Till the slow mountain's dial-hand Shortens to noon's triumphal hour,— While ye sit idle, do ye think The Lord's great work sits idle too? That light dare not o'erleap the brink Of morn, because 't is dark with you? Though yet your valleys skulk in night, In God's ripe fields the day is cried, And reapers, with their sickles bright, Troop, singing, down the mountainside: Come up, and feel what health there is In the frank Dawn's delighted eyes, As, bending with a pitying kiss, The night-shed tears of Earth she dries! More worthy than our twilight dim, For meek Obedience, too, is Light, And following that is finding Him. THE CAPTIVE. IT was past the hour of trysting, From its toiling at the mill. Then the great moon on a sudden O'er the eastern hill-top stood, Dread closed huge and vague about her, And her thoughts turned fearfully To her heart, if there some shelter From the silence there might be, Like bare cedars leaning inland From the blighting of the sea. Yet he came not, and the stillness Dampened round her like a tomb; She could feel cold eyes of spirits Looking on her through the gloom, She could hear the groping footsteps Of some blind, gigantic doom. Suddenly the silence wavered Like a light mist in the wind, "Once my love, my love forever,- As from Holy Land I came. "On a green spot in the desert, Gleaming like an emerald star, "There thou 'lt find the humble postern Surely will not say thee no." Slept again the aspen silence, Wrapt its arms forevermore; Donned she now the pilgrim scallop, Took the pilgrim staff in hand; Like a cloud-shade, flitting eastward, Wandered she o'er sea and land; And her footsteps in the desert Fell like cool rain on the sand. Forward leaped she o'er the threshold, Eager as a glancing surf; Fell from her the spirit's languor, Fell from her the body's scurf;'Neath the palm next day some Arabs Found a corpse upon the turf. THE BIRCH-TREE. RIPPLING through thy branches goes the sunshine, Among thy leaves that palpitate for ever; Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had prisoned, The soul once of some tremulous inland river, Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah! dumb, dumb forever! While all the forest, witched with slumberous moonshine, Holds up its leaves in happy, happy silence, Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended, I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands, And track thee wakeful still amid the wide-hung silence. Upon the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet, Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad, Dripping about thy slim white stem, whose shadow Slopes quivering down the water's dusky quiet, Thou shrink'st as on her bath's edge would some startled Dryad. Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers; Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping; Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience, And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping Above her, as she steals the mystery from thy keeping. Thou art to me like my beloved maiden, So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences; For, as that saved of bird and beast A pair for propagation, So has the seed of these increased And furnished half the nation. Kings sit, they say, in slippery seats: Of ice the northern voyager meets Is more or less than human. I offer to all bores this perch, eyes See golden ages rising, Salt of the earth! in what queer Guys My wonder, then, was not unmixed I saw its trembling arms enclose Now even such men as Nature forms Who knows, thought I, but he has come, About that garb outlandish - "I come from Plymouth, deadly bored They understand us Pilgrims ! they, Smooth men with rosy faces, Strength's knots and gnarls all pared away, And varnish in their places! "We had some toughness in our grain, "He had stiff knees, the Puritan, He thought was worth defending; He did not, with his pinchbeck ore, His country's shame forgotten, Gild Freedom's coffin o'er and o'er, When all within was rotten. "Good sir," I said, "you seem much stirred; The sacred compromises"Now God confound the dastard word! My gall thereat arises: Northward it hath this sense alone, That you, your conscience blinding, Shall bow your fool's nose to the stone, When slavery feels like grinding. ""Tis shame to see such painted sticks "We forefathers to such a rout! - Half rose the ghost, and half drew out The ghost of his old broadsword, Then thrust it slowly back again, And said, with reverent gesture, "No, Freedom, no! blood should not stain The hem of thy white vesture. "I feel the soul in me draw near The mount of prophesying; In this bleak wilderness I hear A John the Baptist crying; Far in the east I see upleap The streaks of first forewarning, I hear great steps, that through the shade I looked, no form mine eyes could find, A dismal tune was blowing; ON THE CAPTURE OF CERTAIN FUGITIVE SLAVES NEAR WASHINGTON. Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can, The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly man; Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up with interest or with ease Consent to hear with quiet pulse of loathsome deeds like these! I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breast Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest; Though we break our fathers' promise, we have nobler duties first; The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed; Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod, Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God! We owe allegiance to the State; but deeper, truer, more, To the sympathies that God hath set within our spirit's core ;Our country claims our fealty; we grant it so, but then Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men. He's true to God who's true to man; wherever wrong is done, To the humblest and the weakest, 'neath the all-beholding sun, That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base, Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their race. God works for all. Ye cannot hem the hope of being free With parallels of latitude, with mountain-range or sea. |