Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform, Complete / Volume III of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier

A WORD FOR THE HOUR.

     THE firmament breaks up. In black eclipse
     Light after light goes out. One evil star,
     Luridly glaring through the smoke of war,
     As in the dream of the Apocalypse,
     Drags others down. Let us not weakly weep
     Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to keep
     Our faith and patience; wherefore should we leap
     On one hand into fratricidal fight,
     Or, on the other, yield eternal right,
     Frame lies of law, and good and ill confound?
     What fear we? Safe on freedom's vantage-ground
     Our feet are planted: let us there remain
     In unrevengeful calm, no means untried
     Which truth can sanction, no just claim denied,
     The sad spectators of a suicide!
     They break the links of Union: shall we light
     The fires of hell to weld anew the chain
     On that red anvil where each blow is pain?
     Draw we not even now a freer breath,
     As from our shoulders falls a load of death
     Loathsome as that the Tuscan's victim bore
     When keen with life to a dead horror bound?
     Why take we up the accursed thing again?
     Pity, forgive, but urge them back no more
     Who, drunk with passion, flaunt disunion's rag
     With its vile reptile-blazon. Let us press
     The golden cluster on our brave old flag
     In closer union, and, if numbering less,
     Brighter shall shine the stars which still remain.

     16th First mo., 1861.

"EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT."

LUTHER'S HYMN.

     WE wait beneath the furnace-blast
     The pangs of transformation;
     Not painlessly doth God recast
     And mould anew the nation.
     Hot burns the fire
     Where wrongs expire;
     Nor spares the hand
     That from the land
     Uproots the ancient evil.

     The hand-breadth cloud the sages feared
     Its bloody rain is dropping;
     The poison plant the fathers spared
     All else is overtopping.
     East, West, South, North,
     It curses the earth;
     All justice dies,
     And fraud and lies
     Live only in its shadow.

     What gives the wheat-field blades of steel?
     What points the rebel cannon?
     What sets the roaring rabble's heel
     On the old star-spangled pennon?
     What breaks the oath
     Of the men o' the South?
     What whets the knife
     For the Union's life?—
     Hark to the answer: Slavery!

     Then waste no blows on lesser foes
     In strife unworthy freemen.
     God lifts to-day the veil, and shows
     The features of the demon
     O North and South,
     Its victims both,
     Can ye not cry,
     "Let slavery die!"
     And union find in freedom?

     What though the cast-out spirit tear
     The nation in his going?
     We who have shared the guilt must share
     The pang of his o'erthrowing!
     Whate'er the loss,
     Whate'er the cross,
     Shall they complain
     Of present pain
     Who trust in God's hereafter?

     For who that leans on His right arm
     Was ever yet forsaken?
     What righteous cause can suffer harm
     If He its part has taken?
     Though wild and loud,
     And dark the cloud,
     Behind its folds
     His hand upholds
     The calm sky of to-morrow!

     Above the maddening cry for blood,
     Above the wild war-drumming,
     Let Freedom's voice be heard, with good
     The evil overcoming.
     Give prayer and purse
     To stay the Curse
     Whose wrong we share,
     Whose shame we bear,
     Whose end shall gladden Heaven!

     In vain the bells of war shall ring
     Of triumphs and revenges,
     While still is spared the evil thing
     That severs and estranges.
     But blest the ear
     That yet shall hear
     The jubilant bell
     That rings the knell
     Of Slavery forever!

     Then let the selfish lip be dumb,
     And hushed the breath of sighing;
     Before the joy of peace must come
     The pains of purifying.
     God give us grace
     Each in his place
     To bear his lot,
     And, murmuring not,
     Endure and wait and labor!

     1861.

TO JOHN C. FREMONT.

On the 31st of August, 1861, General Fremont, then in charge of the Western Department, issued a proclamation which contained a clause, famous as the first announcement of emancipation: "The property," it declared, "real and personal, of all persons in the State of Missouri, who shall take up arms against the United States, or who shall be directly proven to have taken active part with their enemies in the field, is declared to be confiscated to the public use; and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free men." Mr. Lincoln regarded the proclamation as premature and countermanded it, after vainly endeavoring to persuade Fremont of his own motion to revoke it.

     THY error, Fremont, simply was to act
     A brave man's part, without the statesman's tact,
     And, taking counsel but of common sense,
     To strike at cause as well as consequence.
     Oh, never yet since Roland wound his horn
     At Roncesvalles, has a blast been blown
     Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as thine own,
     Heard from the van of freedom's hope forlorn
     It had been safer, doubtless, for the time,
     To flatter treason, and avoid offence
     To that Dark Power whose underlying crime
     Heaves upward its perpetual turbulence.
     But if thine be the fate of all who break
     The ground for truth's seed, or forerun their years
     Till lost in distance, or with stout hearts make
     A lane for freedom through the level spears,
     Still take thou courage! God has spoken through thee,
     Irrevocable, the mighty words, Be free!
     The land shakes with them, and the slave's dull ear
     Turns from the rice-swamp stealthily to hear.
     Who would recall them now must first arrest
     The winds that blow down from the free Northwest,
     Ruffling the Gulf; or like a scroll roll back
     The Mississippi to its upper springs.
     Such words fulfil their prophecy, and lack
     But the full time to harden into things.

     1861.

THE WATCHERS.

     BESIDE a stricken field I stood;
     On the torn turf, on grass and wood,
     Hung heavily the dew of blood.

     Still in their fresh mounds lay the slain,
     But all the air was quick with pain
     And gusty sighs and tearful rain.

     Two angels, each with drooping head
     And folded wings and noiseless tread,
     Watched by that valley of the dead.

     The one, with forehead saintly bland
     And lips of blessing, not command,
     Leaned, weeping, on her olive wand.

     The other's brows were scarred and knit,
     His restless eyes were watch-fires lit,
     His hands for battle-gauntlets fit.

     "How long!"—I knew the voice of Peace,—
     "Is there no respite? no release?
     When shall the hopeless quarrel cease?

     "O Lord, how long!! One human soul
     Is more than any parchment scroll,
     Or any flag thy winds unroll.

     "What price was Ellsworth's, young and brave?
     How weigh the gift that Lyon gave,
     Or count the cost of Winthrop's grave?

     "O brother! if thine eye can see,
     Tell how and when the end shall be,
     What hope remains for thee and me."

     Then Freedom sternly said: "I shun
     No strife nor pang beneath the sun,
     When human rights are staked and won.

     "I knelt with Ziska's hunted flock,
     I watched in Toussaint's cell of rock,
     I walked with Sidney to the block.

     "The moor of Marston felt my tread,
     Through Jersey snows the march I led,
     My voice Magenta's charges sped.

     "But now, through weary day and night,
     I watch a vague and aimless fight
     For leave to strike one blow aright.

     "On either side my foe they own
     One guards through love his ghastly throne,
     And one through fear to reverence grown.

     "Why wait we longer, mocked, betrayed,
     By open foes, or those afraid
     To speed thy coming through my aid?

     "Why watch to see who win or fall?
     I shake the dust against them all,
     I leave them to their senseless brawl."

     "Nay," Peace implored: "yet longer wait;
     The doom is near, the stake is great
     God knoweth if it be too late.

     "Still wait and watch; the way prepare
     Where I with folded wings of prayer
     May follow, weaponless and bare."

     "Too late!" the stern, sad voice replied,
     "Too late!" its mournful echo sighed,
     In low lament the answer died.

     A rustling as of wings in flight,
     An upward gleam of lessening white,
     So passed the vision, sound and sight.

     But round me, like a silver bell
     Rung down the listening sky to tell
     Of holy help, a sweet voice fell.

     "Still hope and trust," it sang; "the rod
     Must fall, the wine-press must be trod,
     But all is possible with God!"

     1862.

TO ENGLISHMEN.

Written when, in the stress of our terrible war, the English ruling class, with few exceptions, were either coldly indifferent or hostile to the party of freedom. Their attitude was illustrated by caricatures of America, among which was one of a slaveholder and cowhide, with the motto, "Haven't I a right to wallop my nigger?"

     You flung your taunt across the wave
     We bore it as became us,
     Well knowing that the fettered slave
     Left friendly lips no option save
     To pity or to blame us.

     You scoffed our plea. "Mere lack of will,
     Not lack of power," you told us
     We showed our free-state records; still
     You mocked, confounding good and ill,
     Slave-haters and slaveholders.

     We struck at Slavery; to the verge
     Of power and means we checked it;
     Lo!—presto, change! its claims you urge,
     Send greetings to it o'er the surge,
     And comfort and protect it.

     But yesterday you scarce could shake,
     In slave-abhorring rigor,
     Our Northern palms for conscience' sake
     To-day you clasp the hands that ache
     With "walloping the nigger!"

     O Englishmen!—in hope and creed,
     In blood and tongue our brothers!
     We too are heirs of Runnymede;
     And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's deed
     Are not alone our mother's.

     "Thicker than water," in one rill
     Through centuries of story
     Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still
     We share with you its good and ill,
     The shadow and the glory.

     Joint heirs and kinfolk, leagues of wave
     Nor length of years can part us
     Your right is ours to shrine and grave,
     The common freehold of the brave,
     The gift of saints and martyrs.

     Our very sins and follies teach
     Our kindred frail and human
     We carp at faults with bitter speech,
     The while, for one unshared by each,
     We have a score in common.

     We bowed the heart, if not the knee,
     To England's Queen, God bless her
     We praised you when your slaves went free
     We seek to unchain ours. Will ye
     Join hands with the oppressor?

     And is it Christian England cheers
     The bruiser, not the bruised?
     And must she run, despite the tears
     And prayers of eighteen hundred years,
     Amuck in Slavery's crusade?

     Oh, black disgrace! Oh, shame and loss
     Too deep for tongue to phrase on
     Tear from your flag its holy cross,
     And in your van of battle toss
     The pirate's skull-bone blazon!

     1862.

MITHRIDATES AT CHIOS.

It is recorded that the Chians, when subjugated by Mithridates of Cappadocia, were delivered up to their own slaves, to be carried away captive to Colchis. Athenxus considers this a just punishment for their wickedness in first introducing the slave-trade into Greece. From this ancient villany of the Chians the proverb arose, "The Chian hath bought himself a master."

      KNOW'ST thou, O slave-cursed land
      How, when the Chian's cup of guilt
      Was full to overflow, there came
      God's justice in the sword of flame
      That, red with slaughter to its hilt,
      Blazed in the Cappadocian victor's hand?

      The heavens are still and far;
      But, not unheard of awful Jove,
      The sighing of the island slave
      Was answered, when the AEgean wave
      The keels of Mithridates clove,
      And the vines shrivelled in the breath of war.

      "Robbers of Chios! hark,"
      The victor cried, "to Heaven's decree!
      Pluck your last cluster from the vine,
      Drain your last cup of Chian wine;
      Slaves of your slaves, your doom shall be,
      In Colchian mines by Phasis rolling dark."

      Then rose the long lament
      From the hoar sea-god's dusky caves
      The priestess rent her hair and cried,
      "Woe! woe! The gods are sleepless-eyed!"
      And, chained and scourged, the slaves of slaves,
      The lords of Chios into exile went.

      "The gods at last pay well,"
      So Hellas sang her taunting song,
      "The fisher in his net is caught,
      The Chian hath his master bought;"
      And isle from isle, with laughter long,
      Took up and sped the mocking parable.

      Once more the slow, dumb years
      Bring their avenging cycle round,
      And, more than Hellas taught of old,
      Our wiser lesson shall be told,
      Of slaves uprising, freedom-crowned,
      To break, not wield, the scourge wet with their
      blood and tears.

      1868.

AT PORT ROYAL.

In November, 1861, a Union force under Commodore Dupont and General Sherman captured Port Royal, and from this point as a basis of operations, the neighboring islands between Charleston and Savannah were taken possession of. The early occupation of this district, where the negro population was greatly in excess of the white, gave an opportunity which was at once seized upon, of practically emancipating the slaves and of beginning that work of civilization which was accepted as the grave responsibility of those who had labored for freedom.

     THE tent-lights glimmer on the land,
     The ship-lights on the sea;
     The night-wind smooths with drifting sand
     Our track on lone Tybee.

     At last our grating keels outslide,
     Our good boats forward swing;
     And while we ride the land-locked tide,
     Our negroes row and sing.

     For dear the bondman holds his gifts
     Of music and of song
     The gold that kindly Nature sifts
     Among his sands of wrong:

     The power to make his toiling days
     And poor home-comforts please;
     The quaint relief of mirth that plays
     With sorrow's minor keys.

