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

glossy green,
The cluster from the vine;
We better love the hardy gift
Our rugged vales bestow,
To cheer us
when the storm shall drift
Our harvest-fields with snow.
Through vales of grass and mends of flowers
Our ploughs their
furrows made,
While on the hills the sun and showers
Of changeful
April played.
We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain
Beneath the sun of May,

And frightened from our sprouting grain
The robber crows away.
All through the long, bright days of June
Its leaves grew green and
fair,
And waved in hot midsummer's noon
Its soft and yellow hair.
And now, with autumn's moonlit eves,
Its harvest-time has come,

We pluck away the frosted leaves,
And bear the treasure home.
There, when the snows about us drift,
And winter winds are cold,

Fair hands the broken grain shall sift,
And knead its meal of gold.
Let vapid idlers loll in silk
Around their costly board;
Give us the
bowl of samp and milk,
By homespun beauty poured!
Where'er the wide old kitchen hearth
Sends up its smoky curls,

Who will not thank the kindly earth,
And bless our farmer girls!
Then 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,