Narrative Poems, part 4, Mable Martin etc | Page 7

negro crushed and rent,?And made of his blood the wall's cement;?Bade the slave-ship speed from coast to coast,?Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost;?And begged, for the love of Christ, the gold?Coined from the hearts in its groaning hold.?What could it matter, more or less?Of stripes, and hunger, and weariness??Living or dying, bond or free,?What was time to eternity?
Alas for the preacher's cherished schemes!?Mission and church are now but dreams;?Nor prayer nor fasting availed the plan?To honor God through the wrong of man.?Of all his labors no trace remains?Save the bondman lifting his hands in chains.?The woof he wove in the righteous warp?Of freedom-loving Oglethorpe,?Clothes with curses the goodly land,?Changes its greenness and bloom to sand;?And a century's lapse reveals once more?The slave-ship stealing to Georgia's shore.?Father of Light! how blind is he?Who sprinkles the altar he rears to Thee?With the blood and tears of humanity!
He erred: shall we count His gifts as naught??Was the work of God in him unwrought??The servant may through his deafness err,?And blind may be God's messenger;?But the Errand is sure they go upon,--?The word is spoken, the deed is done.?Was the Hebrew temple less fair and good?That Solomon bowed to gods of wood??For his tempted heart and wandering feet,?Were the songs of David less pure and sweet??So in light and shadow the preacher went,?God's erring and human instrument;?And the hearts of the people where he passed?Swayed as the reeds sway in the blast,?Under the spell of a voice which took?In its compass the flow of Siloa's brook,?And the mystical chime of the bells of gold?On the ephod's hem of the priest of old,--?Now the roll of thunder, and now the awe?Of the trumpet heard in the Mount of Law.
A solemn fear on the listening crowd?Fell like the shadow of a cloud.?The sailor reeling from out the ships?Whose masts stood thick in the river-slips?Felt the jest and the curse die on his lips.?Listened the fisherman rude and hard,?The calker rough from the builder's yard;?The man of the market left his load,?The teamster leaned on his bending goad,?The maiden, and youth beside her, felt?Their hearts in a closer union melt,?And saw the flowers of their love in bloom?Down the endless vistas of life to come.?Old age sat feebly brushing away?From his ears the scanty locks of gray;?And careless boyhood, living the free?Unconscious life of bird and tree,?Suddenly wakened to a sense?Of sin and its guilty consequence.?It was as if an angel's voice?Called the listeners up for their final choice;?As if a strong hand rent apart?The veils of sense from soul and heart,?Showing in light ineffable?The joys of heaven and woes of hell?All about in the misty air?The hills seemed kneeling in silent prayer;?The rustle of leaves, the moaning sedge,?The water's lap on its gravelled edge,?The wailing pines, and, far and faint,?The wood-dove's note of sad complaint,--?To the solemn voice of the preacher lent?An undertone as of low lament;?And the note of the sea from its sand coast,?On the easterly wind, now heard, now lost,?Seemed the murmurous sound of the judgment host.
Yet wise men doubted, and good men wept,?As that storm of passion above them swept,?And, comet-like, adding flame to flame,?The priests of the new Evangel came,--?Davenport, flashing upon the crowd,?Charged like summer's electric cloud,?Now holding the listener still as death?With terrible warnings under breath,?Now shouting for joy, as if he viewed?The vision of Heaven's beatitude!?And Celtic Tennant, his long coat bound?Like a monk's with leathern girdle round,?Wild with the toss of unshorn hair,?And wringing of hands, and, eyes aglare,?Groaning under the world's despair!?Grave pastors, grieving their flocks to lose,?Prophesied to the empty pews?That gourds would wither, and mushrooms die,?And noisiest fountains run soonest dry,?Like the spring that gushed in Newbury Street,?Under the tramp of the earthquake's feet,?A silver shaft in the air and light,?For a single day, then lost in night,?Leaving only, its place to tell,?Sandy fissure and sulphurous smell.?With zeal wing-clipped and white-heat cool,?Moved by the spirit in grooves of rule,?No longer harried, and cropped, and fleeced,?Flogged by sheriff and cursed by priest,?But by wiser counsels left at ease?To settle quietly on his lees,?And, self-concentred, to count as done?The work which his fathers well begun,?In silent protest of letting alone,?The Quaker kept the way of his own,--?A non-conductor among the wires,?With coat of asbestos proof to fires.?And quite unable to mend his pace?To catch the falling manna of grace,?He hugged the closer his little store?Of faith, and silently prayed for more.?And vague of creed and barren of rite,?But holding, as in his Master's sight,?Act and thought to the inner light,?The round of his simple duties walked,?And strove to live what the others talked.
And who shall marvel if evil went?Step by step with the good intent,?And with love and meekness, side by side,?Lust of the flesh and spiritual pride?--?That passionate longings and fancies vain?Set the