     Another glow than sunset's fire
     Has filled the west with light,
     Where field and garner, barn and byre,
     Are blazing through the night.

     The land is wild with fear and hate,
     The rout runs mad and fast;
     From hand to hand, from gate to gate
     The flaming brand is passed.

     The lurid glow falls strong across
     Dark faces broad with smiles
     Not theirs the terror, hate, and loss
     That fire yon blazing piles.

     With oar-strokes timing to their song,
     They weave in simple lays
     The pathos of remembered wrong,
     The hope of better days,—

     The triumph-note that Miriam sung,
     The joy of uncaged birds
     Softening with Afric's mellow tongue
     Their broken Saxon words.

SONG OF THE NEGRO BOATMEN.

     Oh, praise an' tanks! De Lord he come
     To set de people free;
     An' massa tink it day ob doom,
     An' we ob jubilee.
     De Lord dat heap de Red Sea waves
     He jus' as 'trong as den;
     He say de word: we las' night slaves;
     To-day, de Lord's freemen.
     De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
     We'll hab de rice an' corn;
     Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you hear
     De driver blow his horn!

     Ole massa on he trabbels gone;
     He leaf de land behind
     De Lord's breff blow him furder on,
     Like corn-shuck in de wind.
     We own de hoe, we own de plough,
     We own de hands dat hold;
     We sell de pig, we sell de cow,
     But nebber chile be sold.
     De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
     We'll hab de rice an' corn;
     Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you hear
     De driver blow his horn!

     We pray de Lord: he gib us signs
     Dat some day we be free;
     De norf-wind tell it to de pines,
     De wild-duck to de sea;
     We tink it when de church-bell ring,
     We dream it in de dream;
     De rice-bird mean it when he sing,
     De eagle when be scream.
     De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
     We'll hab de rice an' corn
     Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you hear
     De driver blow his horn!

     We know de promise nebber fail,
     An' nebber lie de word;
     So like de 'postles in de jail,
     We waited for de Lord
     An' now he open ebery door,
     An' trow away de key;
     He tink we lub him so before,
     We hub him better free.
     De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
     He'll gib de rice an' corn;
     Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you hear
     De driver blow his horn!

     So sing our dusky gondoliers;
     And with a secret pain,
     And smiles that seem akin to tears,
     We hear the wild refrain.

     We dare not share the negro's trust,
     Nor yet his hope deny;
     We only know that God is just,
     And every wrong shall die.

     Rude seems the song; each swarthy face,
     Flame-lighted, ruder still
     We start to think that hapless race
     Must shape our good or ill;

     That laws of changeless justice bind
     Oppressor with oppressed;
     And, close as sin and suffering joined,
     We march to Fate abreast.

     Sing on, poor hearts! your chant shall be
     Our sign of blight or bloom,
     The Vala-song of Liberty,
     Or death-rune of our doom!

     1862.

ASTRAEA AT THE CAPITOL.

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1862.

     WHEN first I saw our banner wave
     Above the nation's council-hall,
     I heard beneath its marble wall
     The clanking fetters of the slave!

     In the foul market-place I stood,
     And saw the Christian mother sold,
     And childhood with its locks of gold,
     Blue-eyed and fair with Saxon blood.

     I shut my eyes, I held my breath,
     And, smothering down the wrath and shame
     That set my Northern blood aflame,
     Stood silent,—where to speak was death.

     Beside me gloomed the prison-cell
     Where wasted one in slow decline
     For uttering simple words of mine,
     And loving freedom all too well.

     The flag that floated from the dome
     Flapped menace in the morning air;
     I stood a perilled stranger where
     The human broker made his home.

     For crime was virtue: Gown and Sword
     And Law their threefold sanction gave,
     And to the quarry of the slave
     Went hawking with our symbol-bird.

     On the oppressor's side was power;
     And yet I knew that every wrong,
     However old, however strong,
     But waited God's avenging hour.

     I knew that truth would crush the lie,
     Somehow, some time, the end would be;
     Yet scarcely dared I hope to see
     The triumph with my mortal eye.

     But now I see it! In the sun
     A free flag floats from yonder dome,
     And at the nation's hearth and home
     The justice long delayed is done.

