Poems in War Time, vol 3, part 4 | Page 6

holy flame;
And, dying, gave
The land a saint that lost him as a
slave.
O dark, sad millions, patiently and dumb
Waiting for God, your hour
at last has come,
And freedom's song
Breaks the long silence of
your night of wrong!
Arise and flee! shake off the vile restraint
Of ages; but, like
Ballymena's saint,
The oppressor spare,
Heap only on his head the
coals of prayer.
Go forth, like him! like him return again,
To bless the land whereon
in bitter pain
Ye toiled at first,
And heal with freedom what your
slavery cursed.
1863.
ANNIVERSARY POEM.
Read before the Alumni of the Friends' Yearly Meeting School, at the
Annual Meeting at Newport, R. I., 15th 6th mo., 1863.
ONCE more, dear friends, you meet beneath
A clouded sky
Not yet
the sword has found its sheath,
And on the sweet spring airs the
breath
Of war floats by.
Yet trouble springs not from the ground,
Nor pain from chance;
The
Eternal order circles round,
And wave and storm find mete and bound

In Providence.

Full long our feet the flowery ways
Of peace have trod,
Content
with creed and garb and phrase:
A harder path in earlier days
Led
up to God.
Too cheaply truths, once purchased dear,
Are made our own;
Too
long the world has smiled to hear
Our boast of full corn in the ear

By others sown;
To see us stir the martyr fires
Of long ago,
And wrap our satisfied
desires
In the singed mantles that our sires
Have dropped below.
But now the cross our worthies bore
On us is laid;
Profession's
quiet sleep is o'er,
And in the scale of truth once more
Our faith is
weighed.
The cry of innocent blood at last
Is calling down
An answer in the
whirlwind-blast,
The thunder and the shadow cast
From Heaven's
dark frown.
The land is red with judgments. Who
Stands guiltless forth?
Have
we been faithful as we knew,
To God and to our brother true,
To
Heaven and Earth.
How faint, through din of merchandise
And count of gain,
Have
seemed to us the captive's cries!
How far away the tears and sighs

Of souls in pain!
This day the fearful reckoning comes
To each and all;
We hear
amidst our peaceful homes
The summons of the conscript drums,

The bugle's call.
Our path is plain; the war-net draws
Round us in vain,
While,
faithful to the Higher Cause,
We keep our fealty to the laws

Through patient pain.
The levelled gun, the battle-brand,
We may not take
But, calmly

loyal, we can stand
And suffer with our suffering land
For
conscience' sake.
Why ask for ease where all is pain?
Shall we alone
Be left to add
our gain to gain,
When over Armageddon's plain
The trump is
blown?
To suffer well is well to serve;
Safe in our Lord
The rigid lines of
law shall curve
To spare us; from our heads shall swerve
Its smiting
sword.
And light is mingled with the gloom,
And joy with grief;
Divinest
compensations come,
Through thorns of judgment mercies bloom

In sweet relief.
Thanks for our privilege to bless,
By word and deed,
The widow in
her keen distress,
The childless and the fatherless,
The hearts that
bleed!
For fields of duty, opening wide,
Where all our powers
Are tasked
the eager steps to guide
Of millions on a path untried
The slave is
ours!
Ours by traditions dear and old,
Which make the race
Our wards to
cherish and uphold,
And cast their freedom in the mould
Of
Christian grace.
And we may tread the sick-bed floors
Where strong men pine,
And,
down the groaning corridors,
Pour freely from our liberal stores
The
oil and wine.
Who murmurs that in these dark days
His lot is cast?
God's hand
within the shadow lays
The stones whereon His gates of praise

Shall rise at last.
Turn and o'erturn, O outstretched Hand
Nor stint, nor stay;
The

years have never dropped their sand
On mortal issue vast and grand

As ours to-day.
Already, on the sable ground
Of man's despair
Is Freedom's
glorious picture found,
With all its dusky hands unbound
Upraised
in prayer.
Oh, small shall seem all sacrifice
And pain and loss,
When God
shall wipe the weeping eyes,
For suffering give the victor's prize,

The crown for cross.
BARBARA FRIETCHIE.
This poem was written in strict conformity to the account of the
incident as I had it from respectable and trustworthy sources. It has
since been the subject of a good deal of conflicting testimony, and the
story was probably incorrect in some of its details. It is admitted by all
that Barbara Frietchie was no myth, but a worthy and highly esteemed
gentlewoman, intensely loyal and a hater of the Slavery Rebellion,
holding her Union flag sacred and keeping it with her Bible; that when
the Confederates halted before her house, and entered her dooryard, she
denounced them in vigorous language, shook her cane in their faces,
and drove them out; and when General Burnside's troops followed
close upon Jackson's, she waved her flag and cheered them. It is stated
that May Qnantrell, a brave and loyal lady in another part of the city,
did wave her flag in sight of the Confederates. It is possible that there
has been a blending of the two incidents.
Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear