I saw the brimmed bowl in her grasp Thrilling with godhood; like a lover I sprang the proffered life to clasp;The beaker fell; the luck was over. The Earth has drunk the vintage up; What boots it patch the goblet's splinters? Can Summer fill the icy cup, Whose treacherous crystal is but Winter's? O spendthrift, haste! await the Gods; Coy Hebe flies from those that woo, To pour for thee the cup of honor. THE SEARCH. I WENT to seek for Christ, And Nature seemed so fair That first the woods and fields my youth enticed, And to the solitude Allegiance paid; but winter came and shook Back to the world I turned, So the cramped alley and the hut I spurned, Mid power and wealth I sought, But found no trace of him, And all the costly offerings I had brought With sudden rust and mould grew dim: I found his tomb, indeed, where, by their laws, All must on stated days themselves imprison, Mocking with bread a dead creed's grinning jaws, Witless how long the life had thence arisen; Due sacrifice to this they set apart, Prizing it more than Christ's own living heart. So from my feet the dust Of the proud World I shook; Then came dear Love and shared with me his crust, Its rich and dainty fare, Like down seemed Love's coarse pillow to my head, I followed where they led With naught to fence the weather from his head, Clung round his gracious knee, And a poor hunted slave looked up and smiled No more I knew the hovel bare and poor, The gathered chips into a woodpile grew, The broken morsel swelled to goodly store; I knelt and wept: my Christ no more I seek, His throne is with the outcast and the weak. THE PRESENT CRISIS. WHEN a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time. Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe, When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro; At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start, Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart, And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart. So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill, Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod, Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod. For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flush of right or wrong; Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame; In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light. Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand, Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land? Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 't is Truth alone is strong, And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong. Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see, That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea; Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly; Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by. Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, Slow of faith, how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within, "They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin." Slavery, the earthborn Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood, Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood, Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day, Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey; Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play? Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied. Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, they were souls that stood alone, While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone, Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine, By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design. By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track, |