     Not as we hoped, in calm of prayer,
     The message of deliverance comes,
     But heralded by roll of drums
     On waves of battle-troubled air!

     Midst sounds that madden and appall,
     The song that Bethlehem's shepherds knew!
     The harp of David melting through
     The demon-agonies of Saul!

     Not as we hoped; but what are we?
     Above our broken dreams and plans
     God lays, with wiser hand than man's,
     The corner-stones of liberty.

     I cavil not with Him: the voice
     That freedom's blessed gospel tells
     Is sweet to me as silver bells,
     Rejoicing! yea, I will rejoice!

     Dear friends still toiling in the sun;
     Ye dearer ones who, gone before,
     Are watching from the eternal shore
     The slow work by your hands begun,

     Rejoice with me! The chastening rod
     Blossoms with love; the furnace heat
     Grows cool beneath His blessed feet
     Whose form is as the Son of God!

     Rejoice! Our Marah's bitter springs
     Are sweetened; on our ground of grief
     Rise day by day in strong relief
     The prophecies of better things.

     Rejoice in hope! The day and night
     Are one with God, and one with them
     Who see by faith the cloudy hem
     Of Judgment fringed with Mercy's light.

     1862.

THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862.

     THE flags of war like storm-birds fly,
     The charging trumpets blow;
     Yet rolls no thunder in the sky,
     No earthquake strives below.

     And, calm and patient, Nature keeps
     Her ancient promise well,
     Though o'er her bloom and greenness sweeps
     The battle's breath of hell.

     And still she walks in golden hours
     Through harvest-happy farms,
     And still she wears her fruits and flowers
     Like jewels on her arms.

     What mean the gladness of the plain,
     This joy of eve and morn,
     The mirth that shakes the beard of grain
     And yellow locks of corn?

     Ah! eyes may well be full of tears,
     And hearts with hate are hot;
     But even-paced come round the years,
     And Nature changes not.

     She meets with smiles our bitter grief,
     With songs our groans of pain;
     She mocks with tint of flower and leaf
     The war-field's crimson stain.

     Still, in the cannon's pause, we hear
     Her sweet thanksgiving-psalm;
     Too near to God for doubt or fear,
     She shares the eternal calm.

     She knows the seed lies safe below
     The fires that blast and burn;
     For all the tears of blood we sow
     She waits the rich return.

     She sees with clearer eve than ours
     The good of suffering born,—
     The hearts that blossom like her flowers,
     And ripen like her corn.

     Oh, give to us, in times like these,
     The vision of her eyes;
     And make her fields and fruited trees
     Our golden prophecies

     Oh, give to us her finer ear
     Above this stormy din,
     We too would hear the bells of cheer
     Ring peace and freedom in.

     1862.

HYMN,

SUNG AT CHRISTMAS BY THE SCHOLARS OF ST. HELENA'S ISLAND, S. C.

     OH, none in all the world before
     Were ever glad as we!
     We're free on Carolina's shore,
     We're all at home and free.

     Thou Friend and Helper of the poor,
     Who suffered for our sake,
     To open every prison door,
     And every yoke to break!

     Bend low Thy pitying face and mild,
     And help us sing and pray;
     The hand that blessed the little child,
     Upon our foreheads lay.

     We hear no more the driver's horn,
     No more the whip we fear,
     This holy day that saw Thee born
     Was never half so dear.

     The very oaks are greener clad,
     The waters brighter smile;
     Oh, never shone a day so glad
     On sweet St. Helen's Isle.

     We praise Thee in our songs to-day,
     To Thee in prayer we call,
     Make swift the feet and straight the way
     Of freedom unto all.

     Come once again, O blessed Lord!
     Come walking on the sea!
     And let the mainlands hear the word
     That sets the islands free!

     1863.

THE PROCLAMATION.

President Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation was issued January 1, 1863.

     SAINT PATRICK, slave to Milcho of the herds
     Of Ballymena, wakened with these words
     "Arise, and flee
     Out from the land of bondage, and be free!"

     Glad as a soul in pain, who hears from heaven
     The angels singing of his sins forgiven,
     And, wondering, sees
     His prison opening to their golden keys,

     He rose a man who laid him down a slave,
     Shook from his locks the ashes of the grave,
     And outward trod
     Into the glorious liberty of God.

