Poems in War Time, vol 3, part 4 | Page 9

chivalry?Be knightly honors paid;?For nobler than the sword's shall be?The sickle's accolade.
Build up an altar to the Lord,?O grateful hearts of ours?And shape it of the greenest sward?That ever drank the showers.
Lay all the bloom of gardens there,?And there the orchard fruits;?Bring golden grain from sun and air,?From earth her goodly roots.
There let our banners droop and flow,?The stars uprise and fall;?Our roll of martyrs, sad and slow,?Let sighing breezes call.
Their names let hands of horn and tan?And rough-shod feet applaud,?Who died to make the slave a man,?And link with toil reward.
There let the common heart keep time?To such an anthem sung?As never swelled on poet's rhyme,?Or thrilled on singer's tongue.
Song of our burden and relief,?Of peace and long annoy;?The passion of our mighty grief?And our exceeding joy!
A song of praise to Him who filled?The harvests sown in tears,?And gave each field a double yield?To feed our battle-years.
A song of faith that trusts the end?To match the good begun,?Nor doubts the power of Love to blend?The hearts of men as one!
TO THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS.
The thirty-ninth congress was that which met in 1565 after the close of the war, when it was charged with the great question of reconstruction; the uppermost subject in men's minds was the standing of those who had recently been in arms against the Union and their relations to the freedmen.
O PEOPLE-CHOSEN! are ye not?Likewise the chosen of the Lord,?To do His will and speak His word?
From the loud thunder-storm of war?Not man alone hath called ye forth,?But He, the God of all the earth!
The torch of vengeance in your hands?He quenches; unto Him belongs?The solemn recompense of wrongs.
Enough of blood the land has seen,?And not by cell or gallows-stair?Shall ye the way of God prepare.
Say to the pardon-seekers: Keep?Your manhood, bend no suppliant knees,?Nor palter with unworthy pleas.
Above your voices sounds the wail?Of starving men; we shut in vain *?Our eyes to Pillow's ghastly stain. **
What words can drown that bitter cry??What tears wash out the stain of death??What oaths confirm your broken faith?
From you alone the guaranty?Of union, freedom, peace, we claim;?We urge no conqueror's terms of shame.
Alas! no victor's pride is ours;?We bend above our triumphs won?Like David o'er his rebel son.
Be men, not beggars. Cancel all?By one brave, generous action; trust?Your better instincts, and be just.
Make all men peers before the law,?Take hands from off the negro's throat,?Give black and white an equal vote.
Keep all your forfeit lives and lands,?But give the common law's redress?To labor's utter nakedness.
Revive the old heroic will;?Be in the right as brave and strong?As ye have proved yourselves in wrong.
Defeat shall then be victory,?Your loss the wealth of full amends,?And hate be love, and foes be friends.
Then buried be the dreadful past,?Its common slain be mourned, and let?All memories soften to regret.
Then shall the Union's mother-heart?Her lost and wandering ones recall,?Forgiving and restoring all,--
And Freedom break her marble trance?Above the Capitolian dome,?Stretch hands, and bid ye welcome home?November, 1865.
? Andersonville prison. ** The massacre of Negro troops at Fort Pillow.
THE HIVE AT GETTYSBURG.
IN the old Hebrew myth the lion's frame,?So terrible alive,?Bleached by the desert's sun and wind, became?The wandering wild bees' hive;?And he who, lone and naked-handed, tore?Those jaws of death apart,?In after time drew forth their honeyed store?To strengthen his strong heart.
Dead seemed the legend: but it only slept?To wake beneath our sky;?Just on the spot whence ravening Treason crept?Back to its lair to die,?Bleeding and torn from Freedom's mountain bounds,?A stained and shattered drum?Is now the hive where, on their flowery rounds,?The wild bees go and come.
Unchallenged by a ghostly sentinel,?They wander wide and far,?Along green hillsides, sown with shot and shell,?Through vales once choked with war.?The low reveille of their battle-drum?Disturbs no morning prayer;?With deeper peace in summer noons their hum?Fills all the drowsy air.
And Samson's riddle is our own to-day,?Of sweetness from the strong,?Of union, peace, and freedom plucked away?From the rent jaws of wrong.?From Treason's death we draw a purer life,?As, from the beast he slew,?A sweetness sweeter for his bitter strife?The old-time athlete drew!?1868.
HOWARD AT ATLANTA.
RIGHT in the track where Sherman?Ploughed his red furrow,?Out of the narrow cabin,?Up from the cellar's burrow,?Gathered the little black people,?With freedom newly dowered,?Where, beside their Northern teacher,?Stood the soldier, Howard.
He listened and heard the children?Of the poor and long-enslaved?Reading the words of Jesus,?Singing the songs of David.?Behold!--the dumb lips speaking,?The blind eyes seeing!?Bones of the Prophet's vision?Warmed into being!
Transformed he saw them passing?Their new life's portal?Almost it seemed the mortal?Put on the immortal.?No more with the beasts of burden,?No more with stone and clod,?But crowned with glory and honor?In the image of God!
There was the human chattel?Its manhood taking;?There, in each dark, bronze statue,?A soul was waking!?The man of many battles,?With tears his eyelids pressing,?Stretched over those dusky foreheads?His one-armed blessing.
And he said: "Who hears can