblem now no longer
A bird of prey, with talons reeking,
Above the dying captive shrieking,
But, spreading out her ample wing —
A broad, impartial covering —
The weaker sheltered by the stronger t=
Oh! then to Faith’s anointed eyes
The promised token shall be given;
And on a nation’s sacrifice,
Atoning for the sin of years,
And wet with penitential tears —
The fire shall fall from Heaven !
NEW HAMPSHIRE. — 1845.
Gop bless New Hampshire ! — from her granite peaks
Once more the voice of Stark and Langdon speaks,
The long bound vassal of the exulting South
For very shame her self-forged chain has broken —
Torn the black seal of slavery from her mouth,
And in the clear tones of her old time spoken !
Oh, all undreamed of, all unhoped-for changes ! =»
The tyrant’s ally proves his sternest foe ;
To all his biddings, from her mountain ranges,
New Hampshire thunders an indignant No}
THE NEW YEAR, 197
Who is it now despairs? Oh, faint of heart,
Look upward to those Northern mountains cold,
Flouted by Freedom’s victor-flag unrolled,
And gather strength to bear a manlier part!
All is not lost. The angel of God’s blessing
Encamps with Freedom on the field of fight ;
Still to her banner, day by day, are pressing,
Unlooked for allies, striking for the right !
Courage, then, Northern hearts ! — Be firm, be true:
What one brave State hath done, can ye not also do?
THE NEW YEAR:
ADDRESSED TO THE PATRONS OF THE PENNSYLVANIA
FREEMEN.
THE wave is breaking on the shore—
The echo fading from the chime —
Again the shadow moveth o’er
The dial-plate of time!
Oh, seer-seen Angel! waiting now
With weary feet on sea and shore,
Impatient for the last dread vow
That time shall be no more ! —
Once more across thy sleepless eye
The semblance of a smile has passed 3
The year departing leaves more nigh
_ Time’s fearfullest and last.
Oh! in that dying year hath been
The sum of all since time began —
The birth and death, the joy and pain,
Of Nature and of Man,
198 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Spring, with her change of sun and shower,
And streams released from winter’s chain,
And bursting bud, and opening flower,
And greenly-growing grain ;
And Summer’s shade, and sunshine warm,
And rainbows o’er her hilltops bowed,
And voices in her rising storm —
God speaking from his cloud ! —
And Autumn’s fruits and clustering sheaves,
And soft, warm days of golden light,
The glory of her forest leaves,
And harvest-moon at night ;
And Winter with her leafless grove,
And prisoned stream, and drifting snow,
The brilliance of her heaven above
And of her earth below: —
And man— in whom an angel’s mind
With earth’s low instincts finds abode —
The highest of the links which bind
Brute nature to her God ;
His infant eye hath seen the light,
His childhood’s merriest laughter rung,
And active sports to manlier might
The nerves of boyhood strung !
And quiet love, and passion’s fires,
Have soothed or burned in manhood’s breast
And lofty aims and low desires
By turns disturbed his rest.
THE NEW YEAR. jan
The wailing of the newly-born
Has mingled with the funeral knell ;
And o’er the dying’s ear has gone
The merry marriage-bell.
And Wealth has filled his halls with mirth,
While Want, in many a humble shed,
Toiled, shivering by her cheerless hearth,
The live-long night for bread.
And worse than all — the human slave —
The sport of lust, and pride, and scorn?
Plucked off the crown his Maker gave —
His regal manhocd gone!
Oh! still my country! o’er thy plains,
Blackened with slavery’s blight and ban,
That human chattel drags his chains —
An uncreated man !
And still, where’er to sun and breeze,
My country, is thy flag unrolled,
With scorn, the gazing stranger sees
A stain on every fold.
Oh, tear the gorgeous emblem down!
It gathers scorn from every eye,
And despots smile, and good men frown,
Whene’er it passes by.
Shame! shame! its starry splendors glow
Above the slaver’s loathsome jail —
Its folds are ruffling even now
His crimson flag of sale.
YC WHITTIER’S POEMS,
Still round our country’s proudest hall
The trade in human flesh is driven,
And at each careless hammer-fall
A human heart is riven.
And this, too, sanctioned by the men,
Vested with power to shield the right,
And throw each vile and robber den
Wide open to the light.
Yet shame upon them ! —there they sit,
Men of the North, subdued and still;
Meek, pliant poltroons, only fit
To work a master’s will.
Sold — bargained off for Southern votes —
A passive herd of Northern mules,
Just braying through their purchased throats
Whate’er their owner rules.
And he * —the basest of the base —
The vilest of the vile— whose name,
Embalmed in infinite disgrace,
Is deathless in its shame ! —
A tool —to bolt the people’s door
Against the people clamoring there, —
An ass —to trample on their floor
A people’s right of prayer!
Nailed to his self-made gibbet fast,
Self-pilloried to the public view —
A mark for every passing blast
Of scorn to whistle through ;
* The Northern author of the Congressional rule against res
reiving petitions of the people on the subject of Slavery.
THE NEW YEA,
There let him hang, and hear the boast
Of Southrons o’er their pliant tool —
A St. Stylites on his post,
«« Sacred to ridicule! ’’
Look we at home ! — our noble hall,
To Freedom’s holy purpose given,
Now rears its black and ruined wall,
Beneath the wintry heaven —
Telling the story of its doom —
The fiendish mob — the prostrate law —
The fiery jet through midnight’s gloom,
Our gazing thousands saw,
Look to our State— the poor man’s right
Torn from him: —and the sons of those
Whose blood in Freedom’s sternest fight
Sprinkled the Jersey snows,
Outlawed within the land of Penn,
That Slavery’s guilty fears might cease,
And those whom God created men,
Toil on as brutes in peace.
Vet o’er the blackness of the sturm,
A bow of promise bends on high,
And gleams of sunshine, soft and warm,
Break through our clouded sky.
Fast, West, and North, the shout is heard
Of freemen rising for the right:
Fach valley hath its rallying word —
Each hill its signal light.
201
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
O’er Massachusetts’ rocks of gray,
The strengthening light of freedom shines,
Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay —
And Vermont’s snow-hung pines!
From Hudson’s frowning palisades
To Alleghany’s laurelled crest,
O’er lakes and prairies, streams and glades,
It shines upon the West.
Speed on the light to those who dwell
In Slavery’s land of woe and sin,
And through the blackness of that hell
Let Heaven’s own light break in.
So shall the Southern conscience quake,
Before that light poured full and strong,
So shall the Southern heart awake
To all the bondman’s wrong.
And from that rich and sunny land
The song of grateful millions rise,
Like that of Israel’s ransomed band
Beneath Arabia’s skies:
And all who now are bound beneath
Our banner’s shade — our eagle’s wing,
From Slavery’s night of moral death
To light and life shall spring.
Broken the bondman’s chain — and goné
The master’s guilt, and hate, and fear,
And unto both alike shall dawn,
A New and Happy Year.
MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA, 203
MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA.
{ Written on reading an account of the proceedings of the
eitizens of Norfolk, Va., in reference to GEORGE LATIMER, the
alleged fugitive slave, the result of whose case in Massachusetts
will probably be similar to that of the negro SOMERSET in
England, in 1772. ]
THE blast from Freedom’s Northern hills, upon its
Southern way,
Bears greeting to Virginia from Massachusetts Bay : —
No word of haughty challenging, nor battle bugle’s
peal,
Nor steady tread of marching files, nor clang of
horsemen’s steel.
No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along our high-
ways go —
Around our silent arsenals untrodden lies the snow ;
And to the land breeze of our ports, sie their
errands far,
A thousand sails of commerce swell, but none are
spread for war.
We hear thy threats, Virginia! thy stormy words and
high,
Swell harshly on the Southern winds which melt
along our sky ;
Yet, not one brown, hard hand foregoes its honest
labor here —
No hewer of our mountain oaks suspends his axe in fear.
Wild are the waves which lash the reefs along St.
George’s bank —
Cold on the shore of Labrador the fog lies white and
dank :
204 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Through storm, and wave, and blinding mist, stout
are the hearts which man
The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the sea-boats of
Cape Ann.
The cold north light and wintry sun glare on their
icy forms,
Bent grimly o’er their straining lines or wrestling
with the storms ;
Free as the winds they drive before, rough as the
waves they roam,
They laugh to scorn the slaver’s threat against their
rocky home.
What means the Old Dominion? Hath she forgot
the day
When o’er her conquered valleys swept the Briton’s
steel array ?
How side by side, with sons of hers, the Massachu-
setts men
Encountered ‘Tarleton’s charge of fire, and stout
Cornwallis, then?
Forgets she how the Bay State, in answer to the call
Of her old House of Burgesses, spoke out from
| Faneuil Hall ?
When, echoing back her Henry’s cry, came pulsing
on each breath
Of Northern winds, the thrilling sounds of ‘‘ LiBeRTY
OR DEaTH!”’
What asks the Old Dominion? If now her sons have
proved
False to their fathers’ memory — false to the faith
they loved ;
MASSACHUSETTS TO VILGINIA, 205
If sme ean scoff at Freedom, and its great charter
spurn,
Must we of Massachusetts from truth and duty turn ?
We hunt your bondmen, flying from Slavery’s hatefui
hell
Our voices, at your bidding, take up the blood-
hound’s yell —
We gather, at your summons, above our fathers’
graves,
From Freedom’s holy altar-horns to tear your
wretched slaves !
Thank God! not yet so vilely can Massachusetts
bow;
The spirit of her early time is with her even now;
Dream not because her Pilgrim blood moves slow,
and calm, and cool,
She thus can stoop her chainless neck, a sister’s slave
and tool!
All that a szster State should do, all that a Sree State
may,
Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as in our early
day ;
But that one dark loathsome burden ye must stagger
with alone,
And reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have
sown !
Hold, while ye may, your struggling slaves, and
burden God’s free air
With woman’s shriek beneath the lash, and man-
hood’s wild despair ;
206 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
' Cling closer to the ‘‘ cleaving curse ’’ that writes upon
your plains
The blasting of Almighty wrath against a fand of
chains,
Still shame your gallant ancestry, the cavaliers of old,
By watching round the shambles where human flesh
is sold —
Gloat o’er the new-born child, and count his market
value, when
The maddened mother’s cry of woe shall pierce the
slaver’s den |
Lower than plummet soundeth, sink the Virginian
name ;
Plant, if ye will, your fathers’ graves with rankest
weeds of shame ;
Be, if ye will, the scandal of God’s fair universe —
We wash our hands forever, of your sin, and shame,
and curse.
A voice from lips whereon the coal from Freedom’s
shrine hath been,
Thrilled, as but yesterday, the hearts of Berkshire’s
mountain men:
The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly lingering still
In all our sunny valleys, on every wind-swept hill.
And when the prowling man-thief came hunting for
his prey
Beneath the very shadow of Bunker’s shaft of gray,
How, through the free lips of the son, the father’s
warning spoke ;
How, from its bonds of trade and sect, the Pilgrisw
city broke !
nw ISSACHUNETTS TO VIRGINIA, 207
4@ hunared thousand right arms were lifted up on
high, —
A hundred thousand voices sent back their loud
reply ;
Through the thronged towns of Essex the startling
summons rang,
And up from bench and loom and wheel her young
mechanics sprang !
The voice of free, broad Middlesex — of thousands
as of one —
The shaft of Bunker calling to that of Lexington —
From Norfolk’s ancient villages; from Plymouth’s
rocky bound
To where Nantucket feels the arms of ocean close
her round ; — ;
From rich and rural Worcester, where through the
calm repose .
Of cultured vales and fringing woods the gentle
Nashua flows,
To where Wachuset’s wintery blasts the mountain
larches stir,
Swelled up to Heaven the thrilling cry of ‘* God
save Latimer !’”’
And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt sea
spray —
And Bristol sent her answering shout down Narra-
gansett Bay !
Along the broad Connecticut old Hampden felt the
thrill,
And the cheer of Hampshire’s woodmen swept down
from Holyoke Hill.
208 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
The voice of Massachusetts! Of her free sons and
daughters —
Deep calling unto deep aloud—the sound of many
waters !
Against the burden of that voice what tyrant power
shall stand P
LVo fetters in the Bay State! No slave upon her
land t
Look to it well, Virginians! In calmness we have
borne,
In answer to our faith and trust, your insult and
your scorn ;
You’ve spurned our kindest counsels — you’ve hunted
for our lives —
And shaken round our hearths and hemes your
manacles and gyves!
We wage no war—vwe lift no arm—we fling no
torch within
The fire-damps of the quaking mine beneath your
soil of sin;
We leave ye with your bondmen, to wrestle, while
ye can,
With the strong upward tendencies and God-like soul
of man! |
But for us and for our children, the vow which we
have given
For freedom and humanity, is registered in Heaven;
No slave-hunt in our borders—no pirate on ous
strand !
Vo fetters in the Bay State—no slave upon oud
Jand J
THE RELIC. . 209
THE RELIC,
| PENNSYLVANIA HALL, dedicated to Free Discussion and the
cause of Human Liberty, was destroyed by a mob in 1838.
The following was written on receiving a cane wrought from a
fragment of the wood-work which the fire had spared. ]
TOKEN of friendship true and tried,
From one whose fiery heart of youth
With mine has beaten, side by side,
For Liberty and Truth ;
Wit_. honest pride the gift I take,
And prize it for the giver’s sake.
But not alone because it tells
Of generous hand and heart sincere;
Around that gift of friendship dwells
A memory doubly dear —
Earth’s noblest aim — man’s holiest thought,
With that memorial frail inwrought !
Pure thoughts and sweet, like flowers unfold
And precious memories round it cling,
Even as the Prophet’s rod of old
In beauty blossoming :
And buds of feeling pure and good
Spring from its cold unconscious wood.
Relic of Freedom’s shrine ! —a brand
Plucked from its burning ! — let it be
Dear as a jewel from the hand
Of a lost friend to me ! —
Flower of a perished garland left,
Of life and beauty unbereft!
“O WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Oh! if the young enthusiast bears,
O’er weary waste and sea, the stone
Which crumbled from the Forum’s stairs,
Or round the Parthenon ;
Or olive bough from some wild tree
Hung over old Thermopyle:
If leaflets from some hero’s tomb,
Or moss-wreath torn from ruins hoary, =
Or faded flowers whose sisters bloom
On fields renowned in story, —
Or fragment from the Alhambra’s crest,
Or tne gray rock by druids blessed ;
Sad Erin’s shamrock greenly growing
Where Freedom led her stalwart kern,
Or Scotia’s ‘‘ rough burr thistle ’’ blowing
On Bruce’s Bannockburn —
Or Runnymede’s wild English rose,
Or lichen plucked from Sempach’s snows ! «=»
If it be true that things like these
To heart and eye bright visions bring,
Shall not far holier memories
To this memorial cling ?
Which needs no mellowing mist of time
To hide the crimson stains of crime!
Wreck of a temple, unprofaned —
Of courts where Peace with Freedom trod,
Lifting on high, with hands unstained,
Thanksgiving unto God ;
Where Mercy’s voice of love was pleading
For human hearts in bondage bleeding ! ==
THE RELIC. 211
Where midst the sound of rushing feet
And curses on the night air flung,
That pleading voice rose calm and sweet
From woman’s earnest tongue ; §
And Riot turned his scowling glance,
Awed, from her tranqu:! countenance!
