IT is done!
     Clang of bell and roar of gun
     Send the tidings up and down.
     How the belfries rock and reel!
     How the great guns, peal on peal,
     Fling the joy from town to town!

     Ring, O bells!
     Every stroke exulting tells
     Of the burial hour of crime.
     Loud and long, that all may hear,
     Ring for every listening ear
     Of Eternity and Time!

     Let us kneel
     God's own voice is in that peal,
     And this spot is holy ground.
     Lord, forgive us! What are we,
     That our eyes this glory see,
     That our ears have heard the sound!

     For the Lord
     On the whirlwind is abroad;
     In the earthquake He has spoken;
     He has smitten with His thunder
     The iron walls asunder,
     And the gates of brass are broken.

     Loud and long
     Lift the old exulting song;
     Sing with Miriam by the sea,
     He has cast the mighty down;
     Horse and rider sink and drown;
     "He hath triumphed gloriously!"

     Did we dare,
     In our agony of prayer,
     Ask for more than He has done?
     When was ever His right hand
     Over any time or land
     Stretched as now beneath the sun?

     How they pale,
     Ancient myth and song and tale,
     In this wonder of our days,
     When the cruel rod of war
     Blossoms white with righteous law,
     And the wrath of man is praise!

     Blotted out
     All within and all about
     Shall a fresher life begin;
     Freer breathe the universe
     As it rolls its heavy curse
     On the dead and buried sin!

     It is done!
     In the circuit of the sun
     Shall the sound thereof go forth.
     It shall bid the sad rejoice,
     It shall give the dumb a voice,
     It shall belt with joy the earth!

     Ring and swing,
     Bells of joy! On morning's wing
     Send the song of praise abroad!
     With a sound of broken chains
     Tell the nations that He reigns,
     Who alone is Lord and God!

     1865.

     NOT unto us who did but seek
     The word that burned within to speak,
     Not unto us this day belong
     The triumph and exultant song.

     Upon us fell in early youth
     The burden of unwelcome truth,
     And left us, weak and frail and few,
     The censor's painful work to do.

     Thenceforth our life a fight became,
     The air we breathed was hot with blame;
     For not with gauged and softened tone
     We made the bondman's cause our own.

     We bore, as Freedom's hope forlorn,
     The private hate, the public scorn;
     Yet held through all the paths we trod
     Our faith in man and trust in God.

     We prayed and hoped; but still, with awe,
     The coming of the sword we saw;
     We heard the nearing steps of doom,
     We saw the shade of things to come.

     In grief which they alone can feel
     Who from a mother's wrong appeal,
     With blended lines of fear and hope
     We cast our country's horoscope.

     For still within her house of life
     We marked the lurid sign of strife,
     And, poisoning and imbittering all,
     We saw the star of Wormwood fall.

     Deep as our love for her became
     Our hate of all that wrought her shame,
     And if, thereby, with tongue and pen
     We erred,—we were but mortal men.

     We hoped for peace; our eyes survey
     The blood-red dawn of Freedom's day
     We prayed for love to loose the chain;
     'T is shorn by battle's axe in twain!

     Nor skill nor strength nor zeal of ours
     Has mined and heaved the hostile towers;
     Not by our hands is turned the key
     That sets the sighing captives free.

     A redder sea than Egypt's wave
     Is piled and parted for the slave;
     A darker cloud moves on in light;
     A fiercer fire is guide by night.

     The praise, O Lord! is Thine alone,
     In Thy own way Thy work is done!
     Our poor gifts at Thy feet we cast,
     To whom be glory, first and last!

     1865.

     THANK God for rest, where none molest,
     And none can make afraid;
     For Peace that sits as Plenty's guest
     Beneath the homestead shade!

     Bring pike and gun, the sword's red scourge,
     The negro's broken chains,
     And beat them at the blacksmith's forge
     To ploughshares for our plains.

     Alike henceforth our hills of snow,
     And vales where cotton flowers;
     All streams that flow, all winds that blow,
     Are Freedom's motive-powers.

     Henceforth to Labor's chivalry
     Be knightly honors paid;
     For nobler than the sword's shall be
     The sickle's accolade.

     Build up an altar to the Lord,
     O grateful hearts of ours
     And shape it of the greenest sward
     That ever drank the showers.

     Lay all the bloom of gardens there,
     And there the orchard fruits;
     Bring golden grain from sun and air,
     From earth her goodly roots.

     There let our banners droop and flow,
     The stars uprise and fall;
     Our roll of martyrs, sad and slow,
     Let sighing breezes call.

     Their names let hands of horn and tan
     And rough-shod feet applaud,
     Who died to make the slave a man,
     And link with toil reward.

     There let the common heart keep time
     To such an anthem sung
     As never swelled on poet's rhyme,
     Or thrilled on singer's tongue.

     Song of our burden and relief,
     Of peace and long annoy;
     The passion of our mighty grief
     And our exceeding joy!

     A song of praise to Him who filled
     The harvests sown in tears,
     And gave each field a double yield
     To feed our battle-years.

     A song of faith that trusts the end
     To match the good begun,
     Nor doubts the power of Love to blend
     The hearts of men as one!

     O PEOPLE-CHOSEN! are ye not
     Likewise the chosen of the Lord,
     To do His will and speak His word?

     From the loud thunder-storm of war
     Not man alone hath called ye forth,
     But He, the God of all the earth!

     The torch of vengeance in your hands
     He quenches; unto Him belongs
     The solemn recompense of wrongs.

     Enough of blood the land has seen,
     And not by cell or gallows-stair
     Shall ye the way of God prepare.

     Say to the pardon-seekers: Keep
     Your manhood, bend no suppliant knees,
     Nor palter with unworthy pleas.

     Above your voices sounds the wail
     Of starving men; we shut in vain *
     Our eyes to Pillow's ghastly stain. **

     What words can drown that bitter cry?
     What tears wash out the stain of death?
     What oaths confirm your broken faith?

     From you alone the guaranty
     Of union, freedom, peace, we claim;
     We urge no conqueror's terms of shame.

     Alas! no victor's pride is ours;
     We bend above our triumphs won
     Like David o'er his rebel son.

     Be men, not beggars. Cancel all
     By one brave, generous action; trust
     Your better instincts, and be just.

     Make all men peers before the law,
     Take hands from off the negro's throat,
     Give black and white an equal vote.

     Keep all your forfeit lives and lands,
     But give the common law's redress
     To labor's utter nakedness.

     Revive the old heroic will;
     Be in the right as brave and strong
     As ye have proved yourselves in wrong.

     Defeat shall then be victory,
     Your loss the wealth of full amends,
     And hate be love, and foes be friends.

     Then buried be the dreadful past,
     Its common slain be mourned, and let
     All memories soften to regret.

     Then shall the Union's mother-heart
     Her lost and wandering ones recall,
     Forgiving and restoring all,—

     And Freedom break her marble trance
     Above the Capitolian dome,
     Stretch hands, and bid ye welcome home
     November, 1865.

     *  Andersonville prison.
     ** The massacre of Negro troops at Fort Pillow.

     IN the old Hebrew myth the lion's frame,
     So terrible alive,
     Bleached by the desert's sun and wind, became
     The wandering wild bees' hive;
     And he who, lone and naked-handed, tore
     Those jaws of death apart,
     In after time drew forth their honeyed store
     To strengthen his strong heart.

     Dead seemed the legend: but it only slept
     To wake beneath our sky;
     Just on the spot whence ravening Treason crept
     Back to its lair to die,
     Bleeding and torn from Freedom's mountain bounds,
     A stained and shattered drum
     Is now the hive where, on their flowery rounds,
     The wild bees go and come.

     Unchallenged by a ghostly sentinel,
     They wander wide and far,
     Along green hillsides, sown with shot and shell,
     Through vales once choked with war.
     The low reveille of their battle-drum
     Disturbs no morning prayer;
     With deeper peace in summer noons their hum
     Fills all the drowsy air.