     He cast the symbols of his shame away;
     And, passing where the sleeping Milcho lay,
     Though back and limb
     Smarted with wrong, he prayed, "God pardon
     him!"

     So went he forth; but in God's time he came
     To light on Uilline's hills a holy flame;
     And, dying, gave
     The land a saint that lost him as a slave.

     O dark, sad millions, patiently and dumb
     Waiting for God, your hour at last has come,
     And freedom's song
     Breaks the long silence of your night of wrong!

     Arise and flee! shake off the vile restraint
     Of ages; but, like Ballymena's saint,
     The oppressor spare,
     Heap only on his head the coals of prayer.

     Go forth, like him! like him return again,
     To bless the land whereon in bitter pain
     Ye toiled at first,
     And heal with freedom what your slavery cursed.

     1863.

ANNIVERSARY POEM.

Read before the Alumni of the Friends' Yearly Meeting School, at the Annual Meeting at Newport, R. I., 15th 6th mo., 1863.

     ONCE more, dear friends, you meet beneath
     A clouded sky
     Not yet the sword has found its sheath,
     And on the sweet spring airs the breath
     Of war floats by.

     Yet trouble springs not from the ground,
     Nor pain from chance;
     The Eternal order circles round,
     And wave and storm find mete and bound
     In Providence.

     Full long our feet the flowery ways
     Of peace have trod,
     Content with creed and garb and phrase:
     A harder path in earlier days
     Led up to God.

     Too cheaply truths, once purchased dear,
     Are made our own;
     Too long the world has smiled to hear
     Our boast of full corn in the ear
     By others sown;

     To see us stir the martyr fires
     Of long ago,
     And wrap our satisfied desires
     In the singed mantles that our sires
     Have dropped below.

     But now the cross our worthies bore
     On us is laid;
     Profession's quiet sleep is o'er,
     And in the scale of truth once more
     Our faith is weighed.

     The cry of innocent blood at last
     Is calling down
     An answer in the whirlwind-blast,
     The thunder and the shadow cast
     From Heaven's dark frown.

     The land is red with judgments. Who
     Stands guiltless forth?
     Have we been faithful as we knew,
     To God and to our brother true,
     To Heaven and Earth.

     How faint, through din of merchandise
     And count of gain,
     Have seemed to us the captive's cries!
     How far away the tears and sighs
     Of souls in pain!

     This day the fearful reckoning comes
     To each and all;
     We hear amidst our peaceful homes
     The summons of the conscript drums,
     The bugle's call.

     Our path is plain; the war-net draws
     Round us in vain,
     While, faithful to the Higher Cause,
     We keep our fealty to the laws
     Through patient pain.

     The levelled gun, the battle-brand,
     We may not take
     But, calmly loyal, we can stand
     And suffer with our suffering land
     For conscience' sake.

     Why ask for ease where all is pain?
     Shall we alone
     Be left to add our gain to gain,
     When over Armageddon's plain
     The trump is blown?

     To suffer well is well to serve;
     Safe in our Lord
     The rigid lines of law shall curve
     To spare us; from our heads shall swerve
     Its smiting sword.

     And light is mingled with the gloom,
     And joy with grief;
     Divinest compensations come,
     Through thorns of judgment mercies bloom
     In sweet relief.

     Thanks for our privilege to bless,
     By word and deed,
     The widow in her keen distress,
     The childless and the fatherless,
     The hearts that bleed!

     For fields of duty, opening wide,
     Where all our powers
     Are tasked the eager steps to guide
     Of millions on a path untried
     The slave is ours!

     Ours by traditions dear and old,
     Which make the race
     Our wards to cherish and uphold,
     And cast their freedom in the mould
     Of Christian grace.

     And we may tread the sick-bed floors
     Where strong men pine,
     And, down the groaning corridors,
     Pour freely from our liberal stores
     The oil and wine.

     Who murmurs that in these dark days
     His lot is cast?
     God's hand within the shadow lays
     The stones whereon His gates of praise
     Shall rise at last.

     Turn and o'erturn, O outstretched Hand
     Nor stint, nor stay;
     The years have never dropped their sand
     On mortal issue vast and grand
     As ours to-day.