That temple now in ruin lies ! —
The fire-stain on its shattered wall,
And open to the changing skies
Its black and roofless hall,
It stands before a nation’s sight,
A grave-stone over buried Right!
But from that ruin, as of old,
The fire-scorched stones themselves are crying,
And from their ashes white and cold
Its timbers are replying !
A voice which slavery cannot kill
Speaks from the crumbling arches still!
And even this relic from thy shrine,
Oh, holy Freedom ! — hath to me
A potent power, a voice and sign
To testify of thee ;
And, grasping it, methinks I feel
A deeper faith, a stronger zeal.
And not unlike that mystic rod,
Of old stretched o’er the Egyptian wave,
Which opened, in the strength of God,
A pathway for the slave,
It yet may point the bondman’s way,
And turn the spoiler from his prey.
212 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Ss ANZAS FOR THE TIMES.—1844.
[Writtuszs on reading the sentence of JoHN L. BRown; 97
South Carolina, to be executed on the 25th of 4th month,
1844, for the crime of assisting a female slave to escape from
bondage. The sentence was afterward commuted. ]
Ho ! thou who seekest late and long
A license from the Holy Book
For brutal lust and hell’s red wrong,
Man of the pulpit, look ! —
Lift up those cold and atheist eyes,
This ripe fruit of thy teaching see;
And tell us how to Heaven will rise
The incense of this sacrifice —
This blossom of the Gallows Tree ! —
Search out for SLAVERY’s hour of need
Some fitting text of sacred writ; * —_,
Give Heaven the credit of a deed
Which shames the nether pit.
Kneel, smooth blasphemer, unto Him
Whose truth is on thy lips a lie,
Ask that His bright-winged cherubim
May bend around that scaffold grim
To guard and bless and sanctify ! —
Ho! champion of the people’s cause —
Suspend thy loud and vain rebuke
Of foreign wrong and Old World laws,
Man of the Senate, look ! —
* Three new publications, from the pens of. Dr. Junkin,
President of Miami College, Alexander McCaine of the Metho-
dist Protestant church, and of a clergyman of the Cincinnati
Synod, defending Slavery on Scriptural ground, have recently
made their appearance.
STANZAS FOR THE TIMES. 213
Was this the promise of the free,—
The great hope of our early time,—
That Slavery’s poison vine should be
Upborne by Freedom’s prayer-nursed tree,
O’erclustered with such fruits of crime ? ——
Send out the summons, East and West,
And South and North, let all be there,
Where ke who pitied the oppressed
Swings out in sun and air.
Let not a democratic hand
The grisly hangman’s task refuse ;
There let each loyal patriot stand
Awaiting Slavery’s command
To twist the rope and draw the noose $
- But vain is irony — unmeet
Its cold rebuke for deeds which start
In fiery and indignant beat
The pulses of the heart.
Leave studied wit, and guarded phrase;
And all that kindled heart can feel
Speak out in earnest words which raise,
Where’er they fall, an answering blaze,
Like flints which strike the fire from steel.
Still let a mousing priesthood ply
Their garbled text and gloss of sin,
And make the lettered scroll deny
Its living soul within ;
Still let the place-fed titled knave
Plead Robbery’s right with purchased lips,
And tell us that our fathers gave
For Freedom’s pedestal, a slave,
For frieze and moulding, chains and whips! am
214
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
But ye who own that higher law
Whose tables in the heart are set,
Speak out in words of power and awe
That God is living yet !
Breathe forth once more those tones sublime
Which thrilled the burdened prophet’s lyre,
And in a dark and evil time
Smote down on Israel’s fast of crime
And gift of blood, a rain of fire!
Oh,. not for us the graceful lay,
To whose soft measures lightly move
The Dryad and the woodland Fay,
O’erlooked by Mirth and Love ;
But such a stern and startling strain
As Britain’s hunted bards flung down
From Snowden, to the conquered plain,
Where harshly clanked the Saxon chain
On trampled field and smoking town.
By Liberty’s dishonored name,
By man’s lost hope, and failing trust,
By words and deeds, which bow with shame
Our foreheads to the dust, —
By the exulting tyrant’s sneer,
Borne to us from the Old World’s thrones,
And by their grief, who pining hear,
In sunless mines and dungeons drear,
How Freedom’s land her faith disowns ; —
Speak out in acts ; the time for words
Has passed, and deeds alone suffice ;
In the loud clang of meeting swords
The softer music dies !
THE BRANDED HAND. 215
Act —act, in God’s name, while ye may,
Smite from the church her leprous limb,
Throw open to the light of day
The bondman’s cell, and break away
The chains the state has bound on him.
Ho! every true and living soul,
To Freedom’s perilled altar bear
The freeman’s and the Christian’s whole,
Tongue, pen, and vote, and prayer !
One last great battle for the Right, —
One short, sharp struggle to be free ! —=.
‘To do is to succeed — our fight
ts waged in Heaven’s approving sight —
The smile of God is Victory !
THE BRANDED HAND.
[CAPTAIN JONATHAN WALKER, of Harwich, Mass., was
solicited by several fugitive slaves at Pensacola, Florida, to
convey them in his vessel to the British West Indies. Although
well aware of the hazard of the enterprise, he attempted to
comply with their request. He was seized by an American
vessel, consigned to the American authorities at Key West, and
by them taken back to Florida — where, after a long and rigorous
imprisonment, he was brought to trial. He was sentenced to
be branded on the right hand with the letters «S. S.” (“Slave
Stealer”) and amerced in a heavy fine. He was released on
the payment of his fine in the 6th month of 1845.]
WELCOME home again, brave seaman! with thy
thoughtful brow and gray,
And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day —
With that front of calm endurance, on whose steady
nerve, in vain
Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery shafts
of pain!
216 WHITTIEP’S POBM..
’s the tyrant’s brand upon thee? Did the brutal
cravens aim
To make God’s truth thy falsehood, His holiest work
thy shame?
When, all blood-quenched, from the torture the iron
was withdrawn,
How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools to
scorn !
They change to wrong, the duty which God hath
written out
On the great heart of humanity too legible for
doubt!
They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched from foot-
sole up to crown,
Give to shame what God hath given unto honor and
renown !
Why, that brand is highest honor ! —than its traces
never yet
Upon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazon
set ;
And thy unborn generations, as they tread our rocky
strand,
Shall tell with pride the story of their father’:
BRANDED HAND!
As the Templar home was welcomed, bearing back
from Syrian wars
The scars of Arab lances, and of Paynim scimitars.
The pallor of the prison and the shackle’s crimson
span,
So we meet thee, so we greet thee, truest friend of
God and man!
—————
THE BRANDED HAND. 2.
He suffered for the ransom of the dear Redeemer’s
grave,
Thou for His living presence in the bound and bleed-
ing slave ;
He for a soil no longer by the feet of angels trod,
Thou for the true Shechinah, the present home of
God !
For, while the jurist sitting with the slave-whip o’er ©
him swung,
From the tortured truths of freedom the lie of slavery
wrung,
And the solemn priest to Moloch, on each God-de-
serted shrine,
Broke the bondman’s heart for bread, poured the
bondman’s blood for wine —
While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Saviour
knelt,
And spurned, the while, the temple where a present
Saviour dwelt ;
Thou beheld’st Him in the task-field, in the prison
shadows dim,
And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy unto
Him !
In the lone and long night watches, sky above and
wave below,
Thou did’st learn a higher wisdom than the babbling
school-men know ;
God’s stars and silence taught thee, as His angels
only can,
That the one, sole sacred thing beneath the cope of
heaven is Man!
218 WHITTTER’S POEMS,
That he who treads profanely on the scrolls of law
and creed,
In the depth of God’s great goodness may find mercy
. in his need ;
_ But woe to him who crushes the souL with chain and
: rod,
- And herds with lower natures the awful form of
God!
Then lift that manly right hand, bold ploughman of
z the wave!
_ Its branded palm shall prophesy, ‘‘ SALVATION TO THE
SLAVE !’?
Hold up its fire-wrought language, that whoso reads
may feel
His heart swell strong within him, his sinews change
to steel.
Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our North-
ern air — |
Ho! men of Massachusetts, for the love of God look
there !
Take it henceforth for your standard —like the
Bruce’s heart of yore,
In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be
seen before !
And the tyrants of the slave-land shall tremble at that
sign,
When it points its finger Southward along the Puritan
line:
Woe to the State-gorged leeches, and the Church’s
locust band,
When they look from slavery’s ramparts on the
coming of that hand!
Se oe ee
TEXAS.
TEXAS.
VoIcE OF NEW ENGLAND.
UP the hillside, down the glen,
Rouse the sleeping citizen ;
Summon out the might of men {
Like a lion growling low —
Like a night-storm rising slow —
Like the tread of unseen foe —
It is coming — it is nigh!
Stand your homes and altars by;
On your own free thresholds die!
Clang the bells in all your spires;
On the gray hills of your sires
Fling to heaven your signal fires!
From Wachuset, lone and bleak,
Unto Berkshire’s tallest peak,
Let the flame-tongued heralds speak #
O! for God and duty stand,
Heart to heart and hand to hand,
Round the old graves of the land !
Whoso shrinks or falters now,
Whoso to the yoke would bow,
Brand the craven on his brow !
Freedom's soil hath only place
For a free and fearless race —
None for traitors false and base.
219
WHITTIER’S POEMS,
Perish party — perish clan ;
Strike together while ye can,
Like the arm of one strong man!
Like that angel’s voice sublime,
Heard above a world of crime.
Crying of the end of time —
With one heart and with one mouth,
Let the North unto the South
Speak the word befitting both:
¢¢ What though Issachar be strong!
Ye may load his back with wrong
Overmuch and over long:
¢¢ Patience with her cup o’errun,
With her weary thread outspun,
Murmurs that her work is done.
*¢ Make our Union-bond a chain,
Weak as tow in Freedom’s strain
Link by link shall snap in twain.
¢¢ Vainly shall your sand-wrought rope
Bind the starry cluster up,
Shattered over heaven’s blue cope !
‘¢ Give us bright though broken rays,
Rather than eternal haze,
Clouding o’er the full-orbed blaze!
*¢ Take your land of sun and bloom;
Only leave to Freedom room
For her plough, and forge, and loom $
TEXAS, 22)
%¢'Take your slavery-blackened vales ;
Leave us but our own free gales,
Blowing on our thousand sails !
‘¢ Boldly, or with treacherous art,
Strike the blood-wrought chain apart ;
Break the Union’s mighty heart ;
*¢ Work the ruin, if ye will;
Pluck upon your heads an ill
Which shall grow and deepen still!
¢¢ With your bondman’s right arm bare,
With his heart of black despair,
Stand alone, if stand ye dare !
¢¢ Onward with your fell design ;
Dig the gulf and draw the line:
Fire beneath your feet the mine:
¢¢ Deeply, when the wide abyss
Yawns between your land and this,
Shall ye feel your helplessness.
‘‘ By the hearth, and in the bed,
Shaken by a look or tread,
Ye shall own a guilty dread.
¢¢ And the curse of unpaid toil,
Downward through your generous soil
Like a fire shall burn and spoil.
$6 Our bleak hills shall bud and blow,
Vines our rocks shall overgrow,
Plenty in our valleys flow ; —
222
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
‘¢ And when vengeance clouds your skiey
Hither shall ye turn your eyes,
As the lost on Paradise !
‘¢ We but ask our rocky strand,
Freedom’s true and brother band,
Freedom’s strong and honest hand, ——
«6 Valleys by the slave untrod,
And the Pilgrim’s mountain sod,
Blessed of our fathers’ God!’’
TO FANEUIL HALL.
MEN ! — if manhood still ye claim,
If the Northern pulse can thrill,
Roused by wrong or stung by shame,
Freely, strongly still: —
Let the sounds of traffic die:
Shut the mill-gate — leave the stall an
Fling the axe and hammer by —
Throng to Faneuil Hall!
Wrongs which freemen never brooked <#
Dangers grim and fierce as they,
Which, like couching lions, looked
On your fathers’ way ; —
These your instant zeal demand,
Shaking with their earthquake-call
Every rood of Pilgrim land —
Ho, to Faneuil Hall!
TO FANEUIL HALL.
#rom vour capes and sandy bars —
From your mountain-ridges cold,
Through whose pines the westering stars
Stoop their crowns of gold —
Come, and with your footsteps wake
Echoes from that holy wall:
Once again, for Freedom’s sake,
Rock your fathers’ hall !
Up, and tread beneath your feet
Every cord by party spun ;
Let your hearts together beat
As the heart of one.
Banks and tariffs, stocks and trade,
Let them rise or let them fall:
Freedom asks your common aid —
Up, to Faneuil Hall!
Up, and let each voice that speaks
Ring from thence to Southern plains,
Sharply as the blow which breaks
Prison-bolts and chains !
Speak as well becomes the free—
Dreaded more than steel or ball,
Shall your calmest utterance be,
Heard from Faneuil Hall!
Have they wronged us? Let us then
Render back nor threats nor prayers s
Have they chained our free-born men?
LET US UNCHAIN THEIRS !
Up! your banner leads the van,
Blazoned ‘ Liberty for all!”
¥inish what your sires began —
Up, to Faneuil Hall!
224
WRITTEN DURING THE PENDING OF THE TEXAS QUESTION,
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
TO MASSACHUSETTS.
Wuat though around thee blazes
No fiery rallying sign P
From all thy own high places
Give heaven the light of thine!
What though unthrilled, unmoving,
The statesman stands apart,
And comes no warm approving
From Mammon’s crowded mart?
Stili let the land be shaken
By a summons of thine own!
By all save truth forsaken,
Why, stand with that alone!
Shrink not from strife unequal !
With the best is always hope;
And ever in the sequel
God holds the right side up!
But when, with thine uniting,
Come voices long and loud,
And far-off hills are writing
Thy fire-words on the cloud:
When from Penobscot’s fountains
A deep response is heard,
And across the Western mountaing
Rolls back thy rallying word ;
Shall thy line of battle falter,
With its allies just in view?
Oh, by hearth and holy altar,
My Fatherland, be true!
THE PINE TREE. 225
Fling abroad thy scrolls of Freedom!
Speed them onward far and fast !
Over hill and vailey speed them,
Like the Sibyl’s on the blast!
Lo! the Empire State is shaking
The shackles from her hand;
With the rugged North is waking
The level sunset land !
On they come —the free battalions !
East and West and North they come,
And the heart-beat of the millions
Is the beat of Freedom’s drum.
‘¢To the tyrant’s plot no favor!
No heed to place-fed knaves! |
Bar and bolt the door forever
Against the land of Slaves!’?
Hear it, mother Earth, and hear it,
The Heavens above us spread !
The land is roused — its spirit
Was sleeping, but not dead!
THE PINE TREE.
Lirt again the stately emblem on the Bay State's
rusted shield,
Give to Northern winds the Pine Tree on cur bane
ner’s tattered field,
Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles
round the board,
Answering England’s royal missive with a firm,
‘¢ THUS SAITH THE LORD !”’
226 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
Rise again for home and freedom ! — set the battle in
array |! —
What the fathers did of old time we their sons
must do to-day.