     And Samson's riddle is our own to-day,
     Of sweetness from the strong,
     Of union, peace, and freedom plucked away
     From the rent jaws of wrong.
     From Treason's death we draw a purer life,
     As, from the beast he slew,
     A sweetness sweeter for his bitter strife
     The old-time athlete drew!
     1868.

     RIGHT in the track where Sherman
     Ploughed his red furrow,
     Out of the narrow cabin,
     Up from the cellar's burrow,
     Gathered the little black people,
     With freedom newly dowered,
     Where, beside their Northern teacher,
     Stood the soldier, Howard.

     He listened and heard the children
     Of the poor and long-enslaved
     Reading the words of Jesus,
     Singing the songs of David.
     Behold!—the dumb lips speaking,
     The blind eyes seeing!
     Bones of the Prophet's vision
     Warmed into being!

     Transformed he saw them passing
     Their new life's portal
     Almost it seemed the mortal
     Put on the immortal.
     No more with the beasts of burden,
     No more with stone and clod,
     But crowned with glory and honor
     In the image of God!

     There was the human chattel
     Its manhood taking;
     There, in each dark, bronze statue,
     A soul was waking!
     The man of many battles,
     With tears his eyelids pressing,
     Stretched over those dusky foreheads
     His one-armed blessing.

     And he said: "Who hears can never
     Fear for or doubt you;
     What shall I tell the children
     Up North about you?"
     Then ran round a whisper, a murmur,
     Some answer devising:
     And a little boy stood up: "General,
     Tell 'em we're rising!"

     O black boy of Atlanta!
     But half was spoken
     The slave's chain and the master's
     Alike are broken.
     The one curse of the races
     Held both in tether
     They are rising,—all are rising,
     The black and white together!

     O brave men and fair women!
     Ill comes of hate and scorning
     Shall the dark faces only
     Be turned to mourning?—
     Make Time your sole avenger,
     All-healing, all-redressing;
     Meet Fate half-way, and make it
     A joy and blessing!

     1869.

     AMIDST thy sacred effigies
     Of old renown give place,
     O city, Freedom-loved! to his
     Whose hand unchained a race.

     Take the worn frame, that rested not
     Save in a martyr's grave;
     The care-lined face, that none forgot,
     Bent to the kneeling slave.

     Let man be free! The mighty word
     He spake was not his own;
     An impulse from the Highest stirred
     These chiselled lips alone.

     The cloudy sign, the fiery guide,
     Along his pathway ran,
     And Nature, through his voice, denied
     The ownership of man.

     We rest in peace where these sad eyes
     Saw peril, strife, and pain;
     His was the nation's sacrifice,
     And ours the priceless gain.

     O symbol of God's will on earth
     As it is done above!
     Bear witness to the cost and worth
     Of justice and of love.

     Stand in thy place and testify
     To coming ages long,
     That truth is stronger than a lie,
     And righteousness than wrong.

     VOICE of a people suffering long,
     The pathos of their mournful song,
     The sorrow of their night of wrong!

     Their cry like that which Israel gave,
     A prayer for one to guide and save,
     Like Moses by the Red Sea's wave!

     The stern accord her timbrel lent
     To Miriam's note of triumph sent
     O'er Egypt's sunken armament!

     The tramp that startled camp and town,
     And shook the walls of slavery down,
     The spectral march of old John Brown!

     The storm that swept through battle-days,
     The triumph after long delays,
     The bondmen giving God the praise!

     Voice of a ransomed race, sing on
     Till Freedom's every right is won,
     And slavery's every wrong undone

     1880.

     THE storm and peril overpast,
     The hounding hatred shamed and still,
     Go, soul of freedom! take at last
     The place which thou alone canst fill.

     Confirm the lesson taught of old—
     Life saved for self is lost, while they
     Who lose it in His service hold
     The lease of God's eternal day.

     Not for thyself, but for the slave
     Thy words of thunder shook the world;
     No selfish griefs or hatred gave
     The strength wherewith thy bolts were hurled.

     From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew
     We heard a tender under song;
     Thy very wrath from pity grew,
     From love of man thy hate of wrong.

     Now past and present are as one;
     The life below is life above;
     Thy mortal years have but begun
     Thy immortality of love.

