They understand us Pilgrims! they, Smooth men with rosy faces, Strength's knots and gnarls all pared
And varnish in their places!
"We had some toughness in our grain,
The eye to rightly see us is
Not just the one that lights the brain
Of drawing-room Tyrtæuses:
They talk about their Pilgrim blood,
Their birthright high and holy !-
A mountain-stream that ends in mud
Methinks is melancholy.
"He had stiff knees, the Puritan,
That were not good at bending;
The homespun dignity of man
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.
"These loud ancestral boasts of yours, How can they else than vex us? Where were your dinner orators
When slavery grasped at Texas?
Dumb on his knees was every one
That now is bold as Cæsar,
Mere pegs to hang an office on
Such stalwart men as these are."
"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 In Vane's and Winthrop's places, To see your spirit of Seventy-six
Drag humbly in the traces,
With slavery's lash upon her back,
And herds of office-holders
To shout applause, as, with a crack,
It peels her patient shoulders.
"We forefathers to such a rout! No, by my faith in God's word!"
Half rose the ghost, and half drew out
The ghost of his old broadsword,
Then thrust it slowly back again,
Aud 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,
And they who sowed the light shall reap
The golden sheaves of morning.
"Child of our travail and our woe,
Light in our day of
sorrow, Through my rapt spirit I foreknow The glory of thy morrow;
I hear great steps, that through the shade
Draw nigher still and nigher,
And voices call like that which bade
The prophet come up higher."
I looked, no form mine eyes could find,
I heard the red cock crowing,
And through my window-chinks the
wind
A dismal tune was blowing;
Thought I, My neighbor Buckingham
Hath somewhat in him gritty,
Some Pilgrim-stuff that hates all sham,
And he will print my ditty.
ON THE CAPTURE OF CERΤΑΙΝ 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.
Put golden padlocks on Truth's lips, be callous as ye will,
From soul to soul, o'er all the world, leaps one electric thrill.
Chain down your slaves with ignorance, ye cannot keep apart,
With all your craft of tyranny, the human heart from heart: When first the Pilgrims landed on the Bay State's iron shore, The word went forth that slavery should one day be no more.
Out from the land of bondage 't is decreed our slaves shall go,
And signs to us are offered, as erst to Pharaoh ;
If we are blind, their exodus, like Israel's of yore,
Though a Red Sea is doomed to be. whose surges are of gore.
'Tis ours to save our brethren, with peace and love to win Their darkened hearts from error, ere they harden it to sin; But if before his duty man with listless spirit stands,
Ere long the Great Avenger takes the work from out his hands.
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long,
And I, secure in childish piety, Listened as if I heard an angel sing With news from heaven, which he could bring
Fresh every day to my untainted ears When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.
How like a prodigal doth nature seem, When thou, for all thy gold, so com
Thou teachest me to deem More sacredly of every human heart, Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,
Did we but pay the love we owe, And with a child's undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of God's book.
YE who, passing graves by night,
Glance not to the left nor right,
Lest a spirit should arise,
Cold and white, to freeze your eyes,
Some weak phantom, which your doubt
Shapes upon the dark without
From the dark within, a guess
At the spirit's deathlessness,
Which ye entertain with fear
In your self-built dungeon here,
Where ye sell your God-given lives
Just for gold to buy you gyves,—
Ye without a shudder meet
In the city's noonday street,
Spirits sadder and more dread
Than from out the clay have fled,
Buried, beyond hope of light,
In the body's haunted night!
See ye not that woman pale?
There are bloodhounds on her trail !
Bloodhounds two, all gaunt and lean, -
For the soul their scent is keen,
Want and Sin, and Sin is last,
They have followed far and fast;
Want gave tongue, and, at her howl,
Sin awakened with a growl.
Ah, poor girl! she had a right
To a blessing from the light,
Title-deeds to sky and earth
God gave to her at her birth,
But, before they were enjoyed,
Poverty had made them void,
And had drunk the sunshine up
From all nature's ample cup,
Leaving her a first-born's share
In the dregs of darkness there.
Often, on the sidewalk bleak,
Hungry, all alone, and weak,
She has seen, in night and storm,
Rooms o'erflow with firelight warm,
Which, outside the window-glass,
Doubled all the cold, alas !
Till each ray that on her fell
Stabbed her like an icicle,
And she almost loved the wail
Of the bloodhounds on her trail.
Till the floor becomes her bier,
She shall feel their pantings near,
Close upon her very heels,
Spite of all the din of wheels;
Shivering on her pallet poor,
She shall hear them at the door
Whine and scratch to be let in,
Sister bloodhounds, Want and Sin!
Hark! that rustle of a dress,
Stiff with lavish costliness!