Tell us not of banks and tariffs — cease your paltry
pedler cries —
Shall the good State sink her honor that your gam-
bling stocks may rise ?
Would ye barter man for cotton ?— That your gains
may be the same,
Must we kiss the feet of Moloch, pass our children
through the flame ?
Is the dollar only real? — God and truth and right a
dream ?
Weighed against your lying ledgers must our man-
hood kick the beam ?
Oh, my God !—for that free spirit, which of old in
Boston town
Smote the Province House with terror, struck the
crest of Andros down ! —
For another strong-voiced Adams in the city’s streets
to cry:
‘Up for God and Massachusetts ! — Set your feet on
Mammon’s lie!
Perish banks and perish traffic — spin your cotton’s
latest pound —
But in’ Heaven’s name keep your honor — keep the
heart o’ the Bay State sound !’’
Where’s the man for Massachusetts? —Where’s the
voice to speak her free ? —
Where’s the hane to light up bonfires from her
mountains to the sea?
LINES, 227
Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer ? — Sits she dumb
in her despair ? —
Has she none to break the silence? — Has she none
to do and dare?
Oh my God! for one right worthy to lift up her
rusted shield,
And to plant again the Pine Tree in her banner’s
tattered field !
LINES
SUGGESTED BY A VISIT TO THE CITY OF WASHINGTON IN THB
12TH MONTH OF 1845.
Wirt a cold and wintry noon-light,
On its roofs and steeples shed,
Shadows weaving with the sunlight
From the gray sky overhead,
Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the half-built
town outspread.
Through this broad street, restless ever,
Ebbs and flows a human tide,
Wave on wave a living river;
Wealth and fashion side by side;
aoiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick
current glide.
Underneath yon dome, whose coping
Springs above them, vast and tall,
Grave men in the dust are groping
For the largest, base and small,
Which the hand of Power is scattering, crumbs which
from its table fall.
228 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
Base of heart! They vilely barter
Honor’s wealth for party’s place :
Step by step on Freedom’s charter
Leaving footprints of disgrace ;
For to-day’s poor pittance turning from the great
hope of their race.
Yet, where festal lamps are throwing
Glory round the dancer’s hair,
Gold-tressed, like an angel’s flowing
Backward on the sunset air ;
And the low quick pulse of music beats its measures
sweet and rare:
There to-night shall woman’s glances,
Star-like, welcome give to them,
Fawning fools with shy advances
Seek to touch their garments’ hem,
With the tongue of flattery glozing deeds which God
and ‘Truth condemn.
From this glittering lie my vision
Takes a broader, sadder range,
Full before me have arisen
Other pictures dark and strange ;
From the parlor to the prison must the scene and wit
ness change.
Hark! the heavy gate is swinging
On its hinges, harsh and slow ;
One pale prison lamp is flinging
On a fearful group below
Such a light as leaves to terror whatsoe’er it does net
show.
LINES. 229
Pitying God ! —Is that a WoMAN
On whose wrists the shackles clash ?
Is that shriek she utters human,
Undernearh the stinging lash P
dre they MEN whose eyes of madness from that sad
process n flash ?
Still the dance goes gaily onward !
What is it to Wealth and Pride,
That without the stars are looking
On a scene which earth should hide?
That the SLAVE-sHIP lies in waiting, rocking on
Potomac’s tide!
Vainly to that mean Ambition
Which, upon a rival’s fall,
Winds above its old condition,
With a reptile’s slimy crawl,
Shall the pleading voice of sorrow, shall the slave in
anguish call.
Vainly to the child of Fashion,
Giving to ideal woe
Graceful luxury of compassion,
Shall the stricken mourner go;
Hateful seems the earnest sorrow, beautiful the hole
low show !
Nay, my words are all too sweeping :
In this crowded human mart
Feeling is not dead, but sleeping ;
Man’s strong will and woman’s heart,
tn the coming strife for Freedom, yet shall bear ao
generous dart,
230 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
And from yonder sunny valleys,
Southward in the distance lost,
Freedom yet shall summon allies
Worthier than the North can boast,
With the Evil by their hearth-stones grappling »
severer cost.
Now, the soul alone is willing:
Faint the heart and weak the knee;
And as yet no lip is thrilling
With the mighty words ‘‘ Br Free!”
Tarrieth long the land’s Good Angel, but his advent
is to be!
Meanwhile, turning from the revel
To the prison-cell my sight,
For intenser hate of evil,
For a keener sense of right,
Shaking off thy dust, I thank thee, City of the
Slaves, to-night !
*¢ To thy duty now and ever!
Dream no more of rest or stay}
Give to Freedom’s great endeavor
All thou art and hast to-day: ’’ —
Thus, above the city’s murmur, saith a Voice a
seems to say.
Ye with heart and vision gifted
To discern and love the right,
Whose worn faces have been lifted
To the slowly-growing light,
Where from Freedom’s sunrise drifted slowly back
the murk of night! —
LINES. 23h
Ye who through long years of trial
Still have held your purpose fast,
While a lengthening shade the dial
From the westering sunshine cast,
And of hope each hour’s denial seemed an echoo
the last |! —
Oh, my brothers! oh, my sisters !
Would to God that ye were near,
Gazing with me down the vistas
Of a sorrow strange and drear ;
Would to God that ye were listening to the Voice
I seem to hear !
With the storm above us driving,
With the false earth mined below —_
Who shall marvel if thus striving
We have counted friend as foe;
Unto one another giving in. the darkness blow for
blow P
Well it may be that our natures
Have grown sterner and more hard,
And the freshness of: their features
Somewhat harsh and battle-scarred,
And their harmonies of feeling overtasked and rudely
jarred.
Be it so. It should not swerve us
From a purpose true and brave;
Dearer Freedom’s rugged service
Than the pastime of the slave;
Better is the storm above it than the quiet of the
grave.
232 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Let us then, uniting, bury
All our idle feuds in dust,
And to future conflicts carry
Mutual faith and common trust ;
Always he who most forgiveth in his brother is mos#
just.
From the eternal shadow rounding
All our sun and starlight here,
Voices of our lost ones sounding
Bid us be of heart and cheer,
Through the silence, down the spaces, falling on the
inward ear.
Know we not our dead are looking
- Downward with a sad surprise,
All our strife of words rebuking
With their mild and loving eyes?
Shall we grieve the holy angels? Shall we cloud
their blessed skies ?
Let us draw their mantles o’er us
Which have fallen in our way ;
Let us do the work before us,
Cheerly, bravely, while we may,
Ere the long night-silence cometh, and with us it is
not day !
LINES
from A LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERICAL FRIEND
A STRENGTH Thy service cannot tire —
A faith which doubt can never dim —
A heart of love, a lip of fire —
Oh! Freedom’s God! be Thou to him?
LINES. 233
Speak through him words of power and fear,
As through Thy prophet bards of old,
And let a scornful people hear
Once more Thy Sinai-thunders rolled.
For lying lips Thy blessing seek,
And hands of blood are raised to Thee,
And on Thy children, crushed and weak,
The oppressor plants his kneeling knee,
Let then, oh, God! Thy servant dare
Thy truth in all its power to tell,
Unmask the priestly thieves, and tear
The Bible from the grasp of hell!
From hollow rite and narrow span
_ Of law and sect by Thee released,
Oh! teach him that the Christian man
Is holier than the Jewish priest.
Chase back the shadows, gray and old,
Of the dead ages, from his way,
And let his hopeful eyes behold
The dawn of Thy millennial day ; —
That day when fettered limb and mind
Shall know the truth which maketh free,
And he alone who loves his kind
Shall, childlike, claim the love of Theef
234 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
YORKTOWN.
{ Dr. THATCHER, surgeon in SCAMMEL’S regiment, in his de
scription of the siege of Yorktown, says: ‘“ The labor on the
Virginia plantations is performed altogether by a species of the
human race cruelly wrested from their native country, and
doomed to perpetual bondage, while their masters are manfully
contending for freedom and the natural rights of man. Such is
the inconsistency of human nature.” Eighteen hundred slaves
were found at Yorktown, after its surrender, and restored to
their masters. Well was it said by DR. BARNES, in his late
work on Slavery: ‘ No slave was any nearer his freedom after
the surrender of Yorktown, than when PATRICK HENRY first
faught the notes of liberty to echo among the hills and vales of
Virginia.” }
From Yorktown’s ruins, ranked and still,
Two lines stretch far o’er vale and hill:
Who curbs his steed at head of one ?
Hark! the low murmur: Washington!
Who bends his keen, approving glance
Where down the gorgeous line of France
Shine knightly star and plume of snow ?
Thou too art victor, Rochambeau !
The earth which bears this calm array
Shook with the war-charge yesterday,
Ploughed deep with hurrying. hoof and wheel,
Shot-sown and bladed thick with steel ;
October’s clear and noonday sun
Paled in the breath-smoke of the gun.
And down night’s double blackness fell,
Like a dropped star, the blazing shell.
Now all is hushed: the gleaming lines
Stand moveless as the neighboring pines ;
While through them, sullen, grim, and slow,
The conquered hosts of England go:
YORKTOWN. 235
O’Hara’s brow belies his dress,
Gay Tarlton’s troop ride bannerless :
Shout, from thy fired and wasted homes,
Thy scourge, Virginia, captive comes!
Nor thou alone: with one glad voice
Let all thy sister States rejoice ;
Let Freedom, in whatever clime
She waits with sleepless eye her time,
Shouting from cave and mountain wood,
Make glad her desert solitude,
While they who hunt her quail with fears
The New World’s chain lies broken here #
But who are they, who, cowering, wait
Within the shattered fortress gate?
Dark tillers of Virginia’s soil,
Classed with the battle’s common spoil,
With household stuffs, and fowl, and swine,
With Indian weed and planters’ wine,
With stolen beeves, and foraged corn —
Are they not men, Virginian born?
Oh ! veil your faces, young and brave!
Sleep, Scammel, in thy soldier grave }
Sons of the North-land, ye who set
Stout hearts against the bayonet,
And pressed with steady footfall near
The moated battery’s blazing tier,
Turn your scarred faces from the sight,
Let shame do homage to the right !
Lo! threescore years have passed ; and where
The Gallic timbrel stirred the air,
With Northern drum-roll, and the clear,
Wild horn-blow of the mountaineer,
236
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
While Britain grounded on that plain
The arms she might not lift again,
As abject as in that old day
The slave still toils his life away.
Oh ! fields still green and fresh in story,
Old days of pride, old names of glory,
Old marvels of the tongue and pen,
Old thoughts which stirred the hearts of mer,
Ye spared the wrong; and over all
Behold the avenging shadow fall !
Your world-wide honor stained with shame —
our freedom’s self a hollow name!
Where’s now the flag of that old war?
Where flows its stripe? Where burns its star?
Bear witness, Palo Alto’s day,
Dark Vale of Palms, red Monterey,
Where Mexic Freedom, young and weak,
Fleshes the Northern easzic’s beak :
Symbol of terror and despair,
Of chains and slaves, go seek it there!
Laugh, Prussia, midst thy iron ranks!
Laugh, Russia, from thy Neva’s banks $:
Brave sport to see the fledgling born
Of Freedom by its parent torn !
Safe now is Spielberg’s dungeon cell,
Safe drear Siberia’s frozen hell :
With Slavery’s flag o’er both unrolled,
What of the New World fears the Old?
EGO.
EGO)”
WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF A FRIEND.
On page of thine I cannot trace
The cold and heartless commonplace
A statue’s fixed and marble grace.
Forever as these lines are penned,
~ Still with the thought of thee will blend
That of some loved and common friend <=
Who in life’s desert track has made
His pilgrim tent with mine, or strayed
Beneath the same remembered shade,
And hence my pen unfettered moves
In freedom which the heart approves —
The negligence which friendship loves.
And wilt thou prize my poor gift less
For simple air and rustic dress,
And sign of haste and carelessness ?
Oh! more than specious counterfeit
Of sentiment, or studied wit,
A heart like thine should value it.
Yet half I fear my gift will be
Unto thy book, if not to thee,
Of more than doubtful courtesy.
A banished name from Fashion’s sptre,
A lay unheard of Beauty’s ear,
Forbid, disowned, — what do they here ? =
WHITTIER’S POEMS,
Upon my ear not all in vain
Came the sad captive’s clanking chain ==
The groaning from his bed of pain.
And sadder still, I saw the woe
Which only wounded spirits know
When Pride’s strong footsteps o’er them ga
Spurned not alone in walks abroad,
But from the ‘‘ temples of the Lord’’
Thrust out apart, like things abhorred.
Deep as I felt, and stern and strong,
In words which Prudence smothered long,
My soul spoke out against the wrong ;
Not mine alone the task to speak
Of comfort to the poor and weak,
And dry the tear on Sorrow’s cheek ;
But, mingled in the conflict warm,
To pour the fiery breath of storm
Through the harsh trumpet of Reform 3
To brave ©ninion’s settled frown,
From ered robe and saintly gown,
While ~*estling reverenced Errex down,
Founc# gushed beside my pilgrim way,
Cool *badows on the greensward lay,
Flowaxs swung upon the bending spray.
And, broad and bright, on either hand,
Stretched the green slopes of Fairy lands
With Hope's erernal sunbow spanned ;
EGO, 239
Whence voices called me like the flow,
Which on the listener’s ear will grow,
Of forest streamlets soft and low.
And gentle eyes, which still retain
Their picture on the heart and brain,
smiled, beckoning from that path of pain,
In vain !—nor dream, nor rest, nor pause
Remain for him who round him draws
The battered mail of Freedom’s cause.
From youthful hopes — from each green spot
Of young Romance, and gentle Thought,
Where storm and tumult enter not —
From each fair altar, where belong
The offerings Love requires of Song
In homage to her bright-eyed throng —
With soul and strength, with heart and hand,
{ turned to Freedom’s struggling band —
To the sad Helots of our land.
What marvel then that Fame should turn
Her notes of praise to those of scorn —
Her gifts reclaimed — her smiles withdrawn?
What matters it !— a few years more,
Life’s surge so restless heretofore
Shall break upon the unknown shore!
In that far land shall disappear
‘The shadows which we follow here —
The mist-wreaths of our atmosphere!
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Before no work of mortal hand,
Of human will or strength expand
The pearl gates of the Better Land;
Alone in that great love which gave
Life to the sleeper of the grave,
KResteth the power to ‘‘seek and save."®
Yet, if the spirit gazing through
The vista of the past can view
One deed to Heaven and virtue true—
If through the wreck of wasted powers,
Of garlands wreathed from Folly’s bowers,
Of idle aims and misspent hours —
The eye can note one sacred spot
By Pride and Self profaned not —
A green place in the waste of thought —
Where deed or word hath rendered less
‘¢The sum of human wretchedness,’’
And Gratitude looks forth to bless —
The simple burst of tenderest feeling
From sad hearts worn by evil-dealing,
For blessing on the hand of healing, —
Better than Glory’s pomp will be
That green and blessed spot to me—
A palm-shade in Eternity ! —
Something of Time which may invite
The purified and spiritual sight
To rest on with a calm delight.
EGO.
And when the summer winds shall sweep
With their light wings my place of sleep,
And mosses round my head-stone creep —.