     With somewhat of thy lofty faith
     We lay thy outworn garment by,
     Give death but what belongs to death,
     And life the life that cannot die!

     Not for a soul like thine the calm
     Of selfish ease and joys of sense;
     But duty, more than crown or palm,
     Its own exceeding recompense.

     Go up and on thy day well done,
     Its morning promise well fulfilled,
     Arise to triumphs yet unwon,
     To holier tasks that God has willed.

     Go, leave behind thee all that mars
     The work below of man for man;
     With the white legions of the stars
     Do service such as angels can.

     Wherever wrong shall right deny
     Or suffering spirits urge their plea,
     Be thine a voice to smite the lie,
     A hand to set the captive free!

     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.

     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 all.

     O 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!

     1838.

     BEARER of Freedom's holy light,
     Breaker of Slavery's chain and rod,
     The foe of all which pains the sight,
     Or wounds the generous ear of God!

     Beautiful yet thy temples rise,
     Though there profaning gifts are thrown;
     And fires unkindled of the skies
     Are glaring round thy altar-stone.

     Still sacred, though thy name be breathed
     By those whose hearts thy truth deride;
     And garlands, plucked from thee, are wreathed
     Around the haughty brows of Pride.

     Oh, ideal of my boyhood's time!
     The faith in which my father stood,
     Even when the sons of Lust and Crime
     Had stained thy peaceful courts with blood!

     Still to those courts my footsteps turn,
     For through the mists which darken there,
     I see the flame of Freedom burn,—
     The Kebla of the patriot's prayer!

     The generous feeling, pure and warm,
     Which owns the right of all divine;
     The pitying heart, the helping arm,
     The prompt self-sacrifice, are thine.

     Beneath thy broad, impartial eye,
     How fade the lines of caste and birth!
     How equal in their suffering lie
     The groaning multitudes of earth!

     Still to a stricken brother true,
     Whatever clime hath nurtured him;
     As stooped to heal the wounded Jew
     The worshipper of Gerizim.

     By misery unrepelled, unawed
     By pomp or power, thou seest a Man
     In prince or peasant, slave or lord,
     Pale priest, or swarthy artisan.

     Through all disguise, form, place, or name,
     Beneath the flaunting robes of sin,
     Through poverty and squalid shame,
     Thou lookest on the man within.

     On man, as man, retaining yet,
     Howe'er debased, and soiled, and dim,
     The crown upon his forehead set,
     The immortal gift of God to him.

     And there is reverence in thy look;
     For that frail form which mortals wear
     The Spirit of the Holiest took,
     And veiled His perfect brightness there.

     Not from the shallow babbling fount
     Of vain philosophy thou art;
     He who of old on Syria's Mount
     Thrilled, warmed, by turns, the listener's heart,

     In holy words which cannot die,
     In thoughts which angels leaned to know,
     Proclaimed thy message from on high,
     Thy mission to a world of woe.

     That voice's echo hath not died!
     From the blue lake of Galilee,
     And Tabor's lonely mountain-side,
     It calls a struggling world to thee.

     Thy name and watchword o'er this land
     I hear in every breeze that stirs,
     And round a thousand altars stand
     Thy banded party worshippers.

     Not, to these altars of a day,
     At party's call, my gift I bring;
     But on thy olden shrine I lay
     A freeman's dearest offering.

     The voiceless utterance of his will,—
     His pledge to Freedom and to Truth,
     That manhood's heart remembers still
     The homage of his generous youth.

     Election Day, 1841

     I.
     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,
     From lips which press the temple's marble floor,
     Or kiss the gilded sign of the dread cross He bore.

     II.
     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
     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 their Christ in cruel zeal,
     Through the black torment-smoke, held mockingly to him!

     III.
     The blood which mingled with the desert sand,
     And beaded with its red and ghastly dew
     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!
     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.

     V.
     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;
     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 crime,
     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 brotherhood!

     1842.

     As o'er his furrowed fields which lie
     Beneath a coldly dropping sky,
     Yet chill with winter's melted snow,
     The husbandman goes forth to sow,

     Thus, Freedom, on the bitter blast
     The ventures of thy seed we cast,
     And trust to warmer sun and rain
     To swell the germs and fill the grain.

