Personal Poems II, vol 4, part 2 | Page 8

as when, on nights?Of summer-time, the harmless blaze?Of thunderless heat-lightning plays,?And tree and hill-top resting dim?And doubtful on the sky's vague rim,?Touched by that soft and lambent gleam,?Start sharply outlined from their dream.
Talk not to me of woman's sphere,?Nor point with Scripture texts a sneer,?Nor wrong the manliest saint of all?By doubt, if he were here, that Paul?Would own the heroines who have lent?Grace to truth's stern arbitrament,?Foregone the praise to woman sweet,?And cast their crowns at Duty's feet;?Like her, who by her strong Appeal?Made Fashion weep and Mammon feel,?Who, earliest summoned to withstand?The color-madness of the land,?Counted her life-long losses gain,?And made her own her sisters' pain;?Or her who, in her greenwood shade,?Heard the sharp call that Freedom made,?And, answering, struck from Sappho's lyre?Of love the Tyrtman carmen's fire?Or that young girl,--Domremy's maid?Revived a nobler cause to aid,--?Shaking from warning finger-tips?The doom of her apocalypse;?Or her, who world-wide entrance gave?To the log-cabin of the slave,?Made all his want and sorrow known,?And all earth's languages his own.?1866.
GEORGE L. STEARNS
No man rendered greater service to the cause of freedom than Major Stearns in the great struggle between invading slave-holders and the free settlers of Kansas.
He has done the work of a true man,--?Crown him, honor him, love him.?Weep, over him, tears of woman,?Stoop manliest brows above him!
O dusky mothers and daughters,?Vigils of mourning keep for him!?Up in the mountains, and down by the waters,?Lift up your voices and weep for him,
For the warmest of hearts is frozen,?The freest of hands is still;?And the gap in our picked and chosen?The long years may not fill.
No duty could overtask him,?No need his will outrun;?Or ever our lips could ask him,?His hands the work had done.
He forgot his own soul for others,?Himself to his neighbor lending;?He found the Lord in his suffering brothers,?And not in the clouds descending.
So the bed was sweet to die on,?Whence he saw the doors wide swung?Against whose bolted iron?The strength of his life was flung.
And he saw ere his eye was darkened?The sheaves of the harvest-bringing,?And knew while his ear yet hearkened?The voice of the reapers singing.
Ah, well! The world is discreet;?There are plenty to pause and wait;?But here was a man who set his feet?Sometimes in advance of fate;
Plucked off the old bark when the inner?Was slow to renew it,?And put to the Lord's work the sinner?When saints failed to do it.
Never rode to the wrong's redressing?A worthier paladin.?Shall he not hear the blessing,?"Good and faithful, enter in!"?1867
GARIBALDI
In trance and dream of old, God's prophet saw?The casting down of thrones. Thou, watching lone?The hot Sardinian coast-line, hazy-hilled,?Where, fringing round Caprera's rocky zone?With foam, the slow waves gather and withdraw,?Behold'st the vision of the seer fulfilled,?And hear'st the sea-winds burdened with a sound?Of falling chains, as, one by one, unbound,?The nations lift their right hands up and swear?Their oath of freedom. From the chalk-white wall?Of England, from the black Carpathian range,?Along the Danube and the Theiss, through all?The passes of the Spanish Pyrenees,?And from the Seine's thronged banks, a murmur strange?And glad floats to thee o'er thy summer seas?On the salt wind that stirs thy whitening hair,--?The song of freedom's bloodless victories!?Rejoice, O Garibaldi! Though thy sword?Failed at Rome's gates, and blood seemed vainly poured?Where, in Christ's name, the crowned infidel?Of France wrought murder with the arms of hell?On that sad mountain slope whose ghostly dead,?Unmindful of the gray exorcist's ban,?Walk, unappeased, the chambered Vatican,?And draw the curtains of Napoleon's bed!?God's providence is not blind, but, full of eyes,?It searches all the refuges of lies;?And in His time and way, the accursed things?Before whose evil feet thy battle-gage?Has clashed defiance from hot youth to age?Shall perish. All men shall be priests and kings,?One royal brotherhood, one church made free?By love, which is the law of liberty?1869.
TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD,
ON READING HER POEM IN "THE STANDARD."
Mrs. Child wrote her lines, beginning, "Again the trees are clothed in vernal green," May 24, 1859, on the first anniversary of Ellis Gray Loring's death, but did not publish them for some years afterward, when I first read them, or I could not have made the reference which I did to the extinction of slavery.
The sweet spring day is glad with music,?But through it sounds a sadder strain;?The worthiest of our narrowing circle?Sings Loring's dirges o'er again.
O woman greatly loved! I join thee?In tender memories of our friend;?With thee across the awful spaces?The greeting of a soul I send!
What cheer hath he? How is it with him??Where lingers he this weary while??Over what pleasant fields of Heaven?Dawns the sweet sunrise of his smile?
Does he not know our feet are treading?The earth hard down on Slavery's grave??That, in our crowning exultations,?We miss the charm his presence gave?
Why on this spring air comes no whisper?From him to tell us all is well??Why to our flower-time comes