If still, as Freedom’s rallying sign,
Upon the young heart’s altars shine
The very fires they caught from mine —
If words my lips once uttered still,
In the calm faith and steadfast will
Of other hearts, their work fulfil —
Perchance with joy the soul may learn
These tokens, and its eye discern
The fires which on those altars burn—
A marvellous joy that even then,
The spirit hath its life again,
In the strong hearts of mortal men.
Take, lady, then, the gift I bring,
No gay and graceful offering —
No flower-smile of the laughing spring.
Midst the green buds of Youth’s fresh May,
With Fancy’s leaf-enwoven bay,
My sad and sombre gift I lay.
And if it deepens-in thy mind
A sense of suffering human kind —
The outcast and the spirit-blind:
Oppressed and spoiled on every side,
By Prejudice, and Scorn, and Pride,
Life’s common courtesies denied ;
241
242 _ WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Sad mothers mourning o’er their trust,
Children by want and misery nursed,
Tasting life’s bitter cup at first ;
If to their strong appeals which come
From fireless hearth, and crowded room,
And the close alley’s noisome gloom —
Though dark the hands upraised to thee
In mute beseeching agony,
Thou lend’st thy woman’s sympathy —
Not vainly on thy gentle shrine,
Where Love, and Mirth, and F riendship twine
Their varied gifts, I offer mine.
TO. GOV. M’DUFFIE.
“The patriarchal institution of slavery,” — “ the corner-stone
of our republican edifice.”—Gov. M’ Duffie.
Kine of Carolina — hail!
Last champion of Oppression’s battle !
Lord of rice-tierce and cotton-bale !
Of sugar-box and human cattle!
Around thy temples, green and dark,
Thy own tobacco-wreath reposes ;
Thyself, a brother Patriarch
Of Isaac, Abraham, and Moses !
Why not ? — Their household rule is thine, '
Like theirs, thy bondmen feel its rigor ;
And thine, perchance, as concubine,
Some swarthy counterpart of Hagar.
TO GOV. M’DUFFIE. 245
Why not ?— Like patriarchs of old,
The priesthood is thy chosen station ;
Like them thou payest thy rites to gold—=
An Aaron’s calf of Nullification.
All fair and softly ! — Must we, then,
From Ruin’s open jaws to save us,
Upon our own free workingmen
Confer a master’s special favors ?
Whips for the back — chains for the heels ==
Hooks for the nostrils of Democracy,
Before it spurns as well as feels
The riding of the Aristocracy !
Ho ! — fishermen of Marblehead !
Ho ! — Lynn cordwainers, leave your leather
And wear the yoke in kindness made,
And clank your needful chains together !
Let Lowell mills their thousands yield,
Down let the rough Vermonter hasten,
Down from the workshop and the field,
And thank us for each chain we fasten.
SLAVES in the rugged Yankee land!
I tell thee, Carolinian, never !
Our rocky hills and iron strand
Are free, and shall be free forever.
The surf shall wear that strand away,
Our granite hills in dust shall moulder,
Ere Slavery’s hateful yoke shall lay,
Unbroken, on a Yankee’s shoulder }
No, George M’ Duffie ! — keep thy words
‘For the mail plunderers of thy city,
Whose robber-right is in their swords;
For recreant Priest and Lynch-Committee ¢
244 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Go, point thee to thy cannon’s mouth,
And swear its brazen lips are better,
To guard ‘‘ the interests of the South,”’
Than parchment scroll, or Charter’s letter. *
We fear not. Streams which brawl most loud
Along their course, are oftenest shallow ;
And loudest to a doubting crowd
The coward publishes his valor.
Zhy courage has at least been shown
In many a bloodless Southern quarrel,
Facing, with hartshorn and cologne,
The Georgian’s harmless pistol-barrel. ¢
No, Southron! not in Yankee land
Will threats, like thine, a fear awaken;
The men, who on their charter stand
For truth and right, may not be shaken.
Still shall that truth assail thine ear ;
Each breeze,. from Northern mountains
The tones of Liberty shall bear— [blowing,
God’s ‘‘ free incendiaries ’’ going !
“Ve give thee joy !— thy name is heard
With reverence on the Neva’s borders ;
And ‘‘turban’d Turk,’’ and Poland’s lord,
And Metternich are thy applauders.
Go — if thou lov’st such fame, and share
The mad Ephesian’s base example —
The holy bonds of UNION tear,
And clap the torch to FREEDOM’s temple!
*See Speech of Goy. M’D. to an artillery company in
Charleston, S. C.
t Most of our readers will recollect the “ chivalrous” affair
between M’Duffie and Col. Cummings, of Georgia, some years
ago, in which the parties fortified themselves with spirits of
hartshorn and eau de Cologne.
LINES, 245
Do this — Heaven’s frown, thy country’s curse
Guilt’s fiery torture ever burning —
The quenchless thirst of Tantalus,
And Ixion’s wheel forever turning —
A name, for which ‘‘ the pain’dest fiend
Below’’ his own would barter never,——
These shall be thine unto the end
Thy damning heritage forever !
LINES
Written on reading ‘“* WRIGHT AND WRONG IN Boston; ”™
containing an account of the meeting of the Boston Female
Anti-Slavery Society, and the MoB which followed, on the 21s
of the 10th month, 1835.
UNSHRINKING from the storm,
Well have ye borne your part,
With woman’s fragile form,
But more than manhood’s heart !
Faithful to Freedom, when .
Its name was held accursed —
Faithful, midst ruffian men,
Unto your holy trust.
Oh — steadfast in the Truth {
Not for yourselves alone,
Matron and gentle youth,
Your lofty zeal was shown:
For the bondman of all climes —
For Freedom’s last abode —
For the hope of future times —
For the birthright gift of God —=
346
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
For scorn’d and broken laws —
fr honor and the right —
#or the staked and peril’d cause
Of liberty and light —
For the holy eyes above
On a world of evil cast —
For the CHILDREN of your love=—~
For the MOTHERS of the past!
Worthy of THEM are ye —
The Pilgrim wives who dared
The waste and unknown sea,
And the hunter’s perils shared.
Worthy of her * whose mind,
Triumphant over all,
Ruler nor priest could bind,
Nor banishment appal.
Worthy of her + who died
Martyr of Freedom, where
Your ‘‘ Commons’ ”’ verdant pride,
Opens to sun and air:
Upheld at that dread hour
By strength which could not fail;
Before whose holy power
Bigot and priest turn’d pale.
God give ye strength to run,
Unawed by Earth or Hell,
The race ye have begun
So gloriously and well,
* Mrs. Hutchinson, who was banished from the Massa
thusetts Colony, as the easiest method of confuting her doc-
frines.
¢ Mary Dyer, the Quaker Martyr, who was hanged in Boston.
in 1659, for worshipping God according to the dictates cf her
conscience.
LINES. 247
Ontil the trumpet-call
Of Freedom has gone forth,
With joy and life to all
The bondmen of the earth!
Until ImMoRTAL MIND
Unshackled walks abroad,
And chains no longer bind
The image of our God.
Until no captive one
Murmurs on land or wave;
And, in his course, the sun
Looks down upon no sLavE!
LINES
Written yn the adoption of Pinckney’s Resolutions, in the
.iouse of Representatives, and the passage of Calhoun’s « Bil}
of Abominations” to a second reading, in the Senate of the
United States.
Now, by our fathers’ ashes! where’s the spirit
Of the true-hearted and the unshackled gone?
Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit
Their zames alone?
Is the old Pilgrim spirit quench’d within us?
Stoops the proud manhood of our souls so low,
That Mammon’s lure or Party’s wile can win us
To silence now?
No. When our land to ruin’s brink is verging,
In God’s name, let us speak while there is time}
“low, when the padlocks for our lips are forging,
SILENCE IS CRIME!
248 WHITTIER’S POEMS
What! shall we henceforth humbly ask as favors
Rights all our own? In madness shall we barter,
For treacherous peace, the FREEDOM Nature gave us,
God and our charter?
fTere shall the statesman seek the free to fetter?
Here Lynch law light its horrid fires on high?
And, in the church, their proud and skill’d abettor,
Make truth a he?
Torture the pages of the hallow'd Bible,
To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood ¥
And, in Oppression’s hateful service, libel
Both man and Sie
Shall our New aot stand erect no longer,
But stoop in chains upon her downward way,
Thicker to gather on her limbs and stronger
Day after day?
Oh, no; methinks from all her wild, green moun«
tains —
From valleys where her slumbering fathers lie—
From her blue rivers and her welling fountains,
And clear, cold sky —
From her rough coast, and isles, which hungry Ocean
Gnaws with his surges — from the fisher’s skiff,
With white sail swaying to the billows’ motion
Round rock and cliff —
From the free fireside of her unbought farmer —
From her free laborer at his loom and wheel —
From the brown smith-shop, where, beneath the
hammer,
Rings the red steel —=
LINES. B49
from each and all, if God hath not forsaken
Our land, and left us to an evil chuice,
Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall waken
A PEOPLE’S VOICE ! .
Startling and stern! the Northern winds shall bear it
Over Potomac’s to St. Mary’s wave ;
And buried Freedom shall awake to hear it
Within her grave.
Oh, let that voice go forth! The bondman sighing
By Santee’s wave, in Mississippi’s cane,
Shall feel the hope, within his bosom dying,
Revive again.
Let it go forth!’ The millions who are gazing
Sadly upon us from afar, shall smile,
And unto God devout thanksgiving raising,
Bless us the while.
Oh, for your ancient freedom, pure and holy,
For the deliverance of a groaning earth,
For the wrong’d captive, bleeding, crush’d, and
lowly,
Let it go forth!
Sons of the best of fathers! will ye falter
With all they left ye peril’d and at stake?
Ho! once again on Freedom's holy altar
The fire awake!
Prayer-strengthen’d for the trial, come together,
Put on the harness for the moral fight,
And, with the blessing of your heavenly Father,
MAINTAIN THE RIGHT }
MISCELLANEOUS.
PALESTINE.
Best land of Judea! thrice hallowed of song
Where the holiest of memories pilgrim-like throng 3
In the shade of thy palms, by the shores of thy sea,
On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is with thee,
With the eye of a spirit I look on that shore,
Where pilgrim and prophet have lingered before
With the glide of a spirit I traverse the sod
Made bright by the steps of the angels of God.
Blue sea of the hills ! —in my spirit I hear
Thy waters, Gennesaret, chime on my ear;
Where the Lowly and Just with the people sat down,
And thy spray on the dust of His sandals was thrown,
Beyond are Bethulia’s mountains of green,
And the desolate hills of the wild Gadarene;
And I pause on the goat-crags of Tabor to see
The gleam of thy waters, O dark Galilee!
Hark, a sound in the valley! where, swollen and
strong,
Thy river, O Kishon, is sweeping along ;
Where the Canaanite strove with Jehovah in vain,
And thy torrent prew dark with the blood of the
slain.
250
PALESTINE, eon
There down from his mountains stern Zebulon came,
And Naphtali’s stag, with his eye-balls of flame,
And the chariots of Jabin rolled harmlessly on,
For the arm of the Lord was Abinoam’s son!
There sleep the still rocks and the caverns which
rang
™“o the song which the beautiful prophetess sang,
*Vhen the princes of Issachar stood by her side,
And the shout of a host in its triumph replied.
Lo, Bethlehem’s hill-site before me is seen,
With the mountains around, and the valleys be-
tween ;
There rested the shepherds of Judah, and there
The song of the angels rose sweet on the air.
And Bethany’s palm trees in beauty still throw
Their shadows at noon on the ruins below ;
But where are the sisters who hastened to greet
The lowly Redeemer, and sit at His feet ?
I tread where the TWELVE in their way-faring trod ;
I stand where they stood with the CHOSEN or GoD —
Where His blessing was heard and His lessons were
taught,
Where the blind were restored and the healing was
wrought.
Oh, here with His flock the sad Wanderer came —
These hills He toiled over in grief, are the same —
The founts where He drank by the wayside still flow,
And the same airs are blowing which breathed on His
brow !
252 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
And throned on her hills sits Jerusalem yet,
But with dust on her forehead, and chains on het
feet ;
For the crown of her pride to the mocker hath gone,
And the Holy Shechinah is dark where it shone.
But wherefore this dream of the earthly abode
Of Humanity clothed in the brightness of God?
Where my spirit but turned from the outward and
dim,
It could gaze, even now, on the presence of Him]
Not in clouds and in terrors, but gentle as when,
In love and in meekness, He moved among men;
And the voice which breathed peace to the waves of
the sea,
In the hush of my spirit would whisper to me!
And what if my feet may not tread where He stood,
Nor my ears hear the dashing of Galilee’s flood,
Nor my eyes see the cross which He bowed him to
bear,
Nor my knees press Gethsemane’s garden of prayer?
Yet loved of the Father, Thy Spirit is near
To the meek, and the lowly, and penitent here;
And the voice of Thy love is the same even now,
As at Bethany’s tomb, or on Olivet’s brow.
Oh, the outward hath gone!—but in glory and
power,
The SPIRIT surviveth the things of an hour;
Unchanged, undecaying, its Pentecost flame
On the heart’s secret altar is burning the same ?
EZEKIEL. 253
EZEKIEL.
CHAPTER XXXIII. 30-33.
Tuey hear thee not, O God! nor see:
Beneath Thy rod they mock at Thee ;
~The princes of our ancient line
Lie drunken with Assyrian wine ;
The priests around Thy altar speak
The false words which their hearers seek ;
And hymns which Chaldea’s wanton maids
Have sung in Dura’s idol-shades,
Are with the Levites’ chant ascending,
With Zion’s holiest anthems blending !
On Israel’s bleeding bosom set,
The heathen heel is crushing yet ;
‘The towers upon our holy hill
Echo Chaldean footsteps still.
Our wasted shrines — who weeps for them?
Who mourneth for Jerusalem ?
Who turneth from his gains away P
Whose knee with mine is bowed to pray P
Who, leaving feast and purpling cup,
Takes Zion’s lamentation up ?
A sad and thoughtful youth, I went
With Israel’s early banishment ;
And where the sullen Chebar crept,
The ritual of my fathers kept..
The water for the trench I drew,
The firstling of the flock I slew,
And, standing at the altar’s side,
I shared the Levites’ lingering pride,
That still amidst her mocking foes,
The smoke of Zion’s offering rose.
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
In sudden whirlwind, cloud and flame,
The Spirit of the Highest came !
Before mine eyes a vision passed,
A glory terrible and vast ;
With dreadful eyes of living things,
And sounding sweep of angel wings,
With circling light and sapphire throne,
And flame-like form of One thereon,
And voice of that dread Likeness sent
Down from the crystal firmament !
The burden of a prophet’s power
Fell on me in that fearful hour ;
From off unutterable woes
The curtain of the future rose ;
I saw far down the coming time
The fiery chastisement of crime;
With noise of mingling hosts, and jar
Of falling towers and shouts of war,
I saw the nations rise and fall,
Like fire-gleams on my tent’s white wail,
In dream and trance, I saw the slain
Of Egypt heaped like harvest grain ;
I saw the walls of sea-born Tyre
Swept over by the spoiler’s fire ;
And heard the low, expiring moan
Of Edom on his rocky throne;
And, woe is me! the wild lament
From Zion’s desolation sent ;
And felt within my heart each blow
Which laid her holy places low.