     Who calls thy glorious service hard?
     Who deems it not its own reward?
     Who, for its trials, counts it less.
     A cause of praise and thankfulness?

     It may not be our lot to wield
     The sickle in the ripened field;
     Nor ours to hear, on summer eves,
     The reaper's song among the sheaves.

     Yet where our duty's task is wrought
     In unison with God's great thought,
     The near and future blend in one,
     And whatsoe'er is willed, is done!

     And ours the grateful service whence
     Comes day by day the recompense;
     The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed,
     The fountain and the noonday shade.

     And were this life the utmost span,
     The only end and aim of man,
     Better the toil of fields like these
     Than waking dream and slothful ease.

     But life, though falling like our grain,
     Like that revives and springs again;
     And, early called, how blest are they
     Who wait in heaven their harvest-day!

     1843.

     GOD bless ye, brothers! in the fight
     Ye 're waging now, ye cannot fail,
     For better is your sense of right
     Than king-craft'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 blinded 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.

     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 has wrought,
     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!

     O 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.

     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!

     1843.

     I.
     FAR from his close and noisome cell,
     By grassy lane and sunny stream,
     Blown clover field and strawberry dell,
     And green and meadow freshness, fell
     The footsteps of his dream.
     Again from careless feet the dew
     Of summer's misty morn he shook;
     Again with merry heart he threw
     His light line in the rippling brook.
     Back crowded all his school-day joys;
     He urged the ball and quoit again,
     And heard the shout of laughing boys
     Come ringing down the walnut glen.
     Again he felt the western breeze,
     With scent of flowers and crisping hay;
     And down again through wind-stirred trees
     He saw the quivering sunlight play.
     An angel in home's vine-hung door,
     He saw his sister smile once more;
     Once more the truant's brown-locked head
     Upon his mother's knees was laid,
     And sweetly lulled to slumber there,
     With evening's holy hymn and prayer!

     II.
     He woke. At once on heart and brain
     The present Terror rushed again;
     Clanked on his limbs the felon's chain
     He woke, to hear the church-tower tell
     Time's footfall on the conscious bell,
     And, shuddering, feel that clanging din
     His life's last hour had ushered in;
     To see within his prison-yard,
     Through the small window, iron barred,
     The gallows shadow rising dim
     Between the sunrise heaven and him;
     A horror in God's blessed air;
     A blackness in his morning light;
     Like some foul devil-altar there
     Built up by demon hands at night.
     And, maddened by that evil sight,
     Dark, horrible, confused, and strange,
     A chaos of wild, weltering change,
     All power of check and guidance gone,
     Dizzy and blind, his mind swept on.
     In vain he strove to breathe a prayer,
     In vain he turned the Holy Book,
     He only heard the gallows-stair
     Creak as the wind its timbers shook.
     No dream for him of sin forgiven,
     While still that baleful spectre stood,
     With its hoarse murmur, "Blood for Blood!"
     Between him and the pitying Heaven.

     III.
     Low on his dungeon floor he knelt,
     And smote his breast, and on his chain,
     Whose iron clasp he always felt,
     His hot tears fell like rain;
     And near him, with the cold, calm look
     And tone of one whose formal part,
     Unwarmed, unsoftened of the heart,
     Is measured out by rule and book,
     With placid lip and tranquil blood,
     The hangman's ghostly ally stood,
     Blessing with solemn text and word
     The gallows-drop and strangling cord;
     Lending the sacred Gospel's awe
     And sanction to the crime of Law.

     IV.
     He saw the victim's tortured brow,
     The sweat of anguish starting there,
     The record of a nameless woe
     In the dim eye's imploring stare,
     Seen hideous through the long, damp hair,—
     Fingers of ghastly skin and bone
     Working and writhing on the stone!
     And heard, by mortal terror wrung
     From heaving breast and stiffened tongue,
     The choking sob and low hoarse prayer;
     As o'er his half-crazed fancy came
     A vision of the eternal flame,
     Its smoking cloud of agonies,
     Its demon-worm that never dies,
     The everlasting rise and fall
     Of fire-waves round the infernal wall;
     While high above that dark red flood,
     Black, giant-like, the gallows stood;
     Two busy fiends attending there
     One with cold mocking rite and prayer,
     The other with impatient grasp,
     Tightening the death-rope's strangling clasp.