     Already, on the sable ground
     Of man's despair
     Is Freedom's glorious picture found,
     With all its dusky hands unbound
     Upraised in prayer.

     Oh, small shall seem all sacrifice
     And pain and loss,
     When God shall wipe the weeping eyes,
     For suffering give the victor's prize,
     The crown for cross.

BARBARA FRIETCHIE.

This poem was written in strict conformity to the account of the incident as I had it from respectable and trustworthy sources. It has since been the subject of a good deal of conflicting testimony, and the story was probably incorrect in some of its details. It is admitted by all that Barbara Frietchie was no myth, but a worthy and highly esteemed gentlewoman, intensely loyal and a hater of the Slavery Rebellion, holding her Union flag sacred and keeping it with her Bible; that when the Confederates halted before her house, and entered her dooryard, she denounced them in vigorous language, shook her cane in their faces, and drove them out; and when General Burnside's troops followed close upon Jackson's, she waved her flag and cheered them. It is stated that May Qnantrell, a brave and loyal lady in another part of the city, did wave her flag in sight of the Confederates. It is possible that there has been a blending of the two incidents.

     Up from the meadows rich with corn,
     Clear in the cool September morn.

     The clustered spires of Frederick stand
     Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

     Round about them orchards sweep,
     Apple and peach tree fruited deep,

     Fair as the garden of the Lord
     To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,

     On that pleasant morn of the early fall
     When Lee marched over the mountain-wall;

     Over the mountains winding down,
     Horse and foot, into Frederick town.

     Forty flags with their silver stars,
     Forty flags with their crimson bars,

     Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
     Of noon looked down, and saw not one.

     Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
     Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;

     Bravest of all in Frederick town,
     She took up the flag the men hauled down;

     In her attic window the staff she set,
     To show that one heart was loyal yet.

     Up the street came the rebel tread,
     Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

     Under his slouched hat left and right
     He glanced; the old flag met his sight.

     "Halt!"—the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
     "Fire!"—out blazed the rifle-blast.

     It shivered the window, pane and sash;
     It rent the banner with seam and gash.

     Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
     Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.

     She leaned far out on the window-sill,
     And shook it forth with a royal will.

     "Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
     But spare your country's flag," she said.

     A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
     Over the face of the leader came;

     The nobler nature within him stirred
     To life at that woman's deed and word.

     "Who touches a hair of yon gray head
     Dies like a dog! March on!" he said.

     All day long through Frederick street
     Sounded the tread of marching feet.

     All day long that free flag tost
     Over the heads of the rebel host.

     Ever its torn folds rose and fell
     On the loyal winds that loved it well;

     And through the hill-gaps sunset light
     Shone over it with a warm good-night.

     Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er,
     And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.

     Honor to her! and let a tear
     Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.

     Over Barbara Frietchie's grave,
     Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!

     Peace and order and beauty draw
     Round thy symbol of light and law;

     And ever the stars above look down
     On thy stars below in Frederick town!

     1863.

WHAT THE BIRDS SAID.

     THE birds against the April wind
     Flew northward, singing as they flew;
     They sang, "The land we leave behind
     Has swords for corn-blades, blood for dew."

     "O wild-birds, flying from the South,
     What saw and heard ye, gazing down?"
     "We saw the mortar's upturned mouth,
     The sickened camp, the blazing town!

     "Beneath the bivouac's starry lamps,
     We saw your march-worn children die;
     In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps,
     We saw your dead uncoffined lie.

     "We heard the starving prisoner's sighs,
     And saw, from line and trench, your sons
     Follow our flight with home-sick eyes
     Beyond the battery's smoking guns."

     "And heard and saw ye only wrong
     And pain," I cried, "O wing-worn flocks?"
     "We heard," they sang, "the freedman's song,
     The crash of Slavery's broken locks!

     "We saw from new, uprising States
     The treason-nursing mischief spurned,
     As, crowding Freedom's ample gates,
     The long estranged and lost returned.

     "O'er dusky faces, seamed and old,
     And hands horn-hard with unpaid toil,
     With hope in every rustling fold,
     We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil.

     "And struggling up through sounds accursed,
     A grateful murmur clomb the air;
     A whisper scarcely heard at first,
     It filled the listening heavens with prayer.

     "And sweet and far, as from a star,
     Replied a voice which shall not cease,
     Till, drowning all the noise of war,
     It sings the blessed song of peace!"