In bonds and sorrow, day by day,
Before the pictured tile I lay ;
EZEKIEL. 255
And there, as in a mirror, saw
The coming of Assyria’s war,—
Her swarthy lines of spearmen pass
Like locusts through Bethhoron’s grass ;
I saw them draw their stormy hem
Of battle round Jerusalem ;
And, listening, heard the Hebrew wail
Blend with the victor-trump of Baal!
Who trembled at my warning word ?
Who owned the prophet of the Lord?
How mocked the rude — how scoffed the vile«x
How stung the Levites’ scornful smile,
As o’er my spirit, dark and slow,
The shadow crept of Israel’s woe,
As if the angel’s mournful roll
Had left its record on my soul,
And traced in lines of darkness there
The picture of its great despair !
Yet ever at the hour I feel
My lips in prophecy unseal.
Prince, priest, and Levite, gather near,
And Salem’s daughters haste to hear,
On Chebar’s waste and alien shore,
The harp of Judah swept once more.
They listen, as in Babel’s throng
The Chaldeans to the dancer’s song,
Or wild sabbeka’s nightly play,
As careless and as vain as they.
And thus, oh Prophet-bard of old,
Hast thou thy tale of sorrow told!
The same which earth’s unwelcome seers
Have felt in all succeeding years.
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Sport of the changeful multitude,
Nor calmly heard nor understood,
Their song has seemed a trick of art,
Their warnings but the actors’s part.
With bonds, and scorn, and evil will,
The world requites its prophets still.
So was it when the Holy One
The garments of the flesh put on!
_Men followed where the Highest led
For common gifts of daily bread,
And gross of ear, of vision dim,
Owned not the Godlike power of Him.
Vain as a dreamer’s words to them
His wail above Jerusalem,
And meaningless the watch He kept
Through which His weak disciples slept,
Yet shrink not thou, whoe’er thou art,
For God’s great purpose set apart,
Before whose far discerning eyes,
‘The Future as the Present lies !
Beyond 2 narrow-bounded age
Stretches thy prophet-heritage,
Through Heaven’s dim spaces angel-trod,
Through arches round the throne of God J
Thy audience, worlds ! — all Time to be
The witness of the Truth in thee!
THE WIFE OF MANOAH. 257
THE WIFE OF MANOAH TO HER HUSBAND,
AGAINST the sunset’s glowing wall
The city towers rise black and tall,
Where Zoran on its rocky height
Stands like an armed nan in the light.
Down Eshtaol’s vales of ripened grain
Falls like a cloud the night amain,
And up the hillsides climbing slow
The barley reapers homeward go.
Look, dearest ! how our fair child’s head
The sunset light hath hallowed,
Where at this olive’s foot he lies,
Uplooking to the tranquil skies,
Oh! while beneath the fervent heat
Thy sickle swept the bearded wheat,
I’ve watched with mingled joy and dread,
Our child upon his grassy bed.
Joy, which the mother feels alone
Whose morning hope like mine had flowiy,
When to her bosom, ever blessed,
A dearer life than hers is pressed.
Dread, for the future dark and still,
Which shapes our dear one to its will;
Forever in his large calm eyes,
Y read a tale of sacrifice. —
The same foreboding awe I felt
When at the altar’s side we knelt,
And he, who as a pilgrim came,
Rose, winged and glorious, through the flame#
£58
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
I slept not, thougn the wild bees made
A dreamlike murmuring in the shade,
And on me the warm-fingered hours
Pressed with the drowsy smell of flowers,
Before me, in a vision, rose
The hosts of Israel’s scornful foes,—
Rank over rank, helm, shield, and spear,
Glittered in noon’s hot atmosphere.
I heard their boast, and bitter word,
Their mockery of the Hebrew’s Lord,
I saw their hands His ark assail,
Their feet profane His holy veil.
No angel down the blue space spoke,
No thunder from the still sky broke,
But in their midst, in power and awe,
Like God’s waked wrath, OUR CHILD I saw!
A child no more ! — harsh-browed and strong,
He towered a giant in the throng,
And down his shoulders, broad and bare,
Swept the black terror of his hair.
He raised his arm — he smote amain,
As round the reaper falls the grain,
So the dark host around him fell,
So sank the foes of Israel!
Again I looked. In sunlight shone
The towers and domes of Askelon.
Priests, warrior, slave, a mighty crowd
Within her idol temple bowed.
Vet one knelt not; stark, gaunt, and blind,
His arms the massive pillars twined,—
THE WIFE OF VANOAH. 258
An eyeless captive, strong with hate,
He stood there like an evil Fate.
The red shrines smoked — the trumpets pealed —
He stooped — the giant columns reeled —
Reeled tower and fane, sank arch and wall,
And the thick dust-cloud closed o’er al!!
Above the shriek, the crash, the groan
Of the fallen pride of Askelon,
I heard, sheer down the echoing sky,
A voice as of an angel cry.—
The voice of him, who at our side
Sat through the golden eventide,
Of him, who on thy altar’s blaze
Rose fire-winged, with his song of praise!
“4 Rejoice o’er Israel’s broken chain,
Gray mother of the mighty slain !
Rejoice !’’ it cried, ‘‘ He vanquisheth !
The strong in life is strong in death!
«* To him shall Zorah’s daughters raise
Through coming years their hymns of praise,
And gray old men, at evening tell
Of all he wrought for Israel.
“ And they who sing and they who hear
Alike shall hold thy memory dear,
And pour their blessings on thy head,
Oh, mother of the mighty dead !’’
It ceased: and though a sound I heard
As if great wings the still air stirred,
I only saw the barley sheaves,
And hills half hid by olive leaves,
260 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
I bowed my face, in awe and fear,
On the dear child who slumbered near,
‘‘ With me, as with my only son,
Oh God !’’ I said, ‘‘ Toy WILL BE DONE! **
THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN.
“Get ye up from the wrath of God’s terrible day !?
Ungirded, unsandalled, arise and away !
’Tis the vintage of blood —’tis the fulness of time,
And vengeance shall gather the harvest of crime!”
The warning was spoken —the righteous had gone,
And the proud ones of Sodom were feasting alone;
All gay was the banquet — the revel was long,
With the pouring of wine and the breathing of song.
"Twas an evening of beauty; the air was perfume,
The earth was all greenness, the trees were all bloom;
And softly the delicate viol was heard,
Like the murmur of love or the notes of a bird.
And beautiful maidens moved down in the dance,
With the magic of motion and sunshine of glance ;
And white arms wreathed lightly, and tresses fell free,
As the plumage of birds in some tropical tree.
Where the shrines of foul idols were lighted on high,
And wantonness tempted the lust of the eye;
Midst rites of obsceneness, strange, loathsome, ab-
horred, ,
The blasphemer scoffed at the name of the Lord.
THE CRUCIFIXION. 261
Hark! the growl of the thunder—the quaking of
earth !
Woe — woe to the worship, and woe to the mirth !
The black sky has opened — there’s flame in the air —
The red arm of vengeance is lifted and bare!
Then the shriek of the dying rose wild where the song
And the low tone of love had been whispered along ;
For the fierce flames went lightly o’er palace and
bower,
Like the red tongues of demons, to blast and devour!
Down — down, on the fallen, the red ruin rained,
And the reveller sank with his wine-cup undrained ;
The foot of the dancer, the music’s loved thrill,
And the shout and the laughter grew suddenly still.
The last throb of anguish was fearfully given ;
The last eye glared forth in its madness on Heaven {
The last groan of horror rose wildly and vain,
And death brooded over the pride of the Plain!
THE CRUCIFIXION.
SUNLIGHT upon Judea’s hills !
And on the waves of Galilee —
On Jordan’s stream, and on the rills
_ That feed the dead and sleeping sea !
Most freshly from the greenwood springs
The light breeze on its scented wings ;
And gayly quiver in the sun
The cedar tops of Lebanon!
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
A few more hours—a change hath come?
The sky is dark without a cloud!
The shouts of wrath and joy are dumb,
And proud knees unto earth are bowed,
A change is on the hill of Death,
The helmed watchers pant for breath,
And turn with wild and maniac eyes
From the dark scene of-sacrifice !
That Sacrifice !— the death of Him—
The High and ever Holy One!
Well may the conscious Heaven grow dim,
And blacken the beholding Sun !
The wonted light hath fled away,
Night settles on the middle day,
And earthquake from his caverned bed
Is waking with a thrill of dread!
The dead are waking underneath !
Their prison door is rent away !
And, ghastly with the seal of death,
They wander in the eye of day}
The temple of the Cherubim,
The House of God is cold and dim};
A curse is on its trembling walls,
Its mighty veil asunder falls !
Well may the cavern-depths of Earth
Be shaken, and her mountains nod ;
Well may the sheeted dead come forth
To gaze upon a suffering God !
Well may the temple-shrine grow dim,
And shadows veil the Cherubim,
When He, the chosen one of Heaven,
A sacrifice for guilt is given!
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. ©
And shall the sinful heart, alone,
Behold unmoved the atoning hour,
When Nature trembles on her throne,
And Death resigns his iron power ?
Oh, shall the heart — whose sinfulness
Gave keenness to His sore distress,
And added to His tears of blood —
Refuse its trembling gratitude !
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM.
WHERE Time the measure of his hours
By changeful bud and blossom keeps,
And like a young bride crowned with flowers,
Fair Shiraz in her garden sleeps ;
Where, to her poet’s turban stone,
The Spring her gift of flowers imparts,
Less sweet than those his thoughts have sown
In the warm soil of Persian hearts:
There sat the stranger, where the shade
Of scattered date-trees thinly iay,
While in the hot clear heaven delayed
The long, and still, and weary day.
Strange trees and fruits above him hung,
Strange odors filled the sultry air,
Strange birds upon the branches swung,
Strange insect voices murmured there.
And strange bright blossoms shone around,
Turned sunward from the shadowy bowers,
38 if the Gheber’s soul had found
A fitting home in Iran’s flowers.
264
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Whate’er he saw, whate’er he heard,
Awakened feelings new and sad, —
No Christian garb, nor Christian word,
Nor church with Sabbath bell chimes glad,
But Moslem graves, with turban stones,
And mosque-spires gleaming white, in view,
And gray-beard Mollahs in low tones
Chanting their Koran service through.
The flowers which smiled on either hand
Like tempting fiends, were such as they
Which once, o’er all that Eastern land,
As gifts on demon altars lay.
As if the burning eye of Baal
The servant of his Conqueror knew,
From skies which knew no cloudy veil,
The Sun’s hot glances smote him through.
‘*Ah me!”’ the lonely stranger said,
‘<The hope which led my footsteps on,
And light from Heaven around them shed,
O’er weary wave and waste, is gone!
¢¢ Where are the harvest fields all white,
For Truth to thrust her sickle in ?
Where flock the souls, like doves in flight,
From the dark hiding place of sin ?
‘¢ A silent horror broods o’er all —
The burden of a hateful spell —
The very flowers around recall
The hoary magi’s rites of hell *
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. 265
‘¢ And what am I, o’er such a land
The banner of the Cross to bear ?
Dear Lord uphold me with thy hand,
Thy strength with human weakness share { *
He ceased ; for at his very feet
In mild rebuke a floweret smiled —
How thrilled his sinking heart to greet
The Star-flower of the Virgin’s child !
Sown by some wandering Frank, it drew
Its life from alien air and earth,
And told to Paynim sun and dew
The story of the Saviour’s birth.
From scorching beams, in kindly mood,
The Persian plaints its beauty scréened 3
And on its pagan sisterhood,
In love, the Christian floweret leaned.
With tears of joy the wanderer felt
The darkness of his long despair
Before that hallowed symbol melt,
Which God’s dear love had nurtured there.
From Nature’s face, that simple flower
The lines of sin and sadness swept ;
And Magian pile and Paynim bower
In peace like that of Eden slept.
Each Moslem tomb, and cypress old,
Looked holy through the sunset air ;
And angel-like, the Muezzin told
From tower and mosque the hour of prayer.
266 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
With cheerful steps, the morrow’s dawn
From Shiraz saw the stranger part ;
The Star-flower of the Virgin-Born
Still blooming in bis hopeful heart !
CHRIST IN THE TEMPEST.
STorm on the heaving waters ! — The vast sky
Is stooping with its thunder. Cloud on cloud
Rolis heavily in the darkness, like a shroud
Shaken by midnight’s Angel from on high,
Through the thick sea-mist, faintly and afar,
Chorazin’s watch-light glimmers like a star,
And, momently, the ghastly cloud-fires play
On the dark sea-wall of Capernaum’s bay,
And tower and turret into light spring forth
Like spectres starting from the storm-swept earth
And, vast and awful, Tabor’s mountain form,
Its Titan forehead naked to the storm,
Towers for one instant, full and clear, and then
Blends with the blackness and the cloud again.
And it is very terrible ! — The roar
Ascendeth unto heaven, and thunders back,
Like the response of demons, from the black
Rifts of the hanging tempest — yawning o’er
The wild waves in their torment. Hark ! —the cry
Of strong man in peril, piercing through
The uproar of the waters and the sky,
As the rent bark one moment rides to view,
On the tall billows, with the thunder cloud
Closing around, above her, like a shroud !
CHRIST IN THE TEMPEST, 267
He stood upon the reeling deck — His form
Made visible by the lightning, and His brow
Pale, and uncover’d to the rushing storm,
Told of a triumph man may never know —
Power underived and mighty—‘‘PEACE—BE
STILL | ”’
The great waves heard Him, and the storm’s loud
tone
Went moaning into silence at His will;
And the thick clouds, where yet "the lightning
shone,
And slept the latent thunder, roll’d away,
Until no trace of tempest lurk’d behind,
Changing, upon the pinions of the wind,
To stormless wanderers, beautiful and gay.
Dread Ruler of the tempest! Thou before
Whose presence boweth the uprisen storm —~
To whom the waves do homage round the shore
Of many an Island empire ! —if the form
Of the frail dust beneath Thine eye, may claim
Thy infinite regard —oh, breathe upon
The storm and darkness of man’s soul the same’
Quiet, and peace, and humbleness which came
O’er the roused waters, where Thy voice had gone
A minister of power —to conquer in Thy name!
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
‘¢KNOWEST THOU THE ORDINANCES OF
HEAVEN?”
—Job xxxvill. 33.
Look unto heaven !
The still and solemn stars are burning there,
Like altars lighted in the upper air,
And to the worship of the great God given,
Where the pure spirits of the unsinning dead,
Redeem’d and sanctified from Earth, might shed
The holiness of prayer.
Look ye above !
The Earth is glorious with its summer wreath;
The tall trees bend with verdure; and, beneath,
Young flowers are blushing like unwhisper’d love.
Yet ¢hese will change — Earth’s glories be no more,
And all her bloom and greenness fade before
The ministry of Death.
Then gaze not there.
God’s constant miracle — the star-wrought sky
Bends o’er ye, lifting silently on high,
As with an Angel’s hand, the soul of prayer,
And heaven’s own language to the pure of Earth,
Written in stars at Nature’s mighty birth,
Burns on the gazing eye.
Oh! turn ye, then,
And bend the knee of worship; and the eyes
Of the pure stars shall smile, with glad surprise
At the deep reverence of the sons of men.
Oh! bend in worship, till those stars grow dim
And the skies vanish, at the thought of Him
Whose light beyond them lies!
HYMNS. 269
HYMNS.
FROM THE FRENCH OF LAMARTINE,
OnE hymn more, O my lyre!
Praise to the God above,
Of joy and life and love,
Sweeping its strings of fire!
Oh! who the speed of bird and wind
And sunbeam’s glance will lend to me,
That, soaring upward, I may find
My resting place and home in Thee ?—
Thou, whom my soul, midst doubt and gloom,
Adoreth with a fervent flame —
Mysterious spirit! unto whom
Pertain nor sign nor name!
Swiftly my lyre’s soft murmurs go,
Up from the cold and joyless earth,
Back to the God who bade them flow,
Whose moving spirit sent them forth.
But as for me, O God! for me,
The lowly creature of Thy will,
Lingering and sad, I sigh to Thee
An earth-bound pilgrim still !
Was not my spirit born to shine
Where yonder stars and suns are glowing ?
To breathe with them the light divine,
From God’s own holy altar flowing?
To be, indeed, whate’er the soul _
In dreams hath thirsted for so long =.
A portion of Heaven’s glorious whole
Of loveliness and song ?
270 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
Oh! watchers of the stars at night,
Who breathe their fire, as we the air —=
Suns, thunders, stars, and rays of light,
Oh! say, is He, the Eternal, there?
Bend there around His awful throne
The seraph’s glance, thé angel’s knee?
Or are thy inmost depths his own,
O wild and mighty sea?
Thoughts of my soul, how swift ye go!
Swift as the eagle’s glance of fire,
Or arrows from the archer’s bow,
To the far aim of your desire!
Thought after thought, ye thronging rise,
Like spring-doves from the startled wood,
Bearing like them your sacrifice
Of music unto God!
And shall these thoughts of joy and love
Come back again no more to me P—
Returning like the Patriarch’s dove
Wing-weary from the eternal sea,
To bear within my longing arms
The promise-bough of kindlier skies,
Plucked from the green, immortal palms
Which shadow Paradise ?
All-moving spirit !— freely forth
At Thy command the strong wind goes;
Its errand to the passive earth,
Nor art can stay, nor strength oppose,
Until it folds its weary wing
Once more within the hand divine;
So, weary from its wandering, _
My spirit turns to Thine!
HYMNS. 27%
child of the sea, the mountain stream,
From its dark caverns, hurries on,
Ceaseless, by night and morning’s beam,
By evening’s star and noontide’s sun,
Until at last it sinks to rest,
O’erwearied, in the waiting sea,
And moans upon its mother’s breast —
So turns my soul to Thee!
O Thou who bidst the torrent flow,
Who lendest wings unto the wind —
Mover of all things! where art Thou?
Oh, whither shall I go to find
The secret of Thy resting place?
Is there no holy wing for me,
That, soaring, I may search the space
Of highest Heaven for Thee?
Oh, would I were as free to rise
As leaves on Autumn’s whirlwind borne==
The arrowy light of sunset skies,
Or sound, or ray, or star of morn
Which melts in heaven at twilight’s close,
Or aught. which soars unchecked and free
Through Earth and Heaven; that I might lose
Myself in finding Thee!
When the BREATH DIVINE js flowing,
Zephyr-like o’er all things going,
And as the touch of viewless fingers,
Softly on my soul it lingers,
Open to a breath the lightest,
Conscious of a touch the slightest —
As some calm still lake, whereon
Sinks the snowy-bosomed swan,
272
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
And the glistening water-rings
Circle round her moving wings:
When my upward gaze is turning
Where the stars of heaven are burning
Through the deep and dark abyss —
Flowers of midnight’s wilderness,
Blowing with the evening’s breath
Sweetly in their Maker’s path:
When the breaking day is flushing
All the East, and light is gushing
Upward through the horizon’s haze,
Sheaf-like, with its thousand rays
Spreading, until all above
Overflows with joy and love,
And below, on earth’s green bosom,
All is changed to light and blossoms
When my waking fancies over
Forms of brightness flit and hover,
Holy as the seraphs are,
Who by Zion’s fountains wear
On their foreheads, white and broad,
*‘ HOLINESS UNTO THE LorD!”’?
When, inspired with rapture high,
It would seem a single sigh
Could a world of love create —
That my life could know no date,
And my eager thoughts could fill
Heaven and Earth, o’erflowing still } ==
Then, O Father ! — Thou alone,
From the shadow of Thy throne,
To the sighing of my breast
And its rapture answerest.
LHE FEMALE MARTYR, 273
All my thoughts, which, upward winging,
Bathe where Thy own light is springing —=
All my yearnings to be free
Are as echoes answering Thee!
Seldom upon lips of mine,
Father! rests that name of Thine—
Deep within my inmost breast,
In the secret place of mind,
Like an awful presence shrined,
Doth the dread idea rest !
Hushed and holy dwells it there—
Prompter of the silent prayer,
Lifting up my spirit’s eye
And its faint, but earnest cry,
From its dark but cold abode,
Unto Thee, my Guide and God!
THE FEMALE MARTYR.
[Mary G , aged eighteen, a “SIsTER OF CHARITY,”
died in one of our Atlantic cities, during the prevalence of the
Indian Cholera, while in voluntary attendance upon the sick.}
‘¢ BRING out your dead !’”’ the midnight street
Heard and gave back the hoarse, low call;
Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet —
Glanced through the dark the coarse white sheet —
Her coffin and her pall.
‘« What — only one!’’ The brutal hackman said,
As, with an oath, he spurned away the dead.
How sunk the inmost hearts of all,
As rolled that dead-cart slowly by,
With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-fall!
The dying turned him to the wall,
To hear it and to die! —
274 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Onward it rolled ; while oft its driver stayed,
And hoarsely clamored, ‘‘ Ho! — bring out your
dead.’’
It paused beside the burial-place ;
‘¢Toss in your load !’’— and it was done. —
With quick hand and averted face,
Hastily to the grave’s embrace
They cast them, one by one —
Stranger and friend —the evil and the just,
Together trodden in the church-yard dust }
And thou, young martyr ! — thou wast there —.
No white-robed sisters round thee trod —
_ Nor holy hymn nor funeral prayer
Rose through the damp and noisome air,
Giving thee to thy God ;
Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper gave
Grace to the dead, and beauty to the grave!
Yet, gentle sufferer ! — there shall be,
In every heart of kindly feeling,
A rite as holy paid to thee
As if beneath the convent-tree
Thy sisterhood were kneeling,
At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, keeping
Their tearful watch around thy place of sleeping.
For thou wast one in whom the light
Of Heaven’s own love was kindled well,
Enduring with a martyr’s might,
Through weary day and wakeful night,
Far more than words may tell:
Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and unknown
Thy mercies measured by thy God alone!
SHE FEMALE MARTYR. 275
Where manly hearts were failing, — where
The throngful street grew foul with death,
O high-souled martyr ! —thou wast there,
Inhaling from the loathsome air,
Poison with every breath.
Yet shrinking not from offices of dread
For the wrung dying, and the unconscious dead.
And, where the sickly taper shed
Its light through vapors, damp, confined,
Hushed as a seraph’s fell thy tread —
A new Electra by the bed
Of suffering human-kind!
Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay,
To that pure hope which fadeth not away.
Innocent teacher of the high
And holy mysteries of Heaven !
How turned to thee each glazing eye,
in mute and awful sympathy,
As thy low prayers were given ;
And the o’er-hovering Spoiler wore, the while,
An angel’s features — a deliverer’s smile !
A blessed task ! — and worthy one
Who, turning from the world, as thou,
Before life’s pathway had begun
To leave its springtime flower and sun,
Had sealed her early vow ;
Giving to God her beauty and her youth,
Her pure affections and her guileless truth.
Earth may not claim thee. & Nothing here
Could be for thee a meek reward ;
Thine is a treasure far more dear —
Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear
Of living mortal heard, —
276 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
The joys prepared — the promised bliss above —
The holy presence of Eternal Love!
Sleep on in peace. ‘The earth has not
A nobler name than thine shall be.
The deeds by martial manhood wrought,
The lofty energies of thought,
The fire of poesy —
These have but frail and fading honors ; — thine
Shall Time unto Eternity consign.
Yea, and when thrones shall crumble down,
And human pride and grandeur fall, —
The herald’s line of long renown —
The mitre and the kingly crown —
Perishing glories all !
The pure devotion of thy generous heart
Shall live in Heaven, of which it was a part {
THE FROST SPIRIT.
HE comes—he comes—the Frost Spirit comes!
You may trace his footsteps now
On the naked woods and the blasted fields and the
brown hill’s withered brow.
He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees where
their pleasant green came forth,
And the winds, which follow wherever he goes, have
shaken them down to earth.
He comes — he comes — the Frost Spirit comes ! —
from the frozen Labrador —
From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, which the
white bear wanders o’er —
THE FROST SPIRIT. TT
Where the fisherman’s sail is stiff with ice, and the
luckless forms below
In the sunless cold of the lingering night into marble
statues grow !
He comes — he comes — the Frost Spirit comes ! —
On the rushing Northern blast,
And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed as his
fearful breath went past.
With an unscorched wing he has hurried on, where
the fires of Hecla glow
On the darkly beautiful sky above and the anciert
ice below.
He comes —he comes —the Frost Spirit comes ! —
and the quiet lake shall feel
The torpid touch of his glazing breath, and ring to
the skater’s heel ;
And the streams which danced on the broken rocks,
or sang to the leaning grass,
Shall bow again to their winter chain, and in mourn-
ful silence pass.
He comes — he comes — the Frost Spirit comes ! —
let us meet him as we may,
And turn with the light of the parlor-fire his evil
power away ;
And gather closer the circle round, when that fire-
light dances high,
And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend as his
sounding wing goes by!
278 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
THE VAUDOIS TEACHER.
(«The manner in which the WALDENSEs and heretics dis-
seminated their principles among the CATHOLIC gentry, was by
carrying with them a box of trinkets, or articles of dress. Hav-
ing entered the houses of the gentry, and disposed of some of
their goods, they cautiously intimated that they had commodi-
ties far more valuable than these — inestimable jewels, which
they would show if they could be protected from the clergy.
They would then give their purchasers a bible or testament;
and thereby many were deluded into heresy.””— R. Saccho,]
‘¢ Ou, lady fair, these silks of mine are beautiful and
rare —
The richest web of the Indian loom, which beauty’s
queen might wear ;
And my pearls are pure as thy own fair neck, with
whose radiant light they vie ;
i have brought them with me a weary way,—will my
gentle lady buy?”
And the lady smiled on the worn old man through
the dark and clustering curls,
Which veiled her brow as she bent to view his silks
and glittering pearls ;
And she placed their price in the old man’s hand,
and lightly turned away,
But she paused at the wanderer’s earnest call —
‘«My gentle lady, stay !”’
“Oh, lady fair, I have yet a gem which a purer
lustre flings,
Than the diamond flash of the jewelled crown on the
lofty brow of kings —
A wonderful pearl of exceeding price, whose virtue
shall not decay,
Whose light shall be as a spell to thee and a blessing -
on thy way!”
\
|
THE VAUDOIS TEACHER, 279
‘he fady glanced at the mirroring steel where her
form of grace was seen,
Where her eye shone clear, and her dark locks waved
their clasping pearls between ; —
‘<Bring forth thy pearl of exceeding worth, thou
traveller gray and old —
And name the price of thy precious gem, and my
page shall count thy gold.”
The cloud went off from the pilgrim’s brow, as a
small and meagre book,
Unchased with gold or gem of cost, from his folding
robe he took !
«< Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price, may it prove
as such to thee!
Nay — keep thy gold —I ask it not. for the word of
God is free!”
The hoary traveller went his way, but the gift he left
behind
Hath had its pure and perfect work om that high-born
maiden’s mind,
And she hath turned from the pride sin to the
lowliness of truth,
And given her human heart to God in its beautiful
hour of youth!
And she hath left the gray old halls, where an evil
faith had power,
The courtly knights of her father’s train, and the
maidens of her bower ;
And she hath gone to the Vaudois vales by lordly
feet untrod,
Where the poor and needy of earth are rich in the
perfect love of God! .
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
THE CALL OF THE CHRISTIAN,
Nort always as the whirlwind’s rush
On Horeb’s mount of fear,
Not always as the burning bush
To Midian’s shepherd seer,
Nor as the awful voice which came
To Israel’s prophet bards,
Nor as the tongues of cloven flame,
Nor gift of fearful words —
Not always thus, with outward sign
Of fire or voice from Heaven,
The message of a truth divine,
The call of God is given!
Awaking in the human heart
Love for the true and right —
Zeal for the Christian’s ‘‘ better part,”
Strength for the Christian’s fight.
Nor unto manhood’s heart alone
The holy influence steals :
Warm with a rapture not its own,
The heart of woman feels!
As she who by Samaria’s wall
The Saviour’s errand sought —
As those who with the fervent Paul
And meek Aquila wrought:
Or those meek ones whose martyrdom
Rome’s gathered grandeur saw:
Or those who in their Alpine home
Braved the Crusader’s war,
THE CALL OF THE CHRISTIAN. 281
When the green Vaudois, trembling, heard,
Through all its vales of death,
The martyr’s song of triumph poured
From woman’s failing breath.
And gently, by a thousand things
Which o’er our spirits pass,
Like breezes o’er the harp’s fine strings,
Or vapors o’er a glass,
Leaving their token strange and new
Of music or of shade,
The summons to the right and true
And merciful is made.
Oh, then, if gleams of truth and light
Flash o’er thy waiting mind,
Unfolding to thy mental sight
The wants of human kind;
If brooding over human grief,
The earnest wish is known
To soothe and gladden with relief
An anguish not thine own:
Though heralded with naught of fear,
Or outward sign, or show:
Though only to the inward ear
It whispers soft and low ;
Though dropping, as the manna fell,
Unseen, yet from above,
Noiseless as dew-fall, heed it well o—-
Thy Father’s call of love!
82 WHITTIER’S POEMS,
MY SOUL AND I.
STanD still, my soul, in the silent dark
I would question thee,
Alone in the shadow drear and stark
With God and me!
What, my soul, was thy errand here?
Was it mirth or ease,
Or heaping up dust from year to year?
‘Nay, none of these !”’
Speak, soul, aright in His holy sight
Whose eye looks still
And steadily on thee through the nights
‘To do His wallil’
What hast thou done, oh soul of mine
That thou tremblest so ? —
Hast thou wrought His task, and kept the line
He bade thee go?
What, silent all ! — art sad of cheer ?
Art fearful now ?
When God seemed far and men were neag
How brave wert thou P
Aha! thou tremblest ! — well I see
Thou’rt craven grown.
Is it so hard with Cod and me
To stand alone ? —
Summon thy sunshine bravery back,
Oh, wretched sprite !
Let me hear thy voice through this deep and black
Abysmal night.
MY SOUL AND JI, 283
What hast thou wrought for Right and Truth,
For God and Man,
From the golden hours of bright-eyed youth
To life’s mid span ?