     V.
     The unfelt rite at length was done,
     The prayer unheard at length was said,
     An hour had passed: the noonday sun
     Smote on the features of the dead!
     And he who stood the doomed beside,
     Calm gauger of the swelling tide
     Of mortal agony and fear,
     Heeding with curious eye and ear
     Whate'er revealed the keen excess
     Of man's extremest wretchedness
     And who in that dark anguish saw
     An earnest of the victim's fate,
     The vengeful terrors of God's law,
     The kindlings of Eternal hate,
     The first drops of that fiery rain
     Which beats the dark red realm of pain,
     Did he uplift his earnest cries
     Against the crime of Law, which gave
     His brother to that fearful grave,
     Whereon Hope's moonlight never lies,
     And Faith's white blossoms never wave
     To the soft breath of Memory's sighs;
     Which sent a spirit marred and stained,
     By fiends of sin possessed, profaned,
     In madness and in blindness stark,
     Into the silent, unknown dark?
     No, from the wild and shrinking dread,
     With which he saw the victim led
     Beneath the dark veil which divides
     Ever the living from the dead,
     And Nature's solemn secret hides,
     The man of prayer can only draw
     New reasons for his bloody law;
     New faith in staying Murder's hand
     By murder at that Law's command;
     New reverence for the gallows-rope,
     As human nature's latest hope;
     Last relic of the good old time,
     When Power found license for its crime,
     And held a writhing world in check
     By that fell cord about its neck;
     Stifled Sedition's rising shout,
     Choked the young breath of Freedom out,
     And timely checked the words which sprung
     From Heresy's forbidden tongue;
     While in its noose of terror bound,
     The Church its cherished union found,
     Conforming, on the Moslem plan,
     The motley-colored mind of man,
     Not by the Koran and the Sword,
     But by the Bible and the Cord.

     VI.
     O Thou at whose rebuke the grave
     Back to warm life its sleeper gave,
     Beneath whose sad and tearful glance
     The cold and changed countenance
     Broke the still horror of its trance,
     And, waking, saw with joy above,
     A brother's face of tenderest love;
     Thou, unto whom the blind and lame,
     The sorrowing and the sin-sick came,
     And from Thy very garment's hem
     Drew life and healing unto them,
     The burden of Thy holy faith
     Was love and life, not hate and death;
     Man's demon ministers of pain,
     The fiends of his revenge, were sent
     From thy pure Gospel's element
     To their dark home again.
     Thy name is Love! What, then, is he,
     Who in that name the gallows rears,
     An awful altar built to Thee,
     With sacrifice of blood and tears?
     Oh, once again Thy healing lay
     On the blind eyes which knew Thee not,
     And let the light of Thy pure day
     Melt in upon his darkened thought.
     Soften his hard, cold heart, and show
     The power which in forbearance lies,
     And let him feel that mercy now
     Is better than old sacrifice.

     VII.
     As on the White Sea's charmed shore,
     The Parsee sees his holy hill (10)
     With dunnest smoke-clouds curtained o'er,
     Yet knows beneath them, evermore,
     The low, pale fire is quivering still;
     So, underneath its clouds of sin,
     The heart of man retaineth yet
     Gleams of its holy origin;
     And half-quenched stars that never set,
     Dim colors of its faded bow,
     And early beauty, linger there,
     And o'er its wasted desert blow
     Faint breathings of its morning air.
     Oh, never yet upon the scroll
     Of the sin-stained, but priceless soul,
     Hath Heaven inscribed "Despair!"
     Cast not the clouded gem away,
     Quench not the dim but living ray,—
     My brother man, Beware!
     With that deep voice which from the skies
     Forbade the Patriarch's sacrifice,
     God's angel cries, Forbear.

     1843