Here comes one whose cheek would flush
But to have her garment brush
'Gainst the girl whose fingers thin
Wove the weary broidery in,
Bending backward from her toil,
Lest her tears the silk might soil,
And, in midnight's chill and murk,
Stitched her life into the work,
Shaping from her bitter thought
Heart's-ease and forget-me-not,
Satirizing her despair
With the emblems woven there.
Little doth the wearer heed
Of the heart-break in the brede;
A hyena by her side
Skulks, down-looking, - it is Pride.
He digs for her in the earth,
Where lie all her claims of birth,
With his foul paws rooting o'er
Some long-buried ancestor,
Who, perhaps, a statue won
By the ill deeds he had done,
By the innocent blood he shed,
By the desolation spread
Over happy villages,
Blotting out the smile of peace.
There walks Judas, he who sold
Yesterday his Lord for gold,
Sold God's presence in his heart
For a proud step in the mart;
He hath dealt in flesh and blood, -
At the bank his name is good,
At the bank, and only there,
'T is a marketable ware.
In his eyes that stealthy gleam
Was not learned of sky or stream,
But it has the cold, hard glint
Of new dollars from the mint.
Open now your spirit's eyes,
Look through that poor clay disguise
Which has thickened, day by day,
Till it keeps all light at bay,
And his soul in pitchy gloom
Gropes about its narrow tomb,
From whose dank and slimy walls
Drop by drop the horror falls.
Look! a serpent lank and cold
Hugs his spirit fold on fold;
From his heart, all day and night,
It doth suck God's blessed light.
Drink it will, and drink it must,
Till the cup holds naught but dust;
All day long he hears it hiss,
Writhing in its fiendish bliss;
All night long he sees its eyes
Flicker with foul ecstasies,
As the spirit ebbs away
Into the absorbing clay.
Who is he that skulks, afraid
Of the trust he has betrayed,
Shuddering if perchance a gleam
Of old nobleness should stream
Through the pent, unwholesome room,
Where his shrunk soul cowers
Songs that prove the angels near ;
Who was sent to be the tongue
Of the weak and spirit-wrung,
Whence the fiery-winged Despair
In men's shrinking eyes might flare.
"T is our hope doth fashion us
To base use or glorious:
He who might have been a lark
Of Truth's morning, from the dark
Raining down melodious hope
Of a freer, broader scope,
Aspirations, prophecies,
Of the spirit's full sunrise,
Chose to be a bird of night,
Which, with eyes refusing light,
Hooted from some hollow tree
Of the world's idolatry.
'T is his punishment to hear
Flutterings of pinions near,
And his own vain wings to feel
Drooping downward to his heel,
All their grace and import lost,
Burdening his weary ghost:
Ever walking by his side
He must see his angel guide,
Who at intervals doth turn
Looks on him so sadly stern,
With such ever-new surprise
Of hushed anguish in her eyes,
That it seems the light of day
From around him shrinks away,
Or drops blunted from the wall
Built around him by his fall.
Then the mountains, whose white peaks
Catch the morning's earliest streaks,
He must see, where prophets sit,
Turning east their faces lit,
Whence, with footsteps beautiful,
To the earth, yet dim and dull,
They the gladsome tidings bring
Of the sunlight's hastening:
Never can these hills of bliss
Be o'erclimbed by feet like his !
But enough! O, do not dare
From the next the veil to tear,
Woven of station, trade, or dress,
More obscene than nakedness,
Wherewith plausible culture drapes
Fallen Nature's myriad shapes!
Let us rather love to mark
How the unextinguished spark
Will shine through the thin disguise
Of our customs, pomps, and lies,
And, not seldom blown to flame, Vindicate its ancient claim.
SOME sort of heart I know is hers,
I chanced to feel her pulse one night;
A brain she has that never errs,
And yet is never nobly right;
It does not leap to great results,
But, in some corner out of sight,
Suspects a spot of latent blight,
And, o'er the impatient infinite,
She bargains, haggles, and consults.
Her eye,
- it seems a chemic test
And drops upon you like an acid;
It bites you with unconscious zest,
So clear and bright, so coldly placid;
It holds you quietly aloof,
It holds, -and yet it does not win
It merely puts you to the proof
And sorts what qualities are in you; It smiles, but never brings you nearer,
It lights, her nature draws not nigh; 'Tis but that yours is growing clearer To her assays;- yes, try and try,
You'll get no deeper than her eye. There, you are classified: she's gone Far, far away into herself; Each with its Latin label on, Your poor components, one by one,
Are laid upon their proper shelf In her compact and ordered mind, And what of you is left behind Is no more to her than the wind; In that clear brain, which, day and night, No movement of the heart e'er jos
Her friends are ranged on left and right,
Here, silex, hornblende, sienite; There, animal remains and fossils.
And yet, O subtile analyst,
That canst each property detect Of mood or grain, that canst untwist Each tangled skein of intellect, And with thy scalpel eyes lay bare
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