Ah, soul of mine, thy tones I hear,
But weak and low,
Like far sad murmurs on my ear
They come and go.
‘‘T have wrestled stoutly with the Wrong,
And borne the Right
From beneath the footfall of the throng
To life and light.
‘¢ Wherever Freedom shivered a chain,
God speed, quoth I;
To Error amidst her shouting train
I gave the lie.’’
Ah, soul of mine ! ah, soul of mine!
Thy deeds are well:
Were they wrought for Truth’s sake or for thine?
My soul, pray tell.
‘¢ Of all the work my hand hath wrought
Beneath the sky,
Save a place in kindly human thought,
No gain have I.’’
Go to, go to ! — for thy very self
Thy deeds were done:
Thou for fame, the miser for pelf,
Your end is one!
284 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
And where art thou going, soul of mine?
Canst see the end P
And whither this troubled life of thine
Evermore doth tend ?
What daunts thee now ? — what shakes thee so?
My sad soul say.
é¢T see a cloud like a curtain low
Hang o’er my way.
¢¢ Whither I go I cannot tell:
That cloud hangs black,
High as the heaven and deep as hell,
Across my track.
**T see its shadow coldly enwrap
The souls before.
Sadly they enter it, step by step,
To return no more.
‘«¢ They shrink, they shudder, dear God ! they knaé
To thee in prayer.
They shut their eyes on the cloud, but feel
That it still is there.
*¢ In vain they turn from the dread Before
To the Known and Gone;
For while gazing behind them evermore
Their feet glide on.
‘Yet, at times, I see upon sweet pale faces
A light begin
To tremble, as if from holy places
And shrines within.
MY SOUL AND I. 285
** And at times methinks their cold lips move
With hymn and prayer,
As if somewhat of awe, but more of love
And hope were there.
**T call on the souls who have left the light
To reveal their lot ;
{ bend mine ear to that wall of night,
And they answer not.
«‘ But I hear around me sighs of pain
And the cry of fear,
And a sound like the slow sad dropping of rain,
Each drop a tear !
‘‘ Ah, the cloud is dark, and day by day,
I am moving thither:
I must pass beneath it on my way —
God pity me ! — WHITHER ?””
Ah soul of mine! so brave and wise
In the life-storm loud,
Fronting so calmly all human eyes
In the sunlit crowd !
Now standing apart with God and me
Thou art weakness all,
Gazing vainly after the things to be
Through Death’s dread wall.
But never for this, never for this
Was thy being lent ;
For the craven’s fear is but selfishness,
Like his merriment.
£86 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Folly and Fear are sisters twain:
One closing her eyes,
The other peopling the dark inane
With spectral lies.
Know well, my soul, God’s hand controls
Whate’er thou fearest ;
Round Him in calmest music rolls
Whate’er thou hearest.
What to thee is shadow, to Him is day,
And the end He knoweth,
And not on a blind and aimless way
The spirit goeth.
Man sees no future — a phantom show
Is alone before him ;
Past Time is dead, and the grasses grow,
And flowers bloom o’er him.
Nothing before, nothing behind:
The steps of Faith
Fall on the seeming void, and find
The rock beneath.
The Present, the Present is all thou hast
For thy sure possessing ;
Like the patriarch’s angel hold it fast
Till it gives its blessing.
Why fear the night ? why shrink from Death,
That phantom wan ?
There is nothing in Heaven or earth beneath
Save God and man.
MY SOUL AND I. 289
Peopling the shadows we turn from Him
And from one another ;
All is spectral and vague and dim
Save God and our brother }
Like warp and woof all destinies
Are woven fast,
Linked in sympathy like the keys
Of an organ vast.
Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar3
Break but one
Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar
; Through all will run.
Oh, restless spirit ! wherefore strain
Beyond thy sphere ? —
Heaven and hell, with their joy and pain
Are now and here.
Back to thyself is measured well
All thou hast given ;
Thy neighbor’s wrong is thy present hell,
His bliss thy heaven.
And in life, in death, in dark and light
All are in God’s care ;
Sound the black abyss, pierce the deep of night,
And He is there !
All which is real now remaineth,
And fadeth never :
The hand which upholds it now, sustaineth
The soul forever.
288 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
\ caning on Him, make with reverent meekness
His own thy will,
And with strength from Him shall thy utter weak:
ness
Life’s task fulfil ;
And that cloud itself, which now before thee
Lies dark in view,
Shall with beams of light from the inner glory
Be stricken through.
And like meadow mist through Autumn’s dawn
Uprolling thin,
Its thickest folds when about thee drawn
Let sunlight in.
Then of what is to be, and of what is done
Why queriest thou ? —
‘whe past and the time to be are one,
And both are now!
TO A FRIEND,
On HER RETURN FROM EUROPE,
How smiled the land of France
Under thy blue eye’s glance,
Light-hearted rover !
Old walis of chateaux gray,
Towers of an early day,
Which the Three Colors play
Flauntingly over.
TO A FRIEND.
Now midst the brilliant train
Thronging the banks of Seine:
Now midst the splendor
Of the wild Alpine range,
Waking with change on change
Thoughts in thy young heart strange,
Lovely, and tender.
Vales, soft Elysian,
Like those in the vision
Of Mirza, when, dreaming,
He saw the long hollow dell,
Touched by the prophet’s spell
Into an ocean swell
With its isles teeming.
Cliffs wrapped in snows of years,
Splintering with icy spears
Autumn’s blue heaven :
Loose rock and frozen slide,
Hung on the mountain side,
Waiting their hour to glide
Downward, storm-driven §
Rhine stream, by castle old,
Baron’s and robber’s hold,
Peacefully flowing ;
Sweeping through vineyards green,
Or where the cliffs are seen
O’er the broad wave between
Grim shadows throwing.
Or where St. Peter’s dome
Swells o’er eternal Rome,
Vast, dim, and solemn,—
Hymns ever chanting low—~
WHITTIER’S) POEMS.
Censers swung to and fro —
Sable stoles sweeping slow
Cornice and column !
Oh, as from each and all
Will there not voices call
Evermore back again ?
In the mind’s gallery
‘Wilt thou not always see
Dim phantoms beckon thee
O’er that old track again ?
New forms thy presence haunt —_
New voices softly chant —
New faces greet thee ! —
Pilgrims from many a shrine
Hallowed by poet’s line,
At memory’s magic sign,
Rising to meet thee.
And when such visions come
Unto thy olden home,
Will they not waken
Deep thoughts of Him whose hang
Led thee o’er sea and land
Back to the household band
Whence thou wast taken ?
While, at the sunset time,
Swells the cathedral’s chime,
Yet, in thy dreaming,
While to thy spirit’s eye
Yet the vast mountains lie
Piled in the Switzer’s sky,
Icy and gleaming:
THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE.
Prompter of silent prayer,
Be the wild picture there
In the mind’s chamber,
And, through each coming day
Him, who, as staff and stay,
Watched o’er thy wandering way,
Freshly remember.
So, when the call shall be
Soon or late unto thee,
As to all given,
Still may that picture live,
All its fair forms survive,
And to thy spirit give
Gladness in Heaven!
THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE.
A FREE PARAPHRASE OF THE GERMAN.
To weary hearts, to mourning homes,
God’s meekest Angel gently comes:
No power has he to banish pain,
Or give us back our lost again ;
And yet in tenderest love, our dear
And Heavenly Father sends him here,
There’s quiet in that Angel’s glance,
There’s rest in his still countenance !
He mocks no grief with idle cheer,
Nor wounds with words the mourner’s ear;
But ills and woes he may not cure
He kindly trains us to endure.
291
WHITTIER’S POEMS,
Angel of Patience! sent to.calm
Our feverish brows with cooling palm,
To lay the storms of hope and fear,
And reconcile life’s smile and tear ;
The throbs of wounded pride to still,
And make our own Father’s will!
Oh! thou who mournest on thy way,
With longings for the close of day;
He walks with thee, that Angel kind,
And gently whispers ‘‘ Be resigned:
Bear up, bear on, the end shall tell
The dear Lord ordereth all things well!”
FOLLEN.
On READING His ESSAY ON THE “ FUTURE STATB.™
FRIEND of my soul ! —as with moist eye
I look up from this page of thine,
Is it a dream that thou art nigh,
Thy mild face gazing into mine?
That presence seems before me now,
A placid heaven of sweet moonrise,
When dew-like, on the earth below
Descends the quiet of the skies.
The calm brow through the parted hair,
The gentle lips which knew no guile,
loftening the blue eye’s thoughtful care
With the bland beauty of their smile.
Ah me! —at times that last dread seene
Of Frost and Fire and moaning Sea,
Will cast its shade of doubt between
The failing eyes of Faith and thee.
FOLLEN.
Yet, lingering o’er thy charméd page,
Where through the twilight air of earth,
Alike enthusiast and sage,
Prophet and bard, thou gazest forth 3
Lifting the Future’s solemn veil ;
The reaching of a mortal hand
To put aside the cold and pale
Cloud-curtains of the Unseen Land};
In thoughts which answer to my own,
In words which reach my inward ear,
Like whispers from the void Unknown,
I feel thy living presence here.
The waves which lull thy body’s rest,
The dust thy pilgrim footsteps trod,
Unwasted, through each change, attest
The fixed economy of God.
Shall these poor elements outlive
The mind whose kingly will they wrought?
Their gross unconsciousness survive
Thy Godlike energy of thought?
THOU LIVEST, FOLLEN ! — not in vain
Hath thy fine spirit meekly borne
The burden of Life’s cross of pain,
And the thorned crown of suffering worn,
Oh! while Life’s solemn mystery glooms
Around us like a dungeon’s wall —
Silent earth’s pale and crowded tombs,
Silent the heaven which bends o’er all } ==
294
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
While day by day our leved ones glide
In spectral silence, hushed and lone,
To the cold shadows which divide
The living from the dread Unknown 3
While even on the closing eye,
And on the lip which moves in vain,
The seals of that stern mystery
Their undiscovered trust retain ;—
And only midst the gloom of death,
Its mournful doubts and haunting fears,
Two pale, sweet angels, Hope and Faith,
Smile dimly on us through their tears;
*Tis something to a heart like mine
To think of thee as living yet;
To feel that such a light as thine
Could not in utter darkness set.
Less dreary seems the untried way
Since thou hast left thy footprints there,
And beams of mournful beauty play
Round the sad Angel’s sable hair.
Oh ! —at this hour when half the sky
Is glorious with its evening light,
And fair broad fields of summer lie
Hung o’er with greenness in my sight;
While through these elm boughs wet with rai
The sunset’s golden walls are seen,
With clover bloom and yellow grain
And wood-draped hill and stream between ¢
FOLLEN. 203
I long to know if scenes like this
Are hidden from an angel’s eyes;
If earth’s familiar loveliness
Haunts not thy heaven’s serener skies,
For sweetly here upon thee grew
The lesson which that beauty gave,
The ideal of the Pure and True
In earth and sky and gliding wave,
And it may be that all which lends
The soul an upward impulse here,
With a diviner beauty blends,
And greets us in a holier sphere.
Through groves where blighting never fell
The humbler flowers of earth may twine g
And simple draughts from childhood’s well
Blend with the angel-tasted wine.
But be the prying vision veiled,
And let the seeking lips be dumb, —
Where even seraph eyes have failed
Shall mortal blindness seek to come P
We only know that thou hast gone,
And that the same returnless tide
Which bore thee from us still glides on,
And we who mourn thee with it glide
On all thou lookest we shail look,
And to our gaze ere long shall turn .
That page of God’s mysterious book
We so much wish, yet dread to learn,
296
WHITLIER’S POEMS.
With Him, before whose awful power
Thy spirit bent its trembling knee, —
Who, in the silent greeting flower,
And forest leaf, iooked out on thee, —
We leave thee, with a trust serene,
Which Time, nor Change, nor Death can move,
While with thy childlike faith we lean
On Him whose dearest name is Love!
~
TO THE REFORMERS OF ENGLAND.
Gop bless ye, brothers ! — in the fight
Ye're waging now, ye cannot fail,
For better is your sense of right
Than kingcraft’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 bloated 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.
TO THE REFORMERS OF ENGLAND. 29%
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 hath wrougm,
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!
Oh, 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. |
298
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
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 !
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.
THE REFORMER,
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 ail.
Oh! 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 !
THE REFORMER.
ALL grim and soiled and brown with tan,
I saw a Strong One, in his wrath,
Smiting the godless shrines of man
Along his path.
The Church beneath her trembling dome
Essayed in vain her ghostly charm:
Wealth shook within his gilded home
With strange alarm.
Fraud from his secret chambers fled
Before the sunlight bursting in :_
Sloth drew her pillow o’er her head
To drown the din.
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
‘«Spare,’’ Art implored, ‘‘ yon holy pile;
That grand, old, time-worn, turret spare; *
Meek Reverence, kneeling in the aisle,
Cried out, ‘‘ Forbear !’’
fsray-bearded Use, who, deaf and blind,
Groped for his old accustomed stone,
Leaned on his staff, and wept, to find
His seat o’erthrown.
Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes,
O’erhung with paly locks of gold:
«« Why smite,’’ he asked in sad surprise,
‘<The fair, the old? ”’
Yet louder rang the Strong One’s stroke,
Yet nearer flashed his axe’s gleam 3
Shuddering and sick of heart I woke,
As from a dream.
I looked: aside the dust cloud rolled —
The Waster seemed the Builder too 3
Upspringing from the ruined Old
I saw the New.
*Twas but the ruin of the bad —
The wasting of the wrong and ill;
Whate’er of good the old time had
Was living still.
Calm grew the brows of him I feared ;
The frown which awed me passed away,
And left behind a smile which cheered
Like breaking day.
THE REFORMER, 3U2
The grain grew green on battle-plains,
O’er swarded war-mounds grazed the cow;
The slave stood forging from his chains
The spade and plough.
Where frowned the fort, pavilions gay
And cottage windows, flower-entwined,
Looked out upon the peaceful bay
And hills behind.
Through vine-wreathed cups with wine once red,
The lights on brimming crystal fell,
Drawn, sparkling, from the rivulet head
And mossy well.
Through prison walls, like Heaven-sent hope,
Fresh breezes blew, and sunbeams strayed,
And with the idle gallows-rope .
The young child played.
Where the doomed victim in his cell
Had counted o’er the weary hours,
Glad schoolgirls, answering to the bell,
Came crowned with flowers.
Grown wiser for the lesson given,
I fear no longer, for I know
That, where the share is deepest driven,
The best fruits grow.
‘che outworn rite, the old abuse,
The pious fraud transparent grown,
The good held captive in the use
Of wrong alone —
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
These wait their doom, from that great law
Which makes the past time serve to-day 3
And fresher life the world shall draw
From their decay.
Oh! backward-looking son of time ! —=»
The new is old, the old is new,
The cycle of a change sublime
. Still sweeping through.
So wisely taught the Indian seer ;
Destroying Seva, forming Brahm,
Who wake by turns Earth’s love and fear,
Are one, the same.
As idly as, in that old day
Thou mournest, did thy sires repine,
So, in his time, thy child, grown gray,
Shall sigh for thine.
