Labor and Reform, vol 3, part 5 | Page 9

shame on all the proud and vain,?Whose folly laughs to scorn?The blessing of our hardy grain,?Our wealth of golden corn.
Let earth withhold her goodly root,?Let mildew blight the rye,?Give to the worm the orchard's fruit,?The wheat-field to the fly.
But let the good old crop adorn?The hills our fathers trod;?Still let us, for his golden corn,?Send up our thanks to God!?1847.
THE REFORMER.
ALL grim and soiled and brown with tan,?I saw a Strong One, in his wrath,?Smiting the godless shrines of man?Along his path.
The Church, beneath her trembling dome,?Essayed in vain her ghostly charm?Wealth shook within his gilded home?With strange alarm.
Fraud from his secret chambers fled?Before the sunlight bursting in?Sloth drew her pillow o'er her head?To drown the din.
"Spare," Art implored, "yon holy pile;?That grand, old, time-worn turret spare;"?Meek Reverence, kneeling in the aisle,?Cried out, "Forbear!"
Gray-bearded Use, who, deaf and blind,?Groped for his old accustomed stone,?Leaned on his staff, and wept to find?His seat o'erthrown.
Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes,?O'erhung with paly locks of gold,--?"Why smite," he asked in sad surprise,?"The fair, the old?"
Yet louder rang the Strong One's stroke,?Yet nearer flashed his axe's gleam;?Shuddering and sick of heart I woke,?As from a dream.
I looked: aside the dust-cloud rolled,?The Waster seemed the Builder too;?Upspringing from the ruined Old?I saw the New.
'T was but the ruin of the bad,--?The wasting of the wrong and ill;?Whate'er of good the old time had?Was living still.
Calm grew the brows of him I feared;?The frown which awed me passed away,?And left behind a smile which cheered?Like breaking day.
The grain grew green on battle-plains,?O'er swarded war-mounds grazed the cow;?The slave stood forging from his chains?The spade and plough.
Where frowned the fort, pavilions gay?And cottage windows, flower-entwined,?Looked out upon the peaceful bay?And hills behind.
Through vine-wreathed cups with wine once red,?The lights on brimming crystal fell,?Drawn, sparkling, from the rivulet head?And mossy well.
Through prison walls, like Heaven-sent hope,?Fresh breezes blew, and sunbeams strayed,?And with the idle gallows-rope?The young child played.
Where the doomed victim in his cell?Had counted o'er the weary hours,?Glad school-girls, answering to the bell,?Came crowned with flowers.
Grown wiser for the lesson given,?I fear no longer, for I know?That, where the share is deepest driven,?The best fruits grow.
The outworn rite, the old abuse,?The pious fraud transparent grown,?The good held captive in the use?Of wrong alone,--
These wait their doom, from that great law?Which makes the past time serve to-day;?And fresher life the world shall draw?From their decay.
Oh, backward-looking son of time!?The new is old, the old is new,?The cycle of a change sublime?Still sweeping through.
So wisely taught the Indian seer;?Destroying Seva, forming Brahm,?Who wake by turns Earth's love and fear,?Are one, the same.
Idly as thou, in that old day?Thou mournest, did thy sire repine;?So, in his time, thy child grown gray?Shall sigh for thine.
But life shall on and upward go;?Th' eternal step of Progress beats?To that great anthem, calm and slow,?Which God repeats.
Take heart! the Waster builds again,?A charmed life old Goodness bath;?The tares may perish, but the grain?Is not for death.
God works in all things; all obey?His first propulsion from the night?Wake thou and watch! the world is gray?With morning light!?1848.
THE PEACE CONVENTION AT BRUSSELS.
STILL in thy streets, O Paris! doth the stain?Of blood defy the cleansing autumn rain;?Still breaks the smoke Messina's ruins through,?And Naples mourns that new Bartholomew,?When squalid beggary, for a dole of bread,?At a crowned murderer's beck of license, fed?The yawning trenches with her noble dead;?Still, doomed Vienna, through thy stately halls?The shell goes crashing and the red shot falls,?And, leagued to crush thee, on the Danube's side,?The bearded Croat and Bosniak spearman ride;?Still in that vale where Himalaya's snow?Melts round the cornfields and the vines below,?The Sikh's hot cannon, answering ball for ball,?Flames in the breach of Moultan's shattered wall;?On Chenab's side the vulture seeks the slain,?And Sutlej paints with blood its banks again.
"What folly, then," the faithless critic cries,?With sneering lip, and wise world-knowing eyes,?"While fort to fort, and post to post, repeat?The ceaseless challenge of the war-drum's beat,?And round the green earth, to the church-bell's chime,?The morning drum-roll of the camp keeps time,?To dream of peace amidst a world in arms,?Of swords to ploughshares changed by Scriptural charms,?Of nations, drunken with the wine of blood,?Staggering to take the Pledge of Brotherhood,?Like tipplers answering Father Matthew's call;?The sullen Spaniard, and the mad-cap Gaul,?The bull-dog Briton, yielding but with life,?The Yankee swaggering with his bowie-knife,?The Russ, from banquets with the vulture shared,?The blood still dripping from his amber beard,?Quitting their mad Berserker dance to hear?The dull, meek droning of a drab-coat seer;?Leaving the sport of Presidents and Kings,?Where men for dice each titled gambler flings,?To meet alternate on the Seine and Thames,?For tea and gossip, like old country dames?No! let the cravens plead the weakling's cant,?Let Cobden cipher, and let Vincent rant,?Let Sturge preach peace to democratic throngs,?And Burritt, stammering through his hundred tongues,?Repeat,