     So to me, in a doubtful day
     Of chill and slowly greening spring,
     Low stooping from the cloudy gray,
     The wild-birds sang or seemed to sing.

     They vanished in the misty air,
     The song went with them in their flight;
     But lo! they left the sunset fair,
     And in the evening there was light.
     April, 1864.

THE MANTLE OF ST. JOHN DE MATHA.

A LEGEND OF "THE RED, WHITE, AND BLUE," A. D. 1154-1864.

     A STRONG and mighty Angel,
     Calm, terrible, and bright,
     The cross in blended red and blue
     Upon his mantle white.

     Two captives by him kneeling,
     Each on his broken chain,
     Sang praise to God who raiseth
     The dead to life again!

     Dropping his cross-wrought mantle,
     "Wear this," the Angel said;
     "Take thou, O Freedom's priest, its sign,
     The white, the blue, and red."

     Then rose up John de Matha
     In the strength the Lord Christ gave,
     And begged through all the land of France
     The ransom of the slave.

     The gates of tower and castle
     Before him open flew,
     The drawbridge at his coming fell,
     The door-bolt backward drew.

     For all men owned his errand,
     And paid his righteous tax;
     And the hearts of lord and peasant
     Were in his hands as wax.

     At last, outbound from Tunis,
     His bark her anchor weighed,
     Freighted with seven-score Christian souls
     Whose ransom he had paid.

     But, torn by Paynim hatred,
     Her sails in tatters hung;
     And on the wild waves, rudderless,
     A shattered hulk she swung.

     "God save us!" cried the captain,
     "For naught can man avail;
     Oh, woe betide the ship that lacks
     Her rudder and her sail!

     "Behind us are the Moormen;
     At sea we sink or strand
     There's death upon the water,
     There's death upon the land!"

     Then up spake John de Matha
     "God's errands never fail!
     Take thou the mantle which I wear,
     And make of it a sail."

     They raised the cross-wrought mantle,
     The blue, the white, the red;
     And straight before the wind off-shore
     The ship of Freedom sped.

     "God help us!" cried the seamen,
     "For vain is mortal skill
     The good ship on a stormy sea
     Is drifting at its will."

     Then up spake John de Matha
     "My mariners, never fear
     The Lord whose breath has filled her sail
     May well our vessel steer!"

     So on through storm and darkness
     They drove for weary hours;
     And lo! the third gray morning shone
     On Ostia's friendly towers.

     And on the walls the watchers
     The ship of mercy knew,
     They knew far off its holy cross,
     The red, the white, and blue.

     And the bells in all the steeples
     Rang out in glad accord,
     To welcome home to Christian soil
     The ransomed of the Lord.

     So runs the ancient legend
     By bard and painter told;
     And lo! the cycle rounds again,
     The new is as the old!

     With rudder foully broken,
     And sails by traitors torn,
     Our country on a midnight sea
     Is waiting for the morn.

     Before her, nameless terror;
     Behind, the pirate foe;
     The clouds are black above her,
     The sea is white below.

     The hope of all who suffer,
     The dread of all who wrong,
     She drifts in darkness and in storm,
     How long, O Lord I how long?

     But courage, O my mariners
     Ye shall not suffer wreck,
     While up to God the freedman's prayers
     Are rising from your deck.

     Is not your sail the banner
     Which God hath blest anew,
     The mantle that De Matha wore,
     The red, the white, the blue?

     Its hues are all of heaven,
     The red of sunset's dye,
     The whiteness of the moon-lit cloud,
     The blue of morning's sky.

     Wait cheerily, then, O mariners,
     For daylight and for land;
     The breath of God is in your sail,
     Your rudder is His hand.

     Sail on, sail on, deep-freighted
     With blessings and with hopes;
     The saints of old with shadowy hands
     Are pulling at your ropes.

     Behind ye holy martyrs
     Uplift the palm and crown;
     Before ye unborn ages send
     Their benedictions down.

     Take heart from John de Matha!—
     God's errands never fail!
     Sweep on through storm and darkness,
     The thunder and the hail!

     Sail on! The morning cometh,
     The port ye yet shall win;
     And all the bells of God shall ring
     The good ship bravely in!

     1865.