Yet, not the less for them or thou
The eternal step of Progress beats
To that great anthem, calm and slow,
Which God repeats !
Take heart !— the Waster builds again -a=s
A charmed life old goodness hath ;
The tears may perish — but the grain
Is not for death.
God works in all things; all obey
His first propulsion from the night:
o, wake and watch ! — the world is gray
With morning light !
THE PRISONER FOR DEBT, sud
THE PRISONER FOR DEBT.
400K on him ! —through his dungeon grate
Feebly and cold, the morning light
Comes stealing round him, dim and late,
As if it loathed the sight,
Reclining on his strawy bed,
His hand upholds his drooping head —
His bloodless cheek is seamed and hard,
Unshorn his gray, neglected beard ;
And o’er his bony fingers flow
His long, dishevelled locks of snow.
No grateful fire before him glows,
And yet the winter’s breath is chill;
And o’er his half-clad person goes
The frequent ague thrill!
Silent, save ever and anon,
A sound, half murmur and half groan,
Forces apart the painful grip
Of the old sufferer’s bearded lip ;
O sad and crushing is the fate
Of old age chained and desolate !
‘ust God ! why lies that old man there?
A murderer shares his prison bed,
Whose eyeballs, through his horrid hair,
Gleam on him, fierce and red ;
And the rude oath and heartless jeer
Fall ever on his loathing ear, —
And, or in wakefulness or sleep,
Nerve, flesh, and pulses thrill and creep
Whene’er that ruffian’s tossing limb,
.xlmson with murder, touches him }
WHITTIER’S POEMS.
What has the gray-haired prisoner done?
Has murder stained his hands with gore?
Not so; his crime’s a fouler one;
GOD MADE THE OLD MAN POOR!
For this he shares a felon’s cell —
The fittest earthly type of hell !
For this, the boon for which he poured
His young blood on the invader’s sword,
And counted light the fearful cost —
His blood-gained liberty is lost !
And so, for such a place of rest,
Old prisoner, dropped thy blood as rain.
On Concord’s field, and Bunker’s crest,
And Saratoga’s plain?
Look forth, thou man of many scars,
Through thy dim dungeon’s iron bars};
It must be joy, in sooth, to see
Yon monument upreared to thee —
Piled granite and a prison cell —
The land repays thy service well !
Go, ring the bells.and fire the guns,
And fling the starry banner out;
Shout ‘‘ Freedom !’’ till your lisping ones
Give back their cradle-shout :
Let boastful eloquence declaim
Of honor, liberty and fame ;
Still let the poet’s strain be heard,
With glory for each second word,
And everything with breath agree
To praise ‘‘ our glorious liberty !’’
But when the patriot cannon jars
That prison’s cold and gloomy wall,
And through its grates the stripes and star
Rise on the wind and fall —
LINES. 305
‘Think ye that prisoner’s aged ear
Rejoices in the general cheer?
Think ye his dim and failing eye
Is kindled at your pageantry ?.
Sorrowing of soul, and chained of limb,
What is your carnival to him?
Down with the Law that binds him thus *
Unworthy freemen, let it find
No refuge from the withering curse
Of God and human kind!
Open the prison’s living tomb,
And usher from its brooding gloom
The victims of your savage code,
To the free sun and air of God;
No longer dare as crime to brand
The chastening of the Almighty’s hand.
LINES
Written on Reading Several Pamphlets Published by Clergy-.
men against the Abolition of the Gallows.
1
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,
306 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
From lips which press the temple’s marble floor,
Or kiss the gilded sign of the dread Cross He bore?
Il.
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 f
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 ¢hezr Christ, in cruel zeal,
Through the black torment-smoke, held mockingly
to him!
Ill,
The blood which mingled with the desert sand,.
And beaded with its red and ghastly dew
s LINES. 367
‘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 3
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.
508 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
Vv.
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 3
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 clime,
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 brother
hood !
YHE WORSHIP OF NATURE. 309
THE WORSHIP OF NATURE.
«Tt hath beene as it were especially rendered unto mee and
made plaine and legible to my understandynge that a great
worshipp is going on among the thyngs of God.” — Gra##,
THE Ocean looketh up to Heaven,
As’t were a living thing,
The homage of its waves is given
In ceaseless worshipping.
They kneel upon the sloping sand,
As bends the human knee,
A beautiful and tireless band,
The Priesthood of the Sea!
They pour the glittering treasures out
Which in the deep have birth,
And chant their awful hymns about
The watching hills of earth.
The green earth sends its incense up.
From every mountain shrine,
From every flower and dewy cup
That greeteth the sunshine.
The mists are lifted from the rills
Like the white wing of prayer,
They lean above the ancient hills
As doing homage there.
The forest tops are lowly cast
O’er breezy hill and glen,
As if a prayerful spirit pass’d
On Nature as on men.
810 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
The clouds weep o’er the fallen world
E’en as repentant love ;
Ere to the blessed breeze unfurl’d
They fade in light above.
‘The sky is as a temple’s arch,
The blue and wavy air
Is glorious with the spirit-march
Of messengers of prayer.
The gentle moon — the kindling sun ==
The many stars are given,
As shrines to burn earth’s incense on «=
The altar-fires of Heaven !
LINES
Written in the Commonplace Book of a young lady,
‘‘ WRITE, write! ’’ Dear Cousin, since thy word,
Like that my ancient namesake heard
On Patmos, may not be denied,
I offer for thy page a lay
Breathing of Beauty pass’d away
Of Grace and Genius, Love and Truth,
All which can add a charm to youth,
To Virtue and to Heaven allied.
Forgive me if the lay be such
As may not suit thy hours of gladness,
Forgive me, if it breathe too much
Of mourning and of sadness.
it may be well that tears, at whiles,
Should take the place of Folly’s smiles,
LINES. 31:
When neath some Heaven-directed blow,
Like those of Horeb’s rock, they flow,
For sorrows are in «aercy given
To fit the chasten’d soul for Heaven ;
Prompting, with woe and weariness,
Our yearning for that better sky,
Which, as the shadows close on this,
Grows brighter to the longing eye.
for each unwelcome blow may break,
Perchance, some chain which blinds us here;
And clouds around the heart may make
The vision of our Faith more clear:
As through the shadowy veil of even
The eye looks farthest into Heaven,
On gleams of star and depths of blue
The fervid sunshine never knew !
«‘ The parted spirit,
Knoweth it not our sorrow? Answereth not
Its blessing to our tears ?”
The circle is broken — one Seat is forsaktn,—
One bud from the tree ot our friendship is shakes«m
One heart from among us no longer shall thrill
With the spirit of gladness, or darken with ili.
Weep ! — Lonely and lowly, are slumbering now
The light of her glances, the pride of her brow.
Weep ! —Sadly and long shall we listen in vain .
To hear the soft tones of her welcome again.
Give our tears to the dead! For humanity’s claim
From its silence and darkness is ever the same ;
The hope of that World whose existence is bliss
May not stifle the tears of the mourners of this,
)
312 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
For, oh! if one glance the freed spirit can throw
On the scene of its troubled probation below,
Than the pride of the marble—the pomp of the
dead —
To that glance will be dearer the tears which we
shed.
Oh, who can forget the rich light of her smile,
Over lips moved with music and feeling the while —
The eye’s deep enchantment, dark, dream-like, and
clear,
In the glow of its gladness — the shade of its tear.
And the charm of her features, while over the whole
Play’d the hues of the heart and the sunshine of
soul,—
And the tones of her voice, like the music which
seems
Murmur’d low in our ears by the Angel of dreams!
But holier and dearer our memories hold
Those treasures of feeling, more precious than
gold —
The love and the kindness,— the pity which gave
Fresh hopes to the living and wreaths for the grave —
The heart ever open to Charity’s claim,
Unmoved from its purpose by censure and blame,
While vainly alike on her eye and her ear
Fell the scorn of the heartless, the jesting and jeer.
For, though spotless herself, she could sorrow fom
them
Who sullied with evil the spirit’s pure gem ;
And a sigh or a tear could the erring reprove,
And the sting of reproof was still temper’d by love.
THE WATCHER. 313
As a cloud of the sunset, slow melting in heaven,
As a star that is lost when the daylight is given,
As a glad dream of slumber, which wakens in bliss,
She hath pass’d to the world of the holy from this.
She hath pass’d!~—but, oh! sweet as the flowerets
that bloom
From her last lonely dwelling—the dust of her
tomb —
The charm of her virtues, as Heaven’s own breath,
Shall rise like an incense from darkness and death,
THE WATCHER.
«And Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth, and
spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest
until water dropped upon them out of Heaven, and suffered
neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the
beasts of the field by night.”——2 Sam. xxi. lo.
TALL men and kingly-brow’d ! — they led them forth
Bound for the sacrifice. It was high noon ;
And ancient Gibeah, emptied of her life,
Rose silently before the harvest sun.
Her dwellers had gone out before the walls,
With a stern purpose; and her maidens lean’d
Breathless for its fulfilment, from the hills,
Uncheer’d by reaper’s song. ‘The harvest lay
Stinted and sere upon their parched tops.
The streams had perish’d in their goings on 3
And the deep fountains fail’d. The fervent sun,
Unchasten’d by a cloud, for months had shone
A lidless eye in heaven ; and all the sky
Glow’d as a furnace, and the prodigal dew
With the scorch’d earth held no companionship.
314 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
A curse was over Israel. Unjudged crime
Had wrought it in the elements. Her soil
Was unbless’d as the heathen’s; and the plagues
Of those who know not God, and bow them dow@ta
To a strange worship, had been meted her.
The sacrifice was finish’d. Gibeon roll’d
Back like a torrent through the city gates
Her gather’d thousands; and her victims lay
Naked beneath the brazen arch of heaven,
On the stain’d Rock of Sacrifice. The sun
Went down his heated pathway with a slow
And weary progress, as he loved to gaze
On the dark horror of his burning noon —
The sacrifice of Innocence for Guilt,
Whose blood had sent its sleepless murmur up
To the Avenger’s ear, until fierce wrath
Burn’d over earth and heaven, and Vengeance held
The awful mastery of the elements.
Who stealeth from the city, in the garb
Which tokens the heart’s sorrow, and which seems
Around her wasted form to shadow forth
The visitation of dark grief within?
Lo ! — she hath pass’d the valley, and her foot
Is on the Rock of Sacrifice — and now
She stoopeth over the unburied dead.
And moves her lip, but speaks not. It is strange
And very fearful! The descending sun
Is pausing like a fire-wing’d Angel on
The bare hills of the West, and, fierce and red,
His last rays fall aslant the place of blood,
Coloring its dark stains deeper. Lo! she kneels
To cover, with a trembling hand, the cold
And ghastly work of death — those desecrate
And darken’d temples of the living soul !
THE WATCHER, 315
Her task was finish’d, and she went away
A little distance, and, as night stole on
With dim starlight and shadow, she sat down
Upon a jutting fragment of the rock —
A solitary watcher. The red glow
That wrestled with the darkness, and sent up
It’s spear-like lines of light until they waned
{nto the dark blue zenith, pass’d away,
And, from the broad and shadow’d West, the stars
Shone through substantial blackness. Midnight came;
The wind was groaning on the hills and through
The naked branches of their perishing trees,
And strange sounds blended with it. The gaunt
wolf,
Scenting the place of slaughter, with his long
And most offensive howl did ask for blood ;
And the hyena sat upon the cliff,
His red eye glowing terribly ; and low,
But frequent and most fearfully, his growl
Came to the watcher’s ear. Alone she sat,
Unmoving as her resting-place of rock.
Fear for herself she felt not —every tie
That once took hold on life with aught of love
Was broken utterly. Her eye was fix’d,
Stony and motionless, upon the pall
Which veil’d her princely dead. And this was love
In its surpassing power — yea, love as strong
As that which binds the peopled Universe,
And pure as angel-worship, when the just
And beautiful of Heaven are bow’d in prayer!
The night stole into morning, and the sun,
Red and unwelcome, rose without a cloud,
And there was Rizpah still, woe-worn and pale;
And yet in her dark eye and darker hair,
816 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
And in the marble and uplifted brow,
And the much wasted figure, might be seen
A wreck of perfect beauty, such as bow’d
The throned one of Israel at her feet,
Low as the trampled Philistine had knelt
Before his mailed presence. Not a tear
Glisten’d on eye or cheek, but still she gazed
On the dark veil of sackcloth with a strange
And fixed earnestness. ‘The sky again
Redden’d with heat, and the unmoisten'’d earth
Was like the ashen surface of the hush’d
But perilous volcano. Rizpah bore
The fever of the noon-time, with a stern
And awful sense of duty nerving her,
In her devotedness. She might not leave
The high place of her watching for the shade
Of cluster’d palm-trees ; and the lofty rocks,
Casting their grim and giant shadows down,
Might not afford her shelter ; for the sweep
Of heavy wings went over her like clouds
Crossing the sunshine, and most evil birds,
Lark ard obscene,— the jaguars of the air !——
From all the hills had gather’d. Far and shy
The sombre raven sat upon his rock,
And his vile mate did mock him. The vast wing
Of the great eagle, stooping from the sun,
Winnow’d the cliffs above her !
Day by day,
Beneath the scorching of the unveil’d sun,
And the unweeping solitude of night,
Pale Rizpah kept her vigils ; and her prayer
Went up at morn and eventide, that Earth
Might know the gentle visitings of rain
And be accurs’d no more. And when at last
God thunder’d in the heavens, and clouds come uF
THE CITY OF REFUGE. 317
érom their long slumber, and the great rain fell,
And the parch’d earth drank deeply, Rizpah knew
éler prayers were answer’d, and she knelt again;
dn earnest gratitude; and when the storm
Roll’d off before the sunshine, kindly hands
Convey'd away her wasted charge, and gave
The sons of Saul a sepulchre with him.
ee ee ee ee
THE CITY OF REFUGE.
JosHUA, CHAPTER XX.
s¢ Away from thy people, thou shedder of blood —.
Away to the refuge appointed of God!
Nay, pause not to look for thy household or kin,
For Death is behind thee, thou worker of sin,
<¢ Away ! —look not back, though that sorrowful one,
The mother who bore thee, shall wail for her son,
Nor stay when thy wife, as a beautiful blossom,
Shall clasp thy fair child to her desolate bosom.
«« Away, with thy face to the refuge afar
In the glow of the sun— in the eye of the star;
Though the Simoom breathe o’er thee, oppressive and
warm,
Rest not by the fountain nor under the palm.
*¢ Away! for the kinsman of him thou hast slain
Has breathed on thy head the dark curses of Cain;
The cry of his vengeance shall follow thy path —
The tramp of his footstep, the shout of his wrath.”
And the slayer sprang up as the warning was said,
And the stones of the altar rang out to his tread 3
The wail of his household was lost on his ear —
He spoke not, he paused not, he turn’d not to hear.
318 WHITTIER’S POEMS.
He fled to the desert—he turn’d him not back
When the rush of the sand-storm grew loud in his
track,
Nor paused till his vision fell, grateful and glad,
On the green hills of Gilead—the white tents of
Gad.
Oh, thus, when the crimes and the errors of Earth
Have driven her children as wanderers forth,
To the bow’d and the broken of spirit is given
The hope of a refuge—the refuge of Heaven t
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