Labor and Reform, vol 3, part 5 | Page 